Physical Therapy
by Josh Neuman / Graphics by Eric Elms
While in the waiting room of the hospital, he stopped a nurse to ask what the word oncology meant. Less than 24 hours later he was diagnosed with leukemia.
At the time, I was an adjunct professor at New York University teaching undergraduate courses in philosophy. When I wasn't at NYU, I was filming Jonathan in Paramus, NJ in our childhood home, in a hospital room (where he spent about half of his time), or at my apartment in Manhattan. I wasn't capturing him on video because I thought he would die. Today I am grateful to have so much footage of my brother, but when the camera was recording, it never crossed our minds that we were creating an archive for posterity's sake. We were creating a narrative for art's sake.
Jonathan founded a garage rock band in 1999 called The Physicals, started calling himself Johnny Physical, and baptized the other members of the band: Nick Fiction, Danny Animal, and Frankie Lines. The Physicals were voted the best band on campus at Tufts University in the spring of 2000 and the members' monikers were soon being used more than their real names. Long before my brother was the subject of my film narrative, he was the subject of his own narrative, in which the line between life and art had already been blurred.
So, it felt perfectly natural to capture Jonathan's crisis on camera. He was used to being the center of attention and, more importantly, was used to performing a particular part of himself for the sake of art. Jonathan and I planned to turn the footage we were capturing into a concert video called Physical Therapy. In it, we would include footage from the acoustic show he performed at Memorial Sloan Kettering (where he was now receiving chemo), his jam session with Art Garfunkel (who heard about Johnny Physical and paid him a surprise visit in the hospital), and from his appearance as the "pinhead" at Joey Ramone's annual birthday bash at CBGB's (a hero of Jonathan's since he was a teenager, Joey died of lymphoma in 2001).
Slowly but surely, the legend of Johnny Physical grew. Ari Up of the influential '70s punk band The Slits paid him a surprise visit in the hospital, and Johnny would soon count 2001 Miss USA Candice Kruger and Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover girl Yamila Diaz among his legion of admirers.
Jonathan's prognosis deteriorated, but shooting continued. A week before Jonathan's last visit to the intensive care unit, he was paid a visit by Albert Maysles, who at the time was shooting footage for a Bill Moyers documentary about death. Albert planned to interview Jonathan for 20 minutes. He left after he ran out of tape, two and a half hours later.
When Jonathan died in June of 2002 all I could do was stare at the stacks of digital tapes as they collected dust on my desk. Slowly I started watching the raw footage tape-by-tape. I realized that what I had was evidence of the camera's power to transform experience.
Looking at his arm for a clean vein for the next syringe, Jonathan became Sid Vicious searching for an angry fix. When the chemo started to make its way through his arm, he was Lou Reed rushing on a run. And on a very rare occasion he was Joey Ramone meeting a nurse that he could go for. The Physicals performed for crowds of hundreds when Jonathan was healthy, but the camera gave him an audience of infinite possibility. For the last year and a half of his life, in cold examining rooms, miserable waiting rooms, lonely hospital rooms, he was never just a patient. He was a rock and roll legend.
Albert Maysles was kind enough to grant me permission to use the tapes he had captured of Jonathan. This month I will start working on my first short film. I want it to unfold like a Physical song: fast, urgent, darkly comic, and fiercely unsentimental. The film, as you might have guessed by now, isn't really about cancer at all.
JOSH NEUMAN is the publisher of HEEB magazine.
http://heebmagazine/
For more information about Johnny Physical, check out
http://johnnyphysical.com/
At the time, I was an adjunct professor at New York University teaching undergraduate courses in philosophy. When I wasn't at NYU, I was filming Jonathan in Paramus, NJ in our childhood home, in a hospital room (where he spent about half of his time), or at my apartment in Manhattan. I wasn't capturing him on video because I thought he would die. Today I am grateful to have so much footage of my brother, but when the camera was recording, it never crossed our minds that we were creating an archive for posterity's sake. We were creating a narrative for art's sake.
Jonathan founded a garage rock band in 1999 called The Physicals, started calling himself Johnny Physical, and baptized the other members of the band: Nick Fiction, Danny Animal, and Frankie Lines. The Physicals were voted the best band on campus at Tufts University in the spring of 2000 and the members' monikers were soon being used more than their real names. Long before my brother was the subject of my film narrative, he was the subject of his own narrative, in which the line between life and art had already been blurred.
So, it felt perfectly natural to capture Jonathan's crisis on camera. He was used to being the center of attention and, more importantly, was used to performing a particular part of himself for the sake of art. Jonathan and I planned to turn the footage we were capturing into a concert video called Physical Therapy. In it, we would include footage from the acoustic show he performed at Memorial Sloan Kettering (where he was now receiving chemo), his jam session with Art Garfunkel (who heard about Johnny Physical and paid him a surprise visit in the hospital), and from his appearance as the "pinhead" at Joey Ramone's annual birthday bash at CBGB's (a hero of Jonathan's since he was a teenager, Joey died of lymphoma in 2001).
Slowly but surely, the legend of Johnny Physical grew. Ari Up of the influential '70s punk band The Slits paid him a surprise visit in the hospital, and Johnny would soon count 2001 Miss USA Candice Kruger and Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover girl Yamila Diaz among his legion of admirers.
Jonathan's prognosis deteriorated, but shooting continued. A week before Jonathan's last visit to the intensive care unit, he was paid a visit by Albert Maysles, who at the time was shooting footage for a Bill Moyers documentary about death. Albert planned to interview Jonathan for 20 minutes. He left after he ran out of tape, two and a half hours later.
When Jonathan died in June of 2002 all I could do was stare at the stacks of digital tapes as they collected dust on my desk. Slowly I started watching the raw footage tape-by-tape. I realized that what I had was evidence of the camera's power to transform experience.
Looking at his arm for a clean vein for the next syringe, Jonathan became Sid Vicious searching for an angry fix. When the chemo started to make its way through his arm, he was Lou Reed rushing on a run. And on a very rare occasion he was Joey Ramone meeting a nurse that he could go for. The Physicals performed for crowds of hundreds when Jonathan was healthy, but the camera gave him an audience of infinite possibility. For the last year and a half of his life, in cold examining rooms, miserable waiting rooms, lonely hospital rooms, he was never just a patient. He was a rock and roll legend.
Albert Maysles was kind enough to grant me permission to use the tapes he had captured of Jonathan. This month I will start working on my first short film. I want it to unfold like a Physical song: fast, urgent, darkly comic, and fiercely unsentimental. The film, as you might have guessed by now, isn't really about cancer at all.
JOSH NEUMAN is the publisher of HEEB magazine.
http://heebmagazine/
For more information about Johnny Physical, check out
http://johnnyphysical.com/
