I don’t know anything about the director of this documentary or why he made it. I knew about Justin Pearson (Three One G Records, The Locust, Deaf Club, Dead Cross, Retox, Satanic Planet, Planet B) because I saw him play live a few times with Deaf Club, but I had no idea about his history or influence or voluminous work history within the scene. I’ve briefly chatted with him, and he was very polite, humorous but not overly so, somewhat accessible but just out of reach. But his onstage performance is provocative in a way that is inviting:
Do something.
This may not be true, but it is what I’ve taken away from the sets.
Deaf Club is unfortunately not Don’t Fall In Love With Yourself (hereafter Fall), but a dense (if not brief) history is. Fall travels back to Pearson’s familial roots, which are tangled and knotted by the abuse and distance and idiosyncratic interactions he experienced from his mother and father. Fall looks at the early musical activities of and influences on Pearson, interviewing friends, band members (former and current), and a few other people who knew and know him. Pearson himself appears regularly in the documentary, as does VHS footage and a landscape of Californian music history, provided by people who walked that landscape near or with Pearson.
Director Jon Nix does a good job securing interesting, important, and amusing footage, and while it is a relatively straightforward story (nothing particularly inventive or unique to the approach), the strength of the documentary is that Nix allows the characters to tell the story, from what the viewer can see, without any particular agenda or bias. While one can never know how accurate this all is, there is no bending the story to raise or lower Pearson (though he receives significant praise throughout). Presented as he has been and as he is, Nix’s vision is best seen in this way.
I would say the documentary moves too quickly through Pearson’s time until his band The Locust, at which point that group and era receives a sizable bit of attention. Why this is I cannot say but it did feel uneven as the documentary moved forward. And again, Deaf Club is not included, so we do not see the most current stage of Pearson’s life but perhaps the most expansive. Reviews of the film seem to reflect thankfulness for this, and any I’ve read or heard were all very positive.
Justin Pearson with Dead Cross, live at Riot Fest 2017. Photo by by OJC Pics. Please do not repost without credit.
The viewer will get to see some awesome footage from several of Pearson’s groups, in addition to footage from his life, on top of a slight but valuable selection of bonus features. Pearson shares his own point of view of his life throughout the film (and he has since commented on the film), but it feels odd to catch a glimpse of someone’s motion (like a photo of a car’s headlights captured across the entirety of a street); Pearson is not where the film shows him to be and we cannot know where he will end up. People may not even know what to make of what is shown.
All-in-all, Fall is worth a watch, maybe even two. Music fans or fans of Pearson will learn a lot, but hopefully will be provoked in their own way. I do not know what Nix or Pearson truly wanted us to see in the film, but I think it was to move us away from the lazy and greedy dishonesty of so much around us toward a sort of absurd truth that may have no particular meaning but is vital because it is real. In the film, Pearson does not seem worse for wear (I suppose we cannot know his actual thoughts or feelings) but he does seem driven and moving deliberately toward something valuable, and what resonates to me is what I also see from him on stage – a beacon:
Do something.
Buy the film here:
https://vinegarsyndrome.com/products/dont-fall-in-love-with-yourself?variant=40561232478250
WORDS BY C.ELLARTS