Touch me someplace I can feel (2007)

"Touch me someplace I can feel" is a film on John Callahan (54), in the USA known for his cartoons. At age 21 he gets in a serious car-accident and is paralyzed from the waist down. His outlet becomes drawing, not the most obvious choice because he can hardly use his hands. With a raw style, pen clutched between his hands, he draws himself silly. His spot- on, mostly cynical and ruthless observations of mankind do not just gather acclaim. Protest-marches and angry letters are his share. When the presses had to be held at The Miami Herald because of a cartoon John drew in honour of MLK Jr Day- a little boy in pyjamas with a wet spot on his pyjamas saying: "Mommie I had a dream"- he was fired.

And when he drew an angry fat woman screaming at a tiny, shy man behind her counter: "This is a feminist bookstore, we don't have a humour-section!" some women were absolutely outraged.
John is proud of these protests but he doesn't understand them. "What I see is true, right?" . He admits at having been an angry young man for a long time, trying to point out to people their hypocrisy.

This cynical side is only one side of the man with striking orange- dyed hair and matching sunglasses racing through the streets of Portland. He also writes and sings beautiful, melancholic songs. He likes to play the ukulele, something that is very hard for him to do. But that's the way he is. Of course the songs are no lullabies, lines like "Life is like a box of hand-grenades" and "Something always keeps me from committing suicide in the fall" reflect his way of thinking.
Actor Robin Williams bought the rights to Callahan's autobiography to try and make a movie on John's life-story. "It's painful comedy, as good comedy is" says Williams.
"Touch me someplace I can feel" is a film on will-power. John blasts his way through life, does not want to be ignored and most of all doesn't want to be a thankful, humble disabled person. His cartoon "Cunnilingus accident", starring himself, choking between the legs of a naked woman sitting on his face, tells it all. John has a complicated relationship with women, they sometimes look at him with a look of compassion, "the pity-look", and at moments like these John wants the earth to swallow him whole. But he loves women and he has found his own way of getting close to them.

'Touch me someplace I can feel' is a coproduction of Selfmade Films and IKON. This documentary was made with financial support of the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Fund.