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Poster for The Cut Ups
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Released
1966 · FILM

The Cut Ups

Directed by
Runtime
19 min
Documentary

Synopsis

This nearly 20-minute avant-garde short presents a dizzying montage of quirky shots featuring legendary Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs and noted surrealist artist Brion Gysin. Instead of music or standard dialogue, the film includes repeated articulations of random phrases such as "Hello," "Where are we now?" and "Look at that picture." The narrative is decidedly nonlinear and perplexing, with no discernible plot. It includes images of Gysin working on his paintings and calligraphic designs, as well as Burroughs rummaging through drawers, packing a suitcase, giving a young man a physical, making a call in a phone booth, and waiting on a platform for a subway train.

Credits

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 3

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

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