Wesley Willis’ s Joy Rides: Portrait of a Schizophrenic Chicago City Artist and “Rock Star”

Wesley Willis sits at a computer and adjusts his ever-present headphones, pushes them up against his ears, turns up the volume of the music. He’s frustrated because he still can’t hear his beloved rock ‘n’ roll over all the shouts of “Bum!” and “You’re a stupid asshole!” He begins to cuss, and smack himself in the side of the head. The guy at the computer next to him glances over, wide-eyed behind his spectacles. “I’m sorry,” Willis tells him.”I’m hearing voices.”

This is one of the scenes from Wesley Willis’s Joy Rides, a documentary about the schizophrenic street artist from Chicago turned self-proclaimed “rock star.” First impressions of Willis weren’t always so unnerving for everybody. Although his massive stature and peculiar facial scars made him look intimidating, Willis was “really just a big teddy bear,” as one of his friends describes him in Joy Rides.

Willis’ music wasn’t revolutionary, or even very good. He and his band,
The Wesley Willis Fiasco, had a record deal with Alternative Tentacles
Records, the label owned by former Dead Kennedys singer and all-around
punk icon Jello Biafra. But most people, including some of his fans,
viewed Willis’ music as a novelty or joke: Here was this huge black guy
sporting a big dreadlock afro and stained sweatpants, holding up a
lyric sheet or sitting at a Technics keyboard looping the same canned
beat, barking out eclectic lyrics like “You bring me damaging
disharmony in my life by cussing at me for no reason at all” and “Suck
a cheetah’s dick!”  

No, it wasn’t Willis’ music that made him compelling, but his perspective. We see the world a bit through his eyes in Wesley Willis’s Joy Rides
(MVD Visual). The 2008 “rock you mentary” won accolades at the Chicago
International Film Festival, the Slamdance Film Festival, and the SXSW
International Film Festival, and for good reason: Willis had huge
character and kooky charisma, and his story is filled with even more
stories. There’s not a boring moment here, and that’s saying something
for a 2 1/2 hour movie.  

The film follows Willis through the
streets of his hometown, Chicago, where he sat on street corners and in
subway stations, making colored ink and pen drawings of buildings,
buses, and trains; to London, where he performs his brand of “rock and
roll” for an enthusiastic club; to California, where Biafra talks about
Willis’ prolific music (he self-released more than 45 “albums” before
Biafra signed him); and finally, back to Illinois, where he succumbed
to leukemia at the age of 40.

In addition to the footage of
Willis talking to the camera, there are also interviews with his
family, friends, and art patrons. It’s interesting to hear architecture
teachers and art buyers talk about Willis’ drawings, marveling at the
perfect lines and hard angles, the double vanishing points, and his
attention to detail.

It’s even more interesting to watch him
interact with the public. Willis was a friendly person, and talked to
pretty much everybody he saw. He was known for gently head-butting
people, and had a callous on his forehead from doing it. He would
proudly talk about his music, ask people to buy CDs or artwork, ask
them questions about themselves. Anybody who gave him a chance stuck
around to talk.

What’s so great about Wesley Willis’s Joy Rides
is it really provides a portrait of Willis not only as an artist, but a
person, and it does so without histrionics or mushy pontificating — a
pitfall of some documentaries about the deceased.

Willis died
from leukemia in 2003, before this film was finished, yet he’s so
brilliantly alive here, even after his friends talk about their last
moments with him and the end credits start to roll.