Naked Lunch (1991)

Peter Weller: Bill Lee

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Quotes 

• Bill Lee : Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to.

• Tom Frost : They say you murdered your wife. Is that true?

  Bill Lee : Who told you that?

  Tom Frost : Word gets around.

  Bill Lee : It wasn't murder. It was an accident.

  Tom Frost : There are no accidents. For example, I've been killing my own wife slowly over a period of years.

  Bill Lee : What?

  Tom Frost : Well, not intentionally. I mean, on the level of conscious intention, it's insane, monstrous.

  Bill Lee : But you do consciously know it. You just said it. We're discussing it.

  Tom Frost : Not consciously. This is all happening telepathically, non-consciously.

  Bill Lee : What do you mean?

  Tom Frost : If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan.

• Bill Lee : Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard. This asshole talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called The Better Ole that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?" "Nah I had to go relieve myself." After a while the asshole started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his asshole would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and start eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him, "It is you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat AND shit." After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpoles tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous - except for the EYES you dig. Thats one thing the asshole COULDN'T do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldnt give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes WENT OUT, and there was no more feeling in them than a crabs eyes on the end of a stalk.

• [Joan Lee is explaining the joys of injecting oneself with insecticide] 

  Bill Lee : What do you mean, "it's a literary high"?

  Joan Lee : It's a Kafka high. You feel like a bug.

• Bill Lee : [to Hank]  America is not a young land. It is old... and dirty... and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there... waiting.

• Hans : Mr. Lee is curious about the Frost couple. He would like to meet them.

  Kiki : I think the woman would have sex with you, Mr. Lee. The man, he only likes Interzone boys.

  Bill Lee : I don't want to fuck 'em, I just want to talk to 'em.

  Hans : You know how Americans are, Kiki. They all love to travel, and then they only want to meet other Americans and talk about how hard it is to get a decent hamburger.

• Bill Lee : I understood writing could be dangerous. I didn't realize the danger came from the machinery.

• Creature Voices : I want you to type a few words into me. Words that I'll dictate to ya.

  Bill Lee : Yeah. Sure. What the hell.

  Creature Voices : Okay. Now, the first sentence is: "Homosexuality is the best all-around cover an agent ever had." Aw, come on, Bill.

  [Bill begins typing] 

  Creature Voices : Don't be such a pansy! Be forceful. Hurt me. I love it. That is a great sentence. These are words to live by, Bill.

• Yves Cloquet : I've seen you around, but I had no idea you were queer.

  Bill Lee : Queer?

  Yves Cloquet : [leers]  I saw you arrive with those three Interzone boys. What an entrance. You all looked very... familiar with each other.

  Bill Lee : [gulps]  Queer. A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain - I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion. I would've destroyed myself. And a wise old queen - Bobo, we called her - taught me that I had a duty to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see. Poor Bobo came to a sticky end - he was riding in the Duke Devanche's Hispano Suissa when his falling hemorrhoids blew out of the car and wrapped around the rear wheel. He was completely gutted leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstry. Even the eyes and the brain went with a horrible "shlupping" sound. The Duke says he would carry that ghastly "shlup" with him to his mausoleum.

  Yves Cloquet : You sound as if you could use a drink. My place?

• Bill Lee : Go see the fucking parrots, Kiki.

• Bill Lee : I thought you were finished with doing weird stuff.

  Joan Lee : I thought I was too, but I guess I'm not.

• Bill Lee : I guess it's about time for our William Tell routine.

• Bill Lee : Your predecessor said that Joan was not Human? What did he mean by that?

  Mugwump : Women aren't human. Look at it like this, women are a different species from men. With different wills and purposes on Earth

  Bill Lee : I'm talking about Joan, Joan Lee! If she wasn't human, what was she?

  Mugwump : Joan was a special case. Joan was an Elite Core Centipede.

• [first lines] 

  Bill Lee : Exterminator.

• Doctor Benway : We get a lot of you folks in the extermination business. You better tell this friend of yours to get off the bug powder, it'll kill him.

  Bill Lee : How do I get him to kick?

  Doctor Benway : Kick?

  Bill Lee : How do I get him off it?

• Hank : This stuff's gonna get published under your name - and you'll have a career.

  Martin : Yeah, you'll probably get into print before we will. For God's sake, Bill, play ball with this conspiracy.

  Bill Lee : You're patronizing me, boys. But I don't mind, 'cause you're so sweet to me, too.

• Bill Lee : I need to score some pyrethrum, actually.

  Doctor Benway : Score? You're not trying to pull a fast one on the old Doc, are you?

  Bill Lee : I came here for help.

• Joan Lee : [typing]  It's a little uncivilised.

  Bill Lee : More uncivilised.

  Joan Lee : MORE uncivilised?

• Bill Lee : Joan... was a Centipede?

• Creature Voices : I've been instructed to reveal to you that you were programmed to shoot your wife, Joan Lee. It was not an act of free will on your part.

  Bill Lee : Who the fuck asked you?

• Bill Lee : Save the Psychoanalysis for your grasshopper friends.

• Bill Lee : [sees the Mugwump for the first time]  My God.

• Mugwump : Bill, are you thinking of getting rid of me?

  Bill Lee : I think an exchange of hostages is in order.

• Bill Lee : My God, Joan. You're acting like a full-fledged junkie. And it's *bug powder*, for Christ's sake!

  Joan Lee : Oh. I do have a little bit of a habit, yes, hon. You ought to at least give me a few marks for originality.

• Pawnbroker : It's Commie Trash. And has been fired very recently. Did you use it in a hold-up?

  Bill Lee : I'd like the typewriter, the Clark-Nova in the window.

• Kiki : I'd like you to meet my friend. He specialises in sexual ambivalence.

  Bill Lee : Sexual Ambulance, did you say?

• Bill Lee : You wanted me in that birdcage!

• Bill Lee : And Clark-Nova?

  Creature Voices : He's still in the hands of our enemies. Such are the risks of our trade.

• Bill Lee : [sample platter of Black Meat]  May I?

  Hans : ...Yes.

• Bill Lee : I can't go home

• Bill Lee : "Lift" is Cruel.

• Bill Lee : How did you know it wouldn't just kill you?

  Joan Lee : I don't know, I felt drawn to it. Like you'd feel drawn to an old lover.

• Bill Lee : Cloquet has a Wonderful Car?

  Kiki : A most Wonderful Car...

• Bill Lee : I suffer from sporadic hallucinations.

  Joan Frost : Join the Club.

• Bill Lee : Fuck 'em all. Squares on both sides. I'm the only Complete Man in the Industry.

• Bill Lee : I gave up writing when I was ten. Too dangerous.

  Hank : Only if someone reads what you write. So far we haven't had that problem.

• Bill Lee : You're babes in the woods.

• Yves Cloquet : My, we are fragile today!

  Bill Lee : He has to get to know you, first.

• Bill Lee : You wouldn't be trying to set me up, again?

  Tom Frost : Oh, you set yourself up for this a long time ago. I'm just trying to give you a fighting chance.

• Bill Lee : Dr Benway MD PHD?

  Creature Voices : Self-conferred. He never Graduated.

• Tom Frost : Where's Joan?

  Bill Lee : She ran off with Fedela's Coven.

  Tom Frost : Well, it's a good sign, keep trying, it's worth it. Courting Joan can mean years of pleasant ambivalence.

• Bill Lee : Everyone Blacks Out in Interzone. Wouldn't you?

• Bill Lee : Paranoid Chess-Players...

• Bill Lee : I hear Interzone's nice this time of year.

• Kiki : Are you a faggot?

  Bill Lee : Not by nature, no. I'm not. I wouldn't say, "faggot". No. However, circumstances have forced me to consider the possibility...

• Bill Lee : He's got a gun! You wouldn't want to lose your best Agent?

• Bill Lee : I can feel the heat closing in on you, Fadela. Feel them out there making their moves, you dig?

• Creature Voices : I expect to see this reflected in your Report!

  Bill Lee : Well, how am I supposed to write it? Longhand?

• Bill Lee : Where is Hank?

  Joan Lee : He got embarrassed and left.

  Bill Lee : Not before he came, I hope.

  Joan Lee : Hank's on junk. He doesn't come.

  Bill Lee : Not before you came, I hope.

  Joan Lee : I'm on bug powder. I don't need to come.

• Bill Lee : Don't worry about me. The Zone is full of surprises. The Zone takes care of it's own.

• Joan Lee : I'm shooting up your bug powder. You might like to try it yourself. Or, you might not.

  Bill Lee : I ran out in the middle of a job. You gotta stop using the stuff, Joan. They ration it out like snakebite serum.

  Joan Lee : Well, just do what everybody else does, cut it with baby laxative. The roaches will shit themselves to death.

• Bill Lee : Somebody's stealing my roach powder. Somebody's got it in for me.

  Hank : Well, Bill, maybe you should take it as a sign. Maybe you ought to try your hand at writing pornography.

• Joan Frost : Did you come to Interzone for the boys?

  Bill Lee : No, I didn't.

  Joan Frost : Tom and I did. That's quite a hot threesome you arrived with. They're very cheap and they're really a lot of fun.

• Bill Lee : [Joan typing in Arabic]  I can't read it. Is it erotic?

  Joan Frost : It's, um, fairly erotic. Kind of uncivilized.

  Bill Lee : More erotic. Filthier.

  Joan Frost : Filthier? Okay.

  Bill Lee : All you think about.

• Bill Lee : Wait a minute, where are we going? Oh, man.

  Martin : How about back to your place?

  Bill Lee : Nope.

  Hank : Why not.

  Bill Lee : I'm not safe there. I'm a dead duck there.

• Bill Lee : I can't go home. I can't go home.

• Hank : We thought it was important for us to help you get your book together.

  Martin : Yeah, I've sent sections of it to my publisher, and they're interested. All you gotta do is finish it, man.

  Hank : You've already done the hard part.

  Bill Lee : Book? My book?

  Hank : Yeah. The one you've been calling 'Naked Lunch'.

• Bill Lee : All those women - they work for her?

  Joan Frost : In a sense. They're all Fadela's lovers. I'm going to have to - I'm gonna have to stay here with Fadela - do penance.

• Bill Lee : The machine turns out to be a very good one. Muy simpatico.

• Bill Lee : What's my next assignment? I'm *hungry* for adventure.

• Creature Voices : You know the Swiss dandy Cloquet?

  Bill Lee : Yes.

  Creature Voices : And?

  Bill Lee : I think he's a faggito and won't admit it.

• Creature Voices : Your report on the subversive activities of Joan Frost was a model of its type. If you continue to develop your skills as an operative, I think a top position with the C.I.A. is not out of reach.

  Bill Lee : The C.I.A.? You really think so?

  Creature Voices : You have the demeanor. That's something you can't buy.

  Bill Lee : The C.I.A. The C.I.A. Now, that's a career you can really sink your teeth into.

• Bill Lee : Go see the fucking parrots, will you, Kiki? I gotta take a piss.

• Tom Frost : How are you enjoying your affair with Joan? Literate, complex and neurotic, I would imagine.

  Bill Lee : I haven't seen her for weeks. She ran off with Fadela and her coven.

  Tom Frost : Oh, that's too bad. Yes, she does that when she feels attracted to a man. Don't give up though. It's - it's a good sign. With Joanie, the courtship period can involve years of passionate ambivalence.

• Doctor Benway : Just tell me what you want.

  Bill Lee : I want her.

  Doctor Benway : Her? That purulent little cunt? What for?

  Bill Lee : I can't write without her.

• Bill Lee : What is that? What are you writing?

  Pawnbroker : I'm writing, "All is lost, all is lost." It's all I've ever written.

• Bill Lee : The Chink shortchanged me!