DIG! XX is the 20th anniversary expanded, remastered and reimagined edition of the rock doc DIG!, which looks at the collision of art and commerce through the eyes of two dueling rock bands — The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre — now over 27 years on, which adds new narration by The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Joel Gion and features 40+ minutes of never-before-seen footage.
“Twenty years ago, we had 2,500 hours of footage and a five-hour cut, so a lot of really great stuff hit the cutting room floor,” said DIG! XX director and producer Ondi Timoner.“A lot of those tapes are over a quarter century old — so if we wanted to share more of this crazy story, it was now or never…” says Ondi Timoner
Shot over seven years, DIG! (2004) won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance FIlm Festival. It intimately explores the star-crossed friendship and bitter rivalry between Anton Newcombe, leader of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, leader of The Dandy Warhols.
DIG! tracks both bands’ love and obsession, gigs and recordings, arrests and death threats, uppers and downers – their choices between art and industry, which unfold over time.
From the moment they met, the two quickly bonded over a shared desire not to conform to the tastes of the recording industry. Yet, their choices over how to express their creativity and originality in a profit-driven industry, eventually put them at odds. Culled from 2,500 hours of footage and narrated by Taylor, DIG! follows Newcombe and Taylor and their bands’ divergent trajectories over 7 years.
In 1996, Anton Newcombe and his band, Brian Jonestown Massacre – who in a decade independently released eleven albums, three 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, Newcombe’s creative psychosis takes him to the most remote areas of the human mind on a mission to find his original art, and as a result, destroys every opportunity for financial success.
While tracking the destructive path of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, DIG! also accompanies the more ‘well-adjusted’ Warhols as they navigate the corporate sea, trying to maintain their creative edge while starring in mega-budget music videos (by famed photographer David LaChapelle among others) and entertaining crowds of thousands.
Today, DIG! is a world-renowned cult classic, cited in the top 10 or 20 lists of Best Music Docs of All-Time, and mentioned in the personal Top Doc lists by such iconic artists in their own rights as Jonah Hill, Dave Grohl, Kurt Vile, Perry Farell, Ben Harper and Iggy Pop, among many others.
