Wesley Willis's Joyrides shines light on dark life of Chicago icon

[Above: Still from Wesley Willis's Joyride]

A riff on Daniel Bitton's 2003 documentary The Daddy Of Rock 'n' Roll, released a few months before Wesley Willis’s death from leukemia at age 40, Wesley Willis' Joyrides is a second look at the iconic Chicago artist and musician. Strung together from more than five years of footage by directors Chris Bagley and Kim Shively, the film will be featured at this week’s 44th Chicago International Film Festival. 

Willis, a diagnosed schizophrenic, achieved cult status as a borderline homeless man and gifted artist. He became known known for drawing entire Chicago landscapes from memory with his tool of choice, a ballpoint pen, and later for his 50-plus-album oeuvre of oddball punk songs like "Rock 'N Roll McDonalds" and "Casper The Homosexual Friendly Ghost."

But even as Willis’s popularity garnered him world tours, profiles on MTV and interviews with Howard Stern, darkness always loomed in the back of his head. Many members in the local art community saw the industry taking advantage of a mentally-challenged man, though Joyrides' Bagley and Shively pull together countless interviews with family, friends, and bandmates that reveal the fame, the art and the music were all secondary to Willis’s innate ability to make other people’s lives brighter. Whether trying to sell his artwork on the street, riding the CTA, or slinging quips about his intense love of fast-food, the dude loved interacting with his fellow people. If he particularly dug you, he would ask for a head-butt, cued by a call-and-response rock ‘n roll shout.   

Brimming with animations of Willis’s drawings, and endearing quotes from those who helped him live and succeed, bumped along by the man's own strange charm, Bagley and Shively’s ode to Willis submits a fine virtual ode to the infamous joyride of his life. It screens at the Festival at AMC River East, Oct. 17 at 8:40 p.m., Oct. 21 at 2:15 p.m. and Oct. 27 at 4 p.m.

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