When Zia McCabe first watched Dig! at Sundance Film Festival in 2004, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, her reaction was relief. “We got off easy,” says The Dandy Warhols keyboardist and percussionist. “They could have made us look so much worse. Those were not our darkest moments, believe it or not!”
No mean feat, in a riotous documentary that shows the Dandys debaucherously hoovering up enough cocaine to put Pablo Escobar on his backside – and frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor dropping Spinal Tap-worthy quotes including “I sneeze and hits come out”. It’s difficult to imagine a band offering such unrestricted access today. “What? Like showing them chopping out blow while talking smack about your bandmates?” laughs McCabe, via Zoom, where she’s chopping vegetables – rather than lines – in her Portland home. “It’s an unfiltered shitshow. That’s even more unique now, because people are aware of the repercussions of letting cameras into their lives to that degree. Back then, we were clueless. Dig! could never be made again without seeming contrived.”
It’s easy to see why Dave Grohl applauds Dig! as “the greatest rock ‘n’ roll documentary of all time” and Jonah Hill hails it as “Shakespearian”. Shot over seven years between 1996 and 2003, it follows the tumultuous friendship-turned-rivalry of the Dandys and their fellow Portland psych-rock comrades The Brian Jonestown Massacre, led by Anton Newcombe, as they try to start a revolution. Hankies at the ready, because Taylor-Taylor did sneeze hits, when ‘Bohemian Like You’ propelled the Dandys to living the major-label dream in 2000, while The Jonestown remained perennially on the brink – of success, of madness and of imploding.
By turns hilarious and harrowing, there are moments that cause your jaw to drop to subterranean levels, such as a famous scene when Newcombe scuppers a record company showcase at LA’s Viper Room by brawling with his bandmates on stage. As blood flows, a lone call emerges from the cauldron of flailing limbs: ‘You fucking broke my sitar, motherfucker!’ Things descend even further when Newcombe delivers a box of shotgun shells with the Dandys’ names inscribed on them, causing them to ponder whether they should issue a restraining order. It’s an indication of the pervading chaos that director Ondi Timoner remembers Newcombe signing the release form with the address “777 City of Heaven, Kingdom of God”.
Ondi Timoner was 23 when she decided to chronicle 10 bands on the verge of being signed, aided by her brother David, two years her junior, to pose the quintessentially ‘90s question of: “Can you reach a mass audience and maintain your integrity as an artist? When art meets commerce, does that destroy everything?” Swiftly, she focussed on two “dysfunctional nuclear families”, feeling each frontman possessed the elusive quality the other desired. “Anton wished he could have Courtney’s success, but would always destroy it because he felt it was ‘selling out’”, she remembers. “And Courtney wished he could be as prolific and brilliant a songwriter as Anton, but he also didn’t want to be uncomfortable.”
Dig! ripples with jeopardy and danger, and the gonzo extent to which the Timoners went to is bewildering. “We were hanging on for dear life,” says Ondi, now 52. “It was very rough at times and we threw our lot in with both bands.” They were even arrested on tour with the Jonestown in Georgia and thrown into jail. “I had to get a lawyer to represent me on drugs charges but also a lawyer to represent us to get the tapes back,” recalls Ondi. “Thankfully, the cops didn’t know how to demagnetise the tapes. But there were lots of moments where we wondered what we were doing, like when Anton went full-junkie with a gun on his pillow.”
For Dig!’s 20th anniversary, the Timoners reviewed their 2,500 hours of original footage to produce a remix, Dig! XX, with 40 minutes of extra material that provides greater context. For example, we discover that the Viper Room melee was a result of Newcombe frittering away the Jonestown’s money for the trip to LA on buying sitars (which explains why he was so mad when one got damaged). “We didn’t want to just do an extended or upscaled version,” says Ondi. “We wanted to take it to the next level, and answer any questions you might have had – and those you didn’t even know you had.”
As such, Joel Gion – the Jonestown’s tambourine-playing court jester – provides new, sardonic commentary over Taylor-Taylor’s original narration, allowing for a less one-sided view. “Well, that’s how our two bands interact – the Dandys do something and then we do something that’s funnier and more interesting,” quips Gion. “To have Courtney’s narration already exist with his down-his-nose angle and actually be able to relay our circumstances was very satisfying. I’ve always backed this film from day one. There’s famously a lot of people who don’t.”
Indeed, Taylor-Taylor and Newcombe have distanced themselves from it. “It was brutal for us,” the former informed NME last year, and accused Ondi of “manipulating both bands” – a charge the filmmakers vehemently deny. “We were just-out-of-college kids who believed in the whole revolution thing, so to suggest we tried to stitch them up is offensive, because we cared about them,” says David. “We were rooting for everybody.”
According to Ondi, both frontmen were shown early cuts, yet had “no notes.” Nevertheless, Gion noticed the vibe shift after the crowd reaction at the Sundance premiere. “They didn’t expect to be laughed at, so they were excited about it until audiences started seeing it – then they had to readjust their thinking. When Courtney says ‘I sneeze and hits come out’, he wasn’t trying to be funny in that moment.”
“Egos are tender,” McCabe sighs. “Courtney and Anton are both brilliant, wounded artists and sensitive and tragic, and that’s the essence of music – that you lick your wounds with your lyrics and this is how you cope with your trauma. So who’s going to take the mockery the hardest? Those guys.”
In true Dig! anarchic fashion, perspectives on the film’s accuracy vary. “It’s an incredible thing – even with its flaws,” says McCabe, who argues that “reality TV tactics” were employed to twist the story and magnify the rivalry between the Dandys and the Jonestown. Viewed through a 2020s lens though, she suggests Dig!’s true alchemy is in its raw portrayal of mental health. “I love that it exists. Most bands are going to have one neurodivergent member. You’re looking at people with OCD, ADHD, schizophrenia… I saw this as a river of mental illness with music being the life-raft we were all clinging to as we were flung down the current.”
The aftermath of Dig!’s cult success saw fans attempt to provoke Newcombe at Jonestown gigs into altercations, while McCabe remembers people holding banners emblazoned with “THE JONESTOWN ARE THE BETTER BAND” at Dandys concerts.
“That sucked – we’re not fucking sports teams,” she recalls. “To Jonestown fans, we became The Man. We’re not The Man – we just had not-quite-as-fucked-up upbringings as them, and we chose cocaine and not meth. Cocaine wears off faster and you can lead a normal life. Meth and heroin fuck you up harder.”
Unlike the downbeat ending of the original, which saw the Jonestown dropped by their label and a drug-ravaged Newcombe looking like he might not survive, Dig! XX culminates with both bands sharing a stage in 2023. “Courtney and Anton have come so far from those days and are joys to be around,” beams McCabe. “Over the years, we’ve taken every opportunity we can to hang out to show the rivalry was just a short phrase the Jonestown went through.”
Bringing the story bang up to date, both bands are still recording new albums and touring. McCabe’s own daughter is now 20 – the age she was when she started filming Dig!. “Luckily, I look puffy and not good in that film, so I used it as a cautionary tale to her: ‘That’s gluten, beer, cocaine and cigarettes. You want to look like that? Now you know”.
Dig! XX’s rosier epilogue is slightly subverted, however, with footage of the Jonestown’s deja-vu-eliciting onstage dust-up in 2023, which led to the premature end of their Australian tour. “It’s not just the typical ‘then they got old and boring’ ending,” notes Gion, wryly. “For better or worse, we’re just a bunch of old guys trying not to die doing the exact same shit we did in the first one!”
In further volatile, equally-blessed-and-cursed Dig! style, the 20th anniversary celebrations are happening at a time when Ondi’s house was tragically lost in the devastating California wildfires. “Every movie of mine was burned, but Dig! was the one archive that didn’t burn. You can’t kill Dig!,” she says.
“Sorry Anton!,” she jokes. “That’s what happens when you live in the City of God in the Kingdom of Heaven!”
‘Dig! XX’ is released in UK and Irish cinemas for one night only on March 25