Is it a hoax?

He was living in Lawrence, Kansas at the time of the filming, after moving there to get away from the "excesses" of life at the Bunker in New York. There are a couple of things that make me think this has to be "staged" (in a very loose sense), the fact that Burroughs happens to be watching "The Day After" at the moment when Kansas gets obliterated and secondly, the name of the television repair shop where it is shot is called "Bill's" (Bill is obviously the shortened version of William and sometimes he gets referred to as Bill Burroughs by his friends)...however the way Burroughs is dressed (in his rather fetching distressed queer-redneck combination) and the way he stands outside the shop, if you had no idea who he was, you would assume he was the "Bill" of Bill's television repair shop.

My favourite WS Burroughs cameo next to his appearance on the 1984 German classic, Decoder.

PS> of course this "staging" does make you think, what other scenes are like this? The story is of course true, but even so, there is clearly artifice involved (cue argument about realism and documentary narratives).

PPS> This is made by the BBC and the Arena music at the start really makes me think, was it shown as part of the Arena series, or commissioned and never used for some inexplicable reason?

I also just saw the documentary (again), and I also did some research, and I believe the documentary is real. I saw several documentarys about Einstein's brains, and the dr. Thomas Harvey in the documentary is the 'real' doctor.. as are the other persons 'acting'.
This kind of documentary is also known as 'fake-fake'; it looks fake but IS real.

Hi, guys, I'm the guy you can thank for the availability of the Swedish-subtitled version. I've received some e-mails regarding the recent Dutch broadcast of the documentary, and I'm out to put out some small fires all over the net.

When I first saw Eintein's Brain, I suspected it was fake myself, but nothing I've later read about the film suggests it's not real. Like Kevin said in the original post, there's a book out called Driving Mister Albert, where a journalist tells the story about the time he drove Thomas Harvey across the US to deliver the brain to Evelyn Einstein. Throughout the book, he meets several people involved in the documentary, including Evelyn Einstein, director Kevin Hull, Dr. Zimmermann, and even Professor Sugimoto. Sugimoto even excitedly shows the author his slice of brain.

There is also an article you might want to read called "Wo ist Einsteins Denkorgan", which you'll find online if you search for the title. Here, both Harvey and Sugimoto's indentities are confirmed. It's in German, though, so you'll have to rely on automated translations if you don't read it.

If anyone can give me some info on the comments made on Dutch television, that would be awesome. I've heard many claim it's fake, but I've yet to hear anyone actually present any evidence to back it up. Most of the time, people are jsut assuming it's fake because of its outrageousness.