Eye For Film >> Movies >> DiG! (2004) DVD Review
A short interview with director Ondi Timoner starts off the extras. Timoner seems a world apart from her drug-addled subjects - down to earth and sensible - except in her determination to perfect her work. DiG! took four years to edit, and three months before release, she still wanted to release a five-hour cut.
Unlike the Brian Jonestown Massacre, however, she had the sense to pander to at least meet execs half way and cut it down to a reasonable runtime. Most interesting are the questions about the filming, which was carried out with surveillance cameras to get that extra bit of "normality" into the footage. It's credit to Timoner that whilst clearly being in the thick of the action for the whole time, she keeps her presence excluded and her opinion left to the editing.
Half an hour of deleted scenes follows - almost not enough for a documentary filmed over seven years. A couple focus on the Dandy Warhols, but since they're relatively level-headed compared to BJM, don't make for such interesting viewing. The rest feature BJM, mostly pissed out of their heads and wearing silly sunglasses. The best deleted scene sees Anton in his most egotisical and faux-Lennon-in-Sgt-Pepper mode, talking absolute nonsense on a rooftop. He says that because he's working so hard, that he's going to die soon (Anton is a heroin addict, incidentally), then reveals how he sees himself as a "psychic earthworm". Yeah, I know. Then compares himself to Buddha. His sincerity is quite, quite amazing, but a bit tiresome at the same time: we've all seen pretentious rockstars before and Anton is not an especially talented one.
A couple of trailers round off the package.
Reviewed on: 06 Apr 2008