William S. Burroughs' AH POOK IS HERE

In the 1994 short film Ah Pook is Here, Philip Hunt brings the words of William S. Burroughs to life with an effective mix of CGI, stop-motion animation and pure evil. I first saw this around '96 or so, on a press copy VHS of one of those "Sick and Twisted" animation festivals. All the other shorts were tedious and juvenile gross-outs, just a lot of guts and blood and little things hitting each other. And then, right in the middle of it, there was this thing. Just floating around talking to himself, our little friend here made the rest of the festival look like a marathon of Chip n' Dale cartoons.

The audio comes from Dead City Radio, a 1990 CD featuring Burroughs reciting his work in that inimitable croak of a voice, backed by various noted musicians. The Ah Pook music is by former Velvet Underground-ling John Cale. (Click the image above to buy the Dead City Radio CD.) Hunt does such an amazing job working with the audio that you could easily believe Burroughs had recorded it especially for the film. To this day, when I hear Burroughs' voice, I'll sometimes picture it coming from a naked little plucked-chicken/insect monster. I suspect that this is what Burroughs' soul looked like.

The text itself comes from an aborted graphic novel that Burroughs worked on for years with artist Malcolm McNeill. The text was finally published without the graphics in 1979, and McNeill's art went unseen for 30 years until it was exhibited at Santa Monica's Track 16 Gallery a few weeks ago.




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