Johnny Cash's Anti-Semitism Touched On In New Documentary

Production still from "My Father and the Man in Black"

"It wasn't the drugs and arrests and no-shows that broke Saul and Johnny up," says Jonathan Holiff. He's the son of Saul Holiff, the manager of Johnny Cash in the 1960s and early '70s, a time that included the prison LPs, the jail stays, and Cash's reawakened fundamentalism. "It was an ideological battle that really tore the relationship apart."

Holiff is the director of My Father And The Man In Black, which opens in New York on Sunday. (Sadly, no L.A. showings are scheduled.) In the riveting, excoriating documentary he recreates the relationship between Cash and Jonathan's driven, distant dad, who committed suicide in 2005. The agonizing story, which mixes various film stocks, recorded phone calls between Cash and Saul, and some filmed re-creations, gets all the nasty Cash stuff right. The drugs, the divorces, even -- gulp -- hints of anti-semitism.

In his quietly-explosive film, there is the tale of a father "who didn't love or respect me." And there's the narrative of Saul -- a Canadian Jew -- and Johnny making it to the top together and then breaking up their partnership.

The story comes courtesy of a storage locker that Saul kept, full of his taped Cash musings, phone conversations, letters, which gave his troubled son some insight into his dead-eyed progenitor. Holiff's movie is poetic. But, unlike Biography Channel bullshit, this is "no hagiography." No Johnny Cash's America, with spuds like Al Gore pontificating about a man they didn't know. Here, Cash comes across as weak, crazy, strung out, funny, philandering, and freaking authentic.

"What started this movie was people calling after Walk The Line," says Holiff. "They said 'Managers don't quit superstars; 'they get fired!' But Saul did. It was ideological, not just religious. For instance, Saul refused to go to the White House with Johnny because he was anti-American and anti-Nixon."

More troubling is the rift that ultimately sundered the partnership -- Saul couldn't accept Jesus as his personal savior, as Cash famously did. In the film, we hear phone recordings of Cash pressing Saul about his perceived lack of dedication to a movie and album project in which Cash travels Israel and retells the Gospels.

I asked Holiff if, as the film suggests, Cash was anti-semitic.

"It was naive anti-semitism. The only Jews these guys ever met were at some trading post in some small town in Arkansas. It was really just being a good ole boy. If Saul was just a money-hungry Jew, why did he quit Johnny when he was making a fortune?"

Perhaps the most riveting part of the film is a long phone conversation between Johnny and Saul about Cash's biopic about the life of Jesus that was released in 1971. It's tense. Cash wants to do the movie. Saul tells him he will offend the Muslims and Jews in his fan base. And that "too many people tell you what you want to hear." It may be the very moment that breaks up this odd couple.