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Film Description
An award-winning dissection of friendship and rivalry in the rock world. The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre both sought the same dream. When one of the groups is given a lucky break they turn into bitter enemies as record deals and inner demons take control.
The supremely entertaining documentary Dig! tells of two rival bands from Portland who were going to take over the world but instead fell by rock’s wayside. Both The B... more >
The supremely entertaining documentary Dig! tells of two rival bands from Portland who were going to take over the world but instead fell by rock’s wayside. Both The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols peddled 60s/70s stoner-rock revivalism. The Warhols, whose best recordings (Everyday Should Be A Holiday, Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth) were book ended by tracks on the soundtrack of an Oscar-nominated film (Good Will Hunting’s Boys Beware) and a mobile phone ad (Bohemian Like You), refined the sound and enjoyed some commercial success.
Fuelled by alcohol and frontman Anton Newcombe’s eccentricity and perfectionism, however, the Massacre’s notoriously shambolic live shows got them pegged (unfairly) as little more than a novelty act with a great band name. (Their album titles, however - exhibit 1a: Thank God for Mental Illness - were something else.) They plunged headlong into tetchy obscurity, leaving a trail of bad career choices - heroin addiction, regrettable sideburns, a sound engineer with feathers in his hair - behind them.
Watching Ondi Timoner’s film, what strikes one is how truly unreal this particular scene is, confirmation that rock ‘n’ roll, even of the jobbing kind, is a whole other world. Dig! has a heady sense of bands both on the up and on their uppers.
Minor players, such as the room service waiter to whom Newcombe hands a free copy of the Massacre’s latest recording (“Outstanding”), make dazzling cameos. Nobody gets written out; instead those who vanish do so in a puff of smoke or tinsel: Newcombe’s father commits suicide; a former collaborator runs off to Tahiti to marry the lead guitarist in her new band. A breakfast radio show goes under the ridiculously high-flown name Morning Becomes Eclectic. (Seriously, who’s going to get the joke at that time of the day?)
Timoner, who spent seven years making the film, is no bandwagon-jumper or ambulance-chaser. Her film benefits from a sense she was there from the start, won both bands’ trust,
and hung around to capture every banal or splenetic utterance, each sulk and hissy fit. Best of all, she’s scrupulously fair. If the main narrative arc, and most screen time, is given over to Newcombe’s antics, the voiceover (by the Warhols’ Courtney Taylor) has a counterbalancing effect. (History, in this instance, is very much written by the winners, but Taylor’s slouchy drawl doesn’t stretch easily to too much gloating; besides, as the film is at pains to show, he and Newcombe were friends.)
The music gets shorter shrift, as Timoner tries to squeeze in just under a decade’s worth of footage. Still, it’s a great story, and yet more proof - after last year’s Metallica: Some Kind of Monster - that certain musicians shouldn’t open their mouths in front of a camera unless they’re on stage or in one of their own videos. < less
