Fairly disorganized in the telling and rather impersonally told by filmmaker Yony Leyser, this documentary biography of the stone-faced Beat author of The Naked Lunch is still worth seeing. There's lots of prime footage of Burroughs, who died in 1997, in his stoop-backed later years, when he became the unofficial godfather of punk, living on the Bowery near CBGB's, hanging with Patti Smith, reminiscing with pal Allen Ginsberg about whether there had ever been a spark between them. Lots of interviews are included, from the offputting and pompous (actor Peter Weller) to the sweetly idol-worshipping (Smith, whose first album, Horses, is pure Burroughs) to the smart and perceptive (John Waters, of course). For those who know their Burroughs, there's not much new, except to see how much of a gun nut he was, with more weaponry than Travis Bickle: shooting a rifle in his back yard, carrying concealed weapons even when he was in bed with a young-boy lover.
