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The most Spinal Tap-esque moment of unintentional self-parody in Metallica:
Some Kind of Monster comes in an interview of drummer Lars Ulrich in which
he’s commenting on a mammoth Basquiat painting hanging on the wall
behind him. He waxes distractedly about Basquiat’s placement of
some gold paint, and then draws a parallel between the artist and Metallica
in the studio:
“I mean when is a fucking painting finished? When is a song finished?
When is an album really ever finished?”
Such philosophizing begs the question, “When is a band finished?”
Metallica (Ulrich, Guitarist Kirk Hammett and guitarist-singer James
Hetfield) enters the film a destroyed animal. They have just fired their
bassist of 14 years, Jason Newsted, because he is playing in another band
(the execrable Echobrain), and this selfish and self-destructive act has
shaken them so much that their management company hires a therapist/performance
coach so they can get to the heart of what is tearing them apart.
Though the records keep selling, the last Metallica release was a 1998
double album of covers called Garage Inc. – half of which were culled
from the 1987 EP Garage Days Revisited. The album before that was stitched
together from the sessions that produced the 1996 album Load. On the cover
of this “new” release was a photo by Andres Serrano that incorporates
cow blood mixed with his semen. This parallel works – Metallica
is obsessed with itself, its own mundane suffering, its self-hatred, its
own spunk. It’s a perennial problem for stars, but rarely are we
made to experience this perverse ritual from behind their own private
walls. A lot has been said about the fly-on-the-wall filmmaking of the
Maysles brothers or D.A. Pennebaker, who both made great behind-the-scenes
films about the Stones and Dylan at the peak of their powers. But I doubt
if Dylan or the Stones were going to therapy in the late 60s and early
70s – even if they were, I’ll be damned if we would have been
able to enter this realm with them.
So this is where we find ourselves – the band is meeting with Phil
Towle, a homely Midwestern shrink, in a lavishly appointed room inside
San Francisco’s Ritz Carlton – the establishing shot of the
building has been preceded by the announcement that over the course of
their 20 year existence, Metallica has sold over 40 million records worldwide.
What all this establishes is that this is not a portrait of a rock band
struggling to be creative (which the filmmakers have taken pains to insist
in interviews), or rock and roll or music – but a portrait of the
grotesque egos of the ultra-rich displayed in the scale of the architecture,
the flamboyance of their toys and the scale of their estates and appetites.
I walked away from this film profoundly disturbed, convinced that some
serious black magic shit had been loosed upon the audience, but at a loss
to even approach what exactly had occurred.
The film ends with Lars excitedly insisting that their new album, Saint
Anger, is the first time that aggressive music has been made completely
bereft of negativity. It’s almost like the final scene of a mediocre
biopic in which a wide-eyed scientist gloats in his triumph, “They
said it couldn’t be done! They said we would never reach the Red
Planet, but by God we proved them wrong!”
Ulrich’s pretence is that Metallica has reinvented metal. Of course
they haven’t, and the film is careful not to play us too much of
the dreaded Saint Anger album – which, from internal evidence, seems
like little more than three years’ worth of “stock jams,”
to use a criticism the band levies on itself throughout the film. But
this documentary is not about making music, playing music, or even talking
about music. It’s a film that wallows in the poisonous wretchedness
of so-called success and the Herculean suffering three people endure to
sustain it.
What courses through this film is the utter despair of the band and their
hangers on, masquerading in myriad costumes of petulance, drunkenness,
play, anger, seriousness – you name it. There’s a horrible
emptiness, loneliness and alienation that colors scene after excruciating
scene: the band in therapy, the band in the studio, the band at their
homes. At one point we see Lars walking through the galleries of Christie’s
Auction House, just before he puts his entire art collection on the block.
He waves his arms, he apes the angry pose in a Basquiat, he comments that
he’s never seen the work up close before, he drops a champagne glass
on the floor and it shatters. It’s played as a lighthearted scene;
Lars as the ordinary schmuck. The camera follows him as he retreats before
the gallery is opened for viewing, and then pans away to show the janitor
sweeping up his broken glass.
The moment is a metaphor for the entire picture, for Metallica of the
last 10 years as a band, and as an entity apart from the individuals who
comprise it – we clean up their shit. But the truly dark thing about
this film is that for 2.5 hours we go further. We are actually eating
their shit and are expected to like it. It’s perhaps the most self-absorbed
and hateful salvo from a band with a lot of hateful things to live down.
They’ve given the filmmakers the funds to destroy the last vestiges
of their myth in one final blow, and the audience reels in the gruesome
intimacy of it.
Ever wonder what might drive a person to videotape their suicide? It
might be anger and hatred towards the people who brought them to that
point. Whether the corpse of Metallica is animated for another 2 or 20
years – we will always have this perverse document to mark the moment
when the final rattle was loosed.
The end of the film finds the therapist, the band’s cynical manager,
and their label’s marketing department all hovering around the band’s
as-yet-untitled record like vultures. “Saint Anger” is heavily
favored, and the manager chooses this moment to reveal his utter contempt
for an imagined Metallica fan. He parodies their reasoning like this:
“St. Anger. Wow. I’m angry, those guys are still angry too.
I can relate.”
The marketing team envisions a tag line: “Tuesday is St. Anger’s
Day.”
Lars pipes up: “I think a better title is ‘Friends.’”
The table is silent, the audience guffaws, Hetfield rolls his eyes. Whatta
gaywad!
But it’s a revealing moment – it’s what these damaged
people really lack in their surrender to the money god, and what we, and
all of the people sitting around this table, all crave and all lack. I
can’t shake the image of the Harpies descending on the banquet table.
The last 10 years has been a steady march of betrayal for Metallica –
culminating in their Napster suit where they turned in thousands of names
of fans who downloaded their music from Napster to the Senate. Talk about
puppets.
The real subtext of this film is resentment. Not only is it assumed that
people would care what the band goes through during the most intimate
moments (surprise! – we do), but that we might sympathize for them
in their damaged plight. Fact is, we are also ravenous for their destruction.
The rise precedes the fall, of course – in fact, the rise IS the
fall, since a crash is inevitable for the ascendant. We hunger for the
closure of the circle, and Metallica has cleverly thwarted our desires
by making a document that revels in the monstrosity their fame has created.
Some kind of monster indeed. It’s a neat trick, but lost on them,
and lost on the goober therapist who at one point is seen scribbling down
lyrics for James during a recording session.
The film is a meditation on the black hole of fame – a place where
no light can escape – and on energy that has effectively devoured
itself.
When Saint Anger is in the can and the band decides to make a video,
they go to San Quentin Maximum Security Prison to film it. They play inside
the cell blocks and then perform for the convicts. Hetfield tells them
he’d probably be among them or dead if he hadn’t found music,
and it rings false. If there’s anything therapy does to people,
it makes them blind to their exploitation. It’s given the band license
to stomp over another part of the disenfranchised as they exploit their
lot in horror. Do these people have any fucking realization of what filming
in a prison means? What they are doing profiting from convicts’
suffering? So what if they play a free show for them? It’s another
disgusting moment in the parade.
In Some Kind of Monster the only moments of humanity we witness are when
Hetfield is watching his daughter perform ballet. It’s a great scene,
and we wish him well trying to get in touch with his family.
But I think the more oppressive content is Lars Ulrich’s father
(looking like Gandalf from LOTR), listening to a track on the new record
with his son in the studio and then turning to him with utter frankness
to say, “I think you should delete it.”
Old time metal codependent, Bob Rock, produced Saint Anger and plays
bass on the sessions. He’s looking the worse for wear, he’s
kind of pudgy, kind of dissipated and the unspoken reality of his position
in the process is that he could never be a member of Metallica. He can’t
walk the walk, he can’t talk the talk, he doesn’t have the
plastic surgery. But this issue is never raised during Some Kind of Monster
– instead there’s about 15 minutes of a try-out sequence where
Metallica auditions a myriad of metal has-been and also-ran bassists.
What’s going on here? Its not that the audience is so naïve
to think that a guy like Bob Rock could ever be in Metallica. Metallica
is not in the garage anymore – even though they publicly pine for
those innocent days with two releases over a decade. The first EP was
a throw away document which followed their best album, Master of Puppets
– charming in its slightness and surprising in its reference points.
The double CD Garage Inc. – is just ludicrous overkill. It’s
a band that wants nothing to do with the grind of producing original records.
I suppose it’s just the reality of show biz that’s keeping
Bob Rock behind the mixing board. And really I’m just speculating
– but I’m sure there’s part of him that wants to be
part of the club. Everyone in the film who’s not in the band seems
to hunger for a part of it, and at one point Lars suggests with cruel
glee that Newsted can eat shit when he makes ovations through management
that he would accept an offer to return to the band.
Some Kind of Monster shows three people completely crushed by the beast
they’ve created, too sick to extract themselves with any dignity.
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OTR Comment & Culture - September, 2004