The Dandy Warhols |
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Thu. October 07.2004 12:00 AM EDT |
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Dig!: Behind the MusicNew documentary is a piercing portrait of the tensions and craziness of indie rock. by C. Bottomley |
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Courtney Taylor & Anton Newcombe (Interloper Films) |
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It's the morning after the premiere bash for their documentary Dig!, and filmmakers Ondi and David Timoner are a bit blurry-eyed. You'd think they would be used to extreme partying by now: the siblings spent the last seven years traveling with
[WATCH THE TRAILER] Dig! started life as a plan to document ten nascent groups as they try to bring their music to the world. But along the way it turned into a profile of the strange relationship between the Dandys, an art rock crew led by Courtney Taylor, and the BJM, psychedelic revivalists helmed by Anton Newcombe. When the Dandys scored a major label deal in 1997, the BJM's eccentric boss Anton Newcombe launched a vicious feud against his one-time buds, who he now views as sell-outs. [Watch Anton Newcombe explain his plans for a musical revolution.] [Watch the Brian Jonestown Massacre fall apart at a showcase gig.] The Timoners catch all sorts of tension on film. The Warhols battle with their label in an attempt to score a hit, and Newcombe's downward spiral into drugs and jealousy threatens his group's survival. The frenzied front-man's violent outbursts usually leave him fighting his own band onstage (50 members have passed through the BJM's doors). Dig!'s intimate focus gets you so close to the action, you could be sharing both bands' cramped tour buses. [Watch the Dandy Warhols get their first taste of European success.] The Timoners told VH1 about following these two fascinating groups all the way to a very bitter end. VH1: How did you decide on those two bands as your subjects? Ondi Timoner: I wanted to look at what happens when art and industry meet, and heard the music of the Brian Jonestown Massacre at a friend's house. I thought they were some band from the '60s. Our older sister was having a Celebration of Love ceremony with her partner Felicia in San Francisco, so we went up for that. The night before, we went to film the Brian Jonestown Massacre, met Anton and those characters and we were blown away. We were out late that night. David Timoner: It was another rough morning the next day, except we were younger. [Laughs.] We were a lot younger. VH1: How did the Dandy Warhols get on board? DT: Anton. Anton has orchestrated most of this movie in his own crazy way. There's the scene in the movie when Anton says, "Tell me right now you've never heard of the Dandy Warhols." OT: We used to call him Atomic Anton, because he's like this atom, bouncing off people and making seismic shifts happen. He's very manic and he can be violent, but he also draws people to him like a moth to a flame, because he's such a powerful energy. But that same energy drives people away! VH1: How much of the feud in Dig! was concocted as the bands trying to hype themselves? DT: In the beginning, when he started the feud, Anton said to [Dandy Warhols keyboardist] Zia, "You don't know how much publicity I'm making for us." It was bluster for Anton, but he's not the most stable person. At a certain point, it crossed a line for him in his mind. OT: Like right now, he's slamming the film and he's slamming me, and it's genius! People are going to think, "Wow, this film is really controversial! The subject hates the documentary filmmaker!" If Anton was like, "This is a fantastic vision of my life," it would not be nearly as interesting. Anton's like a shark, he's got to swim against the current. VH1: Anton seems highly unstable and is often too strung out on heroin to make any music. Does a documentarian have an obligation to their subjects? OT: If I had been the only person standing in the room, I would have put [Anton] in rehab myself. DT: But he's not the kind of person you can put in rehab. OT: There was a time that I almost crossed the line, when a record deal fell through for him and he wanted to make a record. We almost raised five grand for him, because we really wanted to see him make it. But then it was like, "Wait a second, we can't do that. We're the filmmakers." You have to remind yourself [that], but if you don't participate, you don't get verite. VH1: Did Anton ever try to shut production down? OT: No. I was like [the Nazi propaganda director] Leni Riefenstahl to him. DT: He wanted you around pretty much all the time. In fact, if we weren't there, he'd be like, "You missed everything!" He says that in the movie, like, "I've been working for 24 hours straight!" OT: [But] Anton threw me out twice. One time when I was filming him yelling at his wife, and one other time when he was very, very high on heroin. But generally, Anton wanted the cameras rolling. We were documenting his revolution, and for a while we believed it. We thought if the Brian Jonestown Massacre was the biggest band in America, the music industry would be a much different place. VH1: You followed both bands as they chased their dream. How did you know when you were going to be finished? OT: I knew when to start editing, not when I was going to be finished. I just knew that we had built a mountain so high, it was time to climb it. DT: Also, there's a certain kind of vital time, a fertile time of shooting. Then the BJM recycled itself. [Anton] recycles members – or not just recycles, but disposes them and picks up new ones. [When that happened], it was obvious that this chapter was over. OT: I'm thinking about an ex-members page on the DVD. DT: Because there's so many! OT: And they all want to talk. "I quit the band because Anton said he would never do drugs again and he went off ..." "And I quit the band because Anton wiped his ass and then hit me." DT: No way! Oh, that's so nasty! I just imagine a page like one of those Vanity Fair spreads, where they have a hundred people or something, all members of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. VH1: Is there anything exploitative about documenting one band's ruin? DT: It comes back to compassion. It's the role of the filmmaker: If you exploit them, then you can be really horrible; but if you have compassion, it comes through. OT: You can tell in Dig! that we love them. VH1: Has Dig! inspired the bands to kiss and make up? OT: The film's brought them both together. DT: They were hanging out after the L.A. film festival screening. OT: Anton saw it, and saw Courtney say that he's a genius and [that] he's always three steps ahead. He realized how humble Courtney was, and then sees himself like lashing out. Anton mellowed out, and Courtney was like, "Wow, we're both stars now. I can hang out with you and it will be nice and cool." DT: Courtney and the rest of the Dandys know Anton's a little crazy, but they'll always love the Brian Jonestown Massacre. They love the music. As long as Anton's not being mean and crazy to Courtney, they're happy to be friends. They absolutely admire each other. VH1: So what do you want people to take away from Dig! OT: Three kids walked up to me on the stairs last night and made my life. They were 23, 24 and 27 and they said that they had been waiting forever for this film, that it will inspire a lot of people to be creative, and express [themselves]. If that's what Dig!'s gonna do, I'm so happy for it to go out into the world and do that, and I think Anton and Courtney would be extremely happy for that to be the result, too. We all appreciate the feeling of creating. There's nothing more exciting than that. We asked the Timoners about their five favorite documentaries. Here's the list they came up with. Don't Look Back - D.A. Pennebaker (1967) C*cks*cker Blues - Robert Frank (1972) Titicut Follies - Fredrick Wiseman (1967) American Movie – Chris Smith (1999) Grey Gardens - David and Albert Maysles (1976) |
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