This Is Why You Love Me
Dig! is a profile of a pair of like-minded, often-linked, incredibly unlikeable bands named The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Each plying a similar kind of psychedelic recidivism, the Portland-based Dandys and LA-based BJM are ostensible sister acts, sometime collaborateurs, and genial pals. Until things start changing. Across the grand narrative of its seven-year span, Dig! charts the simultaneous rise of the former and fall of the latter.
These grand story-arcs are, in that great cinematic tradition, the narrative as microcosm; tales from within American society that speak of the whole macrocosm. Filmmaker Ondi Timoner, having no doubt grown close to her charges through much-of-a-decade's worth of filming, sees the human casualty: looking at how the incredibly capricious, super-capitalist, trend-chasing realm of popular-culture takes a withering toll on those who try and sail its peaks and troughs. And, blessedly for her narrative, Timoner gets to trail in the wake of two bands sailing in disparate directions.
In chronicling camaraderie turning into rivalry, Dig! is blessed by the natural charisma of the two acts' duelling frontmen. There's the BJM’s Anton Newcombe, supposedly insane rock hubrist, and the Dandys' Courtney Taylor-Taylor, self-consumed rock humorist. Each is quietly detestable in their own way, but both are blessed with charm that draws in viewers as they've drawn in band-mates, label execs, etc. This makes evident another thematic topic Timoner teases at: how people can be seduced into following the most obnoxious of leaders.
Thank God for the Music Business
It's easy to see Newcombe as Dig's anti-hero. The BJM's sole constant , he lives his life as the creative cliché manifest: his copious drug use, rampant egotism, willful 'craziness,' and socially-abhorrent behavior a pantomime attempting to delude all who cross him into buying his self-made myth of Genius. Even before Timoner's camera rolled, Newcombe had forged an infamous reputation, largely for recurring on-stage fights with bandmates. Given conflict clearly becomes him, it's little surprise Newcombe's band and the Dandys become adversaries.
One of Dig!'s first dramatic developments concerns the initial ‘failure’ of 1997's …The Dandy Warhols Come Down. At the time, the album was beset by rumors that the band had submitted a My Bloody Valentine-inspired set of strung-out, drug-fueled jams, only to be sent back into the studio by their major-label bosses with an instruction to makes some 'hits.'
In the wake of these spiraling expenses, Capitol acts like a classic major: throwing more and more money into the pot. So, a $400,000 video for the LP's novelty number, "Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth," is suddenly commissioned. When the Dandys invite their pals from the Brian Jonestown Massacre to come and eat the shoot's ‘free’ food (which will come out of the Dandy Warhol’s advance, of course), it makes for the moment that spells the beginning of the end. The BJM pour scorn on their one-time peers for so flagrantly selling out, whilst knowing, deep in their hearts, that the song —with its “heroin is so passe” refrain— is a critique of the (drug) habits of Newcombe.
These Bands Could Be Your Life
Not letting the Dandys’ upward mobility go unchecked, Newcombe fires back with a cut called "Not If You Were The Last Dandy On Earth," and, theoretically, we’ve got some sort of ‘beef’ going on. Except no one's sure if it's pure hatred, a rivalry staged for the press, or an in-joke gotten out of hand. Least of all the bands themselves.
Whilst the Dandy Warhols' novelty single turns them into stars in Europe and Australia, Newcombe's retort does little to halt his outfit's imminent torpor. He and his ever-changing crew continue to slog their way through the public-toilet pit-stops of the well-trodden touring track. As we follow these star-cross'd combos, there are fist-fights, parties, meeting with big talking music-biz goonballs, and a ridiculous amount of collective self-delusion.
Inevitably, every cliché of being in a band comes, unscripted, before Timoner's camera: people sleeping with other people’s girlfriends, drug binges, drug busts, promised riches, failed promises, and performances in places ranging from packed European soccer stadiums to empty dive-bars. Culled from thousands of hours of footage, Dig! is a quiet coup: a rollicking rockumentary journey that debunks the myths of the music machine with an unending parade of painful truths.
Studio: Palm Pictures
Release Date: April 12, 2005
