Dig! (2004)
Interloper Films

Description

Seven years in the making and culled from over 1500 hours of footage, DIG! plunges into the underbelly of rock ‘n’ roll, unearthing an incredible true story of success and self-destruction. Anton A. Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Courtney Taylor of the Dandy Warhols are star-crossed friends and bitter rivals – DIG! is the story of their loves and obsessions, gigs and recordings, arrests and death threats, uppers and downers, and the delicate balance between art and commerce.

Tags

2000s, Rock, 1990s, Sundance award winner, USA

Collected reviews and ratings

10 The Guardian | Xan Brooks

The ghosts of Spinal Tap haunt the wings of Dig!, a rambunctious documentary classic that charts the divergent, Cain and Abel-ish course of two American rock bands [...] One band ends up playing stadium gigs and corporate jingles. The other goes down in a hail of rotten fruit.
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10 Austin Chronicle | Marrit Ingman

There’s a genuine sense of loss when dreams go unrealized, and in these moments DiG! transcends the typical "rock movie" format and aspires to something greater: an examination of why we create and what we receive from art.
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10 digitallyobsessed.com | Dan Heaton

The struggles and conflicts of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols help to generate fascinating drama. This film stands as one of the best music documentaries in recent memory.
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10 DVD Talk | Bill Gribon

The Brian Jonestown Massacre remained a boisterous blip on the local scene. The Dandy's exploded, becoming a hugely popular band in Europe. Amazingly, documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner was there to capture it all. For seven years she took the long strange trip from infancy to infamy with the Dandys and the Massacre. The result is DiG!, perhaps the best documentary ever made about life on the outskirts of rock and roll stardom.
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9.0 Los Angeles Times | Carina Chocano

Ondi Timoner's documentary "DIG!" chronicles the long-standing love-hateship between Courtney Taylor of the Dandy Warhols and Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. The movie, which was seven years in the making, plays like a mid-'90s "Amadeus."
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9.0 New York Times | A. O. Scott

If universities ever start graduate programs in rock stardom, "Dig!" will surely be a cornerstone of the curriculum, for it works as both an instruction manual and a cautionary tale.
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9.0 Exclaim! | Cam Lindsay

... this is a very likeable documentary with some amazing footage of surviving the rock’n’roll game, not to mention the outrageous lifestyle and antics of a true eccentric.
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8.8 Old School Reviews | John Nesbit

Besides documenting how similar bands diverge between recognizable success and self-destruction, the film also takes on the age-old conflict that plagues all artists—the struggle to remain true to your creative vision without selling out to commercial interests.
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8.8 Combustible Celluloid | Jeffrey M. Anderson

Ondi Timoner's documentary DIG! successfully explores the psychological center of a rock band. Only this time, we get two rock bands for the price of one. Given unprecedented access to both the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre for seven years, the filmmaker traces the rising friendship and respect between the two bands, followed by an ever-escalating feud when the Dandys sign a record deal.
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8.0 Amazon user reviews

DiG! will likely be most remembered for a remarkable scene of rock and roll implosion--a show in LA's Viper Room after which the Brian Jonestown Massacre were expected to ink a record deal. Instead, the band erupted in a fist fight onstage. Among themselves.
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8.0 DVD Times | Anthony Nield

It could be read as a cautionary tale or as a success story. A character assassination or a dig at the music industry itself. It is, by turns, fascinating and repellent, continuously funny and ultimately quite draining. In other words, this isn’t your standard rock documentary, but an epic squeezed into less than two hours.
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8.0 efilmcritic.com | Eric D Snider

This film warns against rock stardom the way "Requiem for a Dream" warned against drugs. Music fans will find it especially fascinating -- and it has a killer soundtrack, full of Dandys and Jonestown songs, to boot.
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8.0 Eye For Film | Bradley Brasier

Whether you've heard of them, or not, DiG! is an energetic, insightful look into the dysfunctional, drug fuelled world of the modern pop musician. Its portrayal of the gigs, rehearsals, arguments and partying is refreshingly honest.
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7.2 The Onion A.V. Club | Nathan Rabin

For its first hour or so, Dig! plays like a corrosively funny satire of indie-rock posturing and megalomania, a sort of real-life hipster This Is Spinal Tap that gets its most resonant laughs from the chasm between its stars' bloated self-image and their much sadder realities. In its second hour, however, it turns into a perverse lesson in alt-rock moral relativism.
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7.0 PopMatters.com | Jesse Hassenger

Director Ondi Timoner compiles a truly astounding range of footage. We see both bands bitching, clowning, getting arrested, arguing with their labels, arguing with girlfriends, arguing with each other, taking drugs, brawling; no re-enactments are necessary.
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7.0 filmcritic.com | Christopher Null

Timoner's footage is all crappy VHS work, with blown out shots, bad focus, atrocious sound, and iffy editing to hold it all together. As a storyteller, she's got some amazing raw material. It's a shame she wasn't able to do more with what she had, but even considering its flaws, DiG! isn't a bad way to spend 105 minutes.
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7.0 FutureMovies | Michelle Thomas

As a look at the dark underbelly of the record industry, and a self-defeating ego, it’s fascinating stuff, and should be required viewing for anyone who has ever thought about joining a band.
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0.0 San Francisco Chronicle | Joel Selvin

Self-absorbed, semi-delusional, entirely unrepentant, Newcombe is not only a never-ending source of fascination for his friendly rivals the Warhols -- who nevertheless wind up talking about getting a restraining order to keep him away -- but also the lurching, flailing driving wheel of this movie.
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