Neha Patil (Editor)

My Father and the Man in Black

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
6.8
/
10
1
Votes
Alchetron
6.8
1 Ratings
100
90
80
70
61
50
40
30
20
10
Rate This

Rate This


Initial release
  
23 June 2012 (London)

Screenplay
  
Jonathan Holiff

6.6/10
IMDb


Director
  
Jonathan Holiff

Music director
  
Michael Timmins

My Father and the Man in Black t0gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcTTaBQLoUcHUlS2HG

Producers
  
Jonathan Holiff, Tanya Lyn Nazarec, Jennifer Phillips

Cast
  
Jonathan Holiff, Gary Holiff, David Disher, Alino Giraldi, Elli Hollands

Similar
  
Dixie Chicks: Shut Up a, Walk the Line, Heartworn Highways, Down from the Mountain, Glen Campbell I'll Be Me

My father and the man in black growing up with johnny cash movie trailer


My Father and the Man in Black is a 2012 Canadian documentary film directed and produced by Jonathan Holiff about the stormy relationship between country music star Johnny Cash and the filmmaker's father, Saul Holiff, his personal manager. It qualified for Oscar consideration in 2013. Holiff was inspired to produce the film when he stumbled on his fathers' storage locker filled with audio diaries and a large assortment of other documents relating to his time in the 1960s and 1970s as Cash's manager. The locker also included a framed gold record of "A Boy Named Sue" which went on display at The Grand Theatre during the running of their musical Ring of Fire.

Contents

My father and the man in black


Production

The film employs historically accurate flashbacks. Starting with how Holiff met Johnny Cash when he hired him to sign autographs at his "Sol's Square Boy" drive-in in London, Ontario Hollif went on to sign Cash to a number of other music gigs and Cash hired him to be his manager, with a contract written on the back of a paper napkin.

It is narrated by Jonathan Holiff, interlaced with archival audio by Johnny Cash and Saul Holiff.

The structure of the film interlocks the relationship of Cash and Saul, and often pans to the relationship of Saul with Jonathan. His son often resented his father's time on the road. There is an emphasis of the rift between Cash and Saul, caused by Cash's status as a Born again Christian and Saul as an Atheist, and how their relationship spiraled out of control. Variety.com comments on the unique structure of this film:

"Documentaries as expressions of filial trauma usually fail to generate audience empathy. But with its posthumous, anguished, first-person confessional revolving around the larger-than-life Man in Black this one partly transcends its inherent self-indulgence."

Reception and awards

My Father and the Man in Black has had mixed reviews from critics in the United States. The film has a "Fresh" rating (63 percent) on critic review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes LA Weekly describes it as a "fascinating documentary" despite what it called the "warning signs of a vanity project" Metacritic notes the fresh take on a documentary, saying: "Refreshingly, My Father and the Man In Black does not slip into the realm of tabloid. It’s an intense personal adventure with universal themes and appeal that just happens to feature one of 20th-century music’s great icons" On Roger Ebert.com, the movie is described as "too damn interesting to be maudlin." A review in The Village Voice stated "heart and feeling is soaked through it like the sweat in Cash's guitar strap."

The film has been nominated and has won a number of awards on the film festival circuit.

  • Lewiston Auburn Film Festival: Best Documentary 2012
  • Buffalo Niagara Film Festival : Best Documentary 2013
  • Tiburon International Film Fedtival: Orson Welles award
  • Edinburgh documentary Film Festival: Best feature
  • Reviews

    The film garnered mostly positive reviews in other countries, particularly in the United Kingdom. The Financial Times called it "a non-fiction 'Walk the Line' with script input by Eugene O’Neill." The Guardian said "finally, a fresh angle on the Cash mythology." A reviewer with The Daily Telegraph commented on the frequent dramatic confrontations between Cash and Holiff revealed in authentic audio of phone exchanges between the two. A reviewer from the UK website "Film Forward" states that the movie is a type of answer song to the movie Walk the Line and it covers a number of themes not mentioned in Walk the Line, like Cash's conversion to Christian fundamentalism at the peak of his career, the racism Cash faced by the KKK when they believed Cash's first wife was African American, also the Antisemitism Holiff faced both growing up and in the early days of country music.

    Historical accuracy

    The documentary is considered among the most historically accurate films about Johnny Cash's career in the 1960s and early 1970s — and the often stormy relationship with his manager between 1958 and 1977. This is due to the fact that the film is driven by contemporaneous audio diaries and telephone calls, and hundreds of letters, between the two men. A number of the movie props are genuine articles given to Holiff by Cash.

    Soundtrack

  • Lee Harvey Osmond
  • Michael Timmins of The Cowboy Junkies
  • References

    My Father and the Man in Black Wikipedia