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The Devil and Daniel Johnston

  • 20052005
  • PG-13PG-13
  • 1h 50m
IMDb RATING
7.9/10
10K
YOUR RATING
  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews
  • Trivia
  • IMDbPro
The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
Home Video Trailer from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Play trailer2:23
1 Video
14 Photos
  • Documentary
  • Biography
  • Music

Daniel Johnston, manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist is revealed in this portrait of madness, creativity and love.Daniel Johnston, manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist is revealed in this portrait of madness, creativity and love.Daniel Johnston, manic-depressive genius singer/songwriter/artist is revealed in this portrait of madness, creativity and love.

IMDb RATING
7.9/10
10K
YOUR RATING
  • Director
    • Jeff Feuerzeig
  • Writer
    • Jeff Feuerzeig
  • Stars
    • Daniel Johnston
    • Mabel Johnston
    • Bill Johnston
Top credits
  • Director
    • Jeff Feuerzeig
  • Writer
    • Jeff Feuerzeig
  • Stars
    • Daniel Johnston
    • Mabel Johnston
    • Bill Johnston
  • See production, box office & company info
    • 51User reviews
    • 89Critic reviews
    • 77Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 2 wins & 3 nominations

    Videos1

    The Devil and Daniel Johnston
    Trailer 2:23
    The Devil and Daniel Johnston

    Photos14

    Jeff Feuerzeig at an event for The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    Jeff Feuerzeig at an event for The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    Jeff Feuerzeig at an event for The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    Jeff Feuerzeig at an event for The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    Daniel Johnston
    Jeff Feuerzeig and Henry S. Rosenthal at an event for The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    Jeff Feuerzeig at an event for The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    Stacy Peralta at an event for The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)
    The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Daniel Johnston
    Daniel Johnston
    • Selfas Self
    Mabel Johnston
    • Selfas Self
    Bill Johnston
    • Selfas Self
    Laurie Allen
    • Selfas Self
    Brian Beattie
    • Selfas Self
    Louis Black
    Louis Black
    • Selfas Self
    David Fair
    • Selfas Self
    Jad Fair
    • Selfas Self
    Don Goede
    • Selfas Self
    Matt Groening
    Matt Groening
    • Selfas Self
    Gibby Haynes
    Gibby Haynes
    • Selfas Self
    Sally Johnston Reid
    • Selfas Self
    Dick Johnston
    • Selfas Self
    Margie Johnston
    • Selfas Self
    Ken Lieck
    • Selfas Self
    Kathy McCarty
    • Selfas Self
    Freddie Mercury
    Freddie Mercury
    • Selfas Self
    • (archive footage)
    Thurston Moore
    Thurston Moore
    • Selfas Self
    • Director
      • Jeff Feuerzeig
    • Writer
      • Jeff Feuerzeig
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
    • All cast & crew

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    Storyline

    Edit
    Born January 22, 1961, the late Daniel Johnston began expressing himself through art as a child while doctors struggled to accurately diagnose his unusual behavior. In addition to drawing prolifically, he began using a boombox record curiously stirring songs to cassette tape in high school. Following his brother to Texas, he eventually landed in Austin, working unskilled jobs while continuing to record and self-distribute music to friends and friendly strangers. It was clear to everyone that Daniel was not a typical artist - a disquieting innocence, with references to both light and dark spiritual forces, were evident throughout his work. It was this distinctive voice that compelled local musicians to share his art beyond Austin's city limits, culminating in respected indie musicians like Tom Waits, Beck, and Wilco to either record his songs or reach out to collaborate. Four years in the making, THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON honors the complex artistry of Daniel Johnston while exploring how bipolar disorder and schizophrenia distorted his behavior and informed his haunting work. —Mae Moreno
    • independent music
    • indie music
    • biographical documentary
    • music documentary
    • austin texas
    • 56 more
    • Plot summary
    • Add synopsis
    • Genres
      • Documentary
      • Biography
      • Music
    • Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)
      • Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, drug content, and language including a sexual reference
    • Parents guide

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      As seen in the DVD extras, Daniel and Laurie would meet again after 30+ years following a screening of this film. She said she kept every memento he gave her and was grateful that he always built up her self esteem and said so many nice things to her when they were friends. The two shared a beautiful moment with a nice hug when they saw each other again.
    • Quotes

      Daniel Johnston: I never met a girl I didn't meet.

    • Connections
      Featured in Segundo aniversario (2007)
    • Soundtracks
      Silly Love
      Written by Daniel Johnston

      Performed by Daniel Johnston

      Published by Eternal Yip Eye Music (BMI)

      Administered by BUG Music Publishing

    User reviews51

    Review
    Top review
    9/10
    Troubling story but superb documentary technique
    For a crazy person, Daniel Johnston – a manic-depressive from West Virginia in his forties now an obese chain-smoker on heavy meds and in the care of his parents, has had a wonderful life and a very creative one as an artist, songwriter and performer who's become a cult figure admired and performed by the likes of Tom Waits, Sonic Youth, and Kurt Cobain. Jeff Feuerzeig, whose title refers to Daniel's constant mental battles with Satan, has provided a rich and sympathetic external portrait; and Johnson's own endless cassette tapes, songs, and drawings (which, used as important sources, can't help bringing to mind such influential recent documentaries as Andrew Jareaki's Capturing the Friedmans and Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation), provide as good a picture of what's going on inside Johnston's head as we're going to get.

    Johnston has been celebrated by a long string of artists and become a cult figure to his fans for his purity, innocence, honesty, and raw pain. Like Caouette, he was unappreciated by his parents and particularly his mother, who thought he spent too much time writing songs and drawing pictures when he was young, and called him a "lazy bum" for not doing his chores around the house. His compulsive creativity was never really appreciated by his fundamentalist Christian family, though since thousands of admirers have applauded him at concerts, surely they begin to appreciate it now.

    The many films and tapes of him show Daniel was a charming if unstable young man, buoyant, full of fun, uncooperative, laughing – in a teenage film he plays both himself and his abusive mom – and beginning to compose the songs that others have said sum up the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and other pop greats, though his voice is tuneless and whiny and his piano playing jangly and when he switched to guitar, that was worse. His parents took him out of college because he wasn't doing well, and put him to work. He didn't like that, so they farmed him out to siblings. Luck brought him to Austin in the early Eighties where he worked in a Macdonald's for a surprising length of time considering that he wasn't good at any of the jobs there (he cleared tables) and he was discovered by music writers, an editor, and a man who became his manager and almost his slave (Jeff Tartakov, the manager he fired, who still devotes his life to distributing copies of his tapes).

    Johnston had repeated bouts in mental institutions and became increasingly delusional. A period of heavy LSD use clearly led to one of his worst crises: and yet he can recount all this himself, and his mind seems astonishingly lucid. (This is one of the saddest things about madness: that the mad know they're mad, but can do nothing about it.) For all his crises, the Austin public embraced Johnston and he got top awards for folk singing and song writing – an event that sat ill with some professional musicians at the time, but satisfied the lust for fame that motivated Johnston, who'd been on MTV, and knew how to grab the spotlight better than he knew how to play his guitar.

    I can't see the virtue of Johnston's music and drawings, or rather I can, but I disagree with those in the film who insist he's not an outsider artist. He fits that category well; he's just come along at a time when plaintive whining, alienation, and musical primitivism are the rage, and he was taken up by some admirable champions. However, when he finally got a recording contract – drawn up initially when he was in a mental institution – his first album issued by Atlantic Records sold only a few thousand copies and he was dropped in two years, showing that despite stars' covers of his songs, he himself has no mainstream appeal, or ability to work in a professional format either as a musician or a visual artist. Nonetheless Johnston's open nature, his clarity, his sense of the redeeming artistic value of love, and his ceaseless artistic productivity are unmistakable and justify the attention that has been lavished upon him. This doesn't stop his story from being ultimately a sad one. For all his parents' caring in latter years, for all his championing by editors and managers, he cannot function on his own. Since his meds stifle his creativity, he has tended to give them up for two weeks before a public performance, and after one of the biggest ones, when his dad was flying the two of them home in his little plane, he overpowered him and took the controls and they crashed into some trees, barely surviving. Well, I guess all artists are a bit reckless, but it's just a matter of degree.

    Making full use of films, tapes, and recent interviews, Jeff Feuerzeig has produced a wonderful film that is as good a document of a man as modern techniques allow. And the enduring popular notions of artistic life as train wreck and artistic genius as mental derangement remain unchallenged.

    (Feted at fests in mid to late 2005, The Devil and Daniel Johnston went into limited US release March 31, 2006.)
    helpful•27
    2
    • Chris Knipp
    • Mar 31, 2006

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • May 5, 2006 (United Kingdom)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official site
      • Official site
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Дьявол и Дэниэл Джонстон
    • Filming locations
      • Austin, Texas, USA
    • Production companies
      • Complex Corporation
      • This Is That Productions
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $334,450
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $23,192
      • Apr 2, 2006
    • Gross worldwide
      • $432,339
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 50 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
      • Black and White
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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