William S. Burroughs: A Man Within Page #3

and should never

be recognized...

as a legal human right any more

than robbery or murder.

At the present time

in Colorado where

this was written,

approximate

MOB conditions prevail.

And by MOB,

I mean 'My Own Business.'

No sex crimes on the book.

You can f*** a cow right

in front of the sheriff,

and all he can say is 'Moo!'

But you can hardly expect

to bring down the barn

with an act like that.

With the right virus offset,

perhaps we can get this whole

show out of the barnyard

and into space.

"This is the space age,

and we are here to go."

They asked him at a press

conference what he thought

of the gay rights movement.

And his response was,

"I have never been gay

a day in my life,

and I'm sure as hell

not part of any movement."

But Burroughs

was a deconstructor of labels.

You know,

that was just another sort of

amalgalmized effort to, uh...

to not be marginalized.

And he was

one of the very few...

maybe Jean Genet

and maybe Pier Paolo Pasolini...

who had the balls...

way before it was, like, vogue,

and certainly

when it was dangerous,

to say "I'm queer."

But he was way beyond that,

because he didn't respect any

of the rules of the gay world

at all either.

He was hardly

a Boys in the Band.

He would have hated that.

That culture would have been

very foreign to him because

there were so many rules.

There were so many rules

in the straight world too.

And he violated the rules

of even junkies' worlds.

He opened up to me

not gay culture.

He opened up gay rebels that

couldn't fit in gay culture.

Very different.

And I have to say that

Burroughs to this day

and his work...

have an uneasy, uh,

relationship with

"queer culture in America."

Or queer writing or whatever.

Burroughs was never seen

as part of that.

He was still too transgressive.

Even when it became

sort of okay to be queer,

he was beyond queer.

[ Andy Warhol ]

On this thing right here.

Right here. Here. Go on...

Oh, my God.

[ Bockris ] And I have to take

Burroughs and Warhol

as parallel figures.

Two people who,

in the late '50s

and early '60s,

stood up for

what they believed in.

Made no pretense about it.

Were totally out front about it.

At that time, that was

absolutely outrageous.

I mean, it's hard for people

who didn't live in those times

to know.

When I moved to America

in 1965,

you could not mention

the word "homosexuality"...

without everyone thinking

you were gay.

And it was really

just verboten.

And it's because of Burroughs

and Warhol and what followed

in their wake...

that the whole gay liberation

movement sprung up.

[ James Grauerholz ]

William's boyfriends were

a series of obsessions,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes