PROVOKR PICK
Dick Johnson is Dead, The Hit of Sundance
In Kirsten Johnson’s new film, Dick Johnson is Dead, the documentary filmmaker grapples with her father Dick’s dementia and impending death. She does this by acting out imaginative and macabre ways her father can meet his end. Dick, a retired clinical psychiatrist, goes along for the ride and acts as himself in each scenario. Ways he might die include falling down a flight of stairs and bleeding out from a stab wound to the neck.
According to an interview in Vulture, Johnson said, “The idea first came to me in a dream. I dreamt there was a man in a casket and he sat up and said, ‘Im Dick Johnson and I’m not dead yet.’” She pitched the concept to her dad by asking him to make a movie with her where he repeatedly died. In addition to scenes that conjure up different ways for Dick to die, Johnson had her father act out his funeral and added a scene imagining him being welcomed at the gates of heaven. Johnson incorporated home videos and family photographs into the documentary, including footage of her mother, who died of Alzheimer’s in 2007.
Dick Johnson is Dead had its world premiere on January 25, 2020, at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction Storytelling. Netflix produced and distributed the film. According to Johnson, it was the first time she had a budget before production, and didn’t have to raise money as she went along, or after the project wrapped.
You can watch the irreverent documentary Dick Johnson is Dead on Netflix starting October 2, 2020.
