Gaspar Noé Says He’s Adapted Burroughs’ ‘The Soft Machine’ Into A Script

Last night, Alfonso Cuaron and Gaspar Noe took part in a masterclass at the London Film Academy and one of our readers, Nico, was in attendance.

Noé congratulated Cuaron on the 10-year anniversary of “Gravity” and the conversation generally shifted towards Sci-fi as both spoke about their reverence for Philip K. Dick and Herbert's “Dune”.

On that subject, Noé said that his next project might be an adaptation of William Burroughs' “The Soft Machine,” confirming he already has a draft ready for production. Noé joked about how he wrote Burroughs’ story in "unimaginable ways" and that his script is every bit as crazy as the man himself.

“The Soft Machine” is definitely a choice on the part of Noé — it’s a novel that reads like gibberish. Burroughs was known for writting whilst exceptionally high, on basically every drug known to man at the time. He would then take what he wrote, edit and rearrange it to make something even more bewildering.

There is a plot hidden somewhere deep in the madness of “The Soft Machine”, but it is really hard to decipher. Here’s the most coherent “official” synopsis I could find online:

The book draws the reader into an unmappable textual space, where nothing is true and everything is permitted, to make a total assault on the colonising powers of planet earth that have turned us all into machines.

Noé is coming off the U.S. release of “Vortex,” one of the best movies of his career, he had already previously hinted at what he might be doing next — a story about children. “The Soft Machine” is definitely not about children.

Noé is known as the master provocateur behind such films as “Irreversible,” “Enter the Void” and “Climax”. In “Vortex,” he tackled an elderly couple and the final days leading up to their deaths, it was his most “subdued” film, but that isn’t saying much given his filmography.