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synopsis: Growing up in small-town West Virginia, the youngest child in a fundamentalist Christian family, the teenage Daniel Johnston was a playful, compulsively creative misfit. He clashed often with his traditionally-minded parents, particularly his mother. During a brief stint in college, Johnston's already-precarious mental health began a decline that escalated throughout his early adulthood. Bounced between family members, the increasingly-unstable young man took off on his moped and joined a traveling carnival, working the corn dog hut—for all intents and purposes, running away and joining the circus. He just as abruptly ran away from the carnival after getting randomly beat up one day, and landed in Austin, Texas. His Austin years were marked by his discovery by MTV and his further mental deterioration, which was abetted by some bad drug experiences. Through it all, his creative output continued and his underground fame grew, with some mainstream exposure thanks to MTV and the adulation of alternative rock stars like Kurt Cobain and Sonic Youth. Now cared for and managed by his elderly parents, Johnston leads a medicated and somewhat stable life in Texas, touring the world with his music when his health permits and exhibiting his drawings to increasing acclaim.
review: Director Jeff Feuerzieg had access to a wealth of amazing first-hand source materials, thanks to Johnston's obsessive habit of keeping film, video, and audio diaries and sending letters on audiocassette. The Super-8 home movies made by Johnston as a teen are marvelously clever and funny, showcasing his cheeky personality along with some nifty camera tricks (and appearances by the Johnstons' adorable family cat). Some startlingly candid moments are included as caught on tape by Johnston: arguing with his mother, and, years later, with Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley; being berated by a cop for graffitoing the Statue of Liberty; and delivering paranoid, apocalyptic rants.
Feuerzeig also stages some creatively stylized Errol Morris-style re-enactments, and includes some nifty original images, like a pile of Johnston's diary cassettes arranged in the shape of a heart. Some of these elements are clearly meant to be humorous, like a long, dramatic dolly-in shot of a Pepsi vending machine set to jingles for Mountain Dew that Johnston wrote in a mental hospital, and the addition of splashing sound effects as Austin Chronicle publisher Louis Black re-enacts finding a raving Johnston standing in the middle of a stream.
Johnston is so revered among taste-making recording artists that Feuerzeig could have easily filled up a feature-length film with adulatory testimonials from well-known alternative rock stars, but he wisely avoids this temptation and places the focus squarely on the people closest to Johnston. (As the exception that proves the rule, Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers is interviewed in the dentist's chair, and we are treated to closeups of his teeth being drilled.) The interviews are wonderfully honest and candid—Johnston has obviously had a strong effect on these people, and their loyalty to this damaged man, who has caused some of them considerable trouble, is touching.
One of the most intriguing things about Johnston is the way his mental state smears between oblivious and self-aware and his demeanor alternates between haunted and mischievous. In one of his audio diaries or letters, he can be heard frenetically reading a textbook definition of manic depression (his diagnosed condition), chuckling with mordant self-recognition. And in a cartoon Johnston drew illustrating his first meeting with Louis Black, he depicts himself calculating to play up his naive persona in order to "put one over" on Black and get publicity in Black's paper. At the same time, Johnston suffers from severe, almost schizophrenic delusions of grandeur, and has a serious case of arrested development, obsessing over comic books and a crush he had when he was 19. The film conveys the sense that, underneath all the mental damage, there's a part of Johnston that not only knows that he's crazy and weird and funny but owns and embraces that knowledge. That's a tricky thing to capture, but the film does it brilliantly; it's not only a captivating portrait of a strange person, it also provides a lot of food for thought about the nature of mental illness. (mike.04.06)
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