This thing was probably meant as a sentimental chronicle of both Szeles’s return to magic and his medical miracle — he says he was told he had just a year to live; the movie finds him three years later, in 2017.

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There’s something great about it to me. People get excited to invest in movies that are going to be unique. “I'm always fighting infections because of my lack of circulation and stuff.

He doesn’t know. A: "Unreliable" maybe is a good term for Johnathan, but that’s almost too harsh. Berman can't tell me whether or not he did smoke meth, and I think he enjoys the titillation.

Did it feel that surreal as it was happening to you in real life? We got into Sundance!” And he was like, “Oh, wow. 2011 marks Szeles' third year of performing at the Harmon Theatre and Szeles' 11th consecutive year as a full-time Las Vegas headliner. What’s the best way to tell the story?

A link has been sent to your friend's email address. The movie continues into conversations about what was real, what wasn't. Like Johnathan’s magic, the movie deconstructs itself. Get our newsletter in your inbox twice a week.

Doctors soon diagnosed the comedian with cardiomyopathy - a condition in which the heart muscle becomes inflamed and enlarged. That’s not the movie Berman’s made.

His only credited performance as an actor was The Obligatory Holiday Episode of The Weird Al Show (playing the part of Uncle Johnathan). The longer the movie goes on, the more obvious it becomes that Szeles’s transgressions are contagious. He told them, “Everything came crashing down when I was told I had a year to live.” Then he began to cry under the stage lights. Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about, Director Ben Berman ended up becoming the subject of his own film after he set out to tell the story of comic-magician-prankster the Amazing Johnathan. The Free Press chatted with Berman about following a character known for pulling pranks and stretching the truth (check out the Amazing Johnathan on YouTube) and also about the fraught nature of documentary filmmaking — especially when, against your wishes, you become a player in the very film you’re making. I think they’re so shocked and confused. So I drove out to Vegas and met him, and we started filming that day.

Ben Berman, left, and John Szeles in “The Amazing Johnathan Documentary.”. Oh, yeah. Well, he is a prankster.

(Norm Clarke/Las Vegas Review-Journal) Well, Berman’s mother died of cancer years ago. share. In 2008, Szeles combined two of his passions (classic car collecting and drive-in movie theaters) to open the "Amazing Underground" a members-only indoor drive-in movie theatre located within his warehouse facilities in Las Vegas. It was a strong moment, but it was a little bit more subtle. How can you find the truth in making a film about an unreliable narrator like that? Here’s why that could cost her. Was he intentionally messing with me? Prince once rang Johnathan up and asked if he could bring two guests to his Vegas show. Director Ben Berman insists it isn’t.