Jeff Feuerzeig appears to have plenty of years left, but he feels he’s already completed his life’s work: the film The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Since first encountering Johnston’s music more than twenty years ago, Feuerzeig has felt it was his divine duty and unique privilege to make a film about its creator. He began collecting music, articles, and artwork by Johnston, carefully amassing a body of research that would prepare him for the more than four years he spent making this collage-like life story. “This is not a rock documentary,” Feuerzeig wants us to know. “It’s more along the lines of Crumb, a portrait of an artist and a journey of madness and creativity and genius.” That’s aiming high, but we felt the comparison was apt.
What was your introduction to Daniel Johnston?
In 1985 I got hold of one of his handmade cassettes, Hi, How Are You, which is his Meet the Beatles album. Not only were the songs so achingly beautiful and raw and real, they were just such a breath of fresh air amid everything else going on in music at that time. He sounded like Billie Holiday to me, or early Bob Dylan. He’s a unique voice, a great piano player, and the art on the cover was captivating. Plus, he put his mom yelling at him on the tapes, which I loved.
He never toured much; hasn’t made many albums. Why did you remain interested?
Because he is such an enigma. I felt like I knew him, but only through his art and music. But that’s the best way to appreciate him. As you see in the film, he remains an enigma, he’s a living ghost, and he’s not even really interviewed in his own film. He recorded his whole life on cassette tapes, as living diaries, and he made cassette letters for friends–so you get to hear him throughout his life, talking about his life, which is much more powerful than an interview. I simply created an internal monologue for his incredible journey.
His life to me was very cinematic. He ran away from home and joined the carnival. He’s made all this amazing art. He created a folk legend about himself. And life with mental illness is never dull. It’s scary, harrowing, tragic, and beautiful. And funny. He’s a very funny guy.
How did it work for you, trying to get inside the mind of a person who has struggled so painfully with mental illness?
It was a pleasure, every minute of it. It was my dream to be in his mind and it was so satisfying to go on that journey that the low point is that it’s actually over. I really felt like I was in his head, and it was so incredible to be so close to this fire that burned so brightly. The rest of the world is just not that exciting.
w did Johnston respond when you approached him to make this film?
He was thrilled and very cooperative. I’d already made a film about Daniel’s friend and collaborator Jad Fair, from Half Japanese, so he knew that I would take his life and art very seriously, and try to make a great film.
So how do you follow up your life’s work?
Well, I’m working on a film about a boxer named Chuck Wepner, a former heavyweight champion who was the real-life inspiration for Sylvester StalloneÕs Rocky. I grew up in Jersey, and he was a very big figure there. He fought Muhammad Ali in 1975, went fifteen rounds and then lost. I love the story of Wepner, and I’m fully immersed in it, but I wouldn’t have been able to make it if I hadn’t done The Devil and Daniel Johnston first.
Has he given up music for art?
His art career is his second act in life. His work is at the Whitney Biennial in New York right now. This is a guy who was in the CBGB gallery just last year, and now the art world is really taking notice of him. But he’s not an outsider artist, despite what many say–he’s studied art, went to art school. He’s the ultimate insider. And it’s just incredible that he’s still alive.
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