The Bishop presents Jay Reatard documentary

In the months before his untimely 2010 death, Memphis garage-rock icon Jay Reatard started to become dark during interviews.

“I’m in fucking panic mode,” he told the A.V. Club in 2009, and there was little doubt he was serious. Twelve months later, he died of a cocaine overdose.

Documentary filmmakers Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz spent a week with Reatard nine months before his death, and “Better Than Something” is the resulting movie.

In blending candid footage from their week together with interviews and archival concert footage, Hammond and Markiewicz created a sympathetic portrait of a deeply flawed rock star, a man whose ear for melody and allegiance to lo-fi aesthetics will forever be marred by his taste for drugs and adoption of a derogatory term for the mentally handicapped as his stage name.

Landlocked Music will bring “Better Than Something” to the Bishop Bar tonight, effectively giving the film its Indiana première. The documentary has garnered mostly positive reviews from its numerous appearances at film festivals, but it has only been screened commercially a few times. It’s a rare opportunity that Bloomington music enthusiasts would be remiss to waste.

“Better than something: Jay Reatard”

WHEN 8 p.m. tonight
WHERE The Bishop Bar
MORE INFO Admission is $5, and the show is open to anyone 18 or older.

— Brad Sanders