AN AMERICAN IDOL WITH SERIOUS ISSUES.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

For awhile there watching "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," I wondered whether this music documentary was an elaborate put-on. I eventually concluded that it was not. But like the recent "Unknown White Male," there are some major aspects of the film that just don't seem to add up, reality-wise.

Foremost among these is the idea that Johnston, a singersongwriter with a severe bipolar condition, would have any kind of fan base at all, let alone one that includes presumably savvy critics, disc jockeys, admired recording artists and music industry executives. The snippets of his songs that we hear during the first half of the movie are marked by lame poetry, simple chords and a squeaky, off-key voice, all of which scream amateur night.

It's a tribute to director Jeff Feuerzeig's presentational skills that by the movie's second hour, we can discern a bit more sophistication and shaky, Neil Youngish vocal artistry in Johnston's music. Still, it's mostly whiny, self-absorbed stuff (his best-known composition is probably "Speeding Motorcycle," now heard on television commercials). Nevertheless, the people who compare him to the Beatles, Dylan and Brian Wilson still end up sounding like fools.

Johnston makes some of the same claims for himself. But being more than a bit delusional, such egomania comes off as just another manifestation of his malady. It's one of many.

Raised in a religious West Virginia home and still cared for by his elderly parents (Dad acts as his troubled son's business manager), Johnston started drawing bizarre R. Crumb-like cartoons and making home movies while still a boy. He got into music in college, which was also when his youthful solipsism grew into fullblown manic depression.

Between numerous hospitalizations, Johnston somehow made an impact on the Austin, Texas, and New York alternative music scenes. The guys from Sonic Youth took him in for a while (of course, he disappeared without a trace), and when Kurt Cobain wore a T-shirt with one of Johnston's designs for a couple of months, record companies actually competed to sign him - while he was committed (the resulting album flopped).

Eager for fame and obsessively fearful of Satan, Johnston tends to go off his meds a few days before a live gig. This makes for what he apparently realizes are entertaining meltdowns on stage. It's also caused him to do such things as attack a manager with a lead pipe and crash his father's airplane while they were both flying in it. By some miracle, the men walked away alive.

For all of that, Johnston still tours, even overseas; he's big in Sweden, as is suicide. And if that's hard to believe, how about the fact that he filmed a lot of his life and has made many cassette recordings of his thoughts, mostly paranoid rants about the devil and relatives, women he loved and people he thinks are out to get him.

At least those elements are more interesting than repeated verses of "Do you love me now" or "Tears, stupid tears, bring me down." All of this pre-recorded material is crucial to the documentary, since actually trying to interview the irrational Johnston these days is a lost cause. The parents, though they have their flaws, come off as wonderfully devoted people, poignant in their exasperation with their son and concern for how he'll fare when they're gone.

Friends and what can only be called business partners in the broadest sense fill in most of the details about Johnston's life that are interesting in a pathological kind of way but grow repetitious and unenlightening.

As for the serious fans of his work, well, maybe I'm not getting something, but they seem like the craziest people in the movie.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL JOHNSTON - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: language, drug use, violence)

Director: Jeff Feuerzeig.

Running time: 1 hr. 50 min.

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Landmark NuWilshire, Santa Monica; Edwards University Town Center 6, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Bipolar, not really talented singer-songwriter Johnston is often mistaken for a genius in this intermittently interesting documentary.

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Photo:

Bipolar singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston stops taking his medication a few days before a performance.