The problem with documentaries of musical icons is the tendency to reduce the ups and downs, the highs and the lows of a person’s life to a simple melodrama. And for this we can largely blame MTV. You can imagine Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, Jeff Buckley et al, scowling from the netherworlds at their lives being given the contrived, slo-mo, gravely voice-over treatment, depicting them as angels rather than troubled human beings.
This is often caused by a simple lack of material. Journalists can turn a 10 minute interview with a celebrity into a 4000 word earth-shattering exposé; they simple fill in the gaps with whatever they feel like… or rather, whatever sells. Yet, occasionally, there are people whose lives are so complex, ridiculous or confounding, it’s simply impossible to fabricate. Rarer still, are those troubled souls who record their whole lives on C90 audio cassettes. Such is the life of the much mooted, much maligned singer / songwriter / genius / nutcase Daniel Johnston, raised to a strict ‘Christian, right wing-thing’ family in Austin, Texas.
Johnston makes an identifiable character, disparaged by his god-fearing parents whose advice is to ‘get a job’, a young Daniel (with an odd resemblance to Sam Rockwell) retreats to the basement and creates surprisingly competent home movies, deranged comic book art, and began pouring his fractured thoughts and fears into imaginative if sketchy albums, including the Kurt Cobain-endorsed ‘Hi, How Are You?’. As a solution to their son’s reluctance to fit into society, they ship him off to college, where he meets and falls desperately in love with a pretty young brunette. Johnston mistakes her cordiality for genuine attraction, and she subsequently breaks his heart, setting the singer / songwriter up for 25 years worth of pain, hope and anguish for his comic art and albums.
Looking past the façade of the ‘troubled artist’ biopic, this is a unique insight into mental illness, in Johnston’s case, manic depression. There is a scene in which Johnston’s childhood friend / artistic cohort recalls the pair discussing and damning those who committed troubled artistic geniuses of old to mental asylums, a choice that, ultimately, Daniel’s friends and family had to make. The romanticism of the troubled genius, is, it seems, simply that.
Working at McDonald’s to ‘support’ himself, Johnston suddenly found himself as an underground folk-hero, despite his contemptible efforts with guitar playing and singing. This success led, predictably, to experimentation with drugs, particularly LSD – Johnston was a huge Beatles fan, as the Butthole Surfer’s singer Gibby Haynes says; he didn’t have the kind of mind to handle it. Director Jeff Feuerzeig, a friend of the subject, decides not to contest the legitimacy of Johnston’s ‘genius’, which is left for the audience to decide, instead he focuses on the incredible live footage and revealing audio cassettes; Daniel became obsessed with Satan, often preaching and crying at his sporadic gigs, he also attempted to ‘protect’ the Statue of Liberty by adorning it with hundreds of Christian fish symbols, he was also convinced that Metallica, perceptibly devil worshipers, were going to find him and kill him.
More shocking still, is Johnston’s affinity with Casper (the friendly ghost), a frequent idol of his drawings. Whilst flying with his father in their private crop-duster plane, Daniel decided they should fly home without the plane, removing the keys from the engine, throwing them out of the window and attempted to drag his father outside. Remarkably, his father managed to steer the plane towards woodland and neither were badly hurt.
Despite the absurd episodes in Johnston’s life, the film remains focused and courteous to the troubled mind of the singer / songwriter, never allowing for his fables to cover up the melancholy of the real life story. The documentary is about those who have struggled to keep Daniel this side of sanity, simultaneously putting a monumental strain on their own well being. Perhaps most upsetting, is the physical depiction of the singer’s mental decline, just like Brian Wilson, from sprightly, blossoming genius to the deeply troubled, greying and overweight adult-child. The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a sad, humorous and incredible story.