The Big Picture - Top Five Music Documentaries and ‘Woodstock ’99: Love, Peace, and Rage’

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

We’re living in a boom time for music documentaries. Rob Harvilla joins Sean to talk about the history of the subgenre, why it’s exploding, and their top five favorites (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Garret Price, the filmmaker behind the first installment in Ringer Films’ new documentary music series Music Box: ‘Woodstock ’99: Love, Peace, and Rage,’ a powerful and fascinating portrait of a terrifying moment in music and American history (1:12:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey Guests: Rob Harvilla and Garret Price Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ringer Films is premiering its first of six films in our Music Box series, Woodstock 99, Peace, Love, and Rage, on Friday, July 23rd on HBO. Woodstock 99 tells the story of the infamous music festival promoting unity and counterculture, but devolved into chaos and collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. Watch or stream Woodstock 99, Peace, Love, and Rage on HBO or HBO Max now. The filmmaker behind the first installment in Ringer Films' new documentary music series, Music Box. Garrett's movie is called Woodstock 99, Love, Peace, and Rage. And having worked on it with Garrett over the past couple of years, I can assure you it's a powerful and fascinating portrait of a terrifying moment in music and, frankly, American history. The movie premieres today on HBO and HBO Max. I hope you'll watch the movie and then check out my conversation with Garrett. But first, let's talk about the history of the music documentary, one of the more prevalent subgenres in recent movie history. And joining me to do so is the host of the

terrific podcast, 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, and Ringer staff writer Rob Harvilla. Rob, welcome back to the show. What's up, dude? It's an honor to be here as always. So happy to have you. You, like I i are a connoisseur of music docs i imagine you how many do you think you've watched in your lifetime let's say let's try and put a number on this shall we it might be a hundred yeah that's that's aspirational but i'd say anywhere 70 to 100 feels like the sweet spot i don't know what that says if that's a good thing is that a good thing sean it's chilling rob thing, Sean? It's chilling, Rob.

It's definitely concerning. You and I have spent a lot, a lot, a lot of time in our lives digging into the arcana of music, musicians, musical genres, the history of the form, the feuds, the fights, the love. And it's an interesting kind of a subcategory. Why do you think music in particular has been so ripe for the documentary form, especially nowadays? It feels like we're getting a new one every week, including some that The Ringer ourselves are producing. It is true that the pop star documentary is just a necessary

function of a rollout. Taylor Swift, if you count a Netflix concert movie that she did, she's put out three movies, three feature-length movies in like three or four years it's just you have to do it now you know you got the billy eilish one uh it's lady gaga katie perry beyonce has done a couple it's just it's a natural part of i think it all goes back to to behind the music to vh1's behind the music like just that arc the rise and fall arc like we love to watch rock stars become arc like we love to watch rock stars become rock stars we love to watch rock stars just crash and burn you know and reliably we get both ends of that in your typical rock documentary well let me psychoanalyze you a little bit why do we love that

why do we want to see these you know majestic figures of popular music hit their peaks and then crash so painfully. Right. It's a celebrity worship thing. I think ultimately we love to build people up and we love to watch them break down, if not break them down ourselves. You know, we're sort of seeing this arc with Britney Spears right now, which is like a very moving target as a news story, but it's just the public perception of her and like the way people feel about her and the empathy people have her has changed so radically you know in the last 20 years you know in the last 20 years of rock docs like sometimes she's a villain and sometimes she's a hero and it's it's we just love you know this pro wrestling thing sometimes you're the hero and

sometimes you're the heel you know sometimes you're the hero sometimes you're the villain sometimes you're on top you know sometimes you're all the way at rock bottom it's just it's i think it's just a a clear celebrity prurient sort of fascination you know with the highest highs and the lowest lows imaginable so we're talking about documentaries and there are elements of concert performance that are a part of some of these films. But we're not really, you know, we're not talking about Stop Making Sense or Aretha Franklin's recently unearthed Amazing Grace or Prince's Sign of the Times or movies like that. These are amazing movies. And they have very sort of soft documentary aspects to them, Amazing Grace especially. But for the most part, these are performance films.

We're talking about movies that, while they might feature performance, also feature a kind of documentation of the artist's life or their point of view or the history of a genre. And I'm just kind of curious, like, which do you prefer?

Do you prefer a film that kind of shows the artist in action and then behind the scenes? Do you like one that is a little bit more of an excavation of an unknown culture? Like like what are you looking for in a music documentary ideally a little bit of a mix i mean stop making sense is one of my favorite movies favorite pieces of art of all time just as a talking head super fan and if i don't think there is a single sort of documentary behind the scenes like interview aspect to stop making sense

there's not it's just a there's just a it's just a straight performance and i love that but i do prefer at least some sort of context you know amazing grace doesn't have a ton of it but there's enough of it you get enough of a sense of the place and how everyone around her around aretha is feeling you know and the energy in the room i you know you you bring up uh rattle and hum the u2 documentary which is i love it because it's so pompous you know this is u2 at the height of their powers right in the midst of that run you know unforgettable fire and joshua tree and octoon baby like this is imperial era u2 and they're like trying to be the most american band of all time even though they're not american and it's just it's so ridiculous but so endearingly so every frame

of rattle and hum it's so beautiful and it's so corny at the same time it's like Bono singing a song called Angel in Harlem and you're like okay this is this is terrible and this is fantastic like ideally you get a mixture of the pure musical experience but also some sense of the ego and I think ego is an indispensable part of this that drives that music. I completely agree. I think also a fearlessness about the ideas of pretension is a big part of this, especially for the most of these films because of the power of the artist and usually the popularity and the wealth and the ego boosting that is going on. These are authorized movies. A lot of these movies, and especially you point out Taylor Swift

and Lady Gaga and artists like that, that's a very prevalent aspect to this now is let me be the person to tell my story. I'm in charge of writing my own songs. I'd also like to be in charge of writing my own documentaries, essentially. Does that ever rub you the wrong way? How do you feel about kind of like

the authorized imprint on these movies? I've come to love the chess match of knowing I'm being manipulated and trying to figure out exactly how and it's like the thing i'm watching on screen is contrived to some degree is it 10 percent contrived is it a hundred percent contrived it's just uh yes that inevitably these movies are executive produced by the artist they're not going to show you a single thing that they don't want you to see and that invalidates them as journalism you know or like the unvarnished truth on a certain level but like it's they want to be vulnerable but they want

to be vulnerable on their very specific controlled terms like the beyond the first beyonce documentary the hbo1 life is but a dream like that far precedes like lemonade or any of her sort of internal personal calamity like i that movie is boring but fascinating to me and that she she understands that she has to project vulnerability she has to show you she really is and she has this sort of conceit where she's talking to her laptop you know when she's feeling down or just wants to be alone or wants to process but it's like it's beyonce and she's feeling down or just wants to be alone or wants to process. But it's Beyonce, and she's so in control of everything that you can't really...

She can't get to that place where it feels out of control. Whereas other people get a little better at that balance. One of the most striking images from a pop star movie of the past 10, 15 years is the Katy Perry movie. She's on tour. Her marriage to Russell Brand is disintegrating. You know, we've established this conceit where she starts every show coming up through the floor by a hydraulic lift. And she's got this smile pasted on her face. It's like the crowd sees her for the first time. And she's in, I think she's in Brazil and it's a major crowd, huge crowd. And like the marriage is over and she's bawling on a bed and

it's just like she can't go on and there's like five straight minutes of like maybe katie can't go on and then she's on the lift and she's going up the stage and she plasters a smile on her face like at the last possible second and then she's on stage in front of a hundred thousand whatever people in brazil and like that's what a pop star does. I love watching that and trying to figure out exactly how contrived that is. If there is any respect in which that was just caught by accident, if that's real,

or if they just shrewdly built the whole movie around convincing you that she was having this big personal versus professional internal battle. You know what I'm saying? You're being manipulated. You're seeing something that they want you to see. You know, it's not illicit, you know,

but it's still fun to try and figure out exactly where, you know, the magic is happening. It's also, I think that's insightful because it's also a peek into what the work is. This is an occupation for a lot of these people. It's not unlike watching, you know, someone strap on the shoulder pads before going out to play middle linebacker for a football team or somebody just

strapping on their tool belt to go to their job like that smile is an is an essential tool to what katie perry does so i i too love that sort of thing i do also like the chess match i'm not as fond of the you know our our boss bill simmons i think calls them um documershals you know they're sort of like sure of course fully authorized telling his product but yeah we do i think as vulnerability as a as a as an emotional concept that humanity is getting more and more comfortable with through this century yeah becomes more prevalent i think you see artists trying to find walk this delicate balance. Having Taylor Swift, for example, show herself, learn that she did not get a Grammy nomination. That's the moment. That's her vulnerability. Or finding out that she can't swing

the Tennessee senatorial election. That's exactly that moment for her. Yes. And it's interesting to even see artists identify what is their vision of vulnerability and what is their vision of realness, for lack of a better word. I don't always love those movies specifically, though. I think I'm much more, I have a slightly more anthropological interest, I think, in a lot of this stuff. And some of my favorites, and we'll both share top five lists, top five lists. But I think they kind of go into a world, they kind kind of explore a genre they explore the occupants of the genre sometimes

they're singularly focused on one act but i do like stories also that don't have that this is about bono's ego kind of approach necessarily to movie making um what about you what else do you look for in a in a great music documentary? Sometimes it's a single artist. I made it an honorable mention, but the Fugazi documentary from 1999. I love that. I love Fugazi. I love that movie. There's not really anything beyond just the world of Fugazi, but just the image of Guy hanging upside down in the basketball hoop singing is just so fantastic to me. So I do love a tightly focused one artist thing. You know, this Sparks documentary we're going to talk about, I thought was wonderful,

you know, in that respect. But it is curious to me that when you see a music documentary inched toward prestige a little bit, inched toward like Oscar interest, most of the time now it's like you didn't know about these people but you should you know it's 20 feet from stardom it's about like backup singers standing in the shadows of motown uh the search for sugar man you know it seems like what gets the attention of the oscars or just sort of the prestige film end of things is like learning about an entire subculture you know or an entire universe that you weren't quite aware of.

Like Laurel Canyon beyond like the major players, the wrecking crew, like that kind of thing. Yeah, I think that also flatters documentarians who, of course, vote on the Oscars. That the work is not about just fixing your camera on one compelling person. It's about going and exploring and discovering the truth about this moment in history. That's what, at least for that particular branch. So you mentioned the Sparks film. You mentioned framing Britney Spears, which was a Hulu sort of documentary in conjunction with the New York Times.

And there was Tina earlier this year on HBO. And then later this fall, we're getting this six hour Peter Jackson, Beatles megalith of a film, which I'm frankly just fully looking forward to and have no concerns about it whatsoever. Just give me six hours of Beatles. Six hours.

It's like the Hobbit movies of the Beatles. I'm in. I'm all in. Who is, which, which Beatle is which Hobbit? Can you identify? Just Ringo is all of them. Ringo is, yeah. That's perfect.

Just put Ringo down for all of them. I think the three music docs thus far this year that have distinguished themselves, though, are the Billie Eilish film, The World's a Little Blurry, which comes from R.J. Cutler, an acclaimed documentarian in his own right, and Questlove, Summer of Soul, and the Sparks Brothers.

So I just want to talk about those three pretty quickly with you because I think they do different things and they're fascinating in their own rights. Did you like all three of these? Which one do just want to talk about those three pretty quickly with you because I think they do different things and they're fascinating in their own rights. Did you like all three of these? Which one do you want to talk about first? Well, the Eilish was interesting just in terms of somebody who's so young and so new and so recently acclaimed and so mysterious. Billie Eilish is a really strange combination of very open, obviously, and just out there on social media and you know her story and she's just in a bedroom with her brother but there's so many things you don't know about her at the same time you know what counts for a revelation for her is like she was in

a romantic relationship you know that sort of dissolved over the course of you know her rise you know her biggest year you know that counts as a huge vulnerable moments to her you know i i don't think i don't think the eilish you know rates with the biggest the best the most revelatory pop star documentaries the last five years but this is a hard field in which to distinguish yourself at this point you know like justin bieber has got a youtube series where he's lying in a hyperbaric chamber the vulnerability arms race is just a really fearsome thing you know that what struck me so much about the taylor moment you mentioned the grammys thing is that was such a perfectly taylor way of solving that problem like what's the most

abject thing that i can show you that i still want to show you to sell my next record and i you know i i'm grateful that billy didn't jump into that you know i don't want her to become like a wanton sort of fearful oversharer but i i do think that you're we're getting to the point now where unless you really love the artist and you're in regardless to interest you in a pop star documentary now of like the ariana grande level of the pink level you know there's that mary j blige documentary out on amazon recently and you know rich jesuiak our friend who i trust is like this wants to be really revelatory and like show her things that you've never shown her but like it really doesn't

you know she doesn't open up the way you wish she would but that's probably better for her so that all of that is to say that it just the billy is interesting in this how much should a teenager just a literal teenager reveal of themselves and like how shrewdly is she parceling out these revelations you know just the way she changes you know her fashion you just her presentation to the world there's just so much willful calculation there like not in a bad way but as you say this is what pop stars do this is the job and it's all calculated and it's all manipulative but it can all still be beautiful and still be art but it's just very hard to find that balance and i you know i don't think the billy eilish movie works as a movie but i i'm fine with her staying at the level of secrecy that she still has

yeah i i agree with that i think that's right right on. I think it's actually quite a long film and a little bit baggy at times. On the other hand, there's something radical about its total mundanity, you know, and I don't know, I don't know if this, I don't know if she's withholding

so much as she just doesn't have a lot going on. She's obviously becoming extraordinarily famous and is a creative person and has this compelling partnership with her brother. But also she's clearly just a teenager living in LA. And that's kind of boring.

The idea that her having a boyfriend is a meaningful and profound revelation kind of speaks to that. It's like, this is just not a big deal. She went through a tough time with a boy she liked when she was 16. Hey man, it happens. It happens to the best of us. We all get our hearts broken and we all write songs about it afterwards. So I think that that's an interesting experiment in what happens when you actually don't have a lot of trauma necessarily to unpack, or at least you're not necessarily willing to platform that trauma because that's a whole other strand of these kinds of movies is the know the tina turner film is is an interesting comp to that obviously i think one of the things that it was criticized for was that there was too way too much focus on ike and and the abuse that he uh inflicted upon

her and how that might have colored you know her career forevermore a lot of people saying you know she did so much basically from 1975 to the present day why didn't we talk about that more on the other hand there's already been a narrative feature film about this aspect of her life. And it is something that people really reflect on all the time. So how can you not make it a central part of the story? And so there's a challenge there. Like Tina Turner, maybe Tina Turner deserved a six-hour documentary. I don't know if you can do the whole thing in two hours. Whereas Billie Eilish, as you say, as a teenager, maybe we didn't need two and a half hours right out of the shoot on her, but she probably will get a part two and a part three if she continues to

be successful I think a lot of the movies you and I are going to talk about now find different ways to leverage the boredom of being a musician whether it's because you're backstage whether you're in the studio and you're stuck you know whether your career is totally stalled. There's so much of a hurry up and wait mundanity to the rock star lifestyle. And just across decades, across genres, across major stars, everybody has a slightly different way of addressing that and trying to dress that up as drama. And I think that's part of the fascination too of the music doc. It's like, you know, these people were bored you know how good are they going to be at turning that boredom into something fascinating before we get to our list let's talk about the sparks brothers quickly i want to take you back to january 2021 i watched

the sparks brothers at the sundance film festival hopped on a podcast uh well i was at home it's not as if i was actually at the sundance film festival i was was sitting on my couch and my wife was sitting next to me. And I was like, I'm going to check out this Sparks Brothers movie. It's two and a half hours. And she was like, I'm going to look at my iPad for the next two and a half hours. And frankly, I had the exact same response when I brought this film up to Amanda Dobbins on this podcast. I was like, can we talk about the Sparks Brothers movie?

And she was like, you can. I'm glad I wasn't around for that, honestly. So you're here now. You've watched that movie. I had a lot of appreciation for that movie and it's just complete obstinacy and being what it wanted to be. It was just like, look, if you don't like this band or care about this story, you can check out right now. But if you're interested, hang out because we're going to give you everything. And I thought of you actually while i was watching the movie because because you're an obstinate jerk no that's not yeah that's not i don't know i thought of you

because i think over time you've written a lot of pieces like this i've written pieces like this but this desire to capture a great artist or a great act's entire career in one container and how and how hard that is and how fun that can be to revisit everything and how stupid it is as an act of creativity and you know Sparks obviously are this maximalist pop group that does not have a huge reputation in the United States Edgar Wright made

this film about these two guys Russell and Ron Mail and got as many people that he knew as he could to just say nice stuff about them over the course of this film and talk about every single album that they made, every single album. 20-something albums. Yeah.

And frankly, I enjoyed it. I loved it. It's pretty cool, right? Yeah. It was shocking to me watching it. I'm a big They Might Be Giants fan. And I've dipped in and out of the Sparks catalog over the years,

but never had the deep dive, like, I'm going to do this moment with them. And it's so ridiculous to me watching that movie that I never have, because it's like, this is my band. Like I, it's the point that movie makes is like these people influence so much. And even the people who've been influenced are not aware of it.

Like it's, I, that's the other great thing. The other great sort of genre of music doc, like I said, it's like, you should know these people. These people are way more important than you thought they were, even if you never heard of them.

And I think this is a perfect example of this. Can I ask you, if he hadn't been in it, which obviously Edgar Wright is both his voice and as a talking head at one point, would you have known that it was him directing? Or would you have known that it was like an auteur director? Because music docs don't necessarily have to be like stylish or prestigious. But this one, I was wondering if it did have like the Edgar Wright

signature for you. It did. That question raises another thought. It did for a variety of reasons. Obviously, Edgar is this kind of like relentlessly creative filmmaker who is just desperate to show you how well he can do something and frankly i remain i continue to remain invested in him just kind of pulling out all the stops in every movie and trying to one

up himself and this is his version of doing that for music docs yeah the thing that is interesting about this movie is it basically violates like all of my rules for documentary making it's like the director's in the movie the director's voice is in the movie a lot there's so much animation there's also claymation there's like tons of um archival and b footage from periods that don't matter that like sort of contextualize but it's mega showy the thing is is that at the most of the directors who deploy those tactics are not talented. They're doing it because they don't have anything else in their bag. They're last resort tricks.

For Edgar, it's this like, you know, Robert Rauschenberg style version of filmmaking where it's just like, I'm going to put this kind of piece over here and this is going to have texture. This is going to be paint and this is going to be charcoal and we're going to mess it all together and when you look at it in totality when you look at the tapestry i've created it's not just a series of tricks that i've pulled it's a reflection of the wild influence that the band has and that the that the people who are talking about the band have had on the culture and it shows this kind of expansiveness of their their songwriting and their style making and the movie pays attention also cool stuff that you never hear people talk about. The band has incredible album covers. You don't hear about that sort of stuff

in these movies. You know, the band was really great at being on TV shows like American Bandstand. You know, like most people are not good at that. Their interviews are hilarious on those shows.

So it had a really keen sense for the detail that I think music nerds, music critics, you know people who dig deep into catalogs will appreciate and admire and you know you know that thing when somebody writes a great sentence that has a keen observation in a piece and you're like oh they saw it the way that i saw it and i think that this movie has a lot of that oh you know edgar sees sparks or at least sees pop music the way that i see it which is all the little stuff matters as much as the big pop tune so i really i i dug it i watched it a second time

and i was not bored you know i was as invested i can't remember the last time i was as charmed by a person in a movie any kind of movie documentary regular movie whatever as ron as in the hitler mustache guy and it's not just the Hitler mustache. As you say, there is footage of Sparks in this movie performing at like 75 different European talk shows, you know, across three decades, you know, two dozen albums, you know, like six, seven distinct phases. And Ron looks the same,

all that he's playing his keyboard and he's got the mustache, but it's just the deadpan look on his face. And he sort of looks at the camera and then he looks back at the keyboard. And you could just do a super cut of him going from 1975 to 2005, just bouncing around Europe or whatever and just staying so true to himself. Even as he's just changing everything about himself and his band with every album. He was just a supremely delightful person to spend two and a half hours with it almost feels as if he was born that way looking that way and

being that size you know he's it's just such a self-possessed perfectly formulated rock and roll persona and a perfect contrast to his brother they're great i i had this this everything you said i felt the same way this is a band i I knew about and I had heard a few songs. I never did the deep dive. I was aware of their cult status and now we have this totemic ode to them that's cool to have.

So let's, let's, let's, let's go to our lists. Please. I, you know, this,

like all lists, this is meaningless. These, are these the best of these movies? Yes. Let's put this at meaningless um these are these the best of these movies yes let's put this at the top or bottom of the meaninglessness uh scale this show should be called extra meaningless now that i think about it but nevertheless um you chose five i chose five unsurprisingly we have crossover on two because i think the two i guess technically three but the

two slash three that we have or frankly they would make lists of my favorite movies of all time. Let's start with your number five. Where are you going? My number five is Dave Chappelle's Blot Party from 2005. Michelle Gondry, who I'd forgotten he was the director, which sort of adds to the 2005 of it all. This is a documentary of a summer 2004 blot party in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, thrown by Dave Chappelle. And it has just the purest, let's put on a show, delightful vibe I can remember. I saw this in a theater in 2005 in California, I think.

And just the warmth, just the phenomenal hang of this movie. Kanye West, The Roots, Talib Kweli, Most Deaf, deaf dead prez the fugees reunited and i i hadn't seen it since i saw it in the theater and i was worried returning to it now that like the intervening 15 years you know and the ups and downs of chapelle and kanye and everybody else would sort of affect the way i took in the movie now but that warmth is undiminished you know i it's such a delightful and heartwarming movie. I tear up every time he's hanging around in Dayton, Ohio, Davis, and he finds a marching band. Part of the contriveness, did he just stumble across this marching band? I doubt it. But still,

there's a moment when the marching band director gets to tell the marching band, we're going to get on a bus and go to Brooklynoklyn and you're going to play jesus walks with kanye and just the pure delight the celebration you know the super bowl winning celebration of the band in that moment is such a beautiful thing you know the roots doing you got me with jill scott and erica badu which if you know the history if you're invested in that is a very profound and lovely moment and just cha Chappelle being Chappelle. Who else do you want to spend an hour and a half with under any circumstances than Chappelle? He gets in a rap battle with that guy

who's wearing a free Tibet t-shirt and he says I bet that was a free t-shirt. It's a phenomenal movie. I love it so much and it's a great heartwarming hang. You know, it's totally a time capsule too, because think about the,

think about the reputations of Dave Chappelle or Kanye West in 2021. And frankly, I'm not sure you and I are the best avatars for a conversation about their reputations. I still have a lot of affection for both of them, but they're so much more, those guys were plainly beloved at that time. There was really no complication around their status.

These were, you know, they were figures of creative celebration, you know, and Questlove was the same way and Mos and Talib were the same way and Erykah Badu the same way. And it felt like a make good. And so it's funny to watch Summer of Soul come out right now. Right. And I realized that when Dave organized this concert, this wasn't the first time something like that had happened in New York. You know, a primarily black music festival that could take over a massive part of the city and own and operate a day. Really great movie and also very inventive.

And Gondry kind of at the peak of his powers too, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's not drawing a ton of attention to himself, not doing the full Edgar, right. As it were,

but you can tell that someone, you know, that it's not workmanlike exactly. There's just, there's just a fun, there's a liveliness to it that doesn't draw a ton of attention to himself, but it's still palpable. Nonetheless.

My number five is a movie called dig it's not it's not the dig starring carrie mulligan from 2021 this is a movie called dig exclamation point it's directed by andy timmer she's a documentary filmmaker and it chronicles the kind of friendship

rivalry this feels like the birth of the frenemy i would say between the bands the Dandy Warhols, and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Now, I do not consider myself much of a fan of the Dandy Warhols or the Brian Jonestown Massacre. I don't think you would. I did not expect you to.

Just not my vibe, not my energy. This is a really fascinating movie that takes place effectively over the course of seven years. 2,500 hours of footage of these two bands touring together, creating music, getting terribly and tragically

strung out at times on heroin, drinking, performing, doing all the things that young bands do and watching one sort of rise and one sort of fall in real time. The movie is probably best remembered for the antics of Anton Newcomb and watching one sort of rise and one sort of fall in real time. And, you know, the movie is probably best remembered for the antics of Anton Newcomb,

who is the front man of the Brian Jonestown massacre. And it is just one of those things where some of these movies are just made in the archival. They're just made in what's been captured. You know, they're just, if you have the footage

of people doing outlandish things, you're going to see human frailty. And it's like incredible portrait of human frailty. And it's also one of those things that I think documentary does frankly better than narrative feature filmmaking, which is it's easier to get you to care about people that you don't care about. Like when you're watching a narrative movie and within five minutes, you're like, I do not like our hero.

I do not want to be here. I'm not invested in their story. I could tell you within five minutes of sitting down with anton newcomb that i would not have enjoyed being in his company would not yeah he seemed like a tough hang nevertheless he is very very compelling as is courtney taylor um in the film and it's also just a snapshot of like frankly the the waning days the kind of like frankly the afterbirth of what you've been chronicling on your show you know the 1990s and the idea of like what is alternative rock in the late 90s and early 2000s as this period in history starts to kind of come to a close so just a really cool movie i don't know if you've seen it recently say good night to the rock and

roll era yeah it's it's been a little while for me, but I would be fascinated for a young person now to watch this movie, just because so much of the movie is about authenticity. Did the Dandy Warhols, who had a great deal of success, steal the vibe and the lifestyle of the Brian Jonestown massacre and go out and make TV commercials and become millionaires and be on top of the world for jonestown massacre and like go out and make tv commercials and become millionaires

and be on top of the world for a very short time like is that an inauthentic unrock and roll thing to do like this is just such a pre lana del rey rick ross movie you know and as you said earlier talking about looking at an era and sort of zoning in on on exploring something that's not immediately obvious like to pick these two bands and talk about the late 90s and early 2000s in rock and roll music and just the obsession with cred you know and authenticity it's just this thing

that just doesn't exist this concern anymore but it's so animating to this film I just I would be very curious how young people would take it now that it just it just feels like a dead language you know and just like a dead language you know and just like a dead thing what they're ultimately these two bands like arguing about i completely agree i think that's well put uh there's sort of the inverse of that i think is

in your number four and i'm glad you picked it this one did not even occur to me and i haven't seen it in forever but what's your number four my number four is mad, Truth or Dare from 1991, directed by Alec Kassishian. This is... I don't want this to be left in, but I want this to be left in. Oh, it's fine. Madonna, Truth or Dare, 1991, directed by Alec Kassishian. Chronicling Madonna's 1990 uh Blonde Ambition Tour and this is where to my mind the modern pop star documentary is born you know that that sense of calculation you know this gets blamed a lot for reality tv you know which I don't know how

true that is ultimately but this is okay actually i'm just gonna how i was thinking of how i was gonna sell this to sean and here it's warren baity is in this movie yes he is fantastic he is there is a fantastic so this is after dick tracy madonna and warren baity are some sort of item you know they're frenemies or whatnot and there's a there's a beautiful scene halfway through this movie where madonna is on this grueling tour. She loses her voice. She goes to the doctor. There's a close-up of the doctor crawling down her throat. There's a close-up of her as the doctor crawls down her throat.

And then there's Warren Beatty in the corner being like, why is this a movie? What are these cameras doing here? Why are you doing this? Who would watch this? It's not living for you if it's not on camera like just the the sexiest grumpus ever filmed you know just pissing on reality tv and the pop star lifestyle in real time it's just it's fascinating because everything you're saying about pop stardom especially for women being work and everything you do and say and where and every backstage

quote-unquote interaction it's not nothing is backstage you know every intimacy is just something to be reframed as something you share with the world i think it's all born in this movie because madonna says herself there's there's lots of concert footage too and it's great but madonna says herself like i'm not the best singer i'm not the best dancer what i am is provocative you know like what what i can do better than anybody else is be me and be a pop star and like she has this amazing capacity to make you uncomfortable like there's a scene in this movie where she's at her mother's grave and she's like sprawled across it and like her brother is standing in the woods, like watching her.

And it's just really bizarre. And like critics at the time hated it and thought it was totally contrived. But it's like you're criticizing Madonna for how she should behave at her mother's grave. It's just like a trap. Like it's just Madonna's ability to tie you in knots as you try and figure out if you're rooting for her or revulsed by her. It's just fascinating. You know, we could really use a Madonna in our culture right now. I feel like the person with that level of self-awareness, that level of fearlessness around provocation, but also with

a sense of play. And obviously she was kind of the author of the 1990s sex positive movement, which is obviously massively influential. And she wasn't the first person to become a, you know, a transformer. You know, David Bowie was a transformer. Cher was a transformer. Elvis Presley transformed. Many pop stars over the years transformed. But she seemed to be one of the most self-conscious transformational artists. And this is a snapshot of one period of her transforming

and it's a pretty cool movie i definitely have not seen in 20 years though yeah it's the to the extent that there's a narrative at all like it's very uncomfortable it's like about her relationship with her backup dancers most of whom are gay and like this movie is not progressive by 2021 standards but it was progressive for 1991 that it would even bring up the age crisis but then also madonna's like oh i'm their den mother you know it gets very condescending gets very ill-advised that's like perfect madonna like madonna is still the madonna of our time when aretha franklin died and madonna i think it was the mtv video music awards and just gave this long speech about herself in lieu of honoring Aretha Franklin

and everybody on Twitter was horrified. I was sitting there like, she's still got it. She's still the queen. I could picture Warren Beatty watching that and just smiling ruefully. The most famous image in this movie is her filleting a Coke bottle.

There you go. That's the gig. a Coke bottle. And there you go. That's the gig. That's Madonna. That's number four. I look forward to you replacing your avatar on Twitter with a photo of Madonna filleting a Coke bottle once this pod goes live, Rob. You got it. I'm going to press pause on my number four because we're going to talk about it a little bit later on your list. So why don't we do our shared number three?

Easily my favorite revisit. We cheated here. We picked two movies, but they are part of the trilogy. I love how obnoxious this pick is. We're doing it. Both you and I have The Decline of Western Civilization Part 1 from 1981 and Part 2 from 1988

directed by Penelope Spheeris as our number three entry. Two of three films were made about The decline of western civilization which is to say young people and rock and roll in 81 it was punk music in 88 it's effectively hair metal it's the la scene it's the la scene for punk as well in 81 and i think to guys like us this is a widely known movie but to your point about dig i don't know if it is widely known for younger folks. And I think these are movies

that would work well on younger folks because they are a phenomenal combination of verite filmmaking, concert film footage, and extraordinary interviewing skill. Penelope Spheeris, what she gets people to say in these movies is fucking amazing. she's frankly underrated at her

skill at weaving this narrative together so what do you like about these movies and maybe can you talk about the contrast between part one and part two i think i prefer part one a little bit and it's as you say you the texture you can smell these movies they have a texture you instinctively do the thing where you're at a show, a concert, and you're adjacent to a mosh pit and you raise your arms, your elbows, like in a sort of a defensive crouch. Like you spend the whole movie like that. Both of these movies, like they're just physical experiences. But the first movie is, it's Black Flag. It's the germs. It's X. It's the circle jerks. And there's a format to it

where it's just, we watch them play and then's a format to it where it's just we watch them play and then we hang out with them backstage we just let them cook you know sometimes literally and she's like when x scene from x gets the hiccups like and penelope is just like do you have the hiccups and x he just blows right by it like it's the details for me i was watching i was re-watching this movie with a seven monthmonth-old baby with my daughter sitting in my lap. We were watching, I don't know if she was watching, we were watching, what's the name of the

band? Catholic Discipline. We're watching a band called Catholic Discipline perform and she's scanning the crowd, Penelope is, and there's a punk dude whispering in a punk lady's ear in the crowd. The punk lady makes a scrunched, like disgusted face. And I snorted so loudly that I startled the baby.

Like she did the startled baby, like the limbs just went wah. And she was fine. Like she didn't cry or anything, but that was just a delightful moment. Like these are movies you can visit and revisit. Just seeing all the faces, you know, and just the crowd music, it's crowd movement and just the physicality of them and just the warmth that she brings to them you know even when she clearly you know i don't think she cares for the vast majority of the people she's talking to in part two part

two gets very ugly it's just misogyny it's just a 90 minutes of straight misogyny you know you got kiss and poison you know at the high end but it's just tons of feathered straight misogyny you know you got kiss and poison you know at the high end but it's just tons of feathered like wannabe dopes you know just talking about their dicks and talking about strippers and she's this is sort of the thing where you're just giving them rope to hang themselves you know but it's it's still not quite mean-spirited on her part like there's a tenderness to it even as as she is like just exposing them for the dopes that they are and of course if there's one iconic scene from either of these movies it's the dude from wasp chris holmes from the metal band wasp like floating in a

swimming pool like drunk as hell like dumping vodka on his face with his mother sitting in a chair in a lawn chair next to the pool and you just look at this it's like this guy is going to die before this movie is over and there's a close-up of his mom like with just the most

horrified despairing look on her face and like I can talk about that because that dude is still alive like that dude is thriving

and I'm delighted for him but it's I had the same instinct Rob to look up whether chris holmes was still alive and he is he i mean he looks like absolute shit not that i'm necessarily a peach to look at but right he looks like he's been pouring vodka all through his body for many decades now well someone's like how did you how did you get clean he's like well after your sixth or seventh dui they put you in prison and it's very

hard to drink in prison and like it's very hard to drink in prison it's such a profound beautiful mantra it's these movies are just even if the people are ugly to the depths of their souls there's just a beauty to it and a tenderness to it, even when you know she totally is disgusted by it. Yeah, I think there are interesting archaeological artifacts now of musical history. I think obviously bands like The Germs and X have really been celebrated and valorized as the builders of a scene really in Los Angeles and taking what happened in England and then what happened in New York and kind of translating it to the West Coast. And on the one hand, I think that that film was a little bit more serious and a little bit more admiring of the spirit and the purpose and the goals.

But I do think Penelope Spheeris is turning her nose up at a couple of people and a couple of things. And there are a couple of people in that film that are, especially the fans, that are not very sophisticated. And likewise, I think while you're right that she does seem to be kind of mocking some of the figures in part two, I think she does have a kind of like certainly a sincere interest and fascination with people like Steven Tyler and Joe Perry and even people like Gene Simmons, who, you know, has always struck me as kind of a creep. But as a very, I think, pretty sophisticated and successful and a little bit cruel philosophy on how to win. And that movie is much more about how to win at music than it is about making music that has an ethical value of any kind, which is much more what part one is about. And so they're this great kind of contrast of terms, those two movies. They exist in the same stratosphere, but they're on

different poles. And I don't know, they're also just really fun to watch you know everybody in the film is either a charming doofus or a horrifying monster and that's a great that's great casting you know casting is a huge part of documentary and she does a great job so we love those movies part three i gotta say i have not seen in a long time and it's much less of a music film it's more about yeah it's that's for her and yeah exactly that's for her after part two you know and if you read like her interviews like she to get that movie made and to get that movie shown you know put on dvd at all she had to leverage part one and part two it's like you can only put these out if you put them all out at once and so and i think she met like her long-term boyfriend while making part three and it's it's much more personal to her

and much darker you know there's nothing you know uh there's very little celebratory about part three you know but it's clearly the one closest to her heart definitely i think spheras's career is fascinating the kind of world wait i mean she directed wayne's world she directed the beverly hillbillies movie she directed the second best tom uh chris farley movie uh black sheep you know she's she's had a very odd career right i do think that her best work is is these first two decline of western civilization movies no offense to wayne's world but i agree wayne's world rules it's nothing personal um you want to give your number two my number two is the last waltz uh this is right on the bubble i think of our documentary versus concert film thing you could talk me into or out of this it's 1978 it's martin scorsese of course

the last performance of the band you know the band and i it's if if the dividing line between a documentary and a concert film is there has to be extraordinary backstage detail added, it comes down to whether you consider Rick Danko's shooting pool to be an extraordinary detail. And I do. And so my number two favorite documentary is The Last Waltz. I mean, as a concert film, it's peerless. My top three by far are stop making sense amazing grace and the last waltz i think the best one of the past 20 years at least is is beyonce's homecoming you know the coachella one but i the last waltz sort of stands alone just the talents on stage starting

with the band themselves like my single favorite song from this movie is it makes no difference by the band just rick danko singing but you got neil young you got joni mitchell you got dylan you got the staple singers it's just an absurd cavalcade of riches you know crossing the stage and it's it's just such a wonderful celebratory thing that in its interstitial moments in like the documentary moments they're short it's just marty like sitting around you know shooting the shit or whatever but even in 60 seconds he manages to make the individual members of the band like specific characters like you can see the the the very forceful personality of robbie robertson right like he's like that however you feel about

robbie robertson it's like this is him you know this is the laid-back levon helm you know just how close he is to the soil and just rick danko just in the studio like listening to the music that he's going to make now that the band is done and marty's like what are you going to do now he's like i'm just going to make music and keep busy and then to just hold the camera on rick danko listening to his new music you know in the studio he's staying and it's just such a beautiful moment that says so much about these people as people without having to spend 20 minutes on them it's just it's a very concentrated burst of revelatory vulnerable

documentary content yeah whenever we talk about this movie on the show amanda always rolls her eyes as this is the show that boys try to show me and explain the importance of the band which you know it is but also it's it's the cliche that lives up to the billing in many ways it features the frankly the funniest performance i've ever seen by a great artist which is van morrison in the purple jumpsuit singing caravan with the kicks it also features my my genuine favorite on-screen vocal performance ever which is levon singing the night they drove old dixie down in this movie which is just amazing just playing drums and singing i did that at karaoke once and halfway through it was like i'm not doing

anybody justice i'm not doing the south justice i'm not doing levon i'm not doing myself justice you're too close to the sun exactly but no that's i i my number one and number two i did an obnoxious thing for a website once where i ranked every performance uh in the last waltz and it makes no difference was number thank you thank you number one was it makes no difference but number two is the night they drove old dixie down and that's probably a better number one that's a beautiful beautiful moment you know this is maybe makes me a bit of a dunce considering how many times i've watched this movie, but it occurs to me now

that Fade to Black with the Jay-Z sort of farewell tour, final making of Black Album film is very, very similar to this movie in construction. You know, the kind of bouncing back and forth

between the kind of Verite and interviews and then heading into the performances stuff. Fade to Black, I wonder if he actually retired would it have been on one of our lists has the movie been weakened by the fact that jay is just get cash and samsung checks in 2021 it can't help you know like the black album as a whole i

don't think has taken a critical hit for that reason but i i do think that a concert film is different i think if the band had just jumped back you know onto bonnaroo right like that's obviously not possible for personal reasons but like that the last waltz has to be the last waltz for it to have the power it has but you know what fade to black does have is memphis bleak asking q-tip if he'd like anything from Outback Steakhouse. One of the best things ever. That should be the new theme song to this pod. Extremely special moment. It is your Pearl Jam.

It's Memphis Bleak. You want anything from Outback? It's like, no, I'm good. It's like, there we go. And now it's Sean Fancy with a big, there you go. Perfect. But first, Memphis Bleak. I love that. So let's talk about my number two which is not funny um it's quite a sad film but it's a film that i picked for a very

specific reason it's amy the oscar-winning film from asif kapadia which is a chronicle of the sort of life and the tragic end of the great singer songwriter amy winehouse the reason i picked this is because i felt like i was there for amy winehouse in a way that i was not for really any of these other stories which is to say i wasn't in england when she was recording her first album but i was in new york when she arrived in america on her second album on back to black and i will never in my life forget seeing her i believe was her first u.s show at joe's pub joe's pub you were at joe's pub yes with like 300 people packed house she had the two two dancers alongside her in what would become like that very iconic tour that she put on which you know is also a sort of tragically shown throughout this film yeah but you know not to

go all clive davis on you but when i saw that show i wasically shown throughout this film, but you know, not to go all Clive Davis on you. But when I saw that show, I was like, this is, this will be one of the greatest artists of all time. This is a person who has completely mastered what the best artists do, which is they take the past and they collide it with the future in such a profound way.

And she obviously immensely gifted singer had like the, the songwriting touch, the sense of poetry, the sense of modernity that you really need to be successful singing those kinds of songs. I was just so taken with her, the way that sometimes an artist gets inside of you. And so I felt just very dedicated to her as her career was unfolding. And she had such a, even more so than the Kurt Cobain's or the Jimi Hendrix's or the Jim Morrison's or the Janis Joplin's,

the people. So we sort of valorize who die young in the music business. She had such a short runway and died so quickly. And this movie, while I think at times it's like very hard to watch and some could consider a bit ghoulish the way that it kind of looks back on this very difficult part of her life. Um,

I do think celebrates her in like a sincere way and i i it's watching her in the studio with mark ronson record some of those songs and just hearing the isolated vocals in that movie i'm like i was right this this was a truly truly truly special artist so i really like amy that's why i picked it i had a hard time with it's not the ghoulishness but just the tragedy of it i saw this movie in the theater and i wrote about it in tandem with the kirk cobain movie that came out around that time montage of heck i don't know if it had been out for a while or if it would premiere it on hbo or something and so those two movies are

twinned in my mind i had a really hard time with the tragedy of it and i the the cobain movie is really well made and with its use of like animation and like collage sort of echoes the sparks movie to a degree but like the cobain movie gets ghoulish and i just i have there's like a scene of kurt cobain clearly strung out with a baby on his lap with francis being on his lap and it definitely is like okay it's like i've had enough and i i think that my view of amy is colored by that movie like those are always twinned in my mind as like the tragic pop star you know downfall movies and i the way amy handles hers is is elegant the vast majority of the time and you know it's a grammy

thing like for my blake incarcerated is just such a beautiful amazing bizarre moment it's a grammy moment in history but i what i can say about amy is that i didn't feel as gross as like whitney made me feel like like the whitney houston documentary which is which is tender and well made and does that same trick of showing you just how volcanically powerful this person was but also has this sort of late breaking like sexual assault allegation which is just it just sort of does your head in and i just i this is i can't watch horror movies. I just have a problem with just the squeamishness of the tragicness of movies like this. And so I can appreciate how well-made Amy is and in the end, how respectful it is ultimately. But it's just such a hard watch ultimately and just such a tragedy.

And it's just very hard for me to take a lot of the time. It's totally understandable. I think a lot of people had that reaction because they felt like we lost somebody who is a very special artist. I'll do my number one first before we luxuriate in yours because I think it's an interesting artifact to talk through. My number one is

a bit of a salutation to the nature of this format. It's a movie that I think can never happen again. It's called Don't Look Back. It's a portrait of Bob Dylan in 1965, 66, around that time, directed by the late,

great D.A. Pennebaker. And it's a portrait of an artist on the road to hatred. It's a really, really fascinating picture of a guy who is becoming the most famous musician in America. Right. And grappling and carefully dodging, committing to anything or anyone. And Bob Dylan has always been understood to be an elusive and somewhat prickly persona. If you want to see it in real time, coming into its own, it's in this film. And I don't think Bob Dylan is mean, but I do think that he knows that people wanted a piece of him and he wasn't willing to give anybody any piece of him.

And so it's so interesting to have a camera basically perched on his shoulder while everyone is coming for him, looking for him to make grand declarations about the youth of America, looking for him to explain his songs, which are mystical and defy explanation in such beautiful ways. And I don't think you could get a movie that is this honest and this anti-hero

made now about a pop star. And I think part of it is because Bob Dylan didn't care. Part of it is because maybe he didn't know what D.A. Pendidaker was going to put together. And part of it was constructed in the same way that mythology is kind of constructed. The movie famously opens with that cue card performance of subterranean homesick blues, often called the first music video. And so the same way that Truth or Dare is about the creation of a phase of Madonna's career,

and the Taylor Swift film Miss Americana is about a creation of the phase this is a phase of Dylan and a lot of people have just been ripping off Dylan bouncing from persona to persona for the last 50 years in pop music so I thought we should acknowledge its greatness absolutely I mean truth or dare by design is trying to remind you of don't look back and that's on a superficial level they're both in black and white like the backstage parts of truth or dare and black and white the verite aspect but the first thing about that is that bob dylan backstage is he's tapping on his typewriter you know or he's bagging on donovan you know he's listening to joan baez sing or he just summons a dude from time

magazine to yell at a dude from Time Magazine at great length. It seems exhausting, but it also seems leisurely. He's just posted up, whereas Madonna is constantly getting her makeup done and flirting with her backup dancers, trying not to get arrested or excommunicated.

You could take it as a very superficial lesson about the difference in effort required between male pop stars and female pop stars. But I, I wonder how contrived the Time Magazine scene is, you know, cause I, if I recall correctly, it just sort of jumps into it. Like we don't, you don't really know what set Dylan off in this moment where he starts starts bagging on Time Magazine.

And you sort of wonder if he was actually aggrieved by something that the guy that the hapless reporter said or if this was sort of just a setup like there's there's a lil wayne movie documentary like from 2008 or so like the late 2000s the carter which is another thing where like he clearly didn't know what he was getting into and he like fought it once he found out but like it's it's not a great movie but if you remember one scene it's like a hapless reporter asking lil wayne you know like you're from new orleans like is your music like jazz and like little wayne takes grave offense to this question is like i don't like jazz it's not like and they go back and forth wait 90 seconds then

they kick the dude off the bus and it's like that's the purest don't look back moment that i have seen since don't look back and it's just it's you vacillate between rooting for dylan and sort of understanding empathizing with how hard it must be to be shuttled from hotel room to be hotel room and like have his car mobbed you know and just then you go back on stage and you play Blowing with the Wind and everybody adores you. And then you're back in the hotel room with Joan again.

But at the same time, it's like, this isn't such a bad life. The Pop Star documentary is the 10,000 of which I've watched since then. Most of them require more effort from the Pop Star than this one does you know for whatever that's worth you just conjured frankly too many stories of my time in from 2004 to 2008 talking to rappers for various magazines but i am reminded of one wouldn't you tell that story about the carter

which is uh i went to espn Zone with Wale in 2006. And I sat down. Wale met me at the table, and he was joined by two of his friends. And they sat at the table with us. And I attempted to interview Wale over some chicken fingers at the ESPN Zone. I was going to ask what the apps were. If he's a mozzarella sticks guy, if he's a wings guy. I want to say potato skins were on the table. That sounds like a Wale. Yeah.

Food. Yeah. And so we were watching a Knicks game and I'm asking him very serious questions about being an artist in the DMV and the evolution of hip hop. And he's just like one word answering me. Tough, tough, tough situation. We've all been there as,

as bad music journalists as I once was. And, um, finally he was like, I don't want to do this anymore. And I freaked out because I was like, is he going want to do this anymore and I freaked out because I was like, is he going to leave?

What's he going to do? What does this mean? We haven't finished our chicken fingers. What's going on here? And I thought he was going to kick me off the bus proverbially and instead he was like, let's go play pop a shot.

So we went upstairs and played pop a shot for an hour and talked the whole time. Great equalizer. I wedged the pop a shot, the recorder right on top of the pop a shot. I was going to ask right on top of the pop-a-shot. I was going to ask you how you did this.

That's a noisy transcription. It was very tough, but I got what I needed for the 500-word piece I wrote. Fabulous. 500 words. It's pop-a-shot, two words with a hyphen or three words. That's a tough compression gig there, Sean. That's beautiful. I pulled it off, Rob.

What a beautiful image. That's a beautiful image. I pulled it off. That's a beautiful image. You playing pop a shot with Wale. Yeah, and we've been friends ever since. We talk every day. Yeah, you have.

I'm sure you do. But that's the thing is when you make these movies and you put yourself in this position, you run the risk of getting thrown off the bus. You run the risk

of getting ejected. Speaking of getting ejected, I think that this is a nice transition to some of the complex relationships that we see that happen inside of bands and inside of those who are close to bands. My number four and your number one. So what's your number one, Rob? My number one is Metallica, Some Kind of Monster.

From 2004, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sanofsky. I love this movie with all my heart this is metallica starting in 2001 attempting to record their eighth album state anger which uh finally came out in 2004 and is not beloved by metallica fans i don't believe the drum sound is an issue that the movie does not explore actually but metallica has lost their bass player jason newstead, who's just gotten fed up. There is furious, constant infighting between James Hetfield, the front man, of course, and the drummer, Lars Ulrich. Kirk Hammett, the lead guitarist, who's like a surfer dude, sort of powerless, zen goofball, is just being relentlessly ignored.

James goes into rehab like 45 minutes into this two-and-a-half-hour movie, and he stops hour movie. And he stops the movie in movie time for a year. And seeing this movie in a theater is one of my best movie going memories. I was in Berkeley, California, I believe. And the thing about it is, Metallica looked ridiculous. Just relentlessly ridiculous. For, let me do the math, 150 minutes of screen time but it's never quite making fun of them it is right up to the line of being pure mockery like when you watch movies like this

you're gonna think a spinal tap at least once and possibly the entire time when you watch a music documentary just the pure mockery of it but everybody in that theater went in metallica fans and went out metallica fans you know and reveled in the absurdity but still loved them for it and two moments from this movie that stay with me it's early on lars and james are yelling at each other and lars goes you're being a complete dick and kirk slaps his. He's like in the center of the frame and he just goes, like, oh, it's over. Like this, here we go. And it's the reverberation

of that forehead slap, you know, in IMAX or whatever was a beautiful thing. And then later in the movie, they're finally making the record and they won't put guitar solos on the record because guitar solos are dated now,

you know, in 2002, 2003. And Kirk is railing against this rule. And he gives this soliloquy where he says, if we have no guitar solos because we think they're dated, then that dates it to this period right now. We're going to sound dated if we try to sound not dated and the crowd cheered yes in my theater like a fist pumping like a guitar solo of words and like he sounds helpless and they don't care and they don't listen to him and there are no guitar solos as such on state anger but it was still such a beautiful and profound moment of triumph, even within failure. And I think that works for the entire movie. I totally agree. I'm so glad you pointed out that moment because revisiting the movie, I was like, what an extraordinary logician Kirk

Hammett is. He really just nailed that argument. He's still lost. He was outnumbered. And frankly, Saint Anger will be a dated album and it will not be the most beloved. It won't even be one of the eighth or ninth most beloved Metallica records when it comes down to it. But it's this is an amazing, amazing film. Very similarly to some of the other movies you've talked about where it's like, I don't know. You really you got to be Metallica to make this movie happen. There's actually jokes in the film about how much they have paid for this documentary and whether or not it's going to make any money because not only did they hire this sort of life

coach therapist to guide them through the production of this film in a very tumultuous time in their in their existence but they hired you know not just two jerks they hired joe berlinger and bruce sanofsky on the strength of their paradise lost documentaries these are some of the most acclaimed and gifted documentarians the last 30 years what an emotional swing that is it's crazy and these guys obviously are they're used to traumatic environments and they found themselves one not quite on the order of paradise lost but it is the stuff going on between lars and james is mega it. It is Cain and Abel. It is true brotherly conflict and two people who desperately need each other

and know that they need each other, but they're in a period where they just do not want to have to deal with each other's bullshit. And they're both in an interesting moment of either imagined or true self-actualization, which you never think rock stars can do this, but Lars, you know,

is this kind of Danish intellectual art critic masquerading as one of the great heavy metal drummers. Yeah. And James is this kind of bullet headed fever monster of pain, anguish, and, and rhythm guitar. And yet they both have a lot of therapy speak and they've both been, anguish, and rhythm guitar, and yet they both have a lot of therapy speak,

and they've both been, you know, I think Lars has also been to AA and has been in rehab over time, and so they have all of that vocabulary, and so it makes them great talkers. Not every rock star is a good talker. These guys are phenomenal at looking into the camera and saying what they think about something,

and you can't underestimate that. That's a huge part of making a movie. Right. When Lars is like, only one time while recording Ride the Lightning did James say,

dude, I love you. And it was after 42 beers. But it had to be 42 beers and we had to be alone. And just the narrative of the movie is that James gets clean and Lars resents it.

Yes. You know, it's like you're improving yourself and that upsets me, you know? And it's, it's a fascinating dynamic, you know, and just to have Kirk on the side,

be like, guys, like don't fight. Like he said, Kirk says at one point, he's like, I try to be an example of being egoless to the other guys. And it's,

oh my God, I love Kirk in this movie so much. He is, he is Sisyphus really. It's a tough task that he has. Um, this is a great movie and I don't know, we've talked about a lot of really,

really good films here. Is there anything else on your honorable mentions or things you want to cite before we close out? We should probably talk about gimme shelter at least for a second. Um, this was, I was sort of on the fence about this give me shelter of course is from 1970 it is the rolling stones at altamont in 1969 you know at the terrible free

concerts with security provided by the hell's angels that ends with basically a riots you know and a murder a death on camera and i i re-watched this movie recently with the thought that like i'm going to appreciate this for historical reasons like this is an important milestone in rock docs but like it's not that compelling to watch in 2021 it's received with them but no i am what i was gonna say is that it was absolutely fascinating to me again wasn't really see i've struggled with it with with revisiting it well okay. So this is a glib comparison, but I thought a lot about the Fyre Festival, right?

And like the run of Fyre Festival and documentaries and just that comparison breaks down in terms of cultural significance, in terms of the scale of the tragedy or whatever.

But there's something about the mundane bureaucracy of catastrophe, right? The first half of Gimmeimme shelter has to be boring it has to be sitting in the lawyer's office on 1969 speakerphone going like well people could park at the neighbor's farm like cut to the highway of death right like the miles of abandoned cars and you just it's the last 30 20 minutes of that movie where the stones are on stage is just it's a harrowing thing and there's this i was reading wesley morris about uh the the quest

love movie that's coming out now and he was talking about the difference between a great and a merely passable sort of documentary concert film is the crowd how the filmmaker uses the crowd and there's this stunning moment to me watching now and give me shelter we're like the shit's going down and the hell's angels are beating the shit out of everybody and this is a disaster and everybody is horrified and mick jagger is at the foot of the stage and there are eight to ten fans like pressed up into him and you can see all their faces clearly and they're all so dismayed and they're they're pleading with mick jagger to do something you know and there's a guy there's one guy who's

like got tears going down his face and you can't hear what he's saying obviously he's like man man and they're just pleading with him to stop this and you can never tell of course like if mick can see these people or if he can grasp what's going on but like mick just soaks in their bad vibes for like 30 seconds and then like shimmies away like he chicken strides like he goes the other side of the stage and then a dude gets stabbed in the head to death like five minutes later it's just such a stunning moment and it's this this movie is sort of oversold you know sometimes it's like the death of the 60s or whatever but it it is it's power even if you know it's coming i think it's power now is that you know it's coming and you watch the first 45 minutes and the stones look

totally bored you know and just sort of bemused by it all. And the lawyers are just sort of bumbling. But just the horror movie arc to it is still so fascinating and so terrible. Yeah, I think I only have a hard time revisiting it because its polarity is what is so challenging. The first half of the movie is pretty dull, like you said. And it is, you're right that if you're sitting down to watch this movie for the first time, it movie is pretty dull like you said and it is you're right that if you're sitting down to watch this movie for the first time it's setting you up it's easing you into the story very very carefully and then to only to hammer you at the end but also you know in the

same way that you talked about amy the final 30 minutes the movie are really really hard to watch and it's like the highest stakes possible because someone loses their life um but i will say like when we worked on Woodstock 99, we did talk about Gimme Shelter a little bit. You know, lives were lost at Woodstock 99. The profundity and the scary nature of the crowd and the way that the crowd was managed at that festival too is impacted what kind of a show it was

and what part the artists played in stoking some of that and what awareness the artists had about what was happening in the crowd is this unknowable fascinating chasm of experience for all of these people the same way that mick might have known something was going on but what did he really know was going on and how did that affect the way that he did anything and what does it mean to in the just to take it back to the beginning of what you said, the way that Katy Perry, despite being in enormous pain, would plaster that smile on her face.

When you're a musician and when you sold out a show, you got to perform. That's your number one responsibility. The show must go on. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

This show went on. It went on and on and on until it didn't. Amanda is glued to her earbuds. Yeah. I promise you she's not. Amanda is glued to her earbuds. I promise you she's not. Amanda's on the beach somewhere. You and I are sitting in our homes.

Rob, thank you so much for coming back to the show. Anytime. Anytime. Okay, now let's go to my conversation with Garrett Price. Woodstock 99, what was your perception of Woodstock 99, the festival? I ordered the pay-per-view. I vividly remember I was becoming a sophomore in college. I was living in my first apartment with a roommate. And I remembered watching 94 when I was in high school. And I was like, I loved the music of that time. I'm guilty of that.

I think a lot of us were. And I vividly remember wearing the pay-per-view, having friends over. And it's funny. I remember it being a bit of a shit show, but never, you know, not as much as I discovered years back reflecting upon it. And I think a lot of people feel that way or will feel that way once we kind of, you know, see where we've explored with the story. But again, yeah, I was a fan of the music.

It embodied the zeitgeist of my time. And that's where I think Woodstock stories are so fascinating because they, like I said, embody the zeitgeist of their times. You know, it's more about the people that were there than about the music, I think, a lot of times. And that's what excited me about telling the story. When did you learn that maybe things were not as rosy as they seemed with the festival? Was it that same year?

Was it many years later? Many years later, I did not know about, you know, a lot of the aftermath and accusations, you know, the rampant amount of sexual assault accusations, the deaths that occurred. You know, again, it just felt like a crazy time, you know, and it was something that was really visceral to watch on TV. I mean, some of these performances like Korn and the Chili Peppers and Limp Bizkit, they were crazy to watch. But, you know, they were the music of my time and my generation at this time and music that I'm guilty of seeing them in concert live, too. So it all just felt appropriate at the time. You know, I was in college. I didn't think much about the cultural

context and the aftermath of this stuff. That's really one of the things that the film does so well is provide that context and understanding. But why did you want to make this movie? What was it about this story that you felt needed to be explored more deeply? Partially, I love telling music stories. To to me music docs are catnip i mean i eat it up um but you know the more i think important level i think you know it's hard not to associate myself with a lot of the people that went to this festival and i think i'm just as guilty as a lot of us are we're acting are. I was acting like some of these people, not at Wichita 89 per se, but in life in general when I was 18, 19 years old in the late 90s. And again, and I wanted to explore why I felt like this was appropriate at the time or was okay, which looking back i'm terrified that i acted like this possibly um you know it it's it's wild

i think you look at the cultural context surrounding this festival you know i talk about like girls gone wild promos were on 24 7 i i remember sitting watching tv with my parents and a girls gone wild commercial would come on it's so weird to think about nowadays um columbine just happened a couple months before witch stock 99 which was you know which was you know culturally life-changing in america you don't hear things like that happening um you know you're the y2k panic was sitting in you know this is the unknown so there's all these kind of contextual cultural socio-political things happening around this festival that I

think this festival just stood for. It's such a perfect kind of mirror into the time. And not only from the music that played there, but from the people that attended and the people that the promoters marketed towards. So the festival became emblematic of so many things and the film does a great job of identifying some of those strands, you know, the rise of the internet and the way that people are able to kind of communicate and participate without having to necessarily look at someone, the collision of this like post-grunge moment in rock with this pop music, this kind of Gen X millennial rage that seems to be bubbling under the surface.

Of all of the kind of big themes of the movie, what is the one that most resonated with you? And how did you go about trying to identify it and explore it in the movie? Yeah. I think right from the beginning, something I really wanted to explore, and I think it's kind of the major theme of the film is power dynamics and the shifting of power dynamics at this time um whether it's generational or racial or gender i think they're all touched upon some way in this this project um the one that really interested me the most was you you have this festival you know being put on by basically hippies turned capitalists, pushing their ideals in the way they had it on a younger generation, which I think is dangerous.

And I think we're all guilty of it. I'm guilty of it with my children. I'm guilty of it going to Coachella. And why are these kids watching a performance through their phone? They should be enjoying it. But like, who am I to say why, how this generation should act? I think it's the exact same thing with, you know, I wanted to explore is why should these,

you know, these guys from the counterculture revolution, you know, time generation saying, this is the way generation X should be acting, or they, these are the things they should have that I had in their life would be so much better. So, you know, there's a little bit of like boomerism that I'm exploring a little bit of this. And then on the gender side of things, I mean, again, I talked about earlier, this is the era of Girls Gone Wild, and Maxim Magazine, and FHM, and the Lad Rags that were everywhere, the Mags. And it just felt acceptable to objectify women at this time. And I talked to so many women who went to this festival. It was a horrifying experience, constantly getting chanted at to lift their shirts and

pressured. It was almost the only way to get away from people was to lift your shirt. So you have these guys that are promoting the ideals of the sexual revolution and free love in this toxic swamp wasteland of culture in the late 90s, and that shit's going to happen. And it did happen. So throughout production, you had been describing this movie. You really pitched this movie as a horror movie. So how did you go about making it feel? And honestly, I do think it feels ultimately like a horror movie. How did you make that so in the movie? Yeah, I think deliberately in my career, I've been very lucky where I've chosen to work between documentary and narrative projects. I don't't know i'm an editor by trade

that's what i do this is only my second film i've made as a documentary but i think you know kind of being able to kind of cross the line of both kind of genres of filmmaking uh has really helped me because as a filmmaker because i think the strongest documentaries are the ones that take you know structure and themes of narrative films and really use that in the storytelling of documentaries. And I think in the lines become so blurred now these days between documentary and narrative, like narrative films become more documentary ask and documentaries becoming

more narrative ask. And I, and I was like this, I always look at a project. I'm like, what are the narrative? How would this be a narrative movie? Like with my last film with love Antosha, it was a coming of age story. That's the, that's the, that was the film I wanted to make. And this was like, this is a classic eighties, you know, teen thrasher film. You know, you have a group of kids going upstate for a weekend of drugs, sex and rock and roll. And, you know, as that weekend unfolds, so just some pretty horrific moments so and it almost worked as a perfect three-act structure between friday saturday

and sunday um and it in a way it wrote itself as i started to you know unfold and tell the story um and you know it it was also important to kind of use the festival to kind of, again, what I loved about the opportunity to tell the story and just the ringer and having Bill and you as a producing partner in this was kind of in the vein of like some of the strongest 30 for 30s for me. You were the ones that took a moment in sports, but had something bigger to say about the culture. And this, I want to do the same thing. I want to take you through this festival but as kind of my a story but the b story is to step back and kind of explore the cultural context so it was you know finding that balance of this horrific kind of on boots on the ground weekend progression it's very linear and it's storytelling but also when do you step back and kind of say, hey, this was going on, you know, outside of this festival, you know, and that was kind of the approach.

And like I said, that last night, it just really took, you know, that was the night of murders, basically. Yeah. I want to ask you a little bit about the sort of the build up there and what you felt it was important to show and not show. But, you know, one of the things that jumps out in the film is I was not necessarily somebody who was a huge fan of Kid Rock or Korn or Limp Bizkit. I had an awareness of those bands. I followed them. I followed popular music very closely. But I wasn't buying those records. And still, in watching your film and specifically seeing a couple of the performances,

especially that Korn performance, which takes place very early in the festival. And seeing, I don't know how many people it was. It feels like 100,000 people simultaneously losing their minds during this performance is really powerful. And yet you also don't want to undermine the gravity of the story that you're telling. So how did you go about balancing these really kind of frankly, exciting and breathtaking musical performances with the deeper, more contextual aspects of the story? Yeah. You know, the music,

I mean, these artists, they tapped into something. I mean, I think I'll have to forget how massively popular, you know, specifically, I guess new metal was at that time. And these, you know, specifically, I guess, new metal was at that time.

And these performances, they're so visceral and just all encompassing. Again, this is pre cell phones. Everyone is just locked in watching these things. And there's, it's a connection I don't think we'll ever see again between an artist and their fans or an audience. And it's just incredible to watch but like you said you know there are some very sensitive things that were very important to tell about the story also and that's what makes it such a

polarizing story because it's not it would be too easy to talk about it be too easy to poke fun of everything you know it's not a comedy it that's the easy way out of telling a story like this uh there's something really interesting and you know you know it's not black and white it's very gray you know exploring something like this because again i talked to many people that had the time of their lives that weekend and i talked to a lot of people had the worst three days of their lives so i i wanted it to get both sides of the coin you know it needs to it needs to take you back to a time that you enjoyed a lot of the coin, you know, it needs to,

it needs to take you back to a time that you enjoyed. A lot of us enjoyed this time too. And, and whether you're a fan of the music or not, you know, every single word to those songs, you know, they were, you know, everyone knows those songs. I feel like that are, that are, that are in this film and that were, you know, the music of this generation that were, you know, on the radio 24 seven or or MTV 24-7, which is another big part of the story,

is their role in kind of shaping the culture of the late 90s when they still were a dominant force in music and culture. I hope I answered your question. I was kind of all over the place with that. No, no, that's good. How did you figure out who to talk to?

How did you find people who went to the festival? How did you find people who went to the festival? How did you find artists who performed? Who was comfortable talking? What was that experience like? You know, it was a lot of blind emails and Twitter, you know, stalking. It's, you know, we made a movie during the pandemic, which had its challenges, but also had its advantages um so it's i always explain as a kind of a catch-22 because you know in normal times i'd be traveling all over the country with my crew doing interviews

you know this i had to rely on blind crew local crews people were everywhere no one could travel which had its challenges but at the same time i don't think i would have gotten half the interviews if a lot of these musicians weren't sitting at home you know not being able to tour um a lot of these uh attendees you know were stuck at home weren't going to work so people were excited to be involved in something so between a lot of like twitter stalking and youtube searching for uh archival and who shot this and and then uh luckily, when I kind of pitched this to you guys, I found out you guys had done a podcast on Woodstock 99. And you guys connected me with Stephen Hyden,

who was a massive asset in telling the story and being a part of this and being kind of a consulting producer. And he had done a lot of the legwork for me and introduced me to some of the people he had interviewed for his podcast and it just became you know it just we actually started to get more people than we could handle in the film and that's telling a story like this you know i feel bad we would cut out because you start to get a lot of different points of views you want to get as many points of views as possible and it's really important um in telling the story. But it got to too many at one point, unfortunately. But I think we found our balance in the end. In terms of the artists that you talked to,

did you find that they were self-reflective about the moment? Were they surprised to hear that there was so much anarchy? What did you find amongst them just generally? No, I think they had a lot of time to think about it. And they were all a lot more open talking about it than I ever could have imagined. I thought it would have been kind of like, oh, yeah, we did that. It wasn't a big deal at the time. No, they thought about it. I get some really strong commentary i believe uh specifically from my artist um and you know and we got people all the way from jewel to scott staff of creed to moby the offspring and the list goes on and it it it it again as i'm becoming as i'm making more of these films you know i'm becoming more comfortable interviewing people. Uh, I,

I find you just let people talk, you know, and they will tell you things if you just listen. And that's, you know, I've become more comfortable doing that and just kind of setting them up to tell their story. And they do all the hard work for me, which is always great. Was there one interview that you felt like unlocked the story for you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think Maureen Callahan, um, she at the time had written an expose for spin

magazine on Woodstock 99 and she, I would say her and Steve Hyde and also kind of that glue to kind of, again, find, help me take me through things were happening at the festival and the bigger picture, cultural, sociopolitical things going on and how you relate those two. And they were kind of that, again, that,

that mirror into society that I was searching for that could, and Wesley Morris too, which was, he was amazing opening up for me. Again, because you want to be as objective as possible in telling stories um and the only way i can achieve that is getting as many different points of views as possible and that's that's what's really important so besides just having the journalists it was also the attendees

that were i think vital uh to really kind of you know take me through the festival and the cool thing too is like 99 of the people in this film were there at the Air Force Base that weekend back in July of 1999. That was really important to me also. I didn't want just a bunch of talking head experts telling the story. I want people to experience the story. And this is also as much a kind of a live festival concert film as an exploration of how it kind of slid into hell. did you go look at other concert docs in the past to prepare how did you prep to start

cutting this movie i mean yeah i mean i that was important too i think it's not just showing it's not a clip show it's not a clip documentary it's it again we live in performances. And then what I love is those performances become the score of the movie. And every song chosen, yes, it's a memorable, nostalgic song, but it also is serving as something that has a little more subtext to it to kind of make points and driving them home. And so it was really important to not just like grab a 10 second clip of a performance and there you sit and sit and talk about it it was to use these songs in a way that you know you feel like you're there i want they're loud too i want them to be a little overbearing and uncomfortable

like it is when you go to a music festival you know and especially this music festival as as as those days progressed but then i also wanted them to serve a purpose in scoring the commentary being told. And that was really important to me. And it was very deliberate decision-making in that. One of the things that we talked about a lot after we started seeing cuts of your film was how much to show. There's a lot of disgusting imagery over these three days.

There's a lot of... Obviously, there were a lot of images disgusting imagery over these three days there's a lot of um obviously there were a lot of images of of women and men taking their clothes off or walking around nude or being asked or or chanted at like you said um there's also obviously the the anarchy of the final night um so how did you figure out what should what we should see and what we don't need to see in the context of telling the story right you know as far as like nudity goes i'm very cautious i did not want to be exploitive at all in this um it'd be as respectful as possible but at the same time just like a lot of people i talked to that were there you had to be exhausted by it you know so it was finding again that balance of showing enough where it felt like it was abundant to a point of, you know, just almost gross out. You know, people were getting grossed out by it at a point.

But also, you don't want to show too much where it just feels like, you know, living in nudity and showing as many boobs as possible. So that was always a cautious decision and sharing scenes with different people that could give me perspective. And it's, you know, we talk about, you know, I think some of the stuff that happens in this film can be very triggering for people because it takes them back again to a time in the late 90s where this you know this

attitude uh was pretty you know abundant in the way people acted um specifically men towards women at this time um so that we were very cautious of and then again at the end when kind of the anarchy you know uh takes place it it needs to feel nuts but it's again it's not an action movie it's it's getting finding that balance where it's enough you get the point i don't want to exhaust you by it um and you know to me we talked about this like i could never imagine this being as you guys say in rewatchables, a Netflix series. Because it's exhausting. In the best possible way, I think, watching this film. But it's enough.

So when you... Throughout the story, there's basically a core tension of who's responsible for this. Whose fault is this? Why did this happen? Why is this why did this happen why did this descend into this chaos they don't want you to necessarily spoil what you're what you do in the film which i think is very artful in terms of identifying that but did your opinion change at all about where some of the responsibility lies or maybe your opinion about somebody like fred durst who became this kind of stalking horse for a lot of conversations about responsibility? Yeah. There's a lot of people, a lot of finger pointing that was going

on after this, as I discovered, as I started to make this. And a lot of people, I think musicians have always been scapegoats. Same with movies when things go wrong. And again, it's just too easy to do that. I think things are much more complex than that, you know, and when I went in with this, I really wanted to pose this question if the festival was in fact a victim of its time, you know and not to give things away. I think I'm able to answer that, but also some of the more of the complexities that go along with it.

I think there's a lot of guilty parties and, and again, it just did, did we need a Woodstock 99? I mean, or is it up? And again, is it up to generations to find their own thing? And I think that's what I found so fascinating and exciting to kind of pose that question in this film. And I'm excited for people to see and see if they have their own answer to that. Spending all this time with the music of that time, do you still have an affection for it? Where do you stand on the music of 99 Now?

You should see my Spotify most played list right now, Sean. I can't just turn it on and we have people over. I might get a little embarrassed. I'm always going to have enough action for it. I mean, again, this is the music of my time,

you know, and there's a lot of good stuff that I think that, you know, transcends time also. And again, I think it allowed me to explore some of these genres and see how we got from one point to there and how we've kind of skirted past that but i i think we're kind of

kind of new metal's kind of making it a renaissance right now i would you know i think you know you see bands like you know post malone and you know some of this it's i would say almost like emo hip-hop is kind of like the new new metal in a weird way it's just again it's just taking these different genres and blending them together and it it hits people you know it it talks to people and i think it did in 1999 with a lot of that music then and i think it's doing it now with a lot of the artists now that again i don't quite understand it but who am i to say, you know, what kids should be listening to it?

Just like who are, you know, hippies from the late sixties saying what kids my age should have been listening to. Garrett, we end every episode of this podcast by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen. Have you seen anything good lately?

Oh, I mean, I, I, yeah, I, we just finished Maravistown. I went to school with Brad Inglesby.

So I was happy to finally catch up on that. And it was great. What did you think? Yeah. I loved it. I was totally enthralled. And he knocked it out of the park. So I want to say, since we started working, I've become an avid listener of the big picture.

So keep it up, Sean. Yeah. That's really nice i appreciate that um thanks for coming on today congratulations on woodstock 99 love peace and rage check it out on hbo hbo max it's an amazing achievement by garrett and his team and proud to have been a part of it so thanks garrett thanks sean harvilla and of course our producer bobby wagner for his work on this episode i hope you'll watch woodstock 99 on hbo and hbo max please tune in next week for the next episode of gene and roger on the big picture feed