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Aaron Brookner: I thing it's a very interesting intergenerational story like that because Burroughs was a larger-than-life figure for Howard and for Jim [Jarmusch], Sara [Driver], and Tom [DiCillo], who are also in the film. And then that generation has become so influential on my generation. I grew up idolizing all those filmmakers. What's interesting about the moment when Howard was making [ Burroughs: The Movie] is that you have Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Terry Southern living amongst NYU students and the punk rockers of the Lower East Side.You struggled to get into the bunker, but when you did you found all your uncle's film rolls. It's almost as if you're time traveling.
There is a great line in the Burroughs doc my uncle made where Burroughs talks about time traveling. He says it's not possible, but if it were, he would only do it as an observer. Going into the bunker was like time travel. I couldn't touch anything but suddenly I was plummeted into this whole other planet, especially with the nature of [my documentary] footage being so kind of free and loose. It was really important to channel that experience that I was going through into one that could be shared by the audience. Part of the joy of watching this film is the trip down that rabbit hole at the other end of the looking glass.
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I was totally overwhelmed. The inside hasn't changed; there are spice racks in the kitchen and the spices on them are dated 1978. There is a handgun in Burroughs' dresser; there are Howard's film rolls with literally 30 years of dust on it. It was really powerful. When Jim Jarmusch came by, he felt it too and was like, "Woah, this is really intense."
I think to see it in the movie, the bunker is just a space. It's a bunker; there are no windows. But when you're in there, it's so crazy because the Bowery is so loud—there are huge trucks going by there all the time—but the bunker is completely silent. It is completely hermetic and meditative.I remember Jim telling me this story about when James Grauerholz [Burroughs' biographer and literary executor of his estate] went away to Kansas, he left Jim and Howard in charge of Burroughs for the weekend. They were just going to pop by for a little while, but ended up drinking Great Wall of China vodka and taking some strange drugs. At some point, Burroughs took out his handgun and started to fire into an iron box. Of course the bullets started ricocheting off of it, and then off the bunker's walls. Jim said he had to get going, and when he went outside he thought only a few hours had passed, but an entire day had and morning traffic was passing down the Bowery. This story really resonated because it showed the relationship that they had with Burroughs and also how removed Burroughs and the space were from everyday life.
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It was really important to me to show how it was happening on the ground and take [the audience] through Howard's experience of AIDS. Howard's partner Brad [Gooch] told me that at one point they thought that a virus was coming in through the air ducts in the night clubs. Burroughs was talking about a potentially deadly virus that could be administered by the government, done deliberately to the community. There was so much noise and so much hysteria and disinformation, so I wanted to show the kind of whirl of different perspectives.Also, when Howard came of age, artistically and socially, in the late 70s, it's such a moment of freedom. It was the first generation where homosexuality was open, when there was the second wave of feminism, and all sorts of arts were mixing together. Plus, there was a decrepit downtown New York that was dirt cheap. Howard had a loft on Prince and Bowery that cost $100 a month. To a certain type of person, it was a utopia in a way. Then suddenly there's this thing that comes in, that starts bringing fear, that starts bringing outside, right-wing forces who [publicly oppose] their lifestyle. I really wanted to show the audience how AIDs started to directly, negatively affect the way this beautiful artistic movement had been going.Do you see this film as your way of keeping Howard's memory alive?
Well, I wanted the opportunity to bring back his films so that people could see them. The Burroughs film obviously wasn't known, nor do we know too much about the Wilson film. And Bloodhounds had been forgotten in some way, so I wanted to shine a light on that. More important to me, though: I wanted to conjure something of Howard's spirit, his openness, the joie de vivre , the way he lived his life, the risks he took to make his art.Uncle Howard is currently screening at Sundance. For more on the documentary, visit the movie's website here.Follow Kaleem on Twitter.