CW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence.

Violet Lucca, the author of the new monograph David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials, returns to the podcast from Brooklyn to discuss the book and his controversial 1991 adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch starring Peter Weller and Judy Davis, filmed in Toronto standing in for 50s New York and Morocco, recreated by Cronenberg’s longtime production designer Carol Spier in a former General Electric plant in Toronto’s west end.

We discuss Cronenberg’s lifelong connection to Canadian cinema and the city of Toronto with digressions on Videodrome, The Dead Zone and The Fly before grappling with Naked Lunch, which is less of a literal film version of the novel and more a meditation about the life of Burroughs and what it is to be an artist in general. We also discuss Cronenberg’s cinematic explorations of paranoia and conspiracy theories, and his relationship to the queer artistic community in Canada reflected across his career, even if he’s always identified himself as a heterosexual man.

And we (briefly) contrast Naked Lunch with the new Burroughs cinematic adaptation, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer starring Daniel Craig, which we feel misses the boat on how to adapt Burroughs for the screen.

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Follow Violet Lucca on Bluesky.

David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials, by Violet Lucca (Abrams Books) is now available!

City TV commercial for their public service program “Toronto the Good” (1975)

Universal Pictures' studio trailer for Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983)

Trailer for The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983)

Trailer for Naked Lunch (Cronenberg, 1991)

Trailer for Queer (Guadagnino, 2024)