Review: You're Gonna Miss Me

Plans for a biopic of rock casualty Roky Erickson, lead singer of the 13th Floor Elevators, have long been in the works, and those plans will only be accelerated by You're Gonna Miss Me, an intriguing new documentary that chronicles Erickson's fall from a place of note in the 60s psychedelic rock scene in Austin -- the Elevators were close with Janis Joplin's circle -- into a morass of drug and legal troubles, confinement in a nuthouse and a lifelong losing battle with schizophrenia. Needless to say, Erickson is a pretty good example of a man whose greatest enemy is himself, but a close second is his gruesome mother, who we see living with him in present-day footage, in a Texas flophouse overflowing with cats, garbage, endless knicknacks and useless mail. When first seen, the two of them are filling out a Publisher's Clearing House form so that they can collect their prize. Roky, decked out in a tennis visor and a wrinkly shirt, is later seen fiddling with a Mr. Potato Head bank that's probably been lying around for thirty years.

Erickson's 'value' as a living piece of rock history, though no longer apparent to him, is still of interest to others. We hear from talking heads like Kurt Loder and rock critic Byron Coley, and early on we see a British rock writer actually visiting Roky at his house of horrors and trying to communicate with him, to absolutely no avail. When asked "Can you play us a tune?" Roky responds "Well, I'd like a piano, but they are gargantuan, aren't they?" Cut to a shot of the writer outside, saying his goodbyes. Roky's younger brother Sumner is also acutely aware of who his brother is, or was, and throughout the film we see him battling to wrest legal guardianship of Roky away from the mother. The stated reason, and it's a good one, is that the mother does nothing positive for Roky's health, and even discourages him from taking schizophrenia medication. However, it's also clear that if Roky wasn't Roky, Sumner wouldn't be trying as hard. At one point, he notes that he spoke with his brother maybe twice during the 90s.

There's a lot of humor in You're Gonna Miss Me, although most of it is probably unintentional. I'm thinking in particular of a scene in which the over-excited Sumner, who is clearly in close cahoots with director Keven McAlester, hauls his and Roky's still-living father out of mothballs -- the man must be in his 80s, at least -- and tries to interview him about Roky's involvement in the 60s psychedelic rock movement. It's embarassingly clear that this is a subject that the father probably didn't care about in the 60s and cares about even less now. "I think he [Roky] gets a lot of his wordplay from you," Sumner says. "Huh?" the old man responds. And that's pretty much the end of the interview. The doc also shows us many letters, written by Roky in the haze of his mental illness, to various parties over the years. One letter is addressed to Alfred Hitchcock. Another is addressed to Quaker State, and reads: "Dear Quaker State Corp. Would you please send me oil and lubricants? Vital to your vehicle survival."

As interesting as the present-day Roky Erickson is, the film would have been well-served by giving us a better set-up that includes some background on the 13th Floor Elevators. There's only a smattering of archival footage of the band during its heyday, and there's very little input from the filmmaker about exactly what we're supposed to think or feel about the band's impact on pop culture, if it had any. There's no question that Erickson is a natural musical prodigy -- his talent is immediately apparent whenever we see him singing, even long after mental illness has clouded in and he's singing songs about 'creatures with atom brains' -- and most of the critics assembled for the film seem to agree that the loss of his vocal talent was a serious loss for rock and roll. We hear almost nothing about his closest musical associates however, so it's all a little difficult to place in context unless you happen to be coming to the movie with all the stored-up knowledge of someone like Legs McNeil.

The best scene in the film is a brief one, taking place in 1987, that draws out the sadness of Erickson's condition. More or less hijacked by The Butthole Surfers as some kind of rock n' roll scavenger hunt item, Roky is driven to a gig and tricked into getting up on stage, where he just stands there aimlessly and looks around at everyone else, not responding to their cues to start singing and join in the fun. It's clear at that point that he's a man completely adrift in his own life, without any guardians or people around him who are able to protect him from himself or anyone who would use him for their amusements. It makes it easier for you to get behind the efforts of the younger brother, as he fights to become a guardian of Roky and get him medicated and hopefully on a path to better mental health. And if Roky happens to regain some kind of musical success at the end of it all and everyone benefits, hey, what's the harm in that?