October 1, 2004

So, You're Sure You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star?

ig!" was shown as part of this year's New Directors/New Films series. Following are excerpts from A. O. Scott's review, which appeared in The New York Times on March 26; the full text is available below. The unrated film opens today in Los Angeles and in New York at the Landmark's Sunshine Cinema, 139-143 East Houston Street, East Village.

"Dig!," a new documentary by Ondi Timoner, gives a cinéma vérité spin to the endlessly fascinating pop-music soap opera formula of VH1's "Behind the Music." But Ms. Timoner's film, which traces the linked fortunes of not one band but two - the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre - feels more archetypal than formulaic, and also more real.

For seven years, she followed both bands, interviewing their members and capturing their on- and offstage triumphs and catastrophes, and a result is one of those heaven-sent narratives, like "Hoop Dreams" or "Startup.com," in which the contingency and chaos of events coalesce into a resonant and satisfying story.

If universities ever start graduate programs in rock stardom, "Dig!" will surely be a cornerstone of the curriculum, for it works as both an instruction manual and a cautionary tale.

As their names suggest, the two bands shared a taste for labored puns and a semi-ironic devotion to the pop culture of the 1960's. The Massacre was named partly for the Rolling Stones guitarist and 60's martyr Brian Jones, and at times its leader, Anton Newcombe, seems determined to provide a grim punch line to the joke by following Jones's self-destructive example.

A prolific songwriter who plays dozens of instruments and sees himself as a revolutionary figure, Mr. Newcombe also possesses a sad talent for sabotaging his chances of success. After a while, his bouts of drug use, his flights into paranoia and his habit of antagonizing band mates and audience members become grimly predictable, and a tragic ending to his story feels inevitable.

What happens is a little more complicated, partly because the music business is not as simple as Mr. Newcombe thinks it is. As the Massacre falls prey to bad karma, bad luck and bad decisions, the Dandys, who at first seemed to be heading in the same direction, manage to do a little better.

"We must be the most well-adjusted band in the world," one of them says, and "Dig!" supports this hypothesis. Even though they dabble in decadence and butt heads with record labels and video directors, the Dandys nonetheless keep their act together, winning a huge following in Europe.

The head Dandy, Courtney Taylor, is unstinting in his admiration for Mr. Newcombe, whose talent he rates above his own. But the movie demonstrates that discipline and professionalism, especially given the irrational state of the industry right now, are at least as important as genius. And while it is hard not to be seduced by Mr. Newcombe's furious charisma, it is also hard to accuse the Dandy Warhols, as he occasionally does, of selling out.

It is hard partly because the music itself stays in the background. Viewers unfamiliar with Mr. Newcombe's prodigious output - dozens of albums, most of them self-released - will have a hard time evaluating the quality and influence of his work. But a great many people who have no particular reason to speak well of him - the managers and record company executives he abused, the friends he alienated and scorned, Mr. Taylor above all - speak of him as a virtual demigod, on a plane with musical deities like Bob Dylan and John Lennon.

Such hyperbole gives "Dig!" a heady kick that balances its implicit skepticism.