I first watched The Devil And Daniel Johnston five nights past with the dawn set for tickling the window glass beside me and a head like a pickled arse perched top my shoulders. Fried with insomnia and lust and exhausted on account of the scribbling of a novel and what have you, in this state I hit play on the DVD Disc Spinneroo doohickey, hit play says I and watched as the aforementioned motion picture, Jeff Feuerzeig's most beautiful and harrowing and distressing and life-affirming 2005 documentary affair concerning the singer/songwriter/artist of the title and the sundry terrors and torments and highs and lows rattling around his brain-bumps, watched as that particular masterwork bled o'er the screen and on across the carpet.
It swole up there and then and some two hours later it faded from the screen and I finally fell asleep with its myriad majesties still racing round the skull like rabid sprites afire with The Lord.
I've watched it a further three times since then and still I got the thirst of a thousand hounds gnawing at the throat for to see it again.
I announced with great zeal to all who cared to listen, "Hear me now, you must see this picture, for it is surely a fucking-well glorious slab o' cinema!"
I flung emails left and right and did evangelize its wonders to my lady-friend, Beautiful Ms Gillian, who watched and was similarly awe-struck.
Sat on a park-bench I yelled at a young lad with the eyeliner and the elbow-pads and the strides jutting six feet out past his legs all directions. I yelled and hollered; "You, have you seen The Devil And Daniel Johnston, for judging by that Pitchfork Media shirt I dare say you'd love every frame."
He'd shrugged. "I've seen head nor tail of it. The hell is it, anyroad, pray tell?"
"It's a documentary about Daniel Johnston."
"The Banana Pancakes fella?"
"Moses oh, he is not!"
"Well who?"
Here's who, says I, and then got to telling him all about it.
Daniel Johnston, see, is a singer/songwriter and artist and sometime filmmaker done made his name on the back of a series of self-produced, self-recorded, self-analyzing cassette tapes filled with beautiful, fragile, pop songs recorded on tape decks hung o'er chord organs in basements reeking of religious mania, loneliness and frustration.
Article comments
1 - DJRadiohead
Duke, I had never heard of Daniel Johnston before reading this. My mind feels bewitched to the point of knowing I need to see this film. Heartbreaking.
2 - Duke De Mondo
DJ, thanks for checkin in! I dunno how you'd react to Mr Johnston's music, but there's no doubting the flick is a thing of incredible beauty. Some of Daniel's music is, also, but much more of an acquired taste.
3 - DJRadiohead
He sounds fascinating as a subject regardless of what I might think of his music. I am going to have to see this.