On the dark edge of genius

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, April 14, 2006

Kurt Cobain may not have been the most stable of judges, but it figures he knew something about song writing. No less a light than Cobain thought Daniel Johnston was a brilliant songwriter.

"Daniel who?" you ask.

It's a long story, and it's well told in The Devil and Daniel Johnston, an odd and disturbing documentary from director Jeff Feuerzeig. As the film unfolds, we learn that Johnston became a cult figure who made a name for himself to the emerging Austin, Texas, music scene of the 1980s. Johnston had a way of capturing emotion in very idiosyncratic songs, and he also had the acumen of every self-promoter; i.e., he didn't appear to be advancing his own cause.

By now, you may be wondering why Johnston remains unknown to all but a cult fringe. If Johnson hadn't lost his grip, he might have become a household name for people who hooked into his folksy - perhaps slightly silly - approach to music. But the subject of this unsettling documentary did lose a handle on reality, a condition that allows Feuerzeig to paint a portrait of a man he clearly regards as a failed and tragic genius.

Johnston did not start down the road to genius from the kind of beginning usually associated with pop-cultural heroes. He grew up in Virginia, the son of fundamentalist Christian parents who never quite understood the son who retreated to a basement world where he turned out odd drawings that some now regard as art. (Some of Johnston's new work was featured in a recent Whitney Biennial. A New York Times article reported that his drawings can sell for more than $1,000 each.)

Not surprisingly, the young Johnston - always something of a fish out of water - ran away from home as soon as he could. The story of his early years seems like a collection of clichéd developments culled from a bad novel. Johnston joined a carnival before reaching Austin. His tunes were distributed on homemade cassettes, and he shrewdly manipulated himself into an appearance on MTV.

But even as success loomed, Johnston couldn't manipulate himself out of a bipolar tailspin. He slipped into a series of deranged episodes that included periods in mental institutions. He began to see the world in terms of a strange - and most would say distorted - brand of Christianity that hinged on a Manichean split. Johnston imagined himself threatened by demons.

Before you indict Johnston's stern parents as the culprits in this story, it's best to meet them. Daniel's mother and father, with whom he now lives in Texas, have taken care of their son well beyond the period when any parents should be burdened with such tasks. They have proven surprisingly tolerant of their son's bizarre ways, an especially notable achievement when you realize that Daniel once tried to crash a plane his father was flying.

By the time we meet Daniel as an adult, he seems literally to have shed his early personality. In his 40s, Daniel seems a fallen souffle of a man. Not much of a singer, Johnston still has a global following that cherishes his music, which he sometimes performs. He's finally on medication.

Feuerzeig benefited from the fact that Johnston lived most of his life in a thick fog of self-obsession. He created lots of fodder for a film. He made Super-8 movies, many of which are seen in the movie. His music and his videos become a kind of fractured diary, a journal of a boy who never really did became a man.

I'm not entirely sure that Feuerzeig makes clear why everyone should be interested in Johnston, aside from the fact that his life is steeped in a peculiar brew, insularity embellished by weirdness. Johnston's fringe existence may not speak to the most universal of truths, but the man certainly isn't cut from a cookie-cutter mold.

Maybe that's enough to justify a documentary that tells the story of a young man who approached the precipice, took a mighty leap and, sadly, fell over the edge.

Robert Denerstein is the film critic. Denersteinb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5424