How ‘Dick Johnson Is Dead’ Director Kirsten Johnson Kept Her Dad Alive By Filming His Death

Kirsten Johnson‘s 86-year-old father dies dozens of times in Dick Johnson Is Dead, an experimental documentary that began streaming on Netflix today. Air conditioners drop on his head, he falls down the stair, he gets stabbed in the neck by a stray nail, he plows his car into a truck on a highway, and so on. But every time Johnson “kills” her father through these staged deaths, she always brings him back to life.

Johnson—who put herself on the map as a documentarian with her critically acclaimed 2016 collage footage film, Cameraperson—went to her dad with the idea for Dick Johnson Is Dead after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. After working as a psychiatrist in Seattle for decades, Dr. Dick Johnson started double-booking appointments. Then he drove through a construction site at high speed, and five miles home on four flat tires. He had been living alone ever since Johnson’s mother died—after her own 7-year struggle with Alzheimer’s—so Johnson decided it was time for her dad to move in with her and her family in New York City. Not only would she take care of him, but she’d make him the star of her next feature film.

It’s unconventional, to say the least, but it works. Johnson and her father—who’s still alive, by the way, and currently living in a care facility—attended Sundance to a warm reception back in January. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, it’s a movie about life, death, memory, and the grey area in between. Johnson spoke to Decider about all that and more.

Decider: You say in the film that it’s a way of both you and your father not accepting his fate. How did you land on making a documentary about his death as a way to do that?

Kirsten Johnson: It definitely comes out of just, “I really didn’t want to do this again.” We did this with my mom for a really long time. It was, “No! I don’t want to do this.” Cameraperson freed me in all these ways. It made me feel like cinema can do even more than I thought it could. If I allow my questions to just breathe in the space of a movie, then people will step in and bring their own life to it. So it was this crazy experiment of: “Alright, movie. Can you make my dad immortal?”

When you first came to your dad with the idea, how did that conversation go?

As crazy as it is, I just came to my dad: “Dad, I had this crazy dream, and it gave me this crazy idea. I think we could make a movie together where we kill you using stunt people. You have crazy accidents. It’s funny. You come back to life again. And we do it again. We can just keep doing this. This could be your job until the day you die.” And he laughed. Then he was like, “Okay!” My dad loved Groundhog Day, Harold and Maude, Jackass, Monty Python, Charles Addams cartoons. He gets craft in the service of humor. How do you transgress and be funny? He gets all of those ideas. It was always conceived as an experience with cinema language—mixing of what is real and what is not yet real. You can call that documentary or you can call that fiction. Or you can call that fantasy and evidence. I like using lots of words for things — lots of contradictory words for things.

One example of that is the scene in the ambulance where your father gets CPR—can I ask whether that was real or not?

[Laughs] Completely staged.

Wow. I really thought it might be real!

That’s what we were trying to do. And that’s what we knew cinema could do. It would be different if I hadn’t made Cameraperson, but I made Cameraperson. So you know it’s me behind the camera. You know the kinds of things I do with a camera. Can I replicate those? What would I do if my dad was having a heart attack and I had to get into an ambulance? Because I am making a movie, and we know that I know that I am making a movie, I would definitely turn my cell phone on. I would get so upset, that I would probably drop it or put it on the ground and not care about it anymore.

That’s what would happen—maybe. My father did have an event where he fainted and threw up, and my brother was in town. [My brother] was like, “I guess I’m supposed to film some of this?” He filmed footage that was like, shockingly similar. But it happened after we’d already filmed the other stuff. I wasn’t there. But it was hilarious because it was in that space of: “We know we’re making a movie. Dad’s really going down. Maybe I should film? I don’t know.” All of that energy of it was the same.

Your father’s caretaker says that your father is doing the movie for you, and you respond that you want to be careful not to take advantage of that. How did you set those boundaries?

This is the territory I believe one has to be in when one is making a film: constantly questioning yourself. You can set boundaries in clear ways, and circumstances present themselves where there’s no more clarity. You follow your instincts. Sometimes you go too far. When my dad was covered in blood, freezing, saying, “This is the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life,” you’re like, “Oh, god.” And, also: He’s fine! He’ll be fine.

Inversely, when we weren’t filming at all, I was taking my kids to school. I’ve got the kids getting in the car, my dad’s waiting to get into his spot. There was a guy backing into his spot, and my dad just jumped in front of the back of the car. He almost got run over. It was just the dementia; the way a two-year-old might run out into the street. Sometimes you can’t stop it. You’re attempting to be as decent as you can. You’re attempting to respect another person’s dignity and keep them safe. And yet, you are not able to protect another human from death, necessarily. I learned, in the making of the film, that my father the psychiatrist had a couple of people commit suicide on his watch. As a human, you will fail in your attempts to be ethical. Does that mean you’re not trying all the time? No. But what does it mean to be ethical in this world in which we are complicit in so many things beyond our powers?  It’s a very public opening up of those questions.

Tell me about the process of reaching out to your father’s friends to stage a funeral for him while he was still alive.

First, I reached out to the pastor of the church and asked whether he would be willing to allow the church to be used in that way. He knows my father very well, and he got, immediately, that it would be meaningful for Dad. Then I wrote a letter to every member of the church, in which I invited them to the funeral. I explained to them what it meant to me. I sent them a link to Cameraperson. And then I started having phone calls with people. Many people called and said, “How can you do this?” or, “What is this?” I gave everyone the option, obviously, to not come. And I convinced quite a few people to come. I even convinced somebody who really was upset about it. Afterward, that person said, “I’m so glad to have gotten to experience this.” Because they all knew my dad had dementia. They had all already been to my mother’s funeral in that same place. What I just said to everyone was: “I wanted my mom to be there at the end of her funeral, and she wasn’t. This time, he’s going to be there when it’s all over.”

That friend you’re talking about: Was that Ray, who has a very real breakdown on camera?

Not Ray. No, Ray was all in. He was in from the start. It was powerful because he thought it was really funny. But he also took it seriously. And then he really went there, when it happened. At the time, he was pretty devastated and embarrassed. But then he was at the Sundance premiere, and he was as proud as can be. He was like, “I made this film. This film would be nothing without me.”

It was a very striking scene.

Yeah! It’s the core. It’s the final crescendo of the film. This capacity for it to be many things simultaneously—that’s what I spoke to at the people at the church. It will be a performance, but it also might feel real. We did things like: I met everyone at the door without a camera, as I would as the daughter at a funeral. They all came into the church in the way they would for a funeral. My father wasn’t there, he was hidden upstairs, watching everything on headphones. He was gone for the whole ceremony. These people go to this church every Saturday—it’s the place where their real experience happens. It was very real for people, I think. I did ask everyone to speak in the past tense, and I did a eulogy, but I couldn’t—it felt performative. I tried really hard to imagine myself, but I couldn’t totally do it. I was bifurcated into all these pieces.

Can I ask how your father is doing now?

The dementia is advancing. He’s still completely himself. The pandemic allowed my brother to take care of him from March until July. Then in July, we decided it wasn’t possible anymore for either of us to take care of him anymore. So we moved him into a dementia care facility in August. I just went and visited him last weekend. I talk to him on the phone every day and he’s like, “It’s great here. Food’s delicious. Like the people!” And when I visited him, he was like, “Please take me home. Please take me home. Please take me home. Please take me home,” on a loop for a half an hour. It was brutal. I think he wants to be with us. And yet, he’s now in this place where he’s just looping so much that you have to give up your whole life to be in his time zone. He’s in the dementia time zone, which is always present.

Does he have any understanding that his film is coming out on Netflix? And the huge audience he’s about to have?

I mean, who can really have an understanding of that? That’s crazy, right? I can’t even understand it! But he knows the premiere is happening. They’ve watched it at home multiple times in the care facility. He’s watched the film hundreds of times. He’s been on a bunch of Zoom interviews. He’s talking to journalists. And then he’ll forget in the next minute. It’s both things. But he’s delighted. He’s like, “Sure, I’ll be a movie star. I don’t know how this is happening, but I’m really enjoying myself.” [Laughs]

Any advice for people with aging parents who are about to go through this?

Make something with them. Make something with your parent. That could be a conversation, a recording. Write a letter back and forth. Just make something with them. Because the creative act—the transforming of paying an uncertainty into something new, something unexpected—it’s just full of joy. It brings out all of these questions and wonders and new information about each other. I would say, absolutely seize the moment. This time we’re all in, where we’re distanced from each other… record a Zoom conversation with them. They are here now. And they won’t be here forever, just like you won’t. So make something with them.

Watch Dick Johnson Is Dead on Netflix