My Father and the Man in Black

Jonathan Holiff has courage. He has created a story about his own sense of isolation and loneliness and disregard by his father and unlike so many men who have had the same submerged life of regret, Jonathan Holiff has worked through his - through soul searching, agonizing recollections, the death of a father that was so distant, and through research that unearthed years of recorded tapes made by his father that explain many of the problems Jonathan never understood.

Jonathan Holiff's father, Saul Holiff, was Johnny Cash's personal manager from 1960 to 1973. This film is the untold story of 'bad-boy' Johnny Cash, his talented but troubled manager, Saul Holiff, and a son searching for his father in the shadow of a legend. But what the film delivers in a sophisticated approach to a documentary (mixing many clips of historic clips and conversations on tapes with live actors standing in for the featured characters of this tale) is another look at just who Johnny Cash really was - from a mediocre country singer to a drug addict and alcoholic to a wreck of a human being who failed to show up for concerts, to his gradual comeback via his unique recordings from prisons and then to his fall again as he became a radical fundamentalist born again Christian, through two marriages and a divorce, his fame with June Carter Cash and his eventual death from complications of diabetes in 2003. Tat is not the Cash the public knows and the fact that he sustained the glow of fame is in large part due to the tireless efforts of Saul Holiff, himself an alcoholic and tormented man.

But at what costs? This film allows us to connect most closely with Jonathan Holiff as he comes to grips with the man who as his father was carrying on the tradition of emotional frigidity with his son. The young Holiff knows just how far to push the buttons and when to back off, and the end result is a very powerful film on so very many levels.

Grady Harp

I was excited to see this film since I'm a huge Cash fan, I discovered his music when I was 15 and haven't stopped listening since. But the film really let me down man.The reviews said how it was great and a must see and whatever and i found the film to be completely self serving.Dude, its like if you made a film about Katy Perry's manager.Who cares? and where are johnnys kids to have a say in this film? I've got my own family troubles too, doesn't mean you make a film about it and expect it to be gold. the narration is robotic, the film is flat. only thing that saves the film is the visual effects which are interesting at first but then appear to be the directors crutch to hide the lack of content on our man in black.

This heartfelt documentary is as much about family as it is about showbiz. I particularly was intrigued by the recorded letters, telegrams, diaries, home movies and audiotapes that Jonathan brought to the screen. This was a well written labor of love about a son's search for the understanding of his own father. You cannot help but be a part of Jonathan's journey to learn more about his father who was never home. His father's audio diaries tell a sad story of a father who was never around always distracted and somewhat distant. I felt a deep connection to Jonathan's struggle to find answers as to why his father acted the way he did. Perhaps he will never know the 'real' reason...however in my heart, I believe he found some closer while sifting through evidence of a life he never knew. Kudos to you Jonathan for a job well done!

My Father and the Man in Black is the story of the manager of Johny Cash. The story was told from a personal perspective, namely from the son, Jonathan. (I wonder if his father named him Jonathan because he had such a close connection with Johny Cash). I remember sitting and watching this movie with popcorn in my hand and when the movie started I had only eaten two pieces of popcorn. Then the voice of the narrator of the movie came on and the voice was in the voice-over scenes as well. It described the intertwining roles of Johny Cash with his manager. It was the soul in the voice that mesmerized me. It was like I was hypnotized by the power of the narrator's voice. Perhaps it was the soul that danced through the words or perhaps it was the underlining emotion which seemed to lead me on a labyrinth through the back hallways of Johny Cash's life, including his turbulent and dark and light past. The film-maker, Jonathan, was somewhat rejected by his father (the manager) and perhaps his sadness and his own loss was traced and imprinted in the audio of the film and perhaps, as a viewer in the audience of watching this movie, I could empathize and pick-up intuitively on his personal unresolved despair. So perhaps this is not a documentary about his father and the man in black - but rather a personal story that was unconsciously told in order to process a hurt that was so deep that even a metaphorical dagger could not have touched. Perhaps the magic resides in the camera work and in the voice-over and the narrative. Perhaps this whole movie is about personal redemption after all.

I watched the premiere on CTV, June 17, 2013. It was great to see a story about Johnny Cash's dark celebrity with the focus on his back-room power broker and the lynch-pin that appears to have been an at-times tormented friendship. Caught up in the whirlwind of fame, Saul Holiff appears to have been a man willing to compromise many things in his life that he was sadly unable to reconcile. Kudos to Jonathan Holiff for an unemotional, non-blaming story-telling about the father-son relationship that was clearly collateral damage. The locker full of memorabilia could have been a roomful of pain, and perhaps it was, but the film shows that Jonathan instead chose to receive the content as a gift from a father to his creative, talented son.