The unusual life and career of Daniel Johnston is examined in 2005 documentary
MUSIC DRIVEN: THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON (Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Saturday, October 12, 12:30, and Sunday, October 13, 1:00
Festival continues through October 13
347-227-8030
www.cbgb.com
www.nitehawkcinema.com
Jeff Feuerzeig’s The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a sad portrait of fame and folly. The mesmerizing documentary examines the life and career of Daniel Johnston, an outsider artist and musician who has a ravenous underground following. From the time he was a kid, Johnston was obsessed with recording his existence, making deeply personal audiocassettes and inventive Super-8 films, many of which Feuerzeig includes here, revealing Johnston’s curious, unique past. In the mid-1980s, Johnston recorded a pair of homemade tapes, Songs of Pain and More Songs of Pain, that detailed his unrequited love for an acquaintance of his named Laurie. His music quickly developed a cult audience, landing him on MTV and at the prestigious SXSW festival while gaining such fans as Kurt Cobain, Matt Groening, Sonic Youth, and the Butthole Surfers. All the while, he created comic-book-style paintings and drawings that began to be shown in galleries. But as Feuerzeig’s amazing mix of archival footage, home movies, and new interviews reveals, Johnston is also a manic depressive with severe mental problems who cannot survive on his own. At the time of the film’s release, Johnston was in his mid-forties, still living with his Christian fundamentalist parents, seemingly as childlike as ever, unable to understand the realities of his situation. While many people consider him a genius — at the beginning of the film, he is introduced at a live gig as the greatest songwriter in the world, and his art was part of the 2006 Whitney Biennial — it’s also easy to think that he’s being celebrated for all the wrong reasons and that this worship is doing him — and us — more harm than good. Favorite scene: Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes talking about Johnston while sitting in a dentist’s chair getting his teeth drilled. The Devil and Daniel Johnston is screening October 12-13 at Nitehawk Cinema as part of the CBGB Festival (as well as the continuing Nitehawk series “Music Driven” and “Brunch Screenings”), which also includes such other music-related films as Searching for Sugarman, The Blank Generation, The Stone Roses: Made of Stone, and Twenty Feet from Stardom.
