Beastie Boy Adam Yauch’s distribution company, Oscilloscope Laboratories, will release local filmmaker Yony Leyser’s documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, a biography about the writer of Junky and Naked Lunch, in theaters and on TV this fall.
(See my 2009 feature story on Leyser and his film, and Burroughs’s Chicago ties.)
Leyser started A Man Within as a student at University of Kansas in Burroughs’s adopted hometown of Lawrence, with the participation of James Grauerholz, Burroughs’s one-time lover and now his literary executor.
Leyser crisscrossed the country, interviewing Burroughs friends and fans like Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth, John Waters, Gus Van Sant, and David Cronenberg.
The film premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January, and had its local debut in March in the Chicago Movies and Music Festival.
IndieWire reports today that Oscilloscope will open A Man Within in theaters this fall, followed by DVD and online releases, and PBS will broadcast the film as part of the 2010/11 season of Independent Lens.
Oscilloscope is building a regular Beat pedigree for itself. On Sept. 24 the company opens Howl, starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg in a drama about the Burroughs compatriot’s 1957 obscenity trial. (Steve Buscemi is also developing a screen adaptation of Burroughs’s Queer).