Not me. I like my movies to be well made. I want to be wowed by the artistry of the film itself, and it seems that most documentaries (save for the ones made by Errol Morris) forget about this.
Okay, now that I've said this, let me retract everything I just said. Dig!, directed by Ondi Timoner, has no flashy filmic aspects at all, but I still can't get enough of it. I must have watched this movie ten times, and every time I find something new because the story is so engrossing. It is a film whose strength lies solely in the utter craziness of the plot, yet that is totally enough.
The movie, for those of you who haven't seen it, follows the varying careers of two psychedelic-revivalist bands during the late 1990's: The Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols. As it progresses we witness the success of the Dandys juxtaposed to the complete implosion of the BJM. These paths could not be scripted any better. As the Dandys find success, they seem to sell themselves out more and more. Meanwhile, as the BJM fall deeper and deeper into despair their manifesto seems to become more and more valid.
I can't stress this enough. At the start of the movie, I actually liked the Dandys early songs; they seemed to have a real urgency about them. Yet, by the end of the film I was cringing (and you will too) at how lame the music had become. The opposite holds true for the BJM. When I first saw the film, I was sure I was going to hate the BJM (I had heard too much about their onstage antics and I was over it). Yet as Dig! progresses I couldn't help but love the tunes. It's truly amazing watching Anton Newcombe develop more and more as a musician, while disintegrate more and more as a member of society.
Dig! is great. It tells a story plainly and you are glued to the screen. Add the bunch of wild fringe personalities (Joel Gion, Matt Hollywood, Zia McCabe) and you are in for a truly great ride. It really doesn't matter that there is no fancy camera-work or editing.
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