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Viewing The Inner Gears of Genius: The Devil and Daniel Johnston
In the creation of art there tends to be waste. Chunks of clay hit the floor. Dollops of paint dried, and unusable on a palette. Volumes of words that go unread. In the echelon of genius, it can be the artist himself that becomes the sacrifice of the pursuit.
It’s this idea that is borne out of Jeff Feuerzeig’s, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a chronicle of the life of a living artistic icon with very deep Austin roots.
Daniel Johnston was a precocious visual artist growing up in a Christian fundamentalist family. Thoroughly misunderstood, he spent long hours isolated, drawing frightening images of flaming eyeballs, shooting Super8 films starring himself in every role, and recording songs on a $59 Sanyo boom box.
As a young man, the early signs of manic depression gripped Johnston. By 1985 he was an art school dropout and had picked up with a traveling carnival that landed him in Austin, at a magical time in the city’s musical and artistic history. Working at a McDonald’s, and relying purely on instinct, he handed out his debut homespun album, Hi, How Are You?, on cassettes to recognizable local musicians who drop in for a burger. Johnston’s original artwork on the cassette jacket--the googly, antennae-eyed, Jeremiah The Frog of Innocence--lives in posterity on the side of the Baja Fresh building on Guadalupe.
These meager beginnings resulted in his appearance on MTV’s Cutting Edge; acclaim from the likes of Nirvana, Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam; and a contract with Atlantic Records on a bipolar thrill ride of euphoric highs and paralyzing lows.
The Devil and Daniel Johnston is a true story about an artistic genius whose mental illness may have shaped his greatness as much as it hindered. Using an unprecedented archive of Super8 footage from Johnston’s own vintage films, as well as journalistic analog cassette recordings, the film arrives at a startling vantage point: The slow wind down into madness.
The film marries the archive to Super 16 footage seamlessly, providing both a throwback of grainy, starry home movies and a current retrospective from the most important players in Johnston’s drama in this remarkable visual piece. Coupled with the internal monologue provided by the emotionally-unfiltered, diary voice recordings, the film succeeds in achieving a unique intimate perspective on its subject.
Director Jeff Feuerzeig won the coveted Best Director Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival for The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a film that falls into the category of required viewing for all Austinites.
