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You're all too young to remember, but there was a time when Jandek,
the Jandek, was a figure shrouded in mystery, cloaked in a shadow of
his own design -- a musician whose recorded output, overwhelming as it was,
took a backseat to stories of precisely who he was. It was
a wonderful time, marked by glittering youth and the beautiful contrast it
made against the dark enigma named Jandek. This was the world in which
first-time filmmaker Chad Freidrichs set out to make a documentary biography
of the elusive, cult musician. The glory of unmasking Jandek -- or at
worst, further entrenching the myth -- would be his.
But what a difference a few months makes. Within a year of the original
completion and release of Jandek on Corwood -- and a month after I
saw its Canadian premiere at the Pop Montreal music festival -- Jandek
appeared from behind his veil of mystery to perform live for the first time
in his career at the Instal.04 festival in Glasgow, Scotland on October 17,
2004.
And so the mystery that Freidrichs so carefully observed and refused to
reconcile with -- and the mystique that the interviewees so faithfully
worship and attend to -- is exploded by none other than the recluse himself.
With the public appearance of Jandek, so many of the hypotheses, criticisms
and fantastical theories the documentary is made of are instantly rendered
moot. I firmly believe Jandek is a clever marketer and that he timed his
appearance to roughly coincide with the DVD release of the film. The
filmmakers themselves seem disposed to the idea that Jandek is a manipulator
and I would suggest anyone who can make and sell so many sound-alike albums
to the same group of followers wasn't blind to the impact such a self-reveal
would have, propped up by the circulation of the doc on the art-house film
circuit.
In visual terms, Jandek on Corwood suffers from the filmmakers'
over-imagination, an argument made bulletproof by the DVD's revelation that
the DV footage was processed and re-processed near to the point of oblivion
in an effort to mask the humble core of the production. The visuals seem
intent on making literal Jandek's presumably humanistic albeit abstracted
lyrical thrust. But no amount of colour adjustment, superimposition and
"trick" effects makes the interview subjects compelling. It seems the human
side of the Jandek mystery is too much to handle for the small group of
so-called experts who are called upon to testify on the artist's behalf -- so
Freidrichs finds himself with a cavalcade of talking heads, all of whom appear to
be following the same overgrown music clerk script. If only one of them had
the charm or wit of a Nick Hornby character (or its filmic embodiment in
John Cusack), this film would be decidedly more entertaining and have a
shelf-life longer than its running time. The information concerning the film's
post-production is available on the DVD commentary track, a supplemental feature that is certainly valuable in terms of
explaining the project's DIY roots, the filmmakers' commitment,
the decision to move ahead with the blessing but not the support of the
principal subject, and the reality of assembling material that doesn't
always live up to the expectations many would have of the story, given the
cult figure that Jandek cuts.
The cult of Jandek and Jandek on Corwood is, by and large, a boy's
club, and Freidrichs is unable to present proof to contest this claim, apart
from a couple of token female talking heads who get none of the respect of
their male counterparts. In fact, the disdain met by Katy Vine -- a female
reporter who trumped the small legion of Jandek devotees by bumping into the
musician in Dallas, conducting an on-the-spot interview for Texas Monthly --
by some of the male "experts" and "Jandek scholars" in the documentary
borders on despicable. In brief, they choose not to believe the interview
is authentic and their Jandek-clique posturing smacks of some gender-based
distrust of the female journalist. Hopefully this inner circle has now
crumbled upon itself. Now these Jandek aficionados must wait
for the savvy artist to release a DVD of his festival appearance before they
can diffuse the indie-cred claims of the few lucky souls who witnessed the event in October 2004; it serves them right.
Freidrichs can only hope that this new, public Jandek re-stokes
legitimate interest in his work and validates a documentary that now feels
hopelessly outdated and naive.
-- Mike Baker
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