Celebrating the celluloid expression of the Beat spirit--arguably the most sustained legacy in U.S. counterculture--Naked Lens is a comprehensive study of the most significant interfaces between the Beat writers, Beat culture, and cinema. Naked Lens features key Beat players and their collaborators, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Brion Gysin, Antony Balch, Ron Rice, John Cassavetes, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Klaus Maeck, and Gus van Sant. As well as examining clearly Beat-inspired films such as Pull My Daisy, Chappaqua, and The Flower Thief, Jack Sargeant discusses cinema verite and performance films (Shadows and Wholly Communion), B-movies (The Subterraneans and Roger Corman's Bucket of Blood), and Hollywood adaptations (Heart Beat and Barfly). The second half of the book is devoted to an extensive analysis of the films relating to William Burroughs, from Antony Balch's Towers Open Fire to David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. This book also contains the last ever interview with writer Allen Ginsberg, recorded three months before his death in April 1997.

This exhaustive study focuses on the New York filmmakers that coalesced around the radical manifesto espoused by downtown filmmaker Nick Zedd: none shall emerge unscathed. Placing their work within the wider alternative film and downtown post-punk scenes, Deathtripping offers detailed analyses of the movement s films alongside interviews with the filmmakers and their collaborators, including Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Tommy Turner, Beth B, Joe Coleman, and Lydia Lunch. Also discussed are seminal influences such as the Kuchar brothers, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol as well as the history of underground and trash cinema. "