More than a few actors and directors have made the pilgrimage to Texas to woo the Johnston family and score the movie rights to the life story of Daniel Johnston - the bipolar outsider artist and musician championed by everyone from Kurt Cobain to Tom Waits and the subject of the riveting 2006 documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston."

Until now, they've all failed.

So what was so different about Petaluma High grad Gabe Sunday?

"I did my impression of Daniel for him and played some music with him and we hung out for a few days," he says.

As he's explaining it, he breaks into a high-pitched almost lispy Southern tone that sounds eerily just like Johnston. It was the equivalent of auditioning for the role and he nailed it.

"Daniel thought it was hilarious," Sunday says. "He got a real kick out of it. I've been learning the piano and he calls me 'a virtuoso on the piano.' He's been teaching me some songs. I was just in Texas a little while ago and I stayed with him and his brother for a couple of weeks, so I've actually lived with him."

We had been talking about Sunday's new film "My Suicide," which has racked up awards at the Berlin Film Festival and Gen Art in New York, before making its Bay Area premiere at San Francisco Film Festival next Friday, May 1, when he mentioned his next project.

"I was editing and listening to Daniel's music a lot and I kept getting his voice into my head. He's got this high-pitched, throaty Capote sound and I would walk around doing it and I got his voice down really well."

Looking for a new project, Sunday and "My Suicide" director David Lee Miller "went to Texas and approached the family who had already been approached by gigantic heavy-hitters in Hollywood. And we thought well we're never going to get this. It's just too competitive.

"To our surprise they thought Daniel's story needed to be told in the really grassroots way, like we made 'My Suicide,' and they went with us. We got the life rights."

Sunday, who now lives in L.A., and "My Suicide" director David Lee Miller are writing the script together.

"I knew when I started doing his voice, I knew there was something special about him. I heard the music and then I saw the art and I felt this tug in my chest. And then when I watched the documentary it just knocked me on my ass. How could you not tell that story?

"The documentary was really about people close to Daniel (above) talking about what his mind is like and his stories. Our movie is basically jumping into the mind of a paranoid schizophrenic. It's Daniel's story told from his perspective."

He was particularly inspired by the scene in the "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" doc where Daniel scares an elderly woman and she jumps out of a window and breaks her legs.

"He runs in the woods and stays there for three days. One of the things I want to know immediately is what happened in those three days in the woods?"