Jonathan “Yony” Leyser is a  25-year-old filmmaker and photographer, from Chicago, who’s been kicked out of two art schools!

With help from Burroughs editor and executor James Grauerholz, Leyser has interviewed more than 100 friends, associates, and admirers of the writer, including John Waters, Gus Van Sant, Iggy Pop, Laurie Anderson, Jello Biafra, Amiri Baraka, and a poisonous snake collector named Dean Ripa. The result is a brilliant documentary and it will debut in Chicago at the Music Box, January 21st.

Leyser’s William S. Burroughs: A Man Within is the first full-length documentary to look at the entire life of the Beat and punk icon, author of Junky, Queer, and Naked Lunch. “I’m trying to figure out who the man was behind the persona, behind the monster,” Leyser says. “He opened up queer and junkie culture and new avenues of thinking, but in his personal life he really struggled. You see through the interviews a deeply tortured man, who spoke openly about queer things yet couldn’t bear to be in a relationship.”

“My respect for Burroughs, the queer icon, is equal to my respect for him as a literary artist, a counterculture superstar and a rabble-rouser par excellence,” Leyser says. “His being queer was only one of many ways in which his proclivity to spit in the face of religious, conservative, thoughtless moral judgments attracted me.”

The film has already ganered lots of attention at film festivals around the world, and we are excited to see it coming to Chicago this month!

 Best Gay Chicago.com