This is a great study about fear--the fear of having to do routine things and the unpredictability pertaining to the daily life. Drug addicts want assurance from the promised land of the predictable, and the chemial never fails. Their use of drugs is a flight from contingency, hazard, of life. It's thoroughly an anti-adventure.
William Burroughs here is superbly crazy and very true to his own life.
The song that goes "Poor me, Israelite" has an enigmatic charm in it. (It's by Desmond Dekker and the Aces, the band of which I know absolutely nothing.)
I was imagining the director Gus Van Santo was Dutch, or something. But no, actually he is from Kentucky, of all places. (Then Burroughs is from Lawrence, Kansas.)
"Pressures of everyday life like having to tie their shoes," says Bob (Matt Dillon). The sentence epitomizes his state of mind.
