Ìý The rock'n'roll loser documentary is becoming a bona fide sub genre. Recent films Mayor Of The Sunset Strip, The Devil And Daniel Johnston, and now Derailroaded, show the damaged runaways who people America's rock circus. Larry 'Wild Man' Fischer was a star of the 60s West Coast music scene. A freak when the word meant something greater, Fischer was bizarre in person and on record. His reality, as this affecting but voyeuristic film shows, is unconquerable paranoid schizophrenia.
For the most part, director Josh Rubin comes at Fischer's life story in a standard fashion: musical peers like 'Weird Al' Yankovic provide the anecdotes via talking head interviews, while well researched archive footage establishes Fischer's place in the Outsider Music firmament. Brother David Fischer describes a family history including commitment papers for the 16-year-old Larry. Allied to this colourful chronology, Rubin includes his own present-day interviews with Fischer, and these interludes provide the film's most uncomfortable and memorable moments. Lurid tales of the Wild Man's career-stopping studio antics in the 60s and 70s, (eg throwing a bottle at Frank Zappa's daughter Moon Unit) take on a tragic significance alongside images of a derelict 57-year-old Fischer tortured by paranoia and bitterness.
"NOT EVERYONE WILL SYMPATHISE"
Of course, one man's musical genius is another man's Michael Bolton and not everyone will sympathise with Fischer the ignored artist. It would be hard to do the same with Fischer the human being. Much like the subjects of those other, previously mentioned rock-docs, his is the story of a messed up kid for whom fame was a substitute for family.
