My Father and the Man in Black

I watched the premiere on CTV, June 17, 2013. It was great to see a story about Johnny Cash's dark celebrity with the focus on his back-room power broker and the lynch-pin that appears to have been an at-times tormented friendship. Caught up in the whirlwind of fame, Saul Holiff appears to have been a man willing to compromise many things in his life that he was sadly unable to reconcile. Kudos to Jonathan Holiff for an unemotional, non-blaming story-telling about the father-son relationship that was clearly collateral damage. The locker full of memorabilia could have been a roomful of pain, and perhaps it was, but the film shows that Jonathan instead chose to receive the content as a gift from a father to his creative, talented son.

Jonathan Holiff has created a wonderful documentary, exploring the torturous relationship between Johnny Cash, his father (who was Cash's manager), and himself. He's very nicely mixed real audio recordings with re-enacted scenes to put us in the middle of this complicated relationship. Full disclosure: Jonathan is my cousin. But that takes nothing away from the marvellous way he's pulled back the curtain to explore this often wonderful, often awful relationship among the three of them. The tangled web includes Saul Holiff's difficult relationship with an increasingly out of control Johnny Cash, and Jonathan's increasingly difficult relationship with his father, who was not much of a father at all and knew it.

This heartfelt documentary is as much about family as it is about showbiz. I particularly was intrigued by the recorded letters, telegrams, diaries, home movies and audiotapes that Jonathan brought to the screen. This was a well written labor of love about a son's search for the understanding of his own father. You cannot help but be a part of Jonathan's journey to learn more about his father who was never home. His father's audio diaries tell a sad story of a father who was never around always distracted and somewhat distant. I felt a deep connection to Jonathan's struggle to find answers as to why his father acted the way he did. Perhaps he will never know the 'real' reason...however in my heart, I believe he found some closer while sifting through evidence of a life he never knew. Kudos to you Jonathan for a job well done!

Jonathan Holiff has courage. He has created a story about his own sense of isolation and loneliness and disregard by his father and unlike so many men who have had the same submerged life of regret, Jonathan Holiff has worked through his - through soul searching, agonizing recollections, the death of a father that was so distant, and through research that unearthed years of recorded tapes made by his father that explain many of the problems Jonathan never understood.

Jonathan Holiff's father, Saul Holiff, was Johnny Cash's personal manager from 1960 to 1973. This film is the untold story of 'bad-boy' Johnny Cash, his talented but troubled manager, Saul Holiff, and a son searching for his father in the shadow of a legend. But what the film delivers in a sophisticated approach to a documentary (mixing many clips of historic clips and conversations on tapes with live actors standing in for the featured characters of this tale) is another look at just who Johnny Cash really was - from a mediocre country singer to a drug addict and alcoholic to a wreck of a human being who failed to show up for concerts, to his gradual comeback via his unique recordings from prisons and then to his fall again as he became a radical fundamentalist born again Christian, through two marriages and a divorce, his fame with June Carter Cash and his eventual death from complications of diabetes in 2003. Tat is not the Cash the public knows and the fact that he sustained the glow of fame is in large part due to the tireless efforts of Saul Holiff, himself an alcoholic and tormented man.

But at what costs? This film allows us to connect most closely with Jonathan Holiff as he comes to grips with the man who as his father was carrying on the tradition of emotional frigidity with his son. The young Holiff knows just how far to push the buttons and when to back off, and the end result is a very powerful film on so very many levels.

Grady Harp

Saw this on a flight to Vancouver. You never hear of the back stories of the people supporting these celebrities and the crap they put the people around them through. I understand his not maybe wanting to draw his brother, mother and other family members into his documentary, it was about him and his fathers relationship. Exposing other family members may have been more hurtful. I don't think I could put myself out there as Jonathon has, but finding out that his dad was been tormented inside by the choices he was making may temper his feelings toward his father. I knew Johnny Cash had some demons/drug issues, but I think he can count him self lucky that he had a friend/manager such as Saul, to pick up the pieces.