JOHNNY CASH AND SAUL HOLIFF

Fraught relationships, in the shadow of fame

From 1960 to 1973, Saul Holiff, a "sober-minded businessman from London Ontario" who had specialized in celebrity endorsements, served as the manager of the iconic singer Johnny Cash. This was the time of Cash's rise to fame, the Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash recording sessions, and the singer's famous live concert albums recorded inside the Folsom and San Quentin prisons. In the wake of Saul Holiff's death at 80 by suicide, having gotten access to lost recordings and diaries, his son Jonathan, himself a TV producer, has made a film in which he seeks answers to questions long troubling him. They concern his own lost childhood, his difficult contacts with his remote, austere father, and his father's turbulent relationship with Johnny Cash, two painful tales, both dreary.

Inevitably most of the film is taken up with recounting Johnny Cash's career while his father was managing it, with details about his father's history and problems on the side. Outside sources, lots of photos, and a long series of reel-to-reel tape diaries his father made aren't enough for Holiff, who felt obliged to interject a lot of elaborate reenactments and what are apparently someone doing a creditable imitation of Cash's voice. Holiff even makes still photos move. Is such trickery necessary? Maybe so, because the long chronicle or the two men's relationship is grim and somewhat depressing. Both had drinking problems, with the fathers constant private tippling much emphasized in reenactments. But it was Cash's addiction to uppers and downers plus the alcohol that took the dramatic toll, leading to many, many cancelled concerts, some entire tours blown. Nonetheless Johnny knew he owed a lot to Saul. When Johnny came out to perform in Miami in 1968 and could not, with his manager there with his whole extended family, he called out feebly, "Help me, Saul."

Ultimately we must read between the lines to see how these two men complimented each other and how Johnny Cash's skinny form and haggard face and nasal, prematurely aged baritone voice were the "baraka," the blessed quality arising from (over-) use that make him so credible in a country of youth-worship as "The Rough-Cut King of Country Music" as the Life Magazine cover calls him. He had suffered, even if he brought the suffering on himself. He had done jail time, even if it was just for bringing pills illegally into the country from south of the border and being drunk and disorderly. Occasionally during this story it comes through that the music was wonderful, the songs unique.

In the final stretch Holiff finally turns more to his relations with his father. But ultimately there's not much about Jonathan's relations with Saul because there hardly were any, and those that there were were not very pleasant. Saul treated Jonathan cruelly, like a business manager more than a father. But the story is still dominated by Johnny -- his and his wife June Carter's excessive Christian religiosity, leading Saul to quit him, their occasional communications afterwards, the decline of Cash's career in the Eighties.

This is one of those documentaries that's in large part therapy for its maker. He does make full use of the archival material at his disposal. But if you want a more rounded portrait of Johnny Cash, try the 2005 James Mangold, Joaquim Phoenix movie, Walk the Line. Or just listen to Johnny Cash's songs. He was good.

My Father and the Man in Black , 87 mins., debuted at the North by Northwest Festival in June 2012 and opened in London Ontario a week later. It has been in various festivals. Screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, July 25-August 12, 2013.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.