The Ondi Timoner-directed documentary of The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s love/hate relationship, Dig!, has won the special Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Better still, the film has been picked up for major US distribution by Palm Pictures, reports NME.
Dig! was shot over the course of seven years, often through a spy-cam in Timoner’s hat. It revolves around The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols, two bands who set out with similar goals of changing the music world forever. However, these two groups had different ideas about how to accomplish that goal and it eventually put a strain on their relationship.
“I went up to meet the band at a gig they were playing [in LA seven years ago],” Timoner told Rolling Stone. “The first footage you see in the film is them outside, and they’d showed up late for the gig and they weren’t allowed to play. They just were bitching and standing outside wanting to play . . . and immediately the energy of the band hit me – they were either going to play the game on their own terms or not play it at all. And that was really refreshing. After being in LA and documenting a bunch of bands who were like, ‘Ooh, what can we be to make the industry like us?’ the BJM didn’t give a shit.”
It seems however, that BJM frontman Anton Newcombe is not a big fan of the film. A statement on the band’s website reads, “Anton Newcombe does not support the recently screened documentary film ‘DIG!’ in its currently edited form. He feels strongly that the ‘Jerry Springer-esque’ vilification of his nature is an inappropriate, mis contextualized, and exploitative use of the footage.”
Regardless, kudos to Palm for picking this film up. We can’t wait to see it!
Related:
