Metallica: This Monster Lives

by Joe Berlinger

  I did have some help, though. A few weeks before the festival, I got some frantic calls from Jeff Dowd, a freelance “film rep” who helps filmmakers navigate the complicated process of securing deals with studios and distributors. He really wanted to get involved with Monster. Jeff is a fixture at film festivals. He’s a guy who can schmooze with distributors and the press and do it in a way that somehow makes you laugh, although you’d want to slug almost anyone else who operated with the same methods.

  Now, the first thing you need to know about Dowd is that he was the Coen Brothers’ acknowledged inspiration for Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, the laconic, aging, mild-mannered hippie-slacker played by Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. The second thing you need to know is that he is in fact nothing at all like the Dude. I mean, superficially he’s definitely the Dude. He’s a heavyset guy with an unkempt mop of curly gray hair who favors ratty baggy jeans and, at Sundance, was sporting a bright green-and-yellow Neil Young baseball jacket. Like the Coens’ Dude, you can imagine Dowd writing a check for a carton of milk and listening to Creedence on a crappy car stereo. He looks like he should have a Ben & Jerry’s flavor named after him. And he’s quite a presence. When we met with Paramount at the kitchen table, he got up every few minutes to stalk across the room, grab a hunk of salami from the refrigerator and shove it in his mouth, without breaking the flow of whatever complicated deal points he was discussing.

  One day during the festival he came to our condo to talk about a new offer I had received from New Line Cinema. Bruce and I had advised Metallica to forgo a service-deal arrangement if a company offered the full production cost of the movie. Now, New Line had done just that. They would buy Monster from Metallica for $4.3 million, but there was one crucial catch: the deal would only go through if we agreed to cut twenty minutes from the film.

  Dowd ambled into our living room, made himself comfortable on the couch, and mentioned that the night before he’d been locked out of the condo across town he was sharing with some of the crew from Monster.

  “So what did you do?” I asked.

  “Aah, it was no big deal—this is Sundance,” he said by way of explanation. “I can always find a place to crash. I always carry a toothbrush.”

  “Who did you stay with?”

  “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  It seemed like a good time to change the subject and get down to the business at hand.

  Monster’s length had been an ongoing topic of debate since we’d locked the film a few months earlier. Some people who saw it remarked that they thought it was a bit too long. There’s no getting around it—at 140 minutes, it’s a long film. But it’s also a very tightly constructed film. We had chipped away and chipped away and had concluded that we’d reached the optimal length. The copious amount of intercutting, one of the structural aspects of Monster I’m most proud of, meant that making what might seem like an innocent cut actually risked causing entire sections of the film to unravel. We could tighten some things up here and there, perhaps take out one of the archival concert sequences, which would maybe trim the overall length by three to five minutes. But twenty? No way, not without a mammoth effort. And it wouldn’t be cheap. We’d have to make cuts in each of the film’s eight reels, which meant that the entire negative would have to be reassembled. That would wind up costing a few hundred thousand dollars more. The Q Prime guys were among those who thought the film should be shortened. Metallica was willing to put up the extra cost if it made the film better.

  This was a real dilemma. It was difficult to turn down a deal worth the entire cost of the film, but we felt really strongly that cutting the film, except for small changes, was a mistake. One new member of the Monster family decided to weigh in on this decision.

  “Well, Joe,” Dowd said from the couch, “I think it would be much better shorter.” He grabbed a Ricola cough drop from a bag on the coffee table.

  “Look, we’re not cutting twenty minutes out of the fucking film!” I replied. “Five minutes, maybe …” I had had this conversation with so many people by now that I was a little defensive. It wasn’t that I was repulsed by the very idea of cutting one of our films (“slay your babies” and all that). When we showed Brother’s Keeper at Sundance in 1992, there had been a general consensus, even among those who loved it, that it was too long. Because we had no distribution interest, we listened to the advice and took out fifteen minutes—and we still didn’t get a distribution deal. It was hard for me now to take seriously the need to cut Monster so drastically when we were presiding over a Sundance premiere, getting great press, and fielding various offers from companies vying for a piece of a hot film, with no other distributor asking us to shorten it.

  Dowd bit down hard on the cough drop and swallowed the shattered pieces. “Joe, you just got an angel, not a devil, flying down onto your shoulder and saying—” He paused, staring straight at me. “—we can make this film better!'” What Dowd meant was that the Metallica organization’s willingness to spend money to improve the film was the kind of luxury few filmmakers experience.

  I was startled by his choice of metaphor. As you may recall, I had decided that my decision to make Blair Witch 2, when there were so many good arguments against taking on the project, was due to an inability to distinguish between angels (you’re making this film for the wrong reasons and throwing away a great partnership) and devils (a big paycheck! the glorious world of feature films!) whispering in my ear. I had vowed to listen more closely and only make decisions that felt right. Cutting twenty minutes didn’t feel right. Bruce and I had gone through so many obstacles in order to make Monster the way we wanted to—why back down this late in the game? Now Dowd was telling me I still couldn’t tell the difference between devils and angels. Was the universe speaking through the Dude?

  “We can make this film better,” Dowd continued, “not because you have to, but to bring out the emotion, Joe, the fucking emotion!” He was almost falling off the couch at this point.

  “I don’t know …”

  “Don’t let the fact that you’ve been butt-fucked before influence you, Joe,” Dowd said, alluding to Artisan recutting Blair Witch 2. “I’ve worked with the Hal Ashbys and the Francis Coppolas. Whenever there’s an angel, they always want to treat it like a devil. Trust me. I’m not gonna let you get butt-fucked!”

  Sage words, indeed. I had no interest in being butt-fucked. However … “We’ve worked this film to death …”

  “I want to do with you what I did with Coppola. You have to sit down with the public. You have yet to have a real public screening of this film! I’ve never met a critic as brilliant as the public. They have no agenda!”

  I sighed. “But we’ve learned from experience that our films are ambiguous and filled with double meanings.”

  I was losing some of my conviction. On the subject of the public, Dowd was half right. Besides the Sundance audiences, hardly representative of the hoi polloi, we had done a screening for members of Metallica’s fan club and one for members of DocuClub, a New York organization for people involved in the documentary world. For the fans, I’m sure the movie couldn’t be long enough. The documentary aesthetes are more minutely critical than your average movie audience but also more willing to tolerate documentary conventions that require more patience than the strictures of feature films. In other words, Monster had not been screened for the type of general audiences everyone seemed excited it could attract. But still …

  “I don’t want to do that Orange County test-screening bullshit, Jeff.”

  “I’m not talking about that,” he said, calmer now. “I mean, showing audiences this film and asking them specific questions: ‘What did you think of the art-auction scene?’”

  I had heard the auction scene brought up by several people as a possible cut. It’s true that the film wouldn’t unravel without that scene, but it was such a great sequence. How often do you get to see a heavy-metal drummer root for a Basquiat painting to hit $5 million? On the other hand, Ne
w Line, the studio that had grossed close to $3 billion from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, was offering what every filmmaker wants: a substantial release, serious money, and a chance to recoup Metallica’s entire investment.

  I felt like the Dude had worn me down. I just didn’t know what to think anymore. From the very beginning of this project, we’d walked a fine line with the Metallica organization, subtly abandoning the task we’d been hired to do. It was a gambit that turned out great. But were we now, at this final hour, being irresponsible? With Metallica’s help, we’d managed for three years to make art supercede commerce. But maybe at this eleventh hour, commerce deserved a break.

  I was sitting there, wondering what to do, feeling the Dude’s glare on me, when I remembered that I hadn’t called Lars to give him his daily progress report. He didn’t know about the New Line dilemma. I went upstairs and managed to reach him on his cell in Australia. It was already the next afternoon there, and he was just getting out of bed. I cut to the chase. “We’ve generated a lot of interest, and New Line is offering us $4.3 million, the full cost of the film.”

  UNLEASHING THE MONSTER

  Some Kind of Monster opened in New York on Friday, July 9, 2004. Late that afternoon, Bruce and I walked from our office in the West Village to the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on the Lower East Side. As we passed the marquees of some downtown screens, I marveled at how many documentaries currently had theatrical releases: Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me, Riding Giants, Control Room, Imelda, The Corporation, America’s Heart and Soul, The Hunting of the President. This really is the golden age of documentaries in the cinema. In 1992, the year Brother’s Keeper opened, only five documentaries were released, with generally anemic box-office results. During the first half of 2004, forty-four documentaries were released theatrically. Fahrenheit 9/11 and, to a lesser extent, Super Size Me, even set box-office records.

  When we got to the Sunshine, we discovered that there were midnight screenings of This Is Spinal Tap scheduled for that weekend. This was ironic, because several critics had made a connection between Monster and Spinal Tap, a comparison I found facile at best and inaccurate at worst. But it was funny to see the two movies on the same marquee. In Spinal Tap, the band is annoyed to find itself listed after a puppet show on a marquee (“It’s supposed to be SPINAL TAP AND PUPPET SHOW!”), and there was Spinal Tap, listed underneath Some Kind of Monster at the Sunshine. All four of that night’s Monster screenings sold out, while Spinal Tap played to about 20-percent capacity. Although the box office eventually softened, Monster had the highest per-screen average in America its opening weekend.

  “Really?” He sounded more than just groggy. I could also hear a quizzical tone in his voice that suggested he was a little disappointed, since he’d really warmed to the idea of releasing Monster ourselves.5

  “The thing is, they’re insisting that we take out twenty minutes.”

  “Well, do you guys want to do that?”

  “You know, Lars, we really don’t. Five minutes could go for sure, ten minutes tops, but twenty minutes would really hurt the film.”

  Lars didn’t hesitate. “Look, it’s not about the money, it never has been. It’s about what people will think of this movie in five years, in ten years. We want to make the best film possible.”

  And I believe that’s what we did. If you sit down to watch Some Kind of Monster, make sure you’ve got 140 minutes to spare.

  On the last night the Q Prime managers were in town, we all went to Grappa, my favorite restaurant in Park City, for a celebratory dinner. Afterward, as my wife and I walked down on Main Street, Cliff came up beside us. Loren asked him what he thought the future held for Some Kind of Monster. He pondered the question for a moment. “Forget the PR value of the film,” he said, perhaps remembering that PR was the sole reason he’d asked Bruce and me to turn on our cameras in the first place. “Forget whether it helps Metallica sell albums. The real value of this film is that, in five years, if those guys fall back into their old patterns and habits …” He looked at me and smiled. “I’m gonna sit them down and make them watch it all over again!”

  CHAPTER 23

  LIVING THE MONSTER

  Some of the crazed fans at the Imola Jammin Festival (Courtesy of Joe Berlinger)

  05/20/02

  INT. KITCHEN, HQ RECORDING STUDIO, SAN RAFAEL, CA - DAY

  BOB: Well, you know, going back to [what Phil said] : Tap the energy. It’s not like, “Okay, we had this argument, now let’s go beat on our instruments.” I don’t think it’s as simple as that, but I do think there is something you can tap into here, lyrically. … There is still a lot of anger. I just saw it in this room. There is still a lot of isolation, there is still a lot of hate, there is still a lot of not understanding. This is the kind of stuff that has to be talked about. This is what great writers and great musicians do. They relate to that stuff, so other people can know they’re not alone.

  JAMES: (to Joe) : Or you can just film it so we don’t have to write it. (laughs)

  Some Kind of Monster began life as a promo video about a band trying to make a record. It quickly became a movie about a rock band trying not to fall apart. Somewhere along the way it also became something more, at least for those of us who lived it.

  One reason that Monster feels so authentic—at least to me—is that the journey of making it was completely unplanned. The process affected us deeply because it was largely out of our control. In this age of reality TV, every aspect of human experience has been poked and prodded in the most contrived, preconceived ways. But with Monster, we all took what life dished out for us and learned to live with it. If we had sat down with Metallica in 1999 and told them we wanted to make a film that turned inside out the glorified image of the rock hero by revealing these guys’ individual insecurities, and that hopefully they’d all learn something about themselves, that door to the Four Seasons penthouse suite really would have hit our asses on the way out. Aside from a desire to make a personal film, we had no preconceived notion of what Some Kind of Monster would become. We all just let go of the steering wheel and went along for an incredible ride. And yeah, the car did crash. But it wound up being a happy accident.

  The allure of happy accidents is one reason I’ll never stop making verité films, no matter how much I continue to work in fiction film and television. Cinema verité is an art form that, at its best, provides the emotional catharsis of a good storytelling experience while imparting real, tangible information that makes us see our world differently. Another reason I’ll never turn my back on my first love is because of the life lessons these films provide for me. Brother’s Keeper gave me the courage to be a filmmaker and taught me to accept people for their humanity. Paradise Lost made me examine my views on the death penalty and the fallibility of the justice system. But Monster is the film that’s helped me grow the most. When we started filming at the Presidio, I was a broken man. By the time we loaded our gear out of HQ, I had a new perspective on the creative process that allowed me to tame my ego, accept my weaknesses, and make sense of my failures—gifts that will have a profound impact on my life as a filmmaker, father, husband, collaborator, and friend. I learned all this from a group of guys who, as far as most of the suburban parents that I hang out with during my daughter’s Saturday soccer games are concerned, are incapable of uttering a coherent sentence, let alone imparting such life lessons.

  For me, the crowning moment of making Some Kind of Monster, the moment I realized how much making this film has meant to me, came during the summer of ’03, on the Summer Sanitarium tour. We were busy editing Monster, but we took the time to film various tour stops throughout the summer, beginning with some European dates. After two years, we’d become accustomed to having such an intimate and informal relationship with Metallica that it was a little jarring to find ourselves having to prove ourselves to the road crew, who had no idea that we had just filmed these guys for the past two yeans in the most intimate of situations. To them, we were just anot
her video crew with the potential to complicate their jobs. It took the crew a few dates to figure out that we had a special relationship with the band that had allowed us unprecedented access.

  Much of the concert footage at the end of Monster was shot about an hour outside of Italian city of Bologna, at the Imola Jammin Festival. After traveling with the tour for several weeks, this was our last date before returning to the editing room in New York. At every show, I had been trying to shoot some intimate backstage footage of James, just before he hit the stage. I wanted to capture his preshow rituals, so that we’d see him reclaiming his former status as a rock god after two years of battling the excesses of stage life. My plan was for our camera crew to ride with James in the little van that took him from the heart of the VIP area to the backstage entrance, and then have the camera follow him up onto the wings of the stage. Each time I’d asked, the crew had turned me down, citing security reasons. In Bologna, I decided to bypass the tour’s production staff and ask James’s bodyguard, Gio, to relay the request directly to him. Instead of sending in our DP Bob Richman with his bulky DSR-500 camera and a separate soundman, I offered to ride with James alone and shoot the whole thing with my small PD-150, using the camera’s onboard microphone and a little camera-mounted miniature light. I wasn’t even sure I would be able to cover the situation sufficiently with this camera, since it’s not designed for low-light situations; the sound might also be a problem. But I felt I had to take the risk if we were going to get this shot at all. I promised I would stay out of James’s way