He Is Legend

Comments (0) By Jesse Hughey Thursday, Dec 9 2010

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Born into a prominent family as the grandson of the founder of what would become the Burroughs Corporation, William S. Burroughs was educated at Harvard University. Yet despite his privileged upbringing, he worked as an exterminator, developed a lifelong opiate addiction and chronicled the lowest of lowlifes in novels populated by monstrous junkies, hustlers, killers and pedophiles. Despite his homosexuality, he married two women and fathered a son. And even though he described his accidental fatal shooting of his second wife as a harrowing trauma, he remained a gun nut the rest of his life, even selling splatter paintings he created by blasting away at paint cans. William S. Burroughs: A Man Within sheds some light on the contradictory, incredibly influential writer with archival footage and interviews with friends and colleagues. Its Dallas premiere is 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday at the Texas Theatre, 231 W. Jefferson Blvd.; Saturday's screening also includes a Q&A session via Skype with director Yony Leyser. Tickets are $8, $7 for seniors and children (not that we'd recommend taking your kids to a film about a writer whose major themes include pederasty, hard drugs and violence, but that's your call) or $6 if you bike to the theater. Call 214-948-1546 or visit thetexastheatre.com.
Fri., Dec. 10, 7 p.m.; Sat., Dec. 11, 7 p.m.; Sun., Dec. 12, 1 p.m., 2010