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Special Features
- 3 audio commentaries: members of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, members of the Dandy Warhols, and the filmmakers
- Link-outs: an interactive technology allowing viewers to watch the film with extended and deleted scenes
- Over 2 hours of never-before-seen footage and deleted scenes
- 3 Dandy Warhols music videos: "TV Theme Song," "Last High" (uncut version), and "Bohemian Like You" (uncut version)
- 3 Brian Jonestown Massacre live performances: "Anemone," "Oh Lord," and "Jesus"
- Courtney Taylor and Anton Newscombe jam session
- "Where are they now?" band member updates
- A behind-the-scenes look at the commentary track recording sessions
- Footage from Courtney Taylor's MTV2 Subterranean appearance
- DiG! at Sundance; awards and interviews
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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Italian fabulist Italo Calvino observed that there are two kinds of artists--those who are prolific and successful, and the tortured geniuses, each gazing at the other in deep jealousy and admiration. The two rock bands chronicled in the documentary DiG! fall easily into this equation. On the side of the tortured geniuses is the Brian Jonestown Massacre, led by the psychedelic and volatile Anton Newcombe. Portland's the Dandy Warhols, fronted by Courtney Taylor, fulfill the role of the artists who, while unable to plumb the artistic depths of their friendly rivals, achieve a fair degree of popular acclaim (in Europe, anyway). Shot over seven years and containing some astonishingly intimate footage, the film represents a labor of love for director Ondi Timoner, who befriended, lived, and traveled with the bands. DiG! will likely be most remembered for a remarkable scene of rock and roll implosion--a show in LA's Viper Room after which the Brian Jonestown Massacre were expected to ink a record deal. Instead, the band erupted in a fist fight onstage. Among themselves.
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Does it go uphill or downhill from here? Depends on your definition of the terms. While dooming their careers, the Brian Jonestown Massacre manage to crank out an insane number of self-distributed albums--including three records in a single year. Courtney Taylor and the Dandies regard the musical output of their peers worshipfully and find themselves virtually ignored stateside but huge stars across the pond. While tens of thousands of fans in Germany and the UK sing along to every word at sold-out festivals headlined by the Dandies, Newscombe leads his crew in a nine-hour set in a dingy club for an audience of ten. Throughout the film there are controlled substances imbibed, clothing shed, sitars broken, punches thrown, arrests made. Taylor performs double duty as narrator of the film, begging the question of whether to accept his assertion that he fronts "the most well-adjusted band in America" at face value. The destined-for-greater-things Joel Gion, BJM's tambourine player, is the thief of every scene in which he appears, playing Flavor Flav to Newscombe's Chuck D. For those who want even more immersion, the DVD includes the option to "zoom," or expand, various scenes--a very cool feature. Those responsible for the hilarious excesses of DiG! have made a movie worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as This Is Spinal Tap, as mixed an honor as that might be.
DVD Features
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The second of this set's two discs is practically its own sequel. Director Ondi Timoner had 1500 hours of footage to work with, so there was plenty of good material left on the cutting-room floor that found its way onto this supplemental disc. The deleted scenes include an unintentionally haunting pre-9/11 interview on a New York rooftop with BJM's Anton Newcombe; the twin towers loom behind the singer as he attempts to justify singing about love yet engaging in violence, drawing tenuous parallels between himself and militant prophets throughout history. This, and Newcombe's delight in listening to Charles Manson's musical recordings, is about as heavy as it gets, though. Other extras include various videos by the bands, with the conspicuous absence of the Dandy Warhol's David LaChapelle-directed "Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth." (The omission is understandable in light of the Dandies' sour grapes over the $400,000 video.) The Where Are They Now features find various members of the bands a little older and reflective, with new families and new gigs, reminiscing fondly on the seven years spent under Timoner's watchful spycam. As is the case with the film proper, the mood picks up whenever Joel Gion appears. When is this guy going to get his own talk show? For fans of Timoner's commentary on disc 1 there is--get this--footage of the director and her partners recording that commentary. Why there's no footage of Timoner watching and commenting on the footage of herself recording the commentary is anyone's guess. --Ryan Boudinot
Dig These Discs by the Brian Jonestown Massacre
 Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective |  Strung Out in Heaven |  Bravery Repetition & Noise |
 And This Is Our Music |  Thank God for Mental Illness |  Bringing It All Back Home Again |
Dig These Discs by the Dandy Warhols
 Welcome to the Monkey House |  Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia |  The Dandy Warhols Come Down |
Dig These Documentaries (and One Classic Mockumentary) on DVD
 This Is Spinal Tap (Special Edition) |  Metallica: Some Kind of Monster |  Hype |
 X (The Band): The Unheard Music |  End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones |  Gimme Shelter |
Product Description
Customer Reviews
Seven-some years in the making, it's director Ondi Timoner's crazy love letter to two men -- Anton Newcombe, leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre; and Courtney Taylor, head of the Dandy Warhols. Both groups ignited like Apollo 11's on the launch pad of the 1990s music scene but slowly sputtered back down to the ground just as spectacularly.
Newcombe seems like a musical genius who can't resist imploding at the worst possible times and places, while Taylor has the drive and accessibility to succeed without the crucial spark of crazed brilliance. Their friendship/rivalry takes a lot of turns during the course of this film, which was mostly recorded on handheld cameras as the events unfolded.
Everything that's right and wrong with the music industry is here: the inescapable mechanics of the game; the perils of drugs, egomania, overambition, pride and possession of mass quantities of obnoxiousness. Anybody who thinks they might want to make music for money should see this film first.
Plus, there's a lot of great, entertaining footage here: Newcombe's ill-advised handling of a Georgia roadcheck; a run-in with David LaChappelle; and especially the BJM's disastrous, Andy Kaufman-esque meltdown in front of record execs at the Viper Room (you gotta love any fight scene that ends with "motherf----r broke my sitar, man!").
The movie's only significant weakness the fact that Taylor voices the film narration. Yes, he was there and can comment on the events unfolding with a distinct air of authority, but his reading also gives the lines an unignorable bias. It's a regretable slip that tilts the movie to a slightly unfair angle, but it doesn't sink "DiG!"
Plus, this movie had one of my favorite supporting "performances" of the year: long-suffering BJM sideman Joel Gion. If he doesn't parlay this movie into a career as a comedy star, he's not trying hard enough.
HOWEVER-
I would never claim that either of these bands has a one up on the other one because I don't think either band is one of the alltime greats and I don't care how either achieved their musical goals concerning the reasons given. I don't care about b.s. arguments that claim "hey, man BJM is great because they were prolific and didn't sell out" or the Dandies were great because "they found a way to make it work and that's what you have to do." At the end of the day, all you are left with is the music and if you like it great, but the suggested argument that separates the two (one sold out, one didn't) is bogus. All the bands from the 60' sold out (whatever the hell that means) at one time or another and the ones who didn't wished they had. So what? Any entertainment deal involves a deal with the devil at some level and to suggest otherwise, or that the people who make "unheard" music are somehow "more pure" is nonsense. Why sign a record deal at all, in that case, if everything that comes from that intial decision is a frickin slippery slope to being compromised? IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THUS.
As to the hyberbole of the movie as if it is pitting two super bands against each other, the "5 years ahead of their time" is good rhetoric, but nothing more. Supporters of both bands can claim the Dandies' or BJM influence on music all day long, but as both were so influenced themselves (and never sold many records) who can claim a rightful timeline as to their either band's influence on anyone, unless you're talking about the heirs to BJM, none of which has had that much success on the kind of level the film wants us to accept.
To stress again, I am a fan of both bands, and I loved the movie, but the resulting success vs. sell out argument is, ultimately, a tired and worn out cliche from an era that, ironically or not, had great influence on both bands.
As a portrait of an angry, talented young man (Newcombe), DiG! is a success. People in the music industry regard Newcombe as a savant, even though he does everything he can to sabotage his career - fist fights with band mates, arrests for drugs, etc. DiG! offers viewers some insight into the possible roots of Newcombe's problems when discussing his childhood. Though it is sometimes difficult to watch Newcombe destroy himself, it is always interesting.
The material about the Dandy Warhols is middling. The group achieves more success than does the Brian Jonestown Massacre, but their story is just not as interesting. Anton is the main draw.
In short, DiG! is a good documentary that any fan of rock music will enjoy.
Great music, great setting, intriguing characters.
Fun Movie!
