The story behind 2019’s weirdest doc
Exploring magic, mortality, misdirection and meth in The Amazing Johnathan Documentary
BACK IN THE 1980s, ‘The Amazing Johnathan’ — real name John Edward Szeles — was a staple of late-night TV, whose subversive mix of magic and standup comedy made him an icon among comedy nerds. Skip forward to 2014 and Szeles revealed on stage that, due to a heart condition, he had a year to live, and would be embarking on a farewell tour. First-time film director Ben Berman and his crew were there to follow him for the journey. “I thought I was gathering footage for a short film,” Berman recalls, “about a magician confronting his mortality with humour and seriousness. And then, right before we were going on tour, he let me know about the other crew.”
It soon emerges that the Oscar-winning team behind Man On Wire were also invited to film the tour by Szeles. Berman decided to acknowledge their presence in his film. “If a documentary is a medium that’s supposed to seek the truth, how could I ignore the truth that there was an Academy award-winning crew there? So I decided to experiment and include my competition in the narrative. It went from very small expectations to, ‘Okay, let’s make a weird movie!’”
That’s how a straightforward biographical account of a declining performer turns into something far more meta. “The movie deconstructs itself,” says Berman, “just like Johnathan’s magic act.” Berman, undermined and sidelined by Szeles, soon puts himself in his own film while encountering more twists — including meth smoking, chainsaw juggling, and questions about what is real and what isn’t.
“It’s a movie about Johnathan, and it turns into a movie about me, but ultimately it’s also a movie about the state of documentary filmmaking in 2019,” says Berman, who knowingly includes a clip in the film from Marc Maron’s stand-up comedy, complaining that there are too many documentaries these days. “It’s a golden age of nonfiction storytelling. There are only so many stories. And that’s what I lucked into, or un-lucked into: I figured out a way to have problems be a value.”
How all those problems shake out, we won’t reveal here. But Berman has no regrets for what became an unexpectedly challenging shoot. “I wouldn’t change anything,” he says. “Because to do it right would be wrong for this.” There’s some insane, Amazing Johnathanesque logic to that. JOHN NUGENT THE AMAZING JOHNATHAN DOCUMENTARY IS IN CINEMAS FROM 19 NOVEMBER