At the 1997 funeral for Townes Van Zandt, his longtime friend and fellow Texas songwriter Guy Clark told the crowd with grim humour: "I booked this gig more than 30 years ago."

A song on Van Zandt's first record, ironically enough, is called Waitin' Around to Die.

Some of the lyrics:

Sometimes I don't know
where this dirty road is takin' me
Sometimes I don't even know
the reason why
But I guess I'll keep on gamblin'
Lots of booze and lots of ramblin'
'Cause it's easier than waitin' round to die

While he might not have wanted to wait around to die, the life he lived hastened that inevitable day. Born in 1944, he died on New Year's Day,1997 at the age of 52. His heart failed.

In recorded interviews, Van Zandt told a journalist that he wasn't planning on a long life, and that he thought he would die before his life's work was complete -- "I designed it that way."

You'd almost be justified in thinking Van Zandt had planned to live a life that would provide ample raw material for a filmmaker who wished to document a songwriting genius with a troubled mind and soul -- and a death wish.

First-time director Margaret Brown captures a fairly complete and touching picture of Van Zandt, from his prosperous childhood in an oilman's family to becoming a financially strapped troubador through to his creative and performing decay at the end.

Townes' sister Donna provides one of the early key insights when she talks about how every family has one person who can get away with things that others can't. "In our family, that person was Townes."

In the images chosen by Brown, the younger Van Zandt looks like a pretty happy kid, a bit more serious in his high school photos at Shattuck Military Academy -- where he developed a taste for sniffing glue.

We find that the wild side of his personality really manifested itself when Townes did a tumble off the balcony of a four-story walk-up. He had been wondering what it would be like, and then came to the conclusion he would actually have to do it to find out.

His family had him placed in a mental institution in Galveston, Texas. Doctors diagnosed Van Zandt as a manic depressive. They used shock therapy as a treatment, something that erased his childhood memories. At one point, he had to be told, "This is your mother."

With the home movie footage of Van Zandt, we see that liquor is never very far from his hands or his lips.

We learn about his evolution into a singer-songwriter in the late 1960s -- and about his heroin problem and how glue-sniffing cost him most of his teeth.

One of the more poignant source of insights is the eldest of his three children, J.T. (there's also Will and Katie, both of whom are heard from). J.T. notes that the "romance" of being a roaming musician also provided convenient cover for for someone with an addictive personality. He also noted that his dad's actions hurt a lot of people and added this: "There's a lot more important things than writing songs."

Will also said Townes could say some very mean things under the influence, and that sometimes when he woke up the next morning, his father would be sitting on the bed with tears in his eyes, anguished about what he said the night before.

Untreated sufferers of bipolar disorder, as it's known today, tend to have a big impact on their families, but this isn't something the film dwells on.

Most of the home movie footage shows a grinning Van Zandt; the home movie cameras were apparently never rolling when he said something vicious to a family member while under the influence of alcohol or disturbed brain chemistry.

The story of Townes Van Zandt is ultimately a tragedy leavened with some black humour. When asked about how most of his songs appeared to be sad, Van Zandt joked: "They're not all sad. Some of them are just hopeless."

Towards the film's end, he says there is heaven, hell, purgatory and the blues and that he just wanted to get up to purgatory.

While this documentary is fine portrayal of the tortured artist, keep in mind this excerpt from a CBS.com article on creative people and depression:

CBS CARES: So, there's a danger of glamorizing depression by associating it with creativity?

DR. (NANCY) ANDREASEN: Yes. The 20th century is tragically filled with writers who have committed suicide, such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf, John Barryman, Theodore Rivke. One definitely shouldn't romanticize mental illness. Given that so many creative people have committed suicide, I do not believe that medication, which saves lives, should be seen as impairing creativity-it could have enabled them to live much longer and create so much more. I think it's a really serious argument to say that creative people should not be treated for their depression. In fact, if left untreated, these people are likely to die.

Townes Van Zandt once played three rounds of Russian Roulette in front of someone. Had he not been extremely lucky, we would be talking about him today as one of those suicides. In a way, he still was a suicide in that he never was able to control the behaviour that was killing him.

I liked what she came up with, but if Brown wanted her film to have more of a public service role, she could have pushed the notion that killing yourself slowly while suffering from a treatable mental illness was the real tragedy in Van Zandt's life.