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Film: The Devil and Daniel Johnston [PG-13] 109 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $10.00
Where Viewed: Landmark Varsity Theatre, Seattle, WA
When 1st Seen: 27 April 2006
Time: 7:15 p.m.
Review Dedicated to: CMT III of Albuquerque, NM
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If you have ever been the only person you knew who really loved a particular band, artist, author, etc., and you always felt sort of isolated because of this; or, if you’ve ever known a real bonafide, artistic genius, here is a film that will offer both vindication and validation while simultaneously helping you to comprehend why your life has been unduly complicated as you have worked to support your chosen genius. Allow me to begin by putting one question out of the way from the beginning. Can a person who has never heard of Daniel Johnston get anything out of this movie? Well, I had never heard of him before this movie, and I got a lot out of it. One of the coolest things about life is that as ‘aware’, ‘hip to the scene’, culturally literate, etc. one might perceive oneself to be, every time you turn around there is something big going on that you never knew about. Now, I’m also going to admit something else that will, hopefully, expound on my answer to the previous question while also, possibly unintentionally upsetting some Daniel Johnston fans. I did not come out of the theatre having been converted into a Daniel Johnston fan In fact, I did not like his music nor did I find myself able to appreciate the genius everyone was talking about in his artwork. Truth be told, I thought he sounded terrible when he sang, I thought his lyrics were cheap rhymes, and it was incredibly difficult for me to comprehend how the word, “genius” was being applied to him. Ah, but I am getting the cart ahead of the horse a bit, and I really apologize if I offended any Daniel Johnston fans—my point later will be that (a) you don’t have to like him or ‘get’ him to appreciate this film; and the fact that others do think he’s a genius is just fine—not everyone appreciates every artist and (b) you can learn a great deal about the life of these tragic genius artists from this Sundance 2005 Best Directing Award-winning documentary which could come in handy if you ever encounter one of these people in real life (which I have encountered several) or in helping you to understand the deal behind some of the other infamously tragic artists you may know of from studying history.
So, to put the cart back in the proper place, this film is a semi biography of the life of West Virginian, singer, song-writer, visual artist Daniel Johnston. The documentary chronicles his life story using home super 8 footage he shot himself, 100s of audio tapes he recorded as if he somehow knew they’d be needed for a documentary someday, testimony from friends, relatives, and his managers, and appearances by Daniel Johnston himself as well as other famous or infamous people he has met most serendipitously throughout his life. Beginning with a look at his early adolescent years, the penchant his fundamentalist Christian parents have, especially his mother, for belittling his creativity and his work and referring to him as “the unprofitable servant of the Lord”, the film then moves to his attempts to attend college where he encounters his life-long muse in the unrequited love of his life, Laurie Allen. Her rejection of him and subsequent marriage to a mortician serve as an 8-track tape of his life as he would continue to become obsessed with things (eventually the Devil) that would lead him to produce art and music about his failure to really comprehend these things, then the cycle would repeat. He first became ‘famous’ or ‘infamous’ in Austin, TX when he managed to finagle his way into a concert performance and self-promotional tour of his self-published album “Hi, How Are You”, and then managed to get himself onto an MTV special where people thought he was the standout performer of the show despite not having been scheduled originally to appear. This was after a pretty tragic couple of years and some initial bouts with growing mental illness. For, you see, while never really labeled by medical professionals in a straight-forward way in the film, it is the white elephant in the room that Daniel suffers from the onset of some sort of manic-depressive mental illness from his late teens into the present. Along the way, he has a lot of strange and interesting things happen to him, and a lot of people become hooked on his music and artwork and the legend that surrounds and engulfs him. If you are a skeptic, you may spend a lot of time wondering if he is nothing more than a great self-promoter or if people just respond to him because they sense the mental illness and, therefore, humor him as to how good his music and lyrics are. Unfortunately, the music and lyrics showcased in the film seem trite, non-melodic, and repetitive. Yet, these would be the same comments that anyone who doesn’t get a particular musician, painter, poet, might make. Some people look at Picasso’s work and say, “I don’t get it.” Some say, “Brilliant, I must have that.” Still others say, “I love it,” but you know they really don’t get it, and they are just saying that so they won’t look like the first guy in this list. Well, I’m not going to be the third guy. I’ll be the first guy. I didn’t get Daniel Johnston. I didn’t see what anyone saw in him, and that could be for a couple of reasons obviously: the filmmakers just didn’t do a good enough job of showing off his real talent, or I just didn’t get it—which is allowable. Some of his good friends described some of his work as “unlistenable”—which I thought most of his work was, but again, that’s not the point. A lot of people thought he was great, thought he was a genius, and let’s leave it at that.
Ultimately, whether you ‘get’ Daniel Johnston or not, it is pretty difficult not to see that he is beloved by a lot of people, his songs—more so when covered by other singers than when he sang them himself—have sold thousands and thousands of copies, and the story of his life resonates well when compared to many of history’s countless other misunderstood artists. Of course, Daniel Johnston’s circumstances are amplified by all appearances of diagnosed mental illness and the sheer inability for the mental health profession to help. Part of the time, you want to understand if he is just zany beyond zany and creative beyond creative. Many of the musicians and artists he meets immediately connect with this side of him; but, after a time, even they start to comprehend that, really, there is something else going on that is just not right in his mind. And the same must be true of the experience for every single one of his fans. For much of the film, honestly, I felt most sorry for his parents who, while initially completely at a loss for what to do with, for, and about him, and obviously harboring an incredible amount of guilt for the feeling that they must have done something wrong to have him turn out this way, eventually come to realize that this was something organically wrong with him not something they did, that even though they could not relate to either his music or his artwork, it was still something special that brought joy to other people; and that they can live out the rest of their lives with him in tow living some semblance of a lifestyle that allows him to be creative and them to live in peace.
When all is said and done, Jeff Feuerzeig (Director), did a good job of following the trail of Daniel Johnston’s life and building the case for why we should care about him. The only weakness in the chain as I saw it was that he didn’t include enough of Daniel Johnston’s music as performed by other famous singers. I think this was the missing link for me in cementing the notion that his music really was good. Meanwhile, there is something very odd about a documentary about a person still living that really doesn’t interview the subject. It creates a distance between the film and the subject in a way that grows as the film unspools. By the end, Daniel Johnston’s words “I am the ghost of Daniel Johnston” seem more true that ever. I am sure that Mr. Feuerzeig had his reasons for this, maybe it was out of respect for Daniel Johnston and not wanting to subject him to talking about what it is like to be him, maybe Daniel Johnston refused to be interviewed directly. Whatever the reason, this definitely weakened the film for me and made it harder for me to connect with Daniel Johnston. There are a few other odd touches like interviewing the lead singer of one famous band that thought Daniel Johnston’s work was awesome while he is at the dentist getting his teeth repaired. It was hard to imagine how that came about—“Oh, you can interview me, but since that will be torture, you’re going to have to do it while I’m at the dentist so I can kill two birds with one stone.”? So, in the end, I will have to give this film a mixed review. I learned a lot more than I ever thought I wanted to about the life and times of Daniel Johnston, came out with a greater understanding of a tragic genius artist, but left not really seeing the genius of Daniel Johnston the person the way I think the filmmaker intended.
So, to put the cart back in the proper place, this film is a semi biography of the life of West Virginian, singer, song-writer, visual artist Daniel Johnston. The documentary chronicles his life story using home super 8 footage he shot himself, 100s of audio tapes he recorded as if he somehow knew they’d be needed for a documentary someday, testimony from friends, relatives, and his managers, and appearances by Daniel Johnston himself as well as other famous or infamous people he has met most serendipitously throughout his life. Beginning with a look at his early adolescent years, the penchant his fundamentalist Christian parents have, especially his mother, for belittling his creativity and his work and referring to him as “the unprofitable servant of the Lord”, the film then moves to his attempts to attend college where he encounters his life-long muse in the unrequited love of his life, Laurie Allen. Her rejection of him and subsequent marriage to a mortician serve as an 8-track tape of his life as he would continue to become obsessed with things (eventually the Devil) that would lead him to produce art and music about his failure to really comprehend these things, then the cycle would repeat. He first became ‘famous’ or ‘infamous’ in Austin, TX when he managed to finagle his way into a concert performance and self-promotional tour of his self-published album “Hi, How Are You”, and then managed to get himself onto an MTV special where people thought he was the standout performer of the show despite not having been scheduled originally to appear. This was after a pretty tragic couple of years and some initial bouts with growing mental illness. For, you see, while never really labeled by medical professionals in a straight-forward way in the film, it is the white elephant in the room that Daniel suffers from the onset of some sort of manic-depressive mental illness from his late teens into the present. Along the way, he has a lot of strange and interesting things happen to him, and a lot of people become hooked on his music and artwork and the legend that surrounds and engulfs him. If you are a skeptic, you may spend a lot of time wondering if he is nothing more than a great self-promoter or if people just respond to him because they sense the mental illness and, therefore, humor him as to how good his music and lyrics are. Unfortunately, the music and lyrics showcased in the film seem trite, non-melodic, and repetitive. Yet, these would be the same comments that anyone who doesn’t get a particular musician, painter, poet, might make. Some people look at Picasso’s work and say, “I don’t get it.” Some say, “Brilliant, I must have that.” Still others say, “I love it,” but you know they really don’t get it, and they are just saying that so they won’t look like the first guy in this list. Well, I’m not going to be the third guy. I’ll be the first guy. I didn’t get Daniel Johnston. I didn’t see what anyone saw in him, and that could be for a couple of reasons obviously: the filmmakers just didn’t do a good enough job of showing off his real talent, or I just didn’t get it—which is allowable. Some of his good friends described some of his work as “unlistenable”—which I thought most of his work was, but again, that’s not the point. A lot of people thought he was great, thought he was a genius, and let’s leave it at that.
Ultimately, whether you ‘get’ Daniel Johnston or not, it is pretty difficult not to see that he is beloved by a lot of people, his songs—more so when covered by other singers than when he sang them himself—have sold thousands and thousands of copies, and the story of his life resonates well when compared to many of history’s countless other misunderstood artists. Of course, Daniel Johnston’s circumstances are amplified by all appearances of diagnosed mental illness and the sheer inability for the mental health profession to help. Part of the time, you want to understand if he is just zany beyond zany and creative beyond creative. Many of the musicians and artists he meets immediately connect with this side of him; but, after a time, even they start to comprehend that, really, there is something else going on that is just not right in his mind. And the same must be true of the experience for every single one of his fans. For much of the film, honestly, I felt most sorry for his parents who, while initially completely at a loss for what to do with, for, and about him, and obviously harboring an incredible amount of guilt for the feeling that they must have done something wrong to have him turn out this way, eventually come to realize that this was something organically wrong with him not something they did, that even though they could not relate to either his music or his artwork, it was still something special that brought joy to other people; and that they can live out the rest of their lives with him in tow living some semblance of a lifestyle that allows him to be creative and them to live in peace.
When all is said and done, Jeff Feuerzeig (Director), did a good job of following the trail of Daniel Johnston’s life and building the case for why we should care about him. The only weakness in the chain as I saw it was that he didn’t include enough of Daniel Johnston’s music as performed by other famous singers. I think this was the missing link for me in cementing the notion that his music really was good. Meanwhile, there is something very odd about a documentary about a person still living that really doesn’t interview the subject. It creates a distance between the film and the subject in a way that grows as the film unspools. By the end, Daniel Johnston’s words “I am the ghost of Daniel Johnston” seem more true that ever. I am sure that Mr. Feuerzeig had his reasons for this, maybe it was out of respect for Daniel Johnston and not wanting to subject him to talking about what it is like to be him, maybe Daniel Johnston refused to be interviewed directly. Whatever the reason, this definitely weakened the film for me and made it harder for me to connect with Daniel Johnston. There are a few other odd touches like interviewing the lead singer of one famous band that thought Daniel Johnston’s work was awesome while he is at the dentist getting his teeth repaired. It was hard to imagine how that came about—“Oh, you can interview me, but since that will be torture, you’re going to have to do it while I’m at the dentist so I can kill two birds with one stone.”? So, in the end, I will have to give this film a mixed review. I learned a lot more than I ever thought I wanted to about the life and times of Daniel Johnston, came out with a greater understanding of a tragic genius artist, but left not really seeing the genius of Daniel Johnston the person the way I think the filmmaker intended.
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The Devil And Daniel Johnston [DVD](2005) DVD
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