DiG!

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DIG! movie poster

DiG! is a 2004 documentary film directed by Ondi Timoner, and produced by Ondi Timoner, Vasco Nunes and David Timoner. Compiled from seven years of footage, it contrasts the developing careers of the bands The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and the bands' respective frontmen Courtney Taylor and Anton Newcombe. It won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Newcombe argues that the documentary was unfair in its portrayal of him.

[edit] Synopsis

Compiled from 2,000 hours of footage and narrated by Courtney Taylor, DiG! follows the underground artist Anton Newcombe, revealing him to be an important yet largely unnoticed artist of our time.

In 1996, Anton Newcombe and his band The Brian Jonestown Massacre – who in a decade independently released 11 albums, 3 recorded in one year – are hell-bent on staging a revolution in the music industry. They are convinced their friends, The Dandy Warhols, will join them to create a united front. But Anton destroys every opportunity for financial success. While tracking the destructive path of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, DIG! also accompanies the more "well-adjusted" Warhols through their leader Courtney Taylor, as they navigate the corporate sea, trying to maintain their creative edge while starring in mega-budget music videos and entertaining crowds in the tens of thousands.

DiG! is about both musicians’ love and obsession, gigs and recordings, arrests, uppers and downers - their choices between art and industry, which unfold with the passage of time.

[edit] Response from Anton Newcombe

On the band's official website, Brian Jonestown Massacre frontman Anton Newcombe publicly denounced the film as "a series of punch-ups and mishaps taken out of context, and at worst, bold-faced lies and misrepresentation of fact."