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Japanese Sandman (The)
- Director: Ed Buhr
- Writer: William S. Burroughs
CGiii Comment
Burroughs was distinctive...that whiney drawl with hatchet-job words.
This is an impersonation...and, it works, in part...that is, until the director flips from black & white into colour...for reasons best known to himself.
An impersonated Burroughs is an acquired taste...despite the obvious amount of work that went into this...it falls short of a true imagining of a Burroughs drug-fuelled debacle.
Watch...
The(ir) Blurb...
Both wry travelogue and heartbreaking tale of love lost, The Japanese Sandman adapts a letter William S. Burroughs wrote to Allen Ginsberg in 1953. Told in Burroughs' caustically funny voice, cocaine snorting in Panama and post-prom handjobs in 1931 St. Louis dissolve into a meditation on memory and loss.Actor/performance artist John Fleck leads a stand-out cast through Burroughs' recounting of scoring opiates and boys in Panama and, in the letter's P.S., a love affair with farm boy Billy Brandshinkel in the Ozark's of his youth. Imperial Teen's Roddy Bottum provides the lively and compelling score.
Cast & Characters
Ferd Eggan as Jones the Cab Driver;
Eleanor Estes as Officer's Wife;
Amanda Ferguson as Officer's Wife;
John Fleck as William S. Burroughs;
Darcey Leonard as Panamanian Whore;
Raymond Lopez Jr. as Panamanian Civil Servant;
Cristina Nava as Panamanian Whore;
Nick Niven as Billy Bradshinkel;
Amy O'Neill as Mother / Officer's Wife;
Keston Ridley as The Hip Spade;
Leigh Rose as Grandmother;
Sam Slovick as Bill Gains;
Stephen Twardokus as Young William Burroughs