Manic Depression is
Touching Your Soul

With The Devil and Daniel Johnston,
Director Jeff Feuerzeig Explores the Roots of Artistic Genius
Through an Underground Hero’s Battle With His Demons

By Maurice Spencer Teilmann

If nothing else, the ideal of keeping up with the Joneses has relegated true singularity to the endangered species list of human traits. Still, occasionally an individual is birthed and through a rare combination of unrivaled creativity and mental instability, is able to carve their own path and offer something extraordinary.

For many, the name Daniel Johnston is merely a passing reference strung between the names Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett; or some cryptic figure championed by the likes of Kurt Cobain, Matt Groening and Thurston Moore. In reality, Johnston invented himself; blessed and cursed with crippling manic depression, he created a staggering body of work that spanned music, fine art and film. All the while, he recorded his thoughts and songs onto countless audio tapes. These, along with his extensive collection of sketchpads, provided the source material for director Jeff Feuerzeig’s The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary on Daniel’s astounding journey and the study of a self-aware manic depressive hell-bent on achieving fame. Feuerzeig, who won the award for Best Director at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, shared a few insights on Daniel Johnston and the origins of enigmatic genius.

Do you have a favorite Daniel Johnston story?
[Laughing] There are a million Daniel Johnston stories… He is pretty much a cult legend all over the world now, and they think of him as a singer/songwriter. What people are finally understanding through this film is that Daniel Johnston was a fine artist and a filmmaker. I want people to know that Daniel Johnston is not just some outsider musician, because he’s not at all. He went to art school, studied art, and he has a huge body of work.
He did all this work, really, 20-something years ago. There’s no corporate agenda selling this guy, there’s no reason that the world is interested in Daniel Johnston right now except for the fact that he did all this great work and it’s resonating. It just touches people and gets passed around like a secret handshake. And I think that’s really fascinating, it happened before there was an internet, through fanzine culture and things like that.
It’s art through subversion, he subverts all your expectations of what art is supposed to look like or music is supposed to sound like. It’s always the great artists that subvert all of our expectations, and I think it’s really cool that he’s done that.

You maintain that Daniel Johnston is not an outsider artist. Still, it’s easy to interpret his music as outsider art because it’s pretty askew.
By definition an outsider artist is somebody who is unschooled or untrained and might also be mentally ill. If you read a great book that I read called Touched With Fire by Kay redfield Jamison, what you will learn is that all the great artists, writers, poets, musicians throughout history suffered from the same illness that Daniel Johnston suffers from, manic depression. During their highs their great masterworks are created, and during their lows they are self-medicating. And that’s just the way it is; Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, the list goes on and on and on; the people movies are made about, novels are written about and that we still discuss today. I don’t know why that is, but they all suffer from manic depression.
That’s what this film is really about—whether you like the art, understand the art or music is besides the point. What we’re doing is taking you through the creative process, the manic depression and how tied together they are, and go for that ride. You’re never going to get closer to that because here you have a subject that documented his whole life on tape, and that is a rare peek inside genius and manic depression.
And that’s why I made this movie, because he had a great story to tell. The guy’s life is just incredible, from making those films as a young kid to recording his whole life to running away and joining the carnival—every young boy’s fantasy—he did it. Breaking his way onto MTV, conning his way on, exploiting his own mental illness, his fight with the Devil which is very real to him, Kurt Cobain stepping in when he doesn’t even know him, while he was at a mental hospital, major label bidding wars…why did all that happen? Because he’s special. He deserves his due right now, and he’s getting it.

Why should a viewer not feel any sort of moral dilemma watching your film; that we get this enjoyment, this sublime wonder from watching the products of essentially what has been a tormented life?
Very simple answer. Daniel Johnston exploited his own mental illness way before this film was ever made. His first moment on MTV, the scene from The Cutting Edge, the first words out of his mouth are, “Hi, my name is Daniel Johnston, and this is my new album, Hi, How Are You? and I recorded it while having a nervous breakdown.” So Daniel has done that himself really beautifully, so there’s no reason to feel that.

How does Daniel feel about the film?
He came and saw it at Sundance and he loved it, he said he loved the colors, how colorful it was. He also said he thought it should have a laugh track, he made jokes: “Daniel’s in the hospital, Daniel throws the lady out the window, Daniel crashes the plane, Daniel’s in the hospital…” He thought his life should have a laugh track. He fancies himself a comedian, he likes to be funny and he’s very self-aware of how he’s seen and who he is. He’s the wizard behind his own curtain, he always was…

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