Reviewed by Graham Rae

“Tears are worthless unless genuine, tears from the soul and the guts, tears that ache and wrench and hurt and tear.” — William S Burroughs, Last Words

Let’s face it, the familiar picture of William S Burroughs now pretty much fixed in the public consciousness is of the wife-killing, hat-and-glasses-wearing junkie with the lust for teen boys, his gravel-rolled burr gutter-muttering obscene scientific and medical prophecies to a wasted cheering audience. It’s nowhere near the whole picture, of course, but why let truth come in the way of a good, easily graspable and marketable image?

What’s especially frustrating about this cliché is that it completely ignores the fact that Burroughs was a human being who lived a pretty dismal life — drug addiction, killing his wife, his son dying in his 30s — and treats him instead as a sort of circus freak-cum-alien with no human or redeeming qualities whatsoever. To this way of thinking Burroughs was just the two-dimensional Hombre Invisible, the middle class drug-crash writing mad prose as he strode and staggered purposefully and notoriously down the still-divided-as-to-his-worth annals of literary history.

The neglected human, feeling aspect of the writer is one that is brilliantly and sensitively examined in The Japanese Sandman by director Ed Buhr. This new 12-minute short film is based on the first letter in The Yage Letters, WSB’s fictional book of letters (see Oliver Harris’ authoritative introduction to the 2006 edition for more information on this complex epistolary hoax) supposedly sent to Allen Ginsberg from South America during WSB’s 1953 quest for the hallucinogen yage. This was the mythical “final fix” used by brujos to paint vivid neon prophecies in the humid conspiratorial jungle air, and Burroughs likely wanted it as some sort of panacea to take away the mental and emotional torment that followed his accidental killing of his wife in 1951.

The Japanese Sandman starts off with a faded jaded 38-year-old Burroughs sitting clattering away at his manual Royal typewriter, film noir monochrome mirroring his scarred internal palette. Words crack and rattle across a surrendering gray sky shaking the leaves of vitality-leeched palm trees as the drug-addict writer composes a screed part travelogue, part routine, part anthropology, part sociology, back to Ginsberg in the USA. Not shying away from its subject matter, the film details WSB’s adventures in Panama with drugs and booze and hookers, and it’s clear by this point in his life that he is a cynical, weary individual who has been through the existential wringer.

Buhr conjures up Panama through a judicious handful of interiors and a few tight exteriors, married with a sterling fast-paced editing job, fine crisp evocative cinematography, and a great bouncing soundtrack. John Fleck, the actor who plays Burroughs, does an excellent job mimicking the writer’s unmistakable atonal voice, looks like him and even has his facial tics and tremors down to a tee. Fleck has clearly done his homework, though it must be said he still has all ten fingertips, so there obviously was a limit to what he was willing to suffer for his art! He looks like he’s having fun with the role as he runs with it, and there’s not really a bad performance in the film.

When a shady Panama joint called the Blue Goose reminds him of a Prohibition-era roadhouse from his youth, Burroughs tells the poignant story of Billy Bradshinkel, a lover from his late teenage years. It’s at this point that lusty vibrant color footage supplants the dreary black and white and Burroughs’ internal horizons are seen to be lush and warm and happy. He rewrites their initial sexual encounter in a car and talks about their young naïve relationship before being crushed as they break up. A few months later the writer is left numb when he learns that Billy has died in a car crash. Here we cut back to contemporary Panama and Burroughs promising he has a “silo full of queer corn” like this to recount, but it’s obvious his off-hand glibness is a mask for real pain and sadness. As Oliver Harris notes, having this “routine” right at the start of the book is important for motivating the quest into the jungle to find Yage “as an escape from haunting memories of home, family and desire.”

The Japanese Sandman is a lean, fat-free film, very faithful to the original fake letter it is based on, easily compacting the complex, poignant subject matter into its short, lively running time. The title itself (the letter has none) derives from a line from an old 1920 song of that name, and the line Burroughs quotes from it — “Just an old second-hand man trading new dreams for old” — provides, as he says, the “theme song of story.” Ironically, the writer misquotes the song, replacing the original word “days” with “dreams” by accident or by design, which helps to make his point about remaking painful memories artistically into pain-free images.

A real, heartfelt, melancholic piece of work, The Japanese Sandman is a very welcome addition to the ever-growing list of projects inspired by Burroughs. Ed Buhr has talked of creating a full-length film made based on this material. Let’s hope he manages to get it together, because Burroughs could use a bit of humanizing now that the initial culture shock of his art has died down. There may be nobody better suited for the job than this fine director with his beautiful and inspiring could-be-feature trailer.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

A while back I reviewed Daniel Kane’s Don’t Ever Get Famous, a book of essays he edited on the New York School of poets. Kane’s decision to stray from the beaten path was one of the selling points of that book. No heavy doses of Kenneth Koch, John Ashbery, James Schyuler or Frank O’Hara. For the most part, Kane selected essays on lesser known figures and aspects of the New York School.

Well, Kane has a new book out, We Saw the Light: Conversations between the New American Cinema and Poetry. In each of the book’s seven chapters, one poet is paired with one filmmaker in order to examine the inter-relationship or conversation between them. Once again, Kane charts new territory. Critics have turned their attention to certain aspects of this area, such as the Beats and film. Think Jack Sargeant’s Naked Lens: Beat Cinema or David Sterritt’s Mad to Be Saved: The Beats, the ’50s, and Film. A few studies examine the influence of New American Poetry on New America Cinema, such as R. Bruce Elder’s study of the films of Stan Brakhage, but the influence in the other direction, of New American Cinema (think Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Rudy Burckhardt, Robert Frank, just to mention some filmmakers featured in Kane’s book) on New American Poetry (i.e. the Allen Anthology poets), has not received much, if any, critical attention. Throughout We Saw the Light, Kane explores this path not taken, such as in a reading of John Ashbery’s poetics through the lens of Rudy Burckhardt’s film Ostensibly. Kane’s analysis is wide-ranging, touching on earlier work like Burckhardt’s Lurk and Ashbery’s Three Poems as well as the poetry of Robert Frost. Chapters on Robert Duncan / Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage / Robert Creeley possess similar breadth and depth. The book concludes with an interview with Lisa Jarnot (poet) and Jennifer Reeves (filmmaker) on their collaboration The Time We Killed (2004). This interview highlights the fact that the collaboration between experimental poetry and film is still ongoing and vibrant. This concluding chapter also integrates what had until then been a boy’s club.

I want to look at three chapters in Kane’s book in some depth. Let’s start with the chapter on Allen Ginsberg and Robert Frank. One would expect a discussion of Pull My Daisy, the most famous Beat film and Howl, Ginsberg’s most well-known poem. Such considerations have been done before, for example in Naked Lens and in Mad to Be Saved. In We Saw the Light, Kane passes on examining Pull My Daisy in any depth and chooses to discuss the cinematic aspects of Howl from a new and unusual perspective. Obviously, Ginsberg’s use of juxtaposition, best exemplified by the phrase “hydrogen jukebox,” has links to cinematic montage à la Sergei Eisenstein. Kane chooses not to discuss these links in detail. Not because he is unaware of them — Kane touches on this aspect of New American Poetry in another chapter by quoting from Robert Duncan’s The H.D. Book regarding Eisenstein. No, Kane hopes to open up new areas for discussion. The quoting of The H.D. Book is a case in point. Duncan’s long-running project of creative criticism is for the most part unread and unstudied. The reference to The H.D. Book shows Kane digging deep into forgotten or neglected works. We Saw the Light often cites unpublished interviews, little known correspondence, and other texts that a disc jockey would describe as deep cuts.

For example in considering the influence of cinema on Howl, Kane singles out the figure of Charlie Chaplin. Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky collaborated on a largely neglected poem entitled “A Letter to Chaplin.” In addition, in his notes on the recording of Howl, Ginsberg wrote, “the whole first section typed out madly in one afternoon, a tragic, custard-pie comedy of wild phrasing, meaningless images for the beauty of abstract poetry of mind running along making awkward combinations like Charlie Chaplin’s walk.” The reference to “abstract poetry” highlights the well-documented influence of abstract art on Howl, namely Cézanne, whose juxtapositions of form and color Ginsberg studied intently while developing his own signature style. Kane takes this note on Howl to explore Chaplin as an alternative, and lesser known, cinematic inspiration behind Ginsberg’s “wild phrasing” and “awkward combinations.” Unlike Cézanne, the figure of Chaplin also provides transgressive sexual and political implications. “A Letter to Chaplin” in its subject matter encourages just such reading. Through Chaplin, Kane probes the links between poetic experimentalism, sexual freedom, and political radicalism that underlies Howl.

In addition, Kane focuses on a lesser known Ginsberg / Frank collaboration: Me and My Brother as well as the even more obscure film version of Kaddish, an abandoned project out of which Me and My Brother developed. Me and My Brother is considered in connection with Wichita Vortex Sutra. In a wide-ranging analysis, Kane demonstrates how Ginsberg drew inspiration from, and in turn influenced, Frank’s work. In this light, it becomes clear how Ginsberg’s interrogation of language and reality in “Wichita Vortex Sutra” and other poems of the mid-1960s parallel similar concerns of Frank’s. Ginsberg’s poetics of this period also incorporate Frank’s cinematic techniques of editing as well as his photographic style. Ginsberg’s use of a tape recorder to create these poems mimics Frank’s use of a camera on several levels. The chapter on Frank and Ginsberg sheds new light on their collaboration and the fruits of that collaboration.

Similarly, the chapter on Frank O’Hara and Alfred Leslie is fresh and informative. O’Hara drew much inspiration from Hollywood, and this fact is well known and documented. Poems like To the Film Industry in Crisis and Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed) are obvious examples of O’Hara’s love affair with the movies. Yet for the most part, critical accounts focus on the influence and incorporation of popular culture and mainstream film in O’Hara’s poetry. As Kane makes clear, O’Hara interacted with and drew inspiration from the underground cinema as well. Kane examines the collaboration of Leslie and O’Hara in The Last Clean Shirt (1964). The film, which centers on an interracial couple driving through New York City, is on one level the cinematic equivalent of an “I do this, I do that” poem. Like O’Hara’s poetry, it is very much an urban film focusing on New York City locales. Many critics see O’Hara’s poems as a form of name-dropping performed by an urbane flaneur. As a result, these references are considered on their surface. Instead, Kane uses Last Clean Shirt to highlight how racial and political concerns lie beneath that surface. As a result, O’Hara becomes more of an engaged poet, in a political sense, as well as a poet engaged in the underground of the Lower East Side, not just the art world of Upper Manhattan.

The chapter on Andy Warhol was a bit of a disappointment. The chapter seems to me to be something of an afterthought, maybe the suggestion of an editor. I sense that a higher-up felt that the work of Andy Warhol had to be included. I disagree. Warhol’s films have been much discussed in other books. Most significantly, Reva Wolf has discussed Warhol and his relationship to poetry in her book Andy Warhol, Gossip and Poetry in the 1960s. In addition, Kane himself touched on this topic in All Poets Welcome. One of the strengths of We Saw the Light (and Don’t Ever Get Famous) is that it embraces the unexpected and the unexplored. Another strength is that the book examines the interaction between one filmmaker and one poet in each chapter. Yet the Warhol chapter is devoted to the conversations between Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, and Frank O’Hara. I feel Kane lost his focus a bit by getting away from a tight, compact one-on-one structure. I would have liked to see him narrow his scope and provide a detailed reading of Warhol’s interaction with one poet in particular. Kane examines the screen tests of John Ashbery and Allen Ginsberg. These seem to me to be obvious choices (as is the discussion of Frank O’Hara) which conflicts with more obscure topics covered in the rest of the book. Yet Ron Padgett and Ted Berrigan also sat for screen tests. How about a whole chapter dedicated to the conversation between Warhol and Berrigan? Or Warhol and Padgett? Reva Wolf and Kane himself address these conversations in their earlier books, but, still, such an examination would be more unexpected than discussing Ashbery, O’Hara, or Ginsberg, who are already the subject of chapters in We Saw the Light. I want to stress that this is a small criticism to give balance to this review. Do not get me wrong, I read the Warhol chapter with great interest, and to those not aware of Wolf’s or Kane’s earlier work, the chapter will be a revelation, but for me it was not as fresh and focused as the rest of the book.

Kane mentions Burroughs in passing throughout the book and in a footnote or two. For example I was interested to learn that Burroughs appeared in a Stan Brakhage film, Thot Fal’N (1978). I know next to nothing about this movie. It is described on the internet as follows: “This film describes a psychological state ‘kin to ‘moon-struck,” its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of ‘falling away’ from conscious thought. The film can only be said to ‘describe’ or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the ‘actors’ in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Philip Whalen, are figments of this Thought-Fallen PROCESS as are their images in the film to themselves being photographed.” I would like to know more about this film.

Yet due to a variety of reasons, William Burroughs is not considered in detail in Kane’s book. For one Burroughs is considered a novelist, not a poet. Second, Burroughs’ cut-up films were directed by Antony Balch, a British filmmaker, so they technically are not New American Cinema. Finally and most importantly, the cut-up films have been discussed elsewhere in books and in academic articles. They are, to some extent, covered ground.

That said, Kane’s book demonstrates to me that an entire book on Burroughs and film is much needed. The book I have in mind would serve the same purpose as Ports of Entry that explored Burroughs and visual art. Clearly, Burroughs has a varied and complex relationship to film. Burroughs utilized cinematic techniques in his writing to great effect. Has there been a study of the relationship of experimental film and the cut-up technique or maybe a close reading of The Last Words of Dutch Schultz screenplay and that work’s relation to the rest of Burroughs’ output? What about the idea of film and filmmaking in Burroughs’ theories on the nature of reality and perception? The saga of the making of Naked Lunch into a film from the 1960s onwards has yet to be told in full. What about Burroughs as an actor? Much could be made of the roles Burroughs played and how they reflect on him as a myth and icon. Some of these topics have been covered in academic articles and in chapters on Beat film but others remain untackled. Maybe a collection of essays like Retaking the Universe is in order. Maybe it is already in the works.

In any case, Daniel Kane’s We Saw the Light is on the shelves now and I strongly recommend it. In some cases, it builds on existing material but in large part it opens up whole new areas of inquiry on some of the most exciting and innovative poets and filmmakers of the 20th Century. For anyone interested in New American poetry or cinema, this book is a must-read.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

I just finished reading a catalogue raisonné of Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. For those who do not know, Warhol shot a series of portrait films from 1964 to 1966, one of the most long-term and ambitious projects in his career as a filmmaker. Each test was about four minutes long, roughly the duration of a hundred feet of film. Warhol would place his subject in front of a camera (a 16mm Bolex to start) with instruction to face the camera until the film stopped. In many cases, Warhol would walk away from the subject as the film was shooting.

Warhol directed over 400 screen tests, and they serve as a remarkable archive of the personalities of the New York art scene and the Factory. Artists, art dealers, collectors, critics and patrons are well represented, as are the celebrities of the Factory’s Studio System: Edie Sedgwick, Mario Montez, Ivy Nicholson, Baby Jane Holzer, Ultraviolet, and Taylor Mead. Poets find a place in the pantheon, particularly poets associated with the New York School. Or should I say the Tulsa School? John Ashbery sat for a screen test representing the first generation New Yorkers, and he labeled Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, and Dick Gallup, the Tulsa School. Berrigan, Padgett, and Brainard all sat for screen tests.

The Beats are represented in the form of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Both poets sat on December 4, 1966. These were some of the last screen tests taken in the entire series. In an exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery dedicated to Warhol, I saw a handful of screen tests. Ginsberg’s was one of them. Like many subjects, Ginsberg chooses to sit as still as possible and aggressively out-stare the camera. I also saw Ashbery’s test. Similarly, he aggressively confronts the camera, scowling for much of the test. In interviews, Ashbery admitted to being intimidated by the process. Ginsberg and Orlovsky appeared in another Warhol film, along with Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso, two years earlier. The film was Couch and it has an interesting backstory you can read about here.

William Burroughs never sat for a screen test. Given the hype and excitement that surrounded Burroughs during his time in New York City in 1964/1965, this is somewhat surprising. At the time, Burroughs was an underground celebrity, a perfect subject for a screen test. Yet Burroughs and Warhol did not hit it off in the 1960s. Panna Grady, a rich heiress and a groupie of underground poets and writers, took Burroughs to meet Warhol for dinner. They went to a Chinese restaurant, where Burroughs was offended by the manners of those in Warhol’s entourage. Burroughs walked out.

The personalities of the two men were quite a bit different, as must have been obvious when they met. Warhol cultivated a camp and effeminate gay persona that was the polar opposite of Burroughs’ gun-toting machismo. Burroughs’ letters of the 1950s are filled with his dislike for swishes, so coming face-to-face with Warhol must have aroused some level of distaste. Creatively, however, the two had much in common. Before their ill-fated dinner, Warhol arrived at Burroughs’ loft with a bag of tape-recording equipment. Surely this piqued Burroughs’ interest because Burroughs asked Warhol to leave the recorders at the loft.

I am fascinated by Warhol during the Factory years, and it is an interesting “what if” to me to wonder what a collaboration between Burroughs and Warhol would have been like. How would Burroughs have reacted to a screen test? If anybody could have out-stared a Bolex, it would have been Burroughs. I like to think that the camera would blink, tear up, or break down under the strain of Burroughs’ impassive, sullen gaze. Perhaps Burroughs would not even register on the film at all. In Mexico City, Peru, Panama, and Tangier, Burroughs stalked back alleys anonymously, melting into the shadows without leaving a trace on his surroundings. The banker’s suit and the grey hat were the uniform of the 1950s Everyman. Or maybe a Nobody. Not for nothing did Burroughs’ ability to blend in and disappear earn him the name “El Hombre Invisible.”

Ironically, Burroughs’ non-descript clothes became iconic by the 1970s. Immediately recognizable, precisely because he was invisible. The banker’s clothes disguised a revolutionary: a wolf in sheep’s clothing. When Burroughs returned to New York City from 1974 to 1981, Warhol was still holding court, although the Factory gave way to Studio 54. The screen tests were replaced by celebrity portraits painted for a sizable fee. Interestingly, it was at this period, when Burroughs truly broke into mainstream consciousness, that Warhol and Burroughs would connect. When Burroughs lived in New York City at the Bunker, he and Warhol met again for dinner, and the results were much more cordial than 1965. Victor Bockris taped several of their conversations and published them in With Willam Burroughs: At the Bunker. This title was a Richard Seaver book that was distributed by Grove Press in 1981. Warhol took several Polaroids of Burroughs in preparation for a proposed portrait, but it never came off. Burroughs never ponied up the requisite cash. Yet the attempt was made. Even more than in 1965, Burroughs was a celebrity. Burroughs appeared on Saturday Night Live, was the godfather of Punk, was profiled in People. Such flash and recognition captivated Warhol. The pinnacle of this type of attention would be the Nike ad in 1994 that capitalized on Burroughs’ iconic status in the realm of, not Punk, but Cyber-Punk.

Despite the coldness of their first meeting, Burroughs and Warhol briefly bonded in Burroughs’ loft over the tape recorder. This machine proved central to the creative work and philosophies of both artists in the 1960s. Burroughs: “I am a recording instrument.” Warhol: “I want to be a machine.” Burroughs utilized the tape recorder from the late 1950s on. In his essay The Invisible Generation, Burroughs proclaims such technology as an agent for revolutionary change. Warhol relied on the tape recorder for most of his literary projects. A: A Novel is at its simplest a transcription of Warhol star Ondine talking about the events of his day. Tape transcriptions made up the bulk of Popism and The Philosophy of Andy Warhol as well. Ideally, Warhol sought to just let the tape run and present verbatim transcriptions. There would be no stopping or re-starting of the tape, no edits, no cuts. On the other hand, Burroughs aggressively manipulated the tape. He inched it backwards and forwards, recording and re-recording. He cut and spliced the tape. The resulting transcripts were heavily revised and altered. These two creative icons are on the opposite ends of the spectrum concerning the process of editing. Yet the goal is the same: a dissolving of the control of the artist, a striving for the impersonal.

The major difference between the films of Warhol and Burroughs is, again, the cut. Burroughs’ films are full of aural and visual cuts, and Warhol uses the cut sparingly, if at all. Despite opposing editing techniques, the desire to displace the artist is the same. Of course, just the reverse occurs. Reading Burroughs cut-up texts, his personal obsessions and style shine through. The same occurs with his films. The selection of images and sounds betray his hand. He cannot help but impose his personal imprint. The same holds true for Warhol. Within the seemingly very strict parameters of the screen test, extremely individual, personal performances result. No screen test is exactly the same, even with the same subject filmed for several different tests. If you doubt this, view the several different tests taken of Baby Jane Holzer or Edie Sedgwick. Each test has its unique qualities. The personalities of the sitter show through as does that of Warhol.

Watching the films of Burroughs and Warhol from a drug perspective, I feel that their styles could have been reversed. The drug of choice for Warhol and his art was amphetamine, while Burroughs preferred heroin. One would expect rapid cuts of image and sound from Warhol, and yet it was Burroughs’ cut-up films that reflect the speed freak’s sense and sensibility. Conversely, Warhol films like Sleep and Empire seem to capture the perspective of the junkie on the nod. Burroughs famously wrote in Naked Lunch that while on junk he could stare with interest at his shoe for hours. What would Burroughs have thought of a movie like Empire? Given his interest in editorial manipulation, Burroughs might have found it boring, preferring instead a movie like Chelsea Girls with its split-screen projection. Burroughs’ fascination with multiple perspectives hammers home the point that the world he described is largely seen through the lens of withdrawal. The kicking junkie is besieged by sensation. Spontaneous orgasms, crawling flesh, runaway thoughts. Burroughs’ art, cinematic and literary, captures and reproduces the experience of withdrawal more than the sensation of the fix. The hardcore addict fails to experience the euphoria of heroin in the same manner as a first-time user. Part of the kick is trying to recapture that initial rush. Burroughs’ strong sense of nostalgia stems in part from the longing of the addict for the first fix.

As Warhol was making screen tests in the 1960s, so in a way was Burroughs (along with Brion Gysin, Anthony Balch, and Ian Sommerville). Towers Open Fire (1963) opens with a long static shot of Burroughs which mirrors the portraits Warhol would begin creating a year later. In Guerrilla Conditions, later to become the basis for The Cut-Ups (1966), Burroughs introduced chance / found techniques similar to Warhol’s. Barry Miles writes, “The Cut Ups was literally that, with four reels of film being cut into twelve-inch lengths and assembled in rotation by a lab technician… No artistic judgment was made, and Balch was not even present.” The similarities to the restraints imposed on the screen tests are obvious.

I am more intrigued in considering a film like Bill and Tony (1972) as a Burroughsian screen test. The movie consists of the image of Burroughs mouthing Balch words, and Balch doing likewise to Burroughs’ words. Balch and Burroughs experimented with merging images to form a composite person. Burroughs was very interested in such superimpositions. Burroughs states, “Anthony Balch and I did an experiment with his face projected onto mine and mine onto his. Now if your face is projected onto somebody else’s in color, it looks like the other person. You can’t tell the difference; it’s a mask of light.” He states further, “Another experiment that Anthony and I did was to take the two faces and alternate them twenty-four frames per second, but it’s such a hassle to cut those and replace them, even to put one minute of alternation of twenty-four frames per second on a screen, but it is extraordinary.” Burroughs and Gysin also played with such techniques in The Third Mind experiments. The New Reformers photographs, produced in connection with the Colloque de Tanger in 1975, utilized such superimpositions. In 1971, Jan Herman visited Burroughs and Balch at St. Duke Street in London. At this time, the two men were making Bill and Tony and performing the experiments Burroughs describes above. Herman took part in these experiments and recorded a session on videotape. The results are available exclusively on RealityStudio.

As the video shows, Burroughs introduces montage to the screen test. Montage, collage, assemblage, like the cut-up technique, all center on the cut. In the screen tests, Warhol avoided the edit, the physical cut. The duration of the movie was dictated by the length in feet of the packaged roll of film. No takes, no director yelling cut, no splicing of the film. On the other hand, Burroughs urged a generation to cut up everything. Film, text, audio tape all was fair game for the scissors. Warhol and Burroughs’ editing techniques differed but their goal of depersonalization (and eventual failure to achieve those goals) were the same.

Both Warhol and Burroughs were well exposed to the world of experimental film from Russian avant-garde film of the 1920s to Surrealist film of the 1930s to the New American Film of the post-WWII era. Warhol was a fixture at The Filmmakers’ Co-op and a friend of numerous underground filmmakers like Jonas Mekas, Jack Smith (before their falling out), Willard Maas, and Marie Menken. These filmmakers were subjects for screen tests. Through Gysin and Balch (who distributed European soft-core films), Burroughs would have been exposed to a number of experimental films. I suspect Burroughs and Warhol were well aware of each other’s films as well. Towers Open Fire was completed in 1963 before the underground film boom of the next year. Much of what became The Cut-Ups were filmed around that time. Sections of The Cut-Ups were filmed in the Chelsea Hotel in 1965, the year Warhol and Burroughs first met. Given his connection with Mekas and others, Warhol may have heard about Burroughs’ film experiments as early as 1963. Interestingly, despite Burroughs’ absence from Warhol’s films, particularly the Screen Tests, they are Burroughsian in spirit (alternatively Burroughs’ films are Warholian) as both men had similar obsessions and interests. Burroughs’ films of the mid-1960s have images of young men in bed, of static portraits, of artwork being created in Factory-type fashion.

In fact in 1968, a young man appeared at the Factory introducing himself as Julian Burroughs, the son of William Burroughs. The man was in fact Andrew Dungan, and his act was a con along the lines of that portrayed in Six Degrees of Separation. Dungan read up on Burroughs and his actual son, Billy, in the mainstream and underground media. Either Warhol was fooled or he went along with the deception. The idea of a doppelganger of this type would have appealed to Warhol. He played such tricks himself. Most famously, Edie Sedgwick dyed her hair silver and accompanied Warhol to parties and openings as a female version of Warhol. Less well known but more on point here, Warhol sent Alan Midgette (who sat for a screen test) on a speaking tour of the United States posing as Warhol himself in October 1967 around the time of the Julian Burroughs hoax. Quite possibly, the hoax perpetrated on the Factory inspired Warhol to try it himself, although forgery and impersonation were already staples of the Factory aesthetic. In any case, Warhol cast Dungan / Julian in Lonesome Cowboys and Nude Restaurant. So indirectly Burroughs was a Warhol superstar. Burroughs may never have set foot in the Factory but his presence was felt there and bled into Warhol’s films of the period. Similarly in the screen-test feel of Bill and Tony, Warhol proves to be a ghost in the machine in Burroughs’ films.