biodoc on the enigmatic singer or songwriter who and accord to friend account and spend the last 15 year of his relatively short life seemingly on a mission of self destruction . he die at 52 and overweight and dissipated and of heart disease and after a protracted rampage of virtually non stop overindulgence in alcohol and cigarette and marijuana and cocaine and raucous partying and and flagrant misuse of his vocal instrument ( he confide to a friend that he shout out his lyric at one performance with such force that spatter blood be leave on the microphone ) . all of this despite the fact that he be represent ( 1 ) widely consider to have perhaps the most gifted pop sing ability of his generation while ( 2 ) successful and after year of effort and in term of industry acclaim a grammy and an oscar and a decent recording contract with a top label and and at least two stellar album nilsson schmilsson ( original ) and and a little touch of schmilsson in the night ( standard ) while and ( 3 ) very happily marry ( for the third time ) and with a lovely young family that he seem to adore . the film strength begin with the completeness of it account of nilsson life and include fine use of archival film footage and many still of nilsson while the editor do an especially good job of bring movement to the still . we learn of his close tie to john lennon and and later and ringo starr ( lennon often say that nilsson be his favorite american musician ) . even more impressive be the talk head and often a documentary weakest aspect . here we get people like perry botkin and jr. and ray cooper and mickey dolenz and terry gilliam and mark hudson and eric idle and rick jarrard and randy newman and van dyke park and jimmy webb and robin williams and all tell amazing story about nilsson many uproariously funny and others deeply pathetic and everyone convey their deep affection for him . equally informative and move be interview segment with nilsson wife annie and una and his son zach and and cousin doug hoefer . best set of head i can recall in a biodoc . the most glaring deficiency of the film be that it crowd out nilsson music . even the performance of his great hit and without you and be cut short after about 8 bar . arrrrgh . there be no excuse for this and not give that the movie run a full two hour a it be . lose a few head shot and we could have hear at least that song through and and perhaps one or two more and like one and or his oscar win cover of everybody talk . the filmmaker be simply too intent on plumb nilsson psychological mystique and not attentive enough to his music . my grade represent 7 . 5/10 ( low b plus ) ( see at the nwfc reel music series and 01/07/07 ) .