Who would have thought? Lana Del Rey is a big Daniel Johnston fan? Seven years ago, I got to see ‘The Devil and Daniel Johnston’, a documentary, winner of a Sundance Film Festival, which introduced me to Johnston’s music and the dramatic story that his life has been. I saw him once performing at Amoeba, and this mythic character, a grown-up man with an occasional childish demeanor, has always intrigued me. Apparently, I am not the only one since I would have thought that this 2005 documentary was the definitive one, but a new one is in preparation, ‘Hi, How Are You: A short Film Starring Daniel Johnston’, by filmmaker Gabriel Sunday. But this one may be a little bit different, it is definitively not a biopic and it is described like this:
‘Hi, How Are You” is a collaborative short film by a group of dedicated Daniel Johnston fans (creators of the film Archie’s Final Project) and Daniel himself. It’s a musical tale of an aging artist encountering psychedelic dreams, nightmares, and characters from his past. We began shooting with a simple outline: an intimate interview between Daniel and his younger self addressing his most prolific and maddening era. Our hope was to bring his stories, memories and art to life. What ensued during shooting was beyond anything our crew could have hoped for. Daniel not only opened up and told stories none of us had ever heard, but embraced and relished the idea of speaking with his younger self, gifting advice and warnings from the future. That became the backbone of our script. As shooting continued Daniel interacted with imaginary creatures from his cast of Spirit World characters like Jeremiah and Joe the Boxer. It was a truly unreal and moving experience. The result is something that will appeal not only to Daniel fans, but to any artist trying to find their way.’
‘The goal of the movie is to get inside Daniel’s mind’ says Sunday in the video below, and during the movie Daniel’s art, characters and music come to life, including a young Daniel receiving advices from real Daniel, as if he had a new chance to rewrite his life.
Daniel Johnston is an incredibly prolific songwriter/artist, who has produced over 20 albums, his songs have been covered by almost everybody on the indie scene and his art has been exhibited about everywhere, including the Whitney Museum of American Art. He has a real cult following, among them the late Nirvana frontman himself, Kurt Cobain and Matt Groening. He can break your heart with songs about unrequited love or scare the hell out of you with nightmares turned into cartoons, you can palpate mental illness through everything he creates, but at the same time everything transpires a terrible human drama. When I saw him at Amoeba, Daniel looked really happy to be there and perform but it is quite possible he would have performed the same way in front of an empty place.
Of course, a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to fund the movie, and according to the Line of Best Fit, both Lana Del Rey and rapper Mac Miller have made an important contribution to the campaign, and became by the same occasion ‘executive producers’ on the project. The project has already gone way over the goal of $35,000 which shows how much people care for it!