YOU'RE GONNA MISS ME is one of the strangest documentaries I have ever seen. It's about the rock singer Roky Erickson of the 60s psychedelic band THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS. Unfortunately, the first third of the film is poorly edited and very confusing; it could have used some explanatory dialogue to establish timeline and relationships. However, once you figure out what's going on, the story is captivating. The only movie I could compare this to is CRUMB. As in that film, you keep thinking to yourself "this can't possibly get any weirder," and then it does, again and again. With each new character introduced, the story takes another bizarre turn. I'm not going to say too much about the plot as it's best to see it unfold in the movie.
Roky is mentally disturbed. It's unclear what caused it; he was a heavy drug user in the 60s. One band mate says he never recovered from a particularly bad acid trip. He admits to dropping acid over 300 times. His ex-wife says he got hepatitis from using heroin. He was also diagnosed as schizophrenic. He was arrested for possession of a joint and plead insanity, which was common at the time to avoid jail. He was sent to an asylum, but after escaping was sent to a home for the criminally insane, where he was given electroshock therapy.
So it's impossible to figured out exactly what fried his brain, but meeting his family certain shows that he had problems before any of that began.
If you get a chance to see this film, see it.
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