The Devil and Daniel Johnston by Jeff Feuerzeig

I have a new number one, and it is about to burst out of me. The Devil and Daniel Johnston may quite possibly be the most well-developed documentary of the past decade. Why? First and foremost, the archive. This film may contain the greatest archive of one person’s life that I have ever seen in a documentary. That alone would earn it the top spot, but it does not even begin to touch the story of this fascinating human life. Told through the eyes and ears of this film, it made me want to jump straight into it and live even a small portion of it myself.

Making The Devil and Daniel Johnston must have been one of those rare moments where a documentary filmmaker finds themselves standing in absolute glory after uncovering a mine of archival gold. The stacks and stacks of material surrounding the making of this film must have created endless possibilities for story development, ultimately giving birth to a documentary that feels almost staged in its perfection. Of course, the other side of that gift would have been the painstaking process of sorting through it all and knowing what to leave in and what to cut. In the end, what emerges is a deeply compelling portrait of Daniel Johnston, supported by the footage and audio needed to truly understand what it was like to live inside his world.

Raised in Pennsylvania in a conservative home with strict values, Daniel Johnston struggled to fit in. Sometime in his late teen years, he broke free from it all in a collision of madness and music and hit the road. Gifted as an artist yet struggling with reality, his relationships with family grew tense. His outlets became art, music, and short films, mirroring his internal life back to the world. Obsessed with recording his existence on tape, he captured moments of personal thought, bursts of musical brilliance, and an astonishing archive of family secrets that reveal a household many of us can recognize.

The story of Daniel Johnston, like his mind, moved in two directions. And with Daniel, those directions were always straight up or straight down. Breaking away from his roots, he played his way to the top of the Austin music scene, creating a roar that rivaled anything the region had produced before. Rising toward what he believed was his destiny, Daniel found himself on the early stages of MTV, holding attention just long enough to leave a mark. With a growing legacy of cassette-recorded music, his agent worked tirelessly to get him recognized, eventually pushing Daniel into the center of a record label bidding war that left behind both legend and infamy.

But with Daniel, there was always a deal with the devil, and the devil never forgets. Everything eventually came crashing down. He lost his record deal, stopped making music, destroyed his artwork, and quite literally brought both himself and his father’s plane to the ground. Confronted with the reality of his collapsing mental health, Daniel began a long road back toward sanity, a journey that both saved him and erased parts of who he once was.

When the film jumps forward to the time it was shot, we find Daniel healthier and singing one of my favorite songs, Casper the Friendly Ghost. It is here, in both the film and this song, that Daniel appears at his most beautiful. He is softer, larger, and older. Less wire, more reflection. And if you listen closely to the lyrics, it feels as though he understands that he himself has become Casper, and that Casper was always who he was meant to be.

---
TRAILER

Since its watching, I have fallen in love with this movie and with Daniel and his music.   I have researched more of his work, listened to more of his songs, and gained an understanding that, as the directors share in their commentary, Daniel quite possibly is one of the greatest songwriters and singers of our time, yet unknown.

I hope you will follow up with watching and I would welcome hearing your comments and thoughts.

DANIEL JOHNSTON LINKS:

CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrNT-4hXD3w

OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.hihowareyou.com/ 

TWITTER: @danieljohnston  

FAN PAGE: http://www.rejectedunknown.com/

STORE: http://www.rejectedunknown.com/store/

FORUM: http://www.hihowareyou.com/messageboard/

FULL LENGTH MOVIE ON YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHsKByGW7JE

FURTHER LINKS:

True Love" appears in new Axe hair commercial!  http://youtu.be/NvX71ZbTk-E

Brother’s Keeper by Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky

Brother’s Keeper landed in the mail from Netflix on the recommendation of a friend of mine, and within the first 20 minutes, it was already a top ten on my list. By the end, it had moved firmly into my top five.

Call me behind the times. The film was released in 1992, yet it feels as relevant and powerful today as it did when it was born. It took me a while to put it together, but after about 45 minutes I realized I was watching a documentary that felt like a hybrid of the novels To Kill a Mockingbird and The Grapes of Wrath. The film uncovers a small town, backwoods way of life and explores a rare pocket of human nature, all while taking on a court case that flushes out the uniqueness of four brothers who had lived together in one house since birth. I found myself struck again and again by a quiet sense of awe, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

Set on a farm in upstate New York, the brothers had lived their entire lives together in a run down, ramshackled house, described in the director’s commentary as a kind of personal sanctuary. One morning, they wake to find one of the four not breathing in his bed, with markings on his face that point to death by suffocation. After picking up the story in a local newspaper and following it from near its origin, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky worked quickly to secure the rights to film the events following the brother’s death, documenting what unfolded all the way to the courtroom.

Over the ensuing one hour and forty five minutes, the film reveals the fascinating lives of these four brothers, the farm they grew up on, and the conflicting elements of the legal case. Together, these layers show just how confused the legal system, law enforcement, and state government can become when they collide with a closed, independent small town culture in the rural countryside of a major state.

At first glance, the average viewer may set this film aside without stopping to see why it is so remarkable. Looking closer into this small subculture challenges our ability to understand natural non conformity. It is far easier for a trained, modern mind to dismiss the brothers as strange or out of touch. But if you look deeper, you begin to see something rare and deeply human.

What emerges is a sense of self and simplicity, a way of life that does not seek approval from larger systems of thought. It is this independence that defines these men and their town’s belief in the right to make their own choices, even if that means being damned by a system that believes it knows better. That independence is both beautiful and dangerous in an age shaped by fear and suspicion of small, self contained groups.

This way of life is disappearing rapidly from the public eye, and Brother’s Keeper offers a fleeting glimpse into a world that may soon no longer exist. It is that glimpse that makes this film a top five for me, a moment we may not be able to look into again.

TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlDSGMAyUrE

FULL LENGTH ON YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvroFeisc9k&feature=related