You're Gonna Miss Me : A Film About Roky Erickson

You're Gonna Miss Me : A Film About Roky Erickson
by Keven McAlester

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DVD details

Actor: Billy Gibbons, Evelyn Erickson, Patti Smith, Roky Erickson, Thurston Moore
Director: Keven McAlester
Brand: UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP DISTRIBUTION
Cinematographer: Lee Daniel
Editor: Victor Livingston
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-07-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Palm Pictures / Umvd

DVD Reviews of You're Gonna Miss Me : A Film About Roky Erickson

DVD Review: This was a gift....
Summary: 5 Stars

Great video and great service from Amazon - had already seen movie - this was a gift and was excellent!!!

DVD Review: Interesting!
Summary: 4 Stars

I missed this when it aired on Sundance and it sounded interesting enough that I bought it. It is a tragic story. Though it centers around Roky Erickson, it shows the deeper tragedy surrounding his entire family.

DVD Review: He's a Real Nowhere Man
Summary: 3 Stars

Poor, doomed Roky Erickson.

His second acid trip hurt him, according to 13th Floor Elevators drummer John Ike Walton, but it didn't discourage him from 300 more trips to the same well, burning holes in his mind that most likely will never fill in again if "You're Gonna Miss Me" is any indication.

From all accounts, Erickson was never the same after a year in San Francisco, returning to his hometown of Austin, Texas only to be arrested for possession of marijuana, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and banished to a state mental hospital and endless days of shock therapy and tranquilization. Upon release, he clawed his way from the center of the maelstrom with a series of killer influential albums filled with themes of paranoia and detachment and marked by his hellbent psychopathic raving and cerebral looniness. Then he went off his meds, off the edge, and off his rocker...

By the late 90's, Erickson, possessed of a voice truly unrivalled in the animal kingdom and originator of the term "psychedelic rock," was light years beyond "troubled," reduced to living in government housing where he lorded over his peculiarly dark corner of the universe, days filled with...well...not much other than sitting around his apartment in sunglasses, cloaked in humming white noise from televisions, radios, police scanners, amps, and electric keyboards, waiting around for a daily visit from his mother, Evelyn - a real piece of work - who figures in this story almost as much as her son.

Enter Roky's youngest brother Sumner, whose fundamental problem with his mother's care of his brother is her refusal to climb on board a program for Roky based on therapy and better living through chemistry, fully convinced some unlocked combination of colorful pills will return him back to if not something approaching "normal," then at least back from the brink of wherever he's calling "home."

While there is a happy ending here, as laid out in two postscript segments in the bonus features, don't come to "You're Gonna Miss Me" expecting a glimpse of anything close to the Erickson of yore, handing down some sort of cosmo-dynamic enlightenment to the huddled masses. His full recovery, I suspect, much like the journey that took him to nowheresville in the first place, is something that won't happen overnight, if at all.

On June 13, 1975, Erickson had himself legally declared "an alien from a planet other than Earth." If you'd been born on Saturn, you'd be different, too.

DVD Review: Survival of an American Music Icon
Summary: 4 Stars

"You're Gonna Miss Me" is a creative, superbly made documentary on the life of Austin rock legend Roky Erickson. Fans should be warned that the film isn't a music video or a retrospective of any kind, and so shouldn't be approached as such. It is not even "entertainment", though it's very engaging, moving and even suspenseful. Those seeking only Roky's music should just skip to the Extras (although there you'll find his full reading of "I Know the Hole in Baby's Head", which strongly hints at the dark real-life stuff in the film). Only some brief interviews with folks like Thurston Moore and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons give the film any commonality with typical music docs.

Rather the film is a harrowing, painful and unblinking story of personal survival. It portrays, with incredible up-close intimacy, Erickson's lifelong schizophrenia and the chillingly dysfunctional and tragic family from which he has no means to distance himself. You'll find yourself amazed that he's still alive and getting by - in his own odd way - after all he's been through.

Most of the film documents Erickson's day-to-day life with his mother, and we soon realize she's as toxic a presence in his life as mental illness or state incarceration ever were. Think of the Pink Floyd song "Mother" and you'll have some clue about this woman, who is nonetheless a sympathetic figure herself. She plainly cares and means well. Most interestingly, she's very musical and artistic herself - and nearly as eccentric as her son is.

One of Roky's brothers (a classical musician) finally stages an intervention. A Texas court appoints the brother as Roky's sole guardian; at last getting him the proper treatment he so badly needs. While the film doesn't have a "happy" conclusion, at least it ends with Roky being much more stable and contented than he'd been in years. Those closest to Erickson describe him as always being very likable and sweet; and this quality still shines brightly forth from him despite everything. I very much wonder how he's doing today.

DVD Review: Tragic story. Happy ending?
Summary: 5 Stars

File this astounding documentary of a dysfunctional family right next to your DVDs of Crumb, Capturing the Friedmans and your CD of Wild Man Fisher. Keven McAlister's excellent direction of one family's struggle to help a mentally ill member takes us inside the drama in a beautiful and revealing way. Mother vs brother, who can help this man? BTW, I saw Roky perform at Seattle's Bumbershoot in 2007. He arrived in fine form, good press lead to a large and enthusiastic crowd, and put on a good show. Don't miss this one.

Description of You're Gonna Miss Me : A Film About Roky Erickson

The Fascinating Story of Rock `n Roll Pioneer Roger Kynard "Roky" Erickson And His Struggles With Drug Addiction and Mental Illness.
Outside Austin, Texas, a 53-year-old man sits in an apartment with four radios, three televisions, two amps, a radio scanner, and a Casio electric piano playing all at the same time. Loudly. He has three teeth, his hair is matted into one huge dreadlock, and he has a notarized document on his wall declaring himself an alien, "so whoever's putting shocks to my head will stop."

Special Features: 90+ Minutes of Rare & Exlusive Bonus Footage including:
* Historic, Uncut Live Performances: "COLD NIGHT FOR ALLIGATROS" & Intimate Acoustic Performances of "BLOODY HAMMER," STARRY EYES," "RIGHT TRACK RIGHT NOW," "DON'T SLANDER ME," and many more
* The Complete "I KNOW THE HOLE IN BABY'S HEAD" and other readings by Roky
* The Collected Works of EVELYN ERICKSON
* POSTSCRIPT: Austin City Limits Festival Documentary (2005)
* POSTSCRIPT: Roky's Emancipation Hearing (2007)
* DELETED SCENES & EXTRA DOCUMENTARY FOOTAGE

In the annals of spooked rock, Roky Erickson is a legend. When you hear his wobbling, impassioned, vocal yowl, you have to admit: He could've been a sort of psychedelic, proto-punk, American Van Morrison. Alas, history has been less kind to Roky. Kevin McAlester's documentary discloses precisely why (and how) Roky's early status as an icon--a maverick rock genius as demonstrated by his band, the 13th Floor Elevators--went sadly awry. At the center of You're Gonna Miss Me are some crucial dramatic tropes: a terribly broken family; a pressing, age-old "Am I my brother's keeper" predicament; and a relatively simple case of schizophrenia. The film opens in a courtroom, Erickson's aging and awkward mother, Evelyn, and his youngest brother, Sumner, locked in a battle for guardianship over the then-53-year-old, mentally imbalanced singer. The film captures Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Patti Smith, and Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), among others, testifying to Roky's non-pareil genius. Also present, however, are tales of Roky's singular madness--extended acid and heroin binges and, alas, his then-present-day condition, living in cramped, decrepit quarters with an array of transistor radios, stereos, TVs, and keyboards, all cranked fully as he placidly reclines or wanders aimlessly.

The film painstakingly shows the Erickson family's longstanding fissures, contextualizing Roky's schizophrenia and, disarmingly, putting his mother's own awkward idiosyncratic behavior on display. Lee Daniel's cinematography brilliantly captures the desolation and desperation of Roky's life, camera shaking and panning and finding hidden angles to show the strange, seemingly endless schizophrenic signs around the singer--dozens of antennae, stacks and stacks of mail strewn throughout his apartment, and Evelyn's complicated obsession with Roky's history--from his highpoints as a rocker to his tragic three-year stay at the Rusk State Hospital for marijuana possession (where, for example, he played in an ad hoc band with a couple of murderers, a rapist, and, improbably, a hospital counselor) to her own, eerie film project where she casts Roky as "the king of the beasts" in a home-movie she undertakes as a "legacy" for the family. The film is all about otherworldly dimensions, centering in large part on youngest brother, Sumner--himself an accomplished musician playing tuba with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra--and his legal battle to become Roky's guardian and get Roky "simple medical care" and medication for his schizophrenia. This is an important chapter in the history of rock, without the underlying humor that made Dig! an indie film hit in 2005 but with a much larger historical purview. --Andrew Bartlett

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