Ben Berman set out to tell the story of a magician confronting death, but his subject’s disappearing acts and competing documentary crews gave his film a mysterious magic of its own
It is dark outside and I am sitting alone at home, a silent phone to my ear. I had been promised that I would finally get to speak to the man known to his fans and friends as the Amazing Johnathan, but the minutes tick past and the streetlamps come on outside my window. In his heyday, the Amazing Johnathan was earning $3m a year and had a stage charisma as outsized as his tricks, which included appearing to snort an entire jar of cocaine, and seeming to plunge a spike through his tongue. But tonight, as the PR tries frantically to put my call through to him, there is only silence at the other end of the phone. The Amazing Johnathan has disappeared.
“Yeah, welcome to my club,” laughs Ben Berman when I tell him about my failure to speak to the man born John Edward Szeles. Berman is the director and co-star of The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, which has already been compared to Catfish and Exit Through the Giftshop, which is pretty impressive, given this is Berman’s first feature-length movie. But perhaps the most impressive thing is that he was ever able to film the Amazing Johnathan at all.