Burroughs: The Movie (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Made up of intimate, revelatory footage of the singular author and poet filmed over the course of five years, Howard Brookner’s 1983 documentary about William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch) was for decades mainly the stuff of legend; that changed when Aaron Brookner, the late director’s nephew, discovered a print of it in 2011 and spearheaded a restoration. Now viewers can enjoy the invigorating candidness of Burroughs: The Movie, a one-of-a-kind nonfiction portrait that was brought to life with the help of a remarkable crew of friends, including Jim Jarmusch (Down By Law) and Tom DiCillo (Living in Oblivion), and that features on-screen appearances by fellow artists of Burroughs’s including Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Patti Smith, and Terry Southern. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New, high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack • New interviews with filmmakers Jim Jarmusch, Aaron Brookner, and Tom DiCillo, as well as William S. Burroughs’s friends and fellow writers James Grauerholz and Stew Meyer • Rare outtakes • Footage from the 2014 New York Film Festival premiere of the film’s restoration • Thirty-minute experimental edit of the film from 1981 by inventor and photographer Robert E. Fulton Jr. • More! • PLUS: An essay by critic Luc Sante and a collage poster by artist Alison Mosshart