Metallica: This Monster Lives

by Joe Berlinger

  And so, here we were, on top of the world. Lars, guitarist Kirk Hammett, and bassist Jason Newsted were milling around the suite, as were Cliff and Peter—the co-owners of Q Prime Management—and Marc Reiter, a senior employee of Q Prime who is primarily responsible for the day-to-day marketing of Metallica. We made small talk for a while. We thanked them for letting us use their music in Paradise Lost 2. We talked a little about the wrongfully convicted kids in the film, who had now been imprisoned for six years. The topic of how great the view was from up here, introduced by Bruce, came and went. We were running out of things to say to each other. I was playing with my sneakers, mentally preparing my speech about why Metallica should let us stick a camera in its collective face for a year. I wanted them to broach the subject of the film first, and for some reason, they weren’t. Cliff thoughtfully stroked his gray beard. As the silence began to get uncomfortable, it hit me that we were waiting for singer and guitarist James Hetfield to show up. I was about to learn a cardinal rule of Metallica, one I would come to know well in the coming years: Nothing Happens Without James. If James isn’t around, no action shall be taken, no business discussed. Lars is in many ways Metallica’s mouthpiece, but James is the capo.

  After a few more minutes of shoe picking, view gazing, and small-talk making, James mercifully showed up, accompanied by his full-time bodyguard, the kind of beefy guy employed to snap the neck of anyone who gets near his charge. I instantly noticed that James has an incredible presence. When he walks into a room, the light seems to pool around him. He truly is a rock star, without really trying. I remember thinking, even then, that he carried that powerful aura like a burden. There was something intimidating about him that made me tongue-tied, careful to measure every word. Bruce has an ease with all types—be they mall rats, trailer-park kids, or James Hetfield—that I greatly admire. He speaks spontaneously which sometimes gets him in trouble but more often works to his advantage by disarming people. I tend to measure my words more carefully Someone like James makes me unbearably self-conscious.

  Cliff called the meeting to order. He reminded everyone that a historical documentary about Metallica would be a wise business move. The idea would be for us to delve deep into Lars’s huge video archive, which spanned the band’s history What we’d come out with would be the definitive filmic history of Metallica. We’d throw in a little concert footage that we’d shoot. The whole thing would be finished in time for Metallica’s upcoming sabbatical.

  Cliff paused. Everyone nodded—not, apparently in agreement, but more like to show they were sentient. Just another day at the office.

  What the hell, I figured. Time to jump into the void. Now or never.

  “You know …” I had completely forgotten my speech. “We don’t really do just historical stuff. It’s kind of boring. Anyone can do it.” Hey—why hire us? Any monkey with an Avid could do it!

  Bruce pushed it further. “What Joe and I are really good at is getting involved in our subjects’ lives.” (Bruce has an amazing knack for taking an idea that would make any sane person recoil—a total stranger invading your life—and somehow making it sound okay—fun, even!)

  “Do something more personal,” I urged, really exhorting the troops. “Combine the historical stuff with a portrait of who you guys really are. We can do the history, but let’s try to make this more than an infomercial.” Going in for the kill … “Let’s make it rewarding for people!”

  Somewhere in the room an air conditioner whirred. If there were tumble-weeds in hotel penthouses, one would have blown through the room. If there were crickets, they would’ve chirped.

  Lars pulled at his wet hair. “Personal?” he said, treating the word like a dirty sock. “Like what kind of things? Me taking a leak?” Snickers from the others.

  “I don’t know, man,” Kirk said. “When I’m at home, I really like my privacy”

  Let the record show that the member of Metallica most enamored of the idea was Jason Newsted. He would let us film him backstage and hanging out with fans after shows. Maybe he’d even let us into his house—he’d have to think about it.1

  SOME KIND OF NUMBERS

  (special thanks to Cheryll Stone, production manager)

  Duration of filming: April 2001 to August 2003 (851 days)

  Number of shoot days: 180

  Number of travel days with no shoots: 41

  Breakdown of shoot days:

  Ritz-Carlton Hotel: 26

  The Presidio: 20

  HQ recording studio: 81

  European tour: 20

  James Hetfield’s home: 1

  James at other locations: 1

  Lars Ulrich’s homes: 4

  Lars at Christie’s auction house in New York: 2

  Kirk Hammett’s ranch: 1

  Kirk at traffic school: 1

  Jason Newsted’s home: 1

  Jason Newsted practicing with Echobrain and Voivod: 2

  Office of Metallica’s managers: 2

  Metallica at Oakland Raiders game: 1

  Metallica at San Quentin Prison: 2

  Metallica jet skiing on San Francisco Bay: 1

  Metallica at various other locations: 14

  Total hours of digital videotape shot: 1,602

  Miles of digital videotape consumed: 112

  Hours of sound recorded on DAT: 2,524

  Miles of DAT consumed: 47

  Total number of double-A and 9-volt batteries used by crew: 675

  Total number of Chinese lanterns used for lighting scenes: 36

  Total number of lightbulbs used: 156

  Number of signed release forms and accompanying Polaroids: 428

  Total number of New York-San Francisco round-trip flights taken by two directors: 98

  Total number of colored dots used on tapes and logs: 5,662

  Yards of bubble wrap used to wrap and ship tapes: 283

  Terabytes of storage used by four editors and three assistants: 3

  Total hours worked by four editors and three assistants: 6,000

  Total number of half-liter bottles of water consumed by crew: 1,620

  Total number of turkey sandwiches consumed by crew: 178

  Total number of Diet Cokes consumed by crew: 540

  Total number of Excedrin pain-reliever caplets consumed by crew: 300

  As for James, well, he didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to; the look on his face spoke volumes. This is what it told me: “If, for business reasons, we need to make an infomercial to sell a few albums, that’s fine. But let there be no confusion: I am James Fucking Hetfield, and you are not shoving a camera in my face—unless it’s onstage, in which case, stay the fuck out of my way”

  Cliff also chose nonverbal communication. His look said: “Nice one, guys. You certainly blew that opportunity.” Also: “Don’t let the door hit your personal-film-loving asses on the way out.”

  We all shook hands, never imagining that there would come a day a few years hence, when a therapist would instruct us all to hug one another when saying hello and good-bye. I wasn’t even sure we’d ever say hello to Metallica again.

  Bruce and I got in the elevator and began the slow descent from the rarified air of the penthouse suite to the sweltering heat below, from rock royalty to the hoi polloi. I turned to Bruce and said, “This ain’t gonna happen.”

  Was he rolling his eyes or just following the numbered floors as they counted down? “No shit,” he replied.

  Like I said, we weren’t getting along.

  CHAPTER 2

  GIVE ME FUEL, GIVE ME FIRE, GIMME SHELTER

  Watching James reflect on the past two turbulent years gave me the idea for our film’s structure. (Courtesy of Bob Richman)

  04/21/01

  INT. ROOM 627, RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO - DAY

  JOE BERLINGER: Can I just say–I know I said I wouldn’t talk, but can I just ask one question?

  PHIL: Sure.

  JOE: I just want everyone’s general thoughts on how this process is goi
ng to affect the music you’re about to make. This metamorphosis you guys are going through, this evolution …

  LARS: I would say that anytime you feel that there’s some stuff that you think you need to cover, something you think we could emphasize more, please always feel free to throw that in.

  JOE: Oh, okay, thanks…. I’d love to ask you the same question six months from now, and then at the end of this process.

  LARS: Sure, sure.

  KIRK: You know what I think is gonna happen to our music? I think the music is gonna be much more powerful, much more honest and pure, you know?

  PHIL: The music is going to be much more of that because of what?

  KIRK: Because of all the energy that we’re putting into really solidifying our thoughts for each other, and our common goals. We’re channeling that huge force into the music, and just making, you know, a beautiful, beautiful thing. I think it’s gonna have a huge voice, a bigger voice than ever, because it’s gonna be all of us singing, man.

  PHIL: Oh, wow!

  KIRK: It’s gonna be like a huge choir.

  JAMES: Got enough mics for that?

  Some Kind of Monster begins almost where it ends. Before the opening credits, we see members of the international rock press file into HQ, Metallica’s recording studio, in the spring of 2003 to preview their new album, St. Anger, on the eve of its release. We then see a montage of these journalists interviewing the band about the events of the previous two years. The Metallica guys look nervous, perhaps even a little shell-shocked. This was their return to the public eye, after two harrowing years of recording the album. It had been six years— since the release of Reload—since they’d done this sort of press juggernaut. Two hours and twenty minutes later, the film ends just a few weeks after this rock-critic confab, just as St. Anger is coming out, with the band taking the stage for the first leg of their Summer Sanitarium tour in support of the new album. The body of the film, then, is a series of flashbacks to the turbulent two years leading up to the birth of St. Anger.

  From a narrative standpoint, this was a bigger decision than it might seem on the surface. Much of the dramatic tension in the film revolves around whether or not the band will get it together to make the album, and whether they’ll implode in the process. By opening with Metallica talking about St. Anger, we risked killing much of the suspense by telling the viewer that the band survived to complete the album. We decided to take that risk because we knew that much of the initial audience for Some Kind of Monster would be Metallica fans. These people would all know about St. Anger, and many would even be familiar with the album’s backstory including James’s rehab stint and the band’s lengthy hiatus. Because we had captured so much human drama, we decided it was okay to telegraph the ending. The challenge was creating suspense that wasn’t built around what happened, but how it happened and why.

  When we made this decision in the spring of 2003, after two years of filming, we still had only a vague idea of how we would structure our material. I had been advocating some sort of flashback approach, but we weren’t sure how to pull it off. We talked about using the summer tour as the framing device of the film, flashing back to the events leading up to it. The problem with that idea, however, was that we really did not want to make a concert film. The primary experience of a concert is seeing a live band in the flesh; the primary experience of a film is being immersed in the story. A concert film really is the worst of both worlds. Besides, our material was too intimate, and our access too unusual, to waste time on concert sequences. So we were a little stumped.

  As with many aspects of this film, the solution to the structuring problem arose spontaneously. When we heard that rock journalists from around the world would be converging at Metallica’s studio to interview the band, we thought we’d film some of these interviews for a scene that would hint at the business machine kicking into gear as St. Anger’s release date neared. We envisioned a montage sequence depicting the final weeks of frantic activity, from package design to music videos to touring arrangements. (We did create such a montage but never used it in the finished film.)

  As we filmed journalists speaking with members of Metallica about the events of the last two years—Jason Newsted’s departure, the group therapy, James’s time in rehab—a lightbulb went on in my head: these people were asking about things that we had thoroughly covered in real time. With each question posed by a reporter, I kept saying to myself, “Man, we filmed that!” It immediately occurred to me that this footage of Metallica being interviewed by the rock press could be our framing device. We could open with the interviews, and then flash back to the beginning of the recording and therapy sessions, with more of the journalists’ questions interspersed throughout the film. The interviews would be the glue holding the movie together.

  This simple idea was a real breakthrough for us. Besides giving our film a skeletal structure on which to build, the journalists’ questions allowed us to condense basic information that we wanted to convey to the audience without relying on narration (which we hate) or straight-to-camera talking-head interviews (which we try to use sparingly). I also liked that Metallica’s answers to the questions had a “hindsight is 20/20” quality that belied the depth and complexity of the events they described (and that we filmed). One theme that runs through all the films Bruce and I have made is that the reality of any given situation is much more nuanced and complex than the black-and-white media sound bites that you see on the news. So contrasting the somewhat perfunctory nature of the journalists’ questions and Metallica’s answers with the scenes as they unfolded was a perfect structural device.

  Although this was one of the last ideas we had while filming Some Kind of Monster, I mention it now, at the beginning of my story, not just because this is how the film begins, but also because that epiphany quietly brought me full circle as a filmmaker. It allowed me to pay tribute to the people who got me started. In order to explain this, I need to give you a quick history of my professional life, rendered as briefly as I can, since I know this is not really what we’re here to talk about. Bear with me—I promise Metallica will reenter these pages very soon.

  In 1986, at the age of 25, I was working at the big New York ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. My job was to produce TV commercials for American Express. I had recently returned from a two-year assignment at the agency’s Frankfurt office, which I’d gotten because I spoke fluent German. I came back to New York ostensibly to advance my advertising career, but I secretly wanted to get out of the ad business and into the film world. I didn’t have much of an idea of how I’d enter that world, or what I’d do when I got there, but I knew I couldn’t do it in Germany. One day, at a client meeting, I suggested hiring the legendary documentary duo of Albert and David Maysles—otherwise known as the Maysles Brothers—to create documentary-style TV commercials for American Express. I’ve always been a huge fan of Gimme Shelter, the Maysles Brothers’ (and Charlotte Zwerin’s) landmark film about the Rolling Stones’ disastrous free concert at Altamont, so when we started tossing around ideas about how to make our American Express spots different, the Maysles Brothers and Gimme Shelter came to mind.

  The Maysles Brothers were pioneers of “direct cinema,” the American counterpart to the French cinema verité movement. The basic idea of cinema verité is that a filmmaker can capture real-life drama as it unfolds in front of the camera, without scripts, sets, or narration. In an age when “reality TV” has invaded every nook and cranny of human experience, it may be hard to understand that Monster’s style is rooted in a cinematic revolution launched in the early ’60s. Although today pretty much anyone can grab a video camera (or webcam) and capture real life, this sort of filmic documentation wasn’t possible until the Maysles Brothers—along with Robert Drew, Robert Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, and Frederick Wiseman—devised ways to capture images and synchronous sound (that is, audio that is in synch with the images) in the field with portable, handheld equipment. (Did you ever wonder why old newsreel footage
has no sound other than the narration and sound effects added during post-production?) The synch-sound breakthrough led to an even more important philosophical shift: a filmmaker could now make a documentary that transcended mere news reports or history lessons. The term “nonfiction feature film” was coined to describe this new world of storytelling.

  Most TV commercials use actors and scripts that are approved by the client. My idea was to have Albert and David do unscripted, spontaneous commercials. This has become an increasingly common method for commercials over the past decade or so, but it was quite rare when we asked the Maysleses if they’d be interested in deploying their signature style for these American Express spots. We wanted them to do a variation of American Express’s long-standing “Do You Know Me?” campaign. Instead of tightly scripted commercials, we would make unscripted minidocumentaries about various famous and semifamous cardholders.

  Albert and David liked the idea. During the production of these commercials, David (who suffered a fatal stroke a year later) and I hit it off. I told him that I wanted to get out of the ad business and into film production. He let me know that they’d love to get more commercial work to help fund their films. I quit my job and went to work for the Maysles Brothers as their executive producer in charge of TV commercials. My job was to use my knowledge of the ad business to get commercial work for them. In the five years I worked at Maysles Films, Inc., I treated it like my own personal film school. I tried to learn everything I could about how documentaries were made. I became obsessed with verité filmmaking, from Wiseman’s Titicut Follies to the Maysles Brothers’ own Salesman and Grey Gardens.1