The Devil and Daniel Johnston

First time introduced to Mr. Daniel Johnston. Have not heard of him prior to this and I only heard about him listening to the podcast from documentary blog. After hearing him mentioned about the 10 th time the podcast I had to see this man that reputatedly defied the whole world and made this world changing music from the basement of his parents. Was this the missed Dylan? The thing that struck me though, is how much Sam Rockwell is the splitting image of Dan. That in a strange way took away for me a bit when watching this documentary as I had to constantly remind myself that I was not watching a movie with Rockwell in it. Put up on my twitter that if his movie ever got made no one else had the right to play him but Rockwell. Even both their mannerisms and facial ticks are identical.

I kept on thinking about the people who have had to put up with the artistic genius of our time: brother of Picasso, husband of Virginia Woolf and the parents of Dan. How do they really feel when watching a documentary like this? I wonder if they feel the anguish and hardship of putting up with these misunderstood geniuses is worth it?

I am not really the biggest fan of the sex, drugs and rock and roll stories and in a way this is exactly that, detailing Daniel's rise from obscurity (working in Mac D) to his eventual fall and it's when the story falls into it's trappings of a normal rock and roll documentary I felt the most bored. I liked the personal stories of Daniel plus the superimposition of Daniel's voice recordings over his movie videos of him playing his mom in drags. That was a wonderful touch by the director. It really helped to bridge the two mediums and create in my opinion a new life and view of Daniel's raw material.

Another point worthy of mention here is which I actually gleaned off the documentary blog podcast is the director's appreciation of the 'alternate appreciation' of art and it is due to this that this tribute to Daniel is here today. I actually like the rawness of his music the most and feel that the composition and lyrics of his music to be absolutely genius. At this point too the thought occured to me of how personal art really is and the folly of allowing a bunch of people critique about your art. I guess now I understand better that I am not weird or crazy wheneven I feel the bile regurtitate up my throat when I have to sit through an episode of American Idol. I am sure a person singing like Daniel would have probably would not even have survived the perlims and a genius like this would have flowed right through the Idol filter, so I think about the necessity for this on going reality series that is in it's 10th season?

The scene about Daniel's 'bad boy' stuff related to his acid consumption and weird acts following that was a bit ordinary. I have seen that before. Which one of these artsy genius was not strange?

Conclusion: 4 stars for this one, it was good and it introduced me to one of the best artist I would have missed because of no coverage, just one star taken away for the times I felt a bit bored.