Personality Crisis: One Night Only

2022

Action / Biography / Documentary / Music

2
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 68% · 24 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 68%
IMDb Rating 7.0/10 10 502 502

Plot summary

A portrait of musician David Johansen from Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi featuring a live performance at Café Carlyle in New York City, where he performs as Buster Poindexter singing the Johansen songbook, along with new and archival interviews.

Director

Martin Scorsese Photo
Martin Scorsese

Top cast

Charlotte Moorman Photo
Charlotte Moorman as Self
Kurt Loder Photo
Kurt Loder as Self
David Johansen Photo
David Johansen as Self
Jonathan Ross Photo
Jonathan Ross as Self
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 2160p.WEB
1.14 GB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
2 hr 7 min
Seeds 1
2.35 GB
1920*1080
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
2 hr 7 min
Seeds 4
5.68 GB
3840*2160
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
N/A
Seeds 1

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by jellyneckr

Could have been much more, but enjoyable nontheless

Reviewed by JohnSeal 5 / 10

New York Dull

Even Martin Scorsese can't make a silk purse out of the sow's ear that is the massively overrated David Johansen, who never was a great singer and now is much worse. Built around an embarrassingly bad performance from the Big Apple's Cafe Carlyle, the film is nonetheless worth seeing for footage of the New York Dolls performing on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert and The Old Grey Whistle Test. It's unfortunate Johansen is the last Doll standing - both Johnny Thunders and Sylvain Sylvain's post-Dolls recorded legacies are far superior - but sometimes life isn't fair. If you're a Johansen fan, you'll probably love this film; others will find their patience tried.
Reviewed by paul-allaer 7 / 10

David Johansen in fine form, and then some

As "Personality Crisis: One Night Only" (2022 release; 127 min) opens, ex-New York Dolls lead singer David Johansen is getting ready to hit the stage at the Cafe Carlyle in NYC, in January of 2020 (yup, only weeks before COVID hit New York, and hard). After the first song, we then go back in time to some clips featuring the New York Dolls back in the day. At this point we are 10 minutes into the movie.Couple of comments: this is the latest documentary from frequent collaborators Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi. Here they get unfettered access to Johansen's one night only performance at the Carlyle. This is NOT a bio-doc but instead a performance film which goes back and forth between the live performance footage of 2020, and the archival footage of the 70s and 80s (mostly). Watch Johansen tell the tale of getting arrested in Memphis in 1973, "for dressing like Lisa Minelli". It's priceless, frankly."Personality Crisis: One Night Only" was shown on multiple film festivals last year, and finally started streaming on Showtime in April. I just now caught up with it. Better late than never, I suppose. If you are in the mood for a great performance documentary featuring one of rock's truly originals, I'd readily suggest you check it out and draw your own conclusion.
Read more IMDb reviews

4 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment