DIG!

Being at the right place at the right time is what makes DIG! important, but being in the wrong place, like in the path of a flying mike stand, is what makes it exhilarating.

Seven years in the making, and coiled from fifteen hundred hours of footage, Ondi Timoner's DIG! tracks the tumultuous rise of two talented musicians, Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols, and dissects their star-crossed friendship and bitter rivalry.

Taylor puts it best: "Anton is my friend and my enemy, the greatest inspiration and, ultimately, the greatest regret." Both are hell-bent on staging a self-proclaimed revolution of the music industry. Timoner keeps up with them through their loves and obsessions, gigs and recordings, arrests and death threats, uppers and downers, and ultimately to their chance at a piece of the profit-driven music business. How each handles his stab at success is where the relationship frays and burns.

Fresh, stylish, raucous, and raw, DIG! is a feat in rough-and-tumble fllmmaking, but the conflicts it examines are as old as Mozart. Where does genius fit into a commodified world? Can it thrive and get its due, or does it need to self-destruct to preserve its integrity?