Ya Dig?

Just about anyone who knows me well can tell you what my all-time favorite DVD is. In fact, I love this movie so much that I have taken to the habit of being quite a philanthropist with it. Meaning, anyone with whom I meet and who shows a keen interest in its subject matter, I give them my copy and set out to buy another. I must be on my seventh or eighth copy by now. Spreading the greatness of The Last Waltz is well worth the $9.99 eight times over.

When I set out to write on this topic, though, I had to do some serious introsepctin' -- what makes Scorsese's 1975 documentary on The Band's last concert so magnificent? I admit, I am biased: I love The Band, and I love all the guest appearances who showed up that night to help bring the boys home just as much. So my opinion of the film was tainted even before the first time I ever saw the opening title card: "This Film Should Be Played LOUD!" It was expected that I, along with any other seventies classic rock fan, is going to appreciate the documentary. Yet the question is a pertinent one, does the music make up for any lack of camera technique or the overall quality of the filmmaking? How much can a film be judged beyond the quality of the subject?

The music documentary is not as old of a film genre as we may unconsciously think. Arguably, the first music documentary to make its mark on both the public and film-critic stage was D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 Bob Dylan documentary . Don't Look Back was a pivotal moment in filmmaking for two reasons: 1) it was among the first uses of the 'fly on the wall' cinematography technique in popular cinema; 2) it began a new craze in which musicians/bands were shot as they were, without a script and without slipping into character. This last point was significant in that it was a major shift from the kinds of films fans were used to seeing their stars in. Cross-fertilizing pop stars with film was not a revolutionary idea in 1965. The public was already used to seeing stars like Elvis Presley and The Beatles in movies like Jailhouse Rock (1957), Blue Hawaii (1961), Help! (1965) and A Hard Day's Night (1964), respectively. But until Bob Dylan and D.A. Pennebaker collaborated for his 1965 tour through the U.K., no one had ever seen anything like this.

Jim Ridley, in a 2008 'look back' piece (obviously he was above any title directive) for The Village Voicecalled the film a "rock doc [that] all but invented the form while presaging the music video." In another review, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times remarks on the film's 'real' quality as its best; "the film is arranged in loose chronological order, [and] there is little obvious editing within each scene. This takes advantage of cinéma vérité's strong point -- its ability to show exactly what happened, moment by moment, the bad along with the good." Whether you are a fan or not (because Ebert certainly was not a fan of this film), there is no arguing its influence on the rest of "rock docs" to follow.

Skipping ahead a few generations (having already pseudo-represented the '70s with The Last Waltz in the opening paragraph), I feel I must spend some time discussing Dig!. The 2004 Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Documentary award winner orbits around friendly-competing bands, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Although it wasn't revealed to the public until 2004, the footage is mostly all-'90s. When watching the film for the first time, one gets the sense that Director Ondi Timoner did anything more than release an edited version of her personal home video collection. Yet when deconstructing all that it is, Dig!soon reveals itself to be so much more compelling as an acute representation of how "indie" rock music perceived itself at the dusk of the twentieth century and how bands desired to be received by industry snobs. On top of all this, it was the ultimate no-holds-barred party vid--layered in alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, and good ol' rock n' roll. It is narrated by one of its stars, which is a whimsical twist, not originally planned by Timoner, that adds to its believability and the sincerity of its subject.

Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Filmmaker Ondi Timoner followed the entangled rise of these two bands from the Pacific Northwest with an obsessive compulsive's eye for detail. Every ugly moment is on the screen -- from the onstage fistfights to the Georgia roadside marijuana bust -- as the two bands seek their respective fortunes." The screen plays out like a drug-addled version of Bob Saget's first season of America's Funniest Home Videos, for all of us old enough to remember what watching your buddies' band recorded in your garage on VHS was all about. Dig!'s success lies in it's relativity to its time and perhaps therein lies the lesson.

From Pennebaker to Timoner, with a very young Scorsese in between (he was 34 years old when he madeThe Last Waltz), the one thing these documentary filmmakers share in common is their ability to reflect the madness of their time through the music that defined it. The key to a successful band documentary is not to imitate that which has already been done. Instead, 'document' the music in the medium of which it lives, and you stand alone to make a great film.