Singer David Johansen phones as he’s boarding a flight from New York City to Los Angeles, the chatter of flight attendants occasionally surfacing in the background as he talks about “Personality Crisis: One Night Only,” a new documentary on his life in music.
“We’re coming to Los Angeles because Showtime wants to show this thing to the Academy of Television Arts or something,” says Johansen, 73, a cofounder of the glitter-meets-punk New York Dolls, and later creator of the louche lounge singer Buster Poindexter.
“The people that vote on the Emmys,” he continues. “They’re very concerned about getting an Emmy.”
And why shouldn’t they be? “Personality Crisis” is the first documentary feature on Johansen, a figure in modern music whose interests and work in modern music tie together disparate strands that range from proto-punk to standards, opera to American roots music.
It’s co-directed by Martin Scorsese (and David Tedeschi), himself an iconic New Yorker whose music documentaries have previously included such artists as the Band, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and George Harrison.
And it’s very good, seamlessly blending footage of Johansen’s show as Buster Pointdexter at the Café Carlyle in New York City on his 70th birthday in January 2020 with archival footage and photos, vintage talk show chats and new interviews conducted with Johansen by his stepdaughter Leah Hennessey during the pandemic lockdown.
“Personality Crisis” arrived on Showtime earlier this month. In a conversation edited for length and clarity, and only occasionally interrupted by the flight crew’s admonishments to store overhead luggage and fasten seatbelts, this is what we learned.
Q: How did you come to make the documentary? Was it something you wanted to do or something you had to be talked into?
A: Well, we were doing this two-week run at the Carlyle, and we had – my wife and I – this novel idea of having Buster do Johansen as opposed to what Buster usually does, like a lot of curated covers, you might say.
So we wanted to keep it going. We were looking for some off-Broadway kind of something. And my wife, Mara (Hennessey), she called Marty (Scorsese) and asked him to come and see it so he could kind of advise us about where to go with it.
And when he saw it, the same night, he said, ‘Oh, I want to shoot this.’ So to make a long story short, that’s how it came about.”
Q: Did it start as a concert film or was it always going to be a concert mixed with archival and interviews?
A: This was like January of 2020 and you know the plague was about to break out. So they shot the concert and then they kind of fooled around with it for a little while. I think they were still doing some Fran Lebowitz editing (for Scorsese’s 2021 docuseries “Pretend It’s a City”) as I recall.
Then they got an archivist who was very good, I think, who started digging up stuff and – voila. I mean, there was no plan in the beginning. Essentially, I think their idea was, ‘Let’s shoot the concert and then we’ll figure it out.’
Q: What was it like for you to spend time in your past, singing songs from the New York Dolls, your solo career, from Buster?
A: It was fun to do. I wanted to keep doing it. Though we didn’t go into a theater because then COVID came. And now I’m glad that we filmed it. I was reluctant at first, you know. But then I was persuaded to be whatever you want to call it, the subject – or the victim.
Q: I’ve seen you talk about your reluctance to appear in documentaries on punk or rock or New York City in the ’70s. Why is that?
A: I’ve said this many times. Often, I’m asked to be in documentaries about certain aspects of show business. And I usually just say no because every time – I’ve done one or two in the past – I saw myself I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, who is this guy and what’s he talking about?’
Q: How was this one different?
A: Well, our daughter Leah was the inquisitor in those sections. She just asked me questions and we had – I guess you could say it was a dialogue, but I guess maybe they edited it so that it was mainly me talking. It was nice talking to her, because I was able to get a word in edgewise.
And this one, when I saw it I thought it’s kind of interesting to me. It’s something I can live with. I only cringed two or three times, and usually that was just about a turn of phrase as opposed to something that I actually did. I said this is a good take on an aspect of my life.
Q: There’s a line in it that caught my attention where you say, ‘It’s best to leave an incomplete picture of yourself’ – why do you feel that way?
A: Anyone who’s in the public, no matter how much of it or how small, would eventually wind up scorned. You have to decide whether you’re going to wind up scorned or forgotten or leave an incomplete picture of yourself.
You know it’s impossible for a person to leave a complete image of themselves anyway because there’s so much going on in our heads. We’re constantly evolving and constantly transcending one moment to the next moment yet including everything that we’ve ever been.
Q: Your love of Harry Smith’s American folk music anthologies was something I wasn’t entirely familiar with. What else do you think the film might bring out that your fans are less familiar with?
A: I don’t know. I mention a lot of different kinds of music. So I think the documentary kind of gives a hint of that kind of breadth of my interests in music. I’m very attracted to vocalists especially, but also instrumentalists, who just like touch me in some way.
It doesn’t matter if it’s not in English even, you know. It’s something about the soulfulness of a voice and how it’s expressing, just for lack of a better term, the human condition.
Q: Another thing that struck me in the film was both the song “Maimed Happiness” and your explanation of how that came from a line in a book by the philosopher William James. What was it about the idea of ‘maimed happiness’ that attracted you?
A: It’s something that if you think about it you know it’s kind of true. A lot of people don’t really want to, don’t have sufficient leisure time to think about these things.
You know, I’m half Norwegian, so my wife always says that. We saw a movie about this kind of horrible guy named [Knut] Hamsun, who at one point was a famous author in Norway. I guess they tried to rehabilitate his image because of some really bad scandal that he was involved in. [Hamsun supported Adolf Hitler and the German occupation of Norway during World War II, and gifted his Nobel Prize for Literature to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.]
But anyway, one of his kids said, ‘How are you?’ And he said, ‘Almost happy.’ Max von Sydow played him. He said, ‘I’m almost happy.’
Q: The film’s been finished for a while – what else are you working on now?
A: We’re working on an audio version of the concert (in the film) which is going to come out soon. Working on that. And we’re gonna hopefully start doing some more shows this summer.
Q: I think the last time you played here might have been the Hollywood Bowl with the Dolls in 2011, so it would be great to have you come here again.
A: Yeah, that’d be great. It’s rough, the hard traveling. It’s the schlep that kills you. So hopefully we’re gonna be able to work things out so that it’s not so difficult to get around. I think the film will help. More people will be interested and we might play theaters and auditoriums.
