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PLOT: Documentary on singer/songwriter/artist Daniel Johnston concerns the man whose music has been covered by 150 other artists and whose adult life has been plagued by manic depressive illness.
Daniel Johnston is a brilliant artist who has suffered the indignities of manic-depression most of his adult life. That makes The Devil And Daniel Johnston, a documentary about the renowned painter and musician, both riveting and disturbing to watch.
Johnston manages the same combo of genius and madness that leads to comparisons with Beach Boy Brian Wilson. The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a heartbreaking film about the baby-faced musician who sings about his obsessions and leaves audiences obsessed with him.
Johnston's life story thus far is proof that fact is generally stranger than fiction. The youngest of five children, he grew up in West Virginia in a fairly religious home and eventually ran away (on a moped) to join a carnival.
Always wildly creative as a painter and filmmaker, Johnston's musical success began as a bit of a fluke when he gave a tape to Kathy McCarty (Glass Eye) in Austin. She agreed to let him open for her band without hearing his music in advance. Johnston wrote raw, amazing songs, managed an appearance on MTV, cleared tables at McDonald's and began his bizarre rise to legendary status. It has been a journey punctuated by mental illness. Two record labels engaged in a bidding war over his music while he was hospitalized in the psych ward.
The sad reality of Johnston's life -- never mind about the increasing fame -- is quietly rolled out via interviews with his aged parents, who still take care of their now middle-aged son and also handle his career. His father weeps as he tells how a delusional Johnston once nearly killed them both in an airplane.
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Since Johnston began filmmaking, painting, photography and music at an early age, The Devil And Daniel Johnston has a wealth of visual and audio material from his adolescence. Besides his parents, the movie has interviews with his siblings and with various music writers, artists, friends, managers and followers.
(And it includes photos of Laurie, the woman he fell in love with in the 1980s and for whom he wrote hundreds of love songs. She married an undertaker.)
Today, Johnston is in his 40s, still warbling his frankly astonishing songs in that Neil Young-ish voice of his. As his rabid fans have long included such people as Matt Groening, Tom Waits and the late Kurt Cobain, Johnston's music continues to get out there, but these days, his sketches and paintings are just as popular as his songs.
The Devil And Daniel Johnston is a documentary about survival and creativity; the subject matter is often grim, however, and to Johnston fans the movie may seem vaguely exploitative.
BOTTOM LINE: Kurt Cobain wore a T-shirt promoting Daniel Johnston and his Hi, How Are You? recording for what seemed like most of 1992. Johnston's story really is fascinating, but his creative genius and his mental illness struggle for control throughout it ain't a pretty picture.
(This film is rated 14-A)