[
BURROUGHS: THE MOVIE screens Saturday January 17th at 8:50 pm and Sunday January 18th at 8:10 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
In 1981
Saturday Night Live, now turning 40, was on the verge of cancellation, not even having logged ten years on the air. The star-making variety program, during a notorious absence by producer/guiding light Lorne Michaels, had become stagnated with an unedifying cast and dismal sketches, and ratings plummeted accordingly.
Yet the show, even in its low point, made literary history as the first TV program to broadcast an appearance by William S. Burroughs, the gaunt
addict terrible of the Beat Generation. Burroughs was introduced by guest host Lauren Hutton as "America's greatest living writer," and he read, live from New York, from his hallucinatory
Nova Express.
.jpg)
