Starting with a curiosity in one of the pioneers of the beat generation, Chicago native, Yony Leyser began a film that at first was a William S. Burroughs documentary but by the end, the Burroughs estate and Leyser himself realized he was creating “the” Burroughs documentary. Leyser and I talked about his journey making the film from talking to the Sex Pistols and Iggy Pop, to having his film and equipment being held for ransom. Along the way discovering the man that pioneered the beat generation, and influenced--and continues to influence--counter cultures in America today.

Boy Kings: How did your fascination with Burroughs begin?

Yony Leyser: I first learned about the beats when I was in high school, and it was very exciting to learn that these rebels existed in a time when there was so much grey dreary conformity going on and writing was so standardized. All the texts sounded the same, but Burroughs realized these dystopian fantasies out of a completely afraid America. Where he came up with it…just completely shocking and how he mainstreamed or introduced America to the idea that there are these outsiders. And he really paved the way for a lot of the counter cultures and interesting things we have in America that we take for granted.

BK: How’d you decide you needed to make and direct a movie about Burroughs?

Yony Leyser: Well, I got kicked out of film school in Los Angeles, and I knew Burroughs had lived in Lawrence, Kansas, where my sister lived. So, I moved there 2003 and got a job at the KU newspaper. I wrote a big article for the paper about the history of counter culture called, “From Beatnik to Anarchist: Radical Eruption in Lawrence.” And in it I talked about Burroughs moving to town in the 80’s. His estate got hold of it, and I kind of befriended the estate, and brought up the idea of making a documentary. At first they were like, “Sure, kid. Be another one of the 100 people that think they’re going to the one to make a documentary about Burroughs.”

I just started, and I interviewed his friends that were still in Lawrence and then they started introducing me to other people. They introduced me to a beat poet by the name of Charles Plymell in upstate New York, who introduced me to Sonic Youth, who introduced me…On and on, and that’s how I got all the interviews. And doing this with no money, I just had a camera, puts you in some pretty interesting situations. I was looking at some footage the other day of when I went to go interview Iggy Pop, and it was pretty funny because I didn’t have a camera person and I was down in Miami and didn’t know anyone. So, I talked to my friend and she said, “Yeah, I know someone who shoots porn, she can do it.” But in the end she couldn’t do it because she was also a repo man and had to repo some cars. She hooked me up with someone else and after he shot it we were driving back in his fancy Mercedes Benz, and he told me I had to give him all my money and my wallet before he gave me my equipment back and let me out of his car.

It’s been a lot more fun doing it this way, but now I have a professional post production house and I showed the Burroughs’ estate a rough cut of it about a year ago, and they were really shocked how far I’d gotten, and that’s when they become completely supportive. And I moved back here to Chicago to finish it, linking up with Bullet Proof Films.

BK: And how did the Burroughs fundraiser come together, with original writings by Burroughs and even actors from the film “Naked Lunch”?

Yony Leyser: Well, Bullet Proof Films introduced me to Laurie Glenn, who is the director of think Art. She organized the exhibition, and she has been very helpful and we decided to link a Burroughs fundraiser along with the 50^th Anniversary of “Naked Lunch.”

I then talked to Peter Weller on the phone and asked him to show up and he said yeah. And when I was in Provincetown Massachucetts, for the film festival there, I went to see a movie on Quienten Crisp with John Waters, and Cynthia Dixon from “Sex And The City,” as she played Penny Arcad. I was interested in her character, and John [Waters] said I should get her for the fundraiser. She decided to do it, and then I got a lot of my favorite Beat poets; Anne Waldman is coming out…I think that people are so interested in Burroughs right now and the beats. There’s a “Howl” movie coming out that Gus Van Sant is making, “On the Road” is being made by the people that made “Motorcycle Diaries,” there’s a movie being made about Lucien Carr and a Gregory Corso documentary came out. So, I think that there’s been such a will and interest in the beats right now that everything I’ve done has gotten a lot bigger than I’d ever imagined.

BK: Why do you feel this resurgence in beat interest is happening now?

Yony Leyser: Well, interest in the beats comes and goes, and I don’t know if it’s on a 15 year cycle or what, but I don’t they’ll ever really go away. They became really popular in the 80’s with punk rock, and of course Allen Ginsberg’s influence over the hippies. And I think because of the repressive Bush era, we’re now seeing people getting excited again and trying to a little wild. But I’m not a historian so I don’t really know why.

BK: Is there a group today that takes major influence from the beats?

Yony Leyser: What the beat generation did was open a lot of doors and new avenues of thinking. They say you can be different, you can be crazy, you can introduce these radical concepts to the American consciousness. So the hippies did it in their respect and the punks did it with a little more anger, which I think Burroughs related to. But now I don’t really see a uniform rebellious culture, maybe it’s on the internet. I think the beats were one of the, if not the first rebellious counter cultures that people really related to.

BK: Is there a current counter culture you can think of that exists today in America?

Yony Leyser: I’m not an expert on that, but maybe these steam punks, these luddite culture that rebels against the internet and wears old timey clothes and hops freight trains. That’s one that I’ve seen, but I don’t know how uniform that is.

BK: What was Burroughs’ relationship with Chicago?

Yony Leyser: Burroughs came to study linguistics here with Korzybski here in Chicago and he lived in Lincoln Park. He worked as an exterminator and some other menial jobs, which he wrote quite a bit about. He had a lot of ties to Chicago and of course he was born in the Midwest. This was the first major city he settled in America. He went to Harvard and then he went to Europe and then he came here.

BK: Does your documentary cover his whole life evenly or focus on one period?

Yony Leyser: The film is mostly about the people who he’s influenced, and I think his time making “Naked Lunch” was covered by the movie “Naked Lunch.” So, I’m focusing on who he influenced and who the man was underneath it all and his later years as an artist. It’s called “William S. Burroughs: A man within” which is a line from “Naked Lunch.” It’s trying to dissect who the man beneath the persona was. People were so well aware of who the persona was. There’s a deeply troubled person beneath it all, but extremely creative and bright person. He came from such a square middle class family and became so bold and was open about being gay, his heroin addiction—I’m not going to romanticize his drug use, but to be open about, and to introduce that there are junkies in America. He was so bold in a dangerous time, I hope that people now can be less afraid of being different.

BK: Why do you think that Kerouac and Ginsberg are thought of as the faces of the beats and not Burroughs as much?

Yony Leyser: Well, they’re easier to read is one thing. But as far as academic circles and scholars that are going to study these guys, Burroughs is the go to. I think his writing is going to stand the test of time, where “On The Road” and “Howl” are easier to read, they’re less offensive. They’re just more accessible, where Burroughs went beyond what they would do. And they’re also more character of themselves. Ginsberg and Kerouac were wild people, that other beats felt they could relate to. But Burroughs was a little stranger and a little more dynamic of a person, which makes him much more interesting to make a documentary about.

Check out “A Man Within” at the ThinkArt Salon (1530 N. Paulina, Suite F) This Friday Featuring Live music by Maya Jensen, original writings of Burroughs and 20 minute preview of the documentary, which won’t be shown again to the public until next spring. Oh, don’t forget the hosted bar serving Burroughs' "special elixirs"

5:30 PM - 9:30 PM | 21+