World Famous Comics: Jeff Tartakov The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Jeff Tartakov The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Starring: Thurston Moore, Jeff Tartakov, Louis Black, Don Goede, David Thornberry Directed By: Jeff Feuerzeig Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Binding: DVD Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Sony Pictures Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 99 Release Date: September 19, 2006 Running Time: 110 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 2004
Description: Daniel Johnston is a manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist, revealed in this portrait of madness, creativity and love. The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a stunning portrait of a musical and artistic genius who nearly slipped away. Director Jeff Feurzeig exquisitely depicts a perfect example of brilliance and madness going hand in hand with subject Daniel Johnston. As an artist suffering from manic depression with delusions of grandeur, Daniel Johnston’s wild fluctuations, numerous downward spirals, and periodic respites are exposed in this deeply moving documentary.
Disapointing This reminds me of "You're going to miss me" the documentary about Austin's other wack job, Roky Erikson. The difference is Roky always sounds good no matter how out of his mind he is, where as Daniel almost never sounds good. And the movie actually compares him to Brian Wilson. Yes, if Brian Wilson had little musical talent, I could see the comparison. Daniel is an interesting, creative character, no doubt. The story, sad and scary. He just doesn't have much musical talent, and seems to exist for the pretentious art crowd to pretend to like to prove how open minded or alternative they are. I can see why Kurt Cobain liked him though. He finally found someone more overrated than himself. Austin has great songwriters. Kinky Freidman, Roky Erickson, Bob Schneider, etc. Daniel is like 100 other musicians I've met over the years. Quirky, artistic, self involved. The difference is most of them could play and sing.
An unrealized talent Daniel Johnston is never going to be a big name. Most people will only hear of him through Kurt Cobain and/ or Sonic Youth endorsements. Many of these people will pretend to like Johnston, or will actually like him, but more for the story. And Daniel Johnston's is a story like none other, and this is the most fitting documentary of his story.
I was trying to explain to my wife what, exactly, made Daniel Johnston a great talent. Sure, he's obsessive and prolific. But to many, the songs are still unlistenable. The best way I can explain it is that the songwriting is strong, even though the singing/ guitar playing is not. He is, however, a strong piano player.
Anyhow, this documentary will have you laugh and it has the potential to move you to tears be it from the oft sad occurences, his father's tear-jerking remembrances, or the uncertain fate of an American eccentric who is so dependent on other people.
Are the Brian Wilson references warrented? Yes. But Daniel Johnston is a budgeted, masking-tape Wilson. This documentary shows that, no matter what the odds, the situation, Daniel will always persue art in one form or another (be it cartoon, paint, music, film, etc.)
This is a great documentary. (Though I feel his new band is mildly exploitive).
It's that one guy who did that one song When I started watching this, I didn't really know much about it. I vaguely remember seeing a trailer for it awhile ago, but that's all. However, as the film progressed and more music samples were played, I realized that the documentary's subject, the creative but troubled Daniel Johnston, was the same Daniel Johnston who did a song that I've liked ever since high school, a song that still--over ten years later--has a place of honor on my ipod. I just never realized that the person who did that lovely ditty was a severely afflicted manic-depressive who hung out with the likes of Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers. His story is as amazing as it is depressing. In particular, listening to his ever-patient parents recall disturbing stories of increasingly erratic behavior as his illness progressed is absolutely heartbreaking. I think one of the aspects of the film that most resonated with me was the seemingly unconditional love they felt for a son they easily could have had institutionalized and made less burdensome to their lives. So in that sense, at least, the film does impart a more optimistic sense of filial happiness and is a testament to the strong emotional bonds between parent and child. Moreover, the documentary also serves as a showcase for Johnston's music which really does deserve a wider audience. His music and his singing voice aren't really conventional by any means, but his songs are absolutely sincere and that's more than I can say for most popular artists who are making music today.
Fascinating Documentary that Will Appeal to Fans and Non-Fans Alike This is an award winning 2005 documentary that focuses on the art of Daniel Johnston. I was first introduced to Daniel Johnston's work in the early 90s after his album cover for "Hi, How are You?" appeared on Kurt Cobain's tee-shirt. I was in High School and Nirvana was one of my favorite bands. This documentary actually covers that same discovery and evidently I wasn't the only one who came upon Johnston's work in this way. Overall, I don't think he's Bob Dylan or Neil Young but his lyrics are incredibly unique and in my humble opinion much of his earlier work is bordering on genius. As it turns out his visual art is also appreciated and that is covered here as well. This documentary covers pretty much his whole life and the few times his work has flirted with mainstream recognition.
Daniel sang with a bizarre and casual boy-like high voice that was vulnerable, raw, and consistently uncertain. He sang these unusual and seemingly uninfluenced lyrics that came from nowhere. Like many great singer songwriters his music makes it plainly obvious that a song is better delivered from the voice that wrote it. He sings lyrics that don't seem to make sense but he means it, so they have to at least makes sense to him, right? His music is definitely not for everyone and many will wonder how this man gained any recognition whatsoever. If you enjoy Daniel's music and put him on a level most will not understand then I'd also like to recommend Jeffrey Lewis in addition to Daniel's early work. Some of Nick Drake's emptier later work is comparable to Daniel as well.
But enough about all of that, this is a review of a documentary. As a documentary the film is very well done. I can't think of anything it covered that it really didn't need to, nor can I think of anything that it didn't cover that it should have. Except for maybe the reunion that Daniel has with his muse (a wonderful extra on the DVD itself). Daniel basically fell into the music scene from obscurity due to a cult following and then we see him develop from an inspired and unique artist to a chubby and awkward manic depressive. You get the idea that he had some success based on his exceptional character and general way of thinking but that he lost his mind forever after taking some hallucinogenic drugs. I'm certainly not pretending to be an authority on the subject but having worked in a mental facility as well as watching my best friend fall apart in the same way that Daniel did, I have to say that this seemed completely likely and understandable to me. It seemed like the template was there for him to go crazy and after it happened it destroyed his future and his relationships with almost everyone around him. It is both an extremely sad story and incredibly interesting at the same time.
We almost begin to get an understanding of how songs like "Casper the Friendly Ghost" or "True Love Will Find You in the End" developed in a mentally ill mind, yet still managed to draw a listener's interest. Fundamentally he had a way of expressing himself like so few, but when expressing himself became more and more challenging it can peak only the interest of those few who still strive to understand what the artist is feeling. The whole Daniel Johnston package is interesting to me and this film puts it in an honest enough frame to enhance that interest further. I would highly recommend it.
time flies when you're having fun... Somewhere in the last two decades, films about rock became indistinguishable from documentaries made for public television, and that is no compliment. Perhaps the music described lacked quality, or the subjects portrayed weren't terribly compelling. Where the crying need for amanuenses, explicators, authorities, critics, chroniclers, narrators and the talking heads all saying so little has arisen is a mystery, but it nauseates. One often longs for a return to the time where the film stock furnished all the explanation necessary...Pennebaker or the Maysles for example. However, the many reels of paid footage, expertly shot, are lacking in surveys of the Ramones, of Johnston, of garageland and Geek USA. In their place we have interlocutors---armchair historians guiding us through a story like any D-Day skirmish, peppered liberally with first-hand accounts from the I-Was-Theres.
Jeff Feuerzeig himself has a solid track record, having worked in videos and documentaries for years. He directed the film Half-Japanese: The Band That Would Be King and incidentally produced one of the best records of the 90's: a haunting, mysterious debut by the young Lys Guillorn, long unreleased, that was also the late Robert Quine's last session. He wrote and produced an incisive work on the jazz vocalese master Jon Hendricks. Feuerzeig's not the problem; Daniel Johnston is. Devil is an honorable attempt at conveying him.
In the early 80's, Austin had no train station. Its main stop was just a small Amtrak kiosk unlike the majestic structures of San Antonio, Dallas and Houston, and lacking their forbidding scale. The capital was distinct from the rest of Texas cities, filled with individuals matching another definition of Texan: cool, contemplative, bohemian, often sporting large eyewear. This was the Texas Daniel Johnston found and, as an outsider, would help define.
The "outsider" term, as cast by the Chusids of the music world, is fraught with problems, prone to ugly myths collapsing in on themselves. Since The Devil and Daniel Johnston focuses far more on his music than his art, we find Austin's affectionate embrace of the Savant-Makes-Good to be the picture's locus and Johnston's career high point. His unraveling, and the long dispassionate account of it, forms the substance of this disturbing film.
Johnston is no genius, far from it. His work is marked by simplistic repetitions and formal gimmicks. Musically, for all the manic volume of output, his yield is meager. He has a number of lovely songs, of brutally forthright compositions--"Fate Will Get Done" and "Walking the Cow" are fine contradictory examples--but there remain "outsider" artists, before him and since, possessed of the ability to truly destroy worlds. Of late the resurgence of interest in the incendiary force of nature that is Ghedalia Tazartes (not a Texan, not even American, and lacking t-shirt distribution..quelle horreur) is one example of dozens. As for inspiration, there is a wide gulf between intermittent flashes and all-consuming effulgence, and I wager his legion of defenders who might make their way through a Johnston box set would be winnowed down mightily five discs or so in.
If Kurt Cobain would call Johnston "the greatest living songwriter," one should recall context and the late guitarist's tireless promotion of everyone he knew...his two favorites were Shonen Knife and the Vaselines--not the least for being lovely, technically sloppy, and not American. Comparisons to Robert Johnson, however, are nothing short of idiotic. Louis Black and the other sycophants need not be detailed here.
Johnston devolves from a lovable kid with issues into an ugly manipulator early on, and his force of personality draws in so many of the bespectacled bohos and jazzbos mentioned above, Texan or otherwise--Jeff Tartakov, Steve Shelley, Jad Fair, and the truly wonderful Kathy McCarty, among so many other kind and decent people cast into the turbulence of his wake. His long-suffering parents and their testimonies are the most poignant of all. On a personal level I found Fred Wiseman's Titicut Follies less upsetting than The Devil and Daniel Johnston...the subject is a vortex...prone to eliciting contempt.
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