The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Wednesday 24th May, 2006 - Cameo, Edinburgh
I had a rather spooky moment there when I opened up the dashboard - I could have sworn my photo blinked!
I love the Cameo cinema in Edinburgh, especially when you get into the big screen rooms. But we didn't - we were in the flight cabins! :-)
The Devil and Daniel Johnston has been on my want to see list for a few weeks now because I had watched the trailers. I didn't know who Daniel Johnston was, and the trailers looked intriguing and possibly harrowing.
This film is actually very beautifully captured. The small video clips put in of Daniel as a child mimicking his mother are funny and clever. One thing that struck me though throughout the documentary was that was Daniel really ill? His creativeness seemed to disturb his fundamentalist parents to the point that they sent him away to do something more 'real' and 'of substance' with his life, but music and art to me appeared to be what his very essence was/is, his practicality of home studio environment. His art is not over the top either, it is very pop art/comic book structured. There, as his mother says, is a lot of happiness (and suffering) in his cartoon animations. The characters all seem to have lighting up eyes and a smile on their faces. As does Daniel himself.
There is no doubt that he was/is ill, and I think a lot of the traumatic stuff has deliberately been left out and some is obviously still there, but his creativeness is undoubtable. What I am saying when above I ask was Daniel really ill is because the documentary makes you wonder about his sanity being okay, possibly because a lot of those people who were interviewed came across as very 'strange' while he is pictured as an almost shy looking, curly haired, butter wouldn't melt in mouth young teenager/man being harrassed by his rather moralising parents.
He seemed to become a phenomena where others wouldn't. Working in McDonald's, people phoning up just to speak to him. He had been given the most menial of tasks to do too. Kurt Cobain wearing a tee-shirt with cute looking beheaded frog type thing, gave him probably even more fame ... story being at this time he was in a mental institution and probably hadn't heard of Nirvana.
Spoiler here (Don't get me wrong he has done some very serious stuff such as beat a man with an iron pole, scare an eighty year old woman enough to jump out of her second floor window and nose dive an aeroplane throwing the keys out the window ...) End spoiler.
I was really touched by this documentary ... and left dumbstruck at one, the knowledge of not knowing who he was beforehand and yet he seemed so in touch with real emotions and a real art for portraying it in the words of a song ... He performed live with a guitar he hadn't learnt how to play properly and they say at one point he was winning top awards beating all the folk artists who did know how to play :-) There is so much humour and warmth in the way people interviewed describe him. And fear too. You see the picture of a large middle-aged? man with two frail elderly parents behind him, looking after their son, coping with his manic depression - they speak of him getting up at a different time of the day which allows them almost half the day to themselves and how they welcome that, and you can see in their eyes the true impact of these words.
He doesn't really sing in tune either so how come he is such an enigma ... people like Tom Waits have covered him - mind you Tom Waits is an art in himself with his concoctions of sound.
Anyway, if you get the chance to see this film/documentary do ... it will leave you feeling you've been given a little insight into something special. And I've no doubt after this release a lot more people will have heard of him and put him up there among the greats, this ordinary looking bloke with the rather amateurish playing skills and raw voice who can put it all together into something not to be forgotten.
I've just been searching around and found these two website links which you can follow if you wish - see what you think. ;-)
http://www.hihowareyou.com/
Which says it is the official Daniel Johnston website and
this one http://www.rejectedunknown.com/
which also claims to be the official Daniel Johnston fan site.
And here's a link to more about the film: http://www.sonyclassics.com/devilanddaniel/
Enjoy!
I had a rather spooky moment there when I opened up the dashboard - I could have sworn my photo blinked!
I love the Cameo cinema in Edinburgh, especially when you get into the big screen rooms. But we didn't - we were in the flight cabins! :-)
The Devil and Daniel Johnston has been on my want to see list for a few weeks now because I had watched the trailers. I didn't know who Daniel Johnston was, and the trailers looked intriguing and possibly harrowing.
This film is actually very beautifully captured. The small video clips put in of Daniel as a child mimicking his mother are funny and clever. One thing that struck me though throughout the documentary was that was Daniel really ill? His creativeness seemed to disturb his fundamentalist parents to the point that they sent him away to do something more 'real' and 'of substance' with his life, but music and art to me appeared to be what his very essence was/is, his practicality of home studio environment. His art is not over the top either, it is very pop art/comic book structured. There, as his mother says, is a lot of happiness (and suffering) in his cartoon animations. The characters all seem to have lighting up eyes and a smile on their faces. As does Daniel himself.
There is no doubt that he was/is ill, and I think a lot of the traumatic stuff has deliberately been left out and some is obviously still there, but his creativeness is undoubtable. What I am saying when above I ask was Daniel really ill is because the documentary makes you wonder about his sanity being okay, possibly because a lot of those people who were interviewed came across as very 'strange' while he is pictured as an almost shy looking, curly haired, butter wouldn't melt in mouth young teenager/man being harrassed by his rather moralising parents.
He seemed to become a phenomena where others wouldn't. Working in McDonald's, people phoning up just to speak to him. He had been given the most menial of tasks to do too. Kurt Cobain wearing a tee-shirt with cute looking beheaded frog type thing, gave him probably even more fame ... story being at this time he was in a mental institution and probably hadn't heard of Nirvana.
Spoiler here (Don't get me wrong he has done some very serious stuff such as beat a man with an iron pole, scare an eighty year old woman enough to jump out of her second floor window and nose dive an aeroplane throwing the keys out the window ...) End spoiler.
I was really touched by this documentary ... and left dumbstruck at one, the knowledge of not knowing who he was beforehand and yet he seemed so in touch with real emotions and a real art for portraying it in the words of a song ... He performed live with a guitar he hadn't learnt how to play properly and they say at one point he was winning top awards beating all the folk artists who did know how to play :-) There is so much humour and warmth in the way people interviewed describe him. And fear too. You see the picture of a large middle-aged? man with two frail elderly parents behind him, looking after their son, coping with his manic depression - they speak of him getting up at a different time of the day which allows them almost half the day to themselves and how they welcome that, and you can see in their eyes the true impact of these words.
He doesn't really sing in tune either so how come he is such an enigma ... people like Tom Waits have covered him - mind you Tom Waits is an art in himself with his concoctions of sound.
Anyway, if you get the chance to see this film/documentary do ... it will leave you feeling you've been given a little insight into something special. And I've no doubt after this release a lot more people will have heard of him and put him up there among the greats, this ordinary looking bloke with the rather amateurish playing skills and raw voice who can put it all together into something not to be forgotten.
I've just been searching around and found these two website links which you can follow if you wish - see what you think. ;-)
http://www.hihowareyou.com/
Which says it is the official Daniel Johnston website and
this one http://www.rejectedunknown.com/
which also claims to be the official Daniel Johnston fan site.
And here's a link to more about the film: http://www.sonyclassics.com/devilanddaniel/
Enjoy!
posted by CJ at 10:02 am
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