Dig! is a documentary about success, friendships, and artistry. The film focuses on two bands - firstly, The Dandy Warhols, from Portland, Oregon, who we see following the traditional route to success: major label, David LaChapelle videos, Top 10 UK hits, adoring crowds. The other band, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, from San Francisco, get bogged down in drug addiction, low finances, and disastrous tours. At the core of the film is the obsessive relationship and destructive rivalry between the two bands' frontmen, corporate handshaker Courtney Taylor-Taylor of the Warhols, and the doped-up, prodigious, and violently unhinged Anton Newcombe of BJM.
Director Ondi Timoner spent seven years on the road with them, tracking their every move. The lucky Warhols, who had the cash for indulgent recording processes, contrast with the hard-up-but-resourceful BJMs, who would make an album in a week. Ondi was there as the wealthy Warhols called to do a photoshoot at the authentically trashed BJM apartment, revelling in the squalor as their former friends looked on resentfully. And she was at BJM's acrimonious shows, their fights, and their drug busts.
But for all the Spinal Tap stylings of the film, Ondi is curiously serious. She sees Anton as "very, very talented", although the singer has ranted about her since the film was released. In a statement on the band's website he says: "I was shocked and let down when I saw the end result. Several years of our hard work was reduced at best to a series of punch-ups and mishaps taken out of context, and at worst bold-faced lies and misrepresentation of fact." Ondi shrugs this off with, "Anton will one day realise what this film has done for him."
The BJM's grinning, hugely sideburned tambourine player, Joel Guion, provides the comic counterpoint in the sometimes grim film. "Joel's working at Amoeba Records in San Francisco now", Ondi says. "He gets taken out for drinks by fans of the film all the time, and hosts screenings." Kate Hodges
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