Skip to main contentWhen Ondi Timoner pitched a documentary to MTV that would record the trials and tribulations of 10 up-and-coming bands, the music channel execs did what any self-respecting media players in the age of pseudo-edgy reality TV would do: They never got back to her. Then MTV completely bastardized the concept, eventually turning it into a game show called The Cut.
Unfazed, Timoner, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, went ahead with her project but changed it, choosing to focus on two bands: the Dandy Warhols from Portland and the Brian Jonestown Massacre from San Francisco. After sifting through 1,500 hours of footage she shot while touring and hanging out with the bands for seven years, she created the film Dig! Then she won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Timoner 1, MTV 0.
Timoner's choice in bands wasn't haphazard. The Dandys and BJM had developed a friendship based on a admiration for each other's music and a fondness for drugs, '60s-inspired psych pop and a belief in what BJM leadman Anton Newcombe refers to numerous times in the film as "the revolution." Timoner says she believed, like Newcombe, that these were two bands that could make it and possibly change the face of pop culture.
"The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre were way more uncompromising than any other band I looked at in their aesthetic and certainly were going to do what they were going to do, no matter what," Timoner told WW from her home in L.A. "They just weren't as interested in getting signed on the industry's terms, and they were sure they were rock stars before they were rock stars, and they were living that life."
That lifestyle provides some seriously entertaining moments of pure rock-'n'-roll bliss. One moment the bands are sharing a mound of coke on a coffee table; the next, they're all pouring drinks down each other's pants. Good fun. Courtney Taylor-Taylor and the Dandys manage to balance this lifestyle with their ambitions, living like the rock stars they want to be while staying focused enough to become the rock stars they want to be. But that same lifestyle begins to wear on BJM's Newcombe, leading to frightening antics, including inciting a brawl with his band during a label showcase and kicking a fan in the head at another show. Combined with an uncompromising vision that manifests itself in a maniacal self-destruction, Newcombe's debilitating heroin addiction alienates his entire band and destroys his chances at signing with a major label. By the end of the film, the Dandys are playing to gargantuan crowds in European festivals while Newcombe is still storming off the stages of small clubs.
"I think, at the core, that Courtney is crucially self-aware--overly and obsessively self-aware--and Anton has no self-awareness whatsoever," Timoner says. "He has a problem with the movie because he remembers everything differently than it was in the movie, instantly. It's clear to me that the way he gets through life is by remembering things differently."
Watching Newcombe self-implode is sad, but it's also what makes Dig! more than a regular rockumentary--more, for that matter, than the faux docs found on MTV, a station that has a lot of practice in making the life of the musician look edgy enough to attract the teen or tween music buyer, but safe enough to earn the approval of parents. Constructed as a straightforward visual narrative, Dig! rarely tips its hand, allowing the words and actions of the subjects to speak for themselves, and allowing the audience to watch one band succeed, one band fail, and a longtime friendship between Newcombe and Taylor-Taylor dissolve into contempt and pity. It's not the rock-'n'-roll dream we all imagine, but it's got to be more real than MTV Cribs.
Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 223-4515. 7 and 9:15 pm Friday-Thursday, Oct. 15-21. Additional shows 2:15 and 4:30 pm Saturday and Sunday. $4-$7.
"I'm in touch with the Dandys all the time and with all the members of the Brian Jonestown except for Anton. If I never speak to Anton again, it's OK. I did my time with Anton. I think that if I made a film that he loved, I would have failed." --Ondi Timoner
WWeek 2015