Aint It Cool News' Dig! Review

Aintitcoolnews.com
DVD Release
By Moriarty

Slabtown.Net note: This is part of a larger article, with only the Dig! section included. The full article is at http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=19976

DIG! is enormously entertaining, and I almost feel guilty about how much fun I had while watching it. There’s a lot of pain and frustration on display in the film, but there are times when it’s hysterical for that exact reason. I think THIS IS SPINAL TAP made it hard to watch rock star angst play out with a straight face. Writer/director Ondi Timoner walks a fine line all the way through this seven-year-long odyssey as she follows the careers of the Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, two bands that started at roughly the same time, but had wildly divergent career arcs. Timoner seems to have been there from the start, and god only knows what sort of prescient good fortune motivated her to start filming both bands. In the early days, it seems like The Brian Jonestown Massacre is the band that’s going to explode, thanks in large part to the manic brilliance of founder and frontman Anton A. Newcombe. He’s one of those guys who always seems a little too hip for the room, ungodly talented but also a bit of a monster. It’s obvious that Courtney Taylor of the Warhols has a total man-crush on Newcombe in those early days, and the bands would frequently play together, trading influences and ideas. There’s a really lovely idealistic attitude in the early part of the film. But then money rears its ugly head...

The Dandy Warhols get signed to a major label, and very quickly, they get caught up in the hype machine. At first, Anton and the rest of the BJM joke about it and enjoy watching what’s happening to their friends, but very quickly, things start to go sour for their band, and they start to envy the success of the Warhols. There’s a particularly brutal scene where the Warhols are supposed to do a photo shoot, and they get the idea to take a photographer to the house that all the members of the BJM are sharing as a crash pad. It’s the morning after a huge heroin party at the house, and the Warhols run around, posing in front of the detritus of decadence and treating it all like they’re at the Junkie Rock Star Disneyland. As the members of the BJM struggle back to consciousness, they grouse about how they can never take pictures in their own house now because it’ll look like they’re copying the Warhols. On those occasions where the BJM puts together an opportunity for themselves, they seem to inevitably blow it. An industry showcase turns into a startlingly nasty fistfight onstage. Anton attacks audience members at gigs. They get busted for pot as they drive cross-country on tour. They seem to exist under a black cloud. And the worse things get for Anton, the more he seems to focus on the success of Courtney and his band.

I’ll confess: I went to Amoeba and picked up TEPID PEPPERMINT WONDERLAND: A RETROSPECTIVE, a comprehensive best-of album by the BJM after seeing this film, and I’m enjoying it a lot. I think Anton’s got obvious talent, and onscreen, Matt Hollywood and Joel Gion are hilarious. Gion, in particular, steals pretty much every scene he’s in, a natural ham who seems perfectly happy to stand center stage while the chaos of the band rages around him like a storm. The combustible combination of Matt Hollywood and Anton leads to many of the most memorable fights, some brawls that are almost too ugly to believe. Courtney Taylor comes across like a likeable manipulator, a guy who loves being a frontman and who frequently pisses on his bandmates in interviews without realizing he’s doing it. For their part, Zia McCabe and Peter Holstrom come across like really decent people, particularly in the “Where Are They Now?” segments on disc two, grateful for everything they ever enjoyed and still focused on the joy of being musicians. By the time the line-up of the Brian Jonestown Massacre we get used to implodes in the film, everyone’s already walking wounded, and the scars still run deep.

Palm Pictures should be proud of the package they put together for this one. The film is beautifully reproduced on disc one, with three separate audio commentary tracks, one with the filmmakers, one with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and one with the Dandy Warhols. Everybody gets to tell their side of the story on the disc, so no one can complain about being treated unfairly. There’s a 5.1 Dolby Surround mix, a 2.0 Dolby mix, as well as a great use of line-outs, branching extra snippets of footage you can click to when prompted while watching the film. Disc two features more than two hours of extra footage and deleted scenes, as well as music videos from the Warhols and live performances and music videos from both bands. There’s a great “Where Are They Now?” segment where the filmmakers interview everyone again, and we even see them shooting the commentary tracks. Overall, this is one of the most energizing discs I’ve seen all year, a big joyous document of the creative lives of a whole big messy sprawling cast of characters you’ll want to watch more than once. Definitely, find this one and pick it up.