Dig! XX
Producer: Ondi Timoner
Director: Ondi Timoner
Cast: The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Dandy Warhols
Working at Pop Heist isn't all editing copy and staff meetings. In fact, it's sometimes a reason to get away for an evening. Last week, Editor-In-Chief Brett White and I, Managing Editor Ethan Kaye, snuck out to see the newly revamped 20th anniversary edition of our favorite rock documentary, Ondi and David Timoner's 2003 classic Dig!, now retitled as Dig! XX.
When I tell people about Dig!, I always have to explain it the same way since so many people I talk to don't have any idea who the stars "The Brian Jonestown Massacre" or "The Dandy Warhols" are: It's a documentary that follows the trajectory of two bands. One, The Dandy Warhols, played by the music industry rules for the most part and became massive successes. The other, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, playing similar '60s throwback indie rock, refused to abide by any record industry conventions, and while arguably more talented, crashed and disintegrated.
The last time either one of us had seen the original Dig! was about six years ago, when Ondi did a Q&A after a screening at Brooklyn's Nighthawk Cinemas. Seeing this masterpiece on Nighthawk's big screen made every fight, every laugh, every tragedy, every arrest larger than life. Dig! XX, 40 minutes longer than the original, adds humor, clarity, and even more music to a film that's already light years past any other rockumentary.
Dig! is chaos from the start. Fights break out between band members and between the audience and the band. Friendships turn into rivalries turn into threats (the leader of BJM, Anton Newcombe, sent individually gift-wrapped shotgun shells to the members of the Dandy Warhols, with their names written on each). Drug and alcohol abuse wander through every scene to put their stamp on the action, including two drug busts (Newcombe and Ondi are arrested, while the members of the Dandys go free — and get to keep the weed).
The original Dig! is narrated by Dandy's songwriter and vocalist Courtney Taylor-Taylor, and the 20th anniversary redux keeps his narration but adds new commentary from BJM percussionist Joel Gion, the clowny star of the original and one of the few mainstays of the band through its various incarnations. Last year he released an exceedingly well-written memoir, In The Jingle Jangle Jungle, which details incidents that were left out of the original cut of the film, but appear in this new release.
The new cut should not be your first time seeing Dig!, despite the fun of Joel's additions. The new scenes add context, extended dialogues, and longer song clips to what was already a film bursting with character, so while listening to a rambling, clearly drugged audience member spout off about how much he loves the Brian Jonestown Massacre is hilarious in the longer cut, it's really an expansion of a scene in the original where this guy dances frantically by himself, alone on the dance floor for literal hours. It's the context that was left out of the original.
For fans of the band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, vocalist Peter Hayes gets much more screen time than he did in the original. Despite Dig! focusing primarily on the time he was in the Brian Jonestown Massacre, he doesn't appear much, only really noticeable at the end to punctuate how people from that band went off to do other successful projects. In Dig! XX he's much better represented, including the times he busked on the streets of New York with the band and when he and bass player Matt Hollywood stormed off into the night in downtown Chicago.
Dig! ended on a sour note in 2004. While the Dandy Warhols were opening their own studio/performance space, Newcombe was shown getting arrested for assault at a solo show (he kicked an audience member in the head from the stage) with the reveal that, while his son had just been born, he was being kept from seeing him. Thankfully, things have looked up 20 years later and Gion narrates a "where are they now" coda. People have cleaned themselves up, nearly everyone survived, and old fences have been mended (the closing scene is the Dandys and the BJM reuniting on stage at the Levitation festival in 2023). It answers all the lingering questions from the first film, and Newcombe looks like he's in a much better place, both personally and creatively.
Overall, it's a dynamic, energetic snapshot of the underground music business in the late '90s that benefits from hindsight narration 20 years later. It's for fans of the original, though; I can imagine that if this was your first introduction to this amazing film, the 146 minute runtime could be exhausting. But for fans like Brett and me, we were hanging onto every word, every chord — and every punch and kick.
Dig! XX is playing in select theaters.
