Metallica: This Monster Lives (14 page)

“I think it’s fucking stock! Which part of that is unclear to you? I think it sounds stock to my ears! Do you want me to write it down?”

This scene is a perfect example of how digital video, the format we used to shoot
Monster
, has completely transformed documentary filmmaking. The
cost of buying, exposing, and developing ten minutes of 16mm film is three hundred dollars. For twenty bucks, you can shoot an entire
hour
of digital video. The new technology makes it possible to adhere more closely to the cinema verité ideal. (The downside, as we found out when we began to edit, is that when you’re not worried about cost, you can find yourself drowning in footage.) It’s no exaggeration to say that
Monster
wouldn’t be the movie it is without digital video. As this scene demonstrated, it allowed us to be more honest, because we were able to use two cameras on most of our shoots. That meant we were able to capture more of those elusive moments and furtive glances without having to invent cutaway shots. (While making our other films, there’s always been a point where we’ve had to ask people to redo some motion so that we’d have a cutaway but we would never ask people to repeat words. Still, even when we make minor requests, it always feels a little like cheating.)

James adds to the list of possible album titles. (Courtesy of Bob Richman)

During this argument, Wolfgang Held, our cameraman on that shoot, operated one camera, and Bruce operated the other. Wolfgang, holding the main camera, focused squarely on James. Bruce, sitting next to Kirk with his little Sony PD-150 (a portable digital video camera that gets surprisingly crisp footage) nearly invisible on his lap, was able to capture one of
Monster
’s most priceless shots, a moment where real life is more complex than anything a screenwriter could imagine.

“TEMPTATION”

Temptation, wreck my head

Temptation, make you dead

Temptation, sucks my soul

Temptation, fill no hole

Temptation, fuck you up

Temptation

No, no, no, I can’t say no, no, no, no

I can’t let it go

No, no, no, no

Go away

Leave me be

Just leave me be

The exchange was becoming tenser. Kirk, as he often did, tried to steer things in a more constructive direction. “Why don’t we just go in there and hammer it out, instead of hammering on each other?”

Unfortunately, it was too late. James said he was in a pissy mood. Lars lambasted James for letting his mood get in the way. James said he was just being honest.

Lars: “You’re just sitting here being a complete dick.”

Kirk, unwittingly displaying perfect comic timing and an honestly exasperated expression, leaned back and slapped his forehead. It was one of those “worth a thousand words” moments.

James got up and exited stage left. He slammed the door, abruptly drawing the curtain on the film’s first act. Nearly a year would pass before Bruce or I saw him again.

EARLY WARNING

“Temptation” was a perfect fit for us, because the song so clearly encapsulated the state of James Hetfield during this period. However, as any astute Metallica fan will instantly notice, “Temptation” isn’t on
St. Anger.
Why was the song so right for
Some Kind of Monster
but not apparently up to the standards of
St. Anger
? Setting aside the possibility that one or more members of Metallica simply didn’t like the song (all
St. Anger
selections required everyone’s vote), one possible answer reveals a lot about the difference between what we were trying to do as documentary filmmakers and what Metallica were trying to do as musicians.

The first time the subject came up in front of our cameras was during James’s rehab stint. Bob Rock and the two remaining members of Metallica were in a therapy session with Phil. They were talking about James’s recent lyrics. Kirk brought up “Temptation.” “Those lyrics are so clear now,” he said. “[The song will] have so much more impact now that it’s more fact than fiction.”

Bob nodded. “It’ll probably never make the album, but—”

“That song has to make the album,” Kirk said.

“The interesting thing about ‘Temptation’ is that James wrote it off the top of his head,” Bob continued. “In other words, it was not thought-out. And listening to the music that’s been created so far [at the Presidio], there has to be some stuff that’s thought-out more.” This was probably Bob’s delicate way of saying
that when (or if) the time came for Metallica to regroup, the band would have to find a way to focus its creative energies.

Today, Bob still remembers the “Temptation” session. “James just made it up as he was going along,” he says. “There was something magical about it. But there was no way management or the record company would let it come out.” Why not? “It was just too raw.”

Like Bob, we saw the magic of this rawness, and it was just the sort of magic we were looking for. As verité filmmakers, we want to capture those times when human behavior is at its most unvarnished. We live for the moments when people let down their guard. When I saw James letting those words pour out of him, I knew right away that it was one of those moments. I wasn’t even thinking about whether that song would be on the album. I just knew I was watching something powerful.

Whatever you think of
St. Anger
, it’s definitely Metallica’s most “verité” album. It’s Metallica’s attempt to present an honest sonic document of the band—and James’s attempt to portray the honest state of his psyche—without worrying about making the music sound polished or “perfect.” You could really feel them struggle with this when it came time to assemble a tentative song list for
St. Anger
in late 2002. We used a bit of this meeting in the film, but it’s worth highlighting the larger discussion about “Temptation.”

James, Lars, Kirk, and Bob all brought a short list of songs each thought should make the cut. James and Kirk each had “Temptation” on their list. Bob thought that “Temptation” was more a “vibe” than a song, and suggested that maybe a bit of it could be used as a lead-into or fade-out of another song. James said he agreed that it wasn’t a complete song, but he was reluctant to abandon the idea of turning it into one. “It really does sum up all the lyrics that are in this new project. It was done long before [my] recovery, so it was kind of [anticipating] all of this coming to life.”

“I like it for what it represents to me,” Bob said. “I will always listen to it because it represents a point in time [and] everything we’ve been through.” But he wondered if maybe it was
too much
of a personal statement, too disturbing, and too different from anything Metallica had ever done, to fit cohesively into the album. James said that he liked the song precisely because it was different and disturbing. He wasn’t suggesting it was a classic “like ‘Master of Puppets,’” but he was having trouble letting it go. “I remember writing that thing—it came out, it flowed, totally, instantly.”

Bob asked Lars what he thought. Lars said it sounded more like a jam than a song, and said he envisioned an album where “every piece of fat” was trimmed.

Kirk again voiced his support. “I think the great thing about ‘Temptation’ is that it has such a mood and a lot of atmosphere. I hear the emotion in your voice,” he said to James. “I can tell you’re singing your heart out…. It’s just total raw emotion, and I don’t think we’ve ever caught a moment so completely.”

In the end, James was torn. On the one hand, if “Temptation” was such a great moment captured on tape, why couldn’t they whip it into a song? On the other hand, “whipping anything into shape” was the MO on
Load
and
Reload
, and something they wanted to avoid this time. James eventually conceded Lars’s point that the song wasn’t meant for
St. Anger.
We used that bit of dialogue in the film, because both James and Lars later commented that the consensus they reached showed how far they’d come in learning to communicate with each other.

Kirk had one more thing to say about “Temptation.” “If I listen to it twice in a row, and I’m in a certain mood, it just brings me straight back to the Presidio. And I’m just like, ‘Whoa.’ I get kind of freaked out, you know?”

Sometimes, when it cuts too close to the heart, there’s such a thing as too much verité.

CHAPTER 8

ENTER NIGHT

08/15/01
INT. ROOM 627, RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO - DAY

LARS:
Are you saying that the party line at the [treatment facility] is that James cannot get better unless he gives up music?

PHIL:
No, I wouldn’t say that. I would say that the party line there is [that you do] whatever it takes to get healthy, and if you feel you can’t control yourself around certain situations …

KIRK:
Isn’t that a self-fulfilling prophecy, though?

PHIL:
Well, I don’t share their belief, myself. I believe that whatever problems we have, it is to our advantage to be put in situations where we have to expose the issues so that we can work through them. If you have a fear of heights, you shouldn’t spend a lot of time on the ground, you know?

LARS:
The point I was trying to make is that when I saw James, he had been away from us for forty-eight hours. Now it’s been [almost two months]. So it’ll be interesting to. see how the
return to the world that the rest of us inhabit, how that is going…. Like I said before, I’m prepared for the worst.

PHIL:
Now, if you prepare for the worst, I don’t want fear to dictate your energy.

LARS:
I have a certain calmness about it.

PHIL:
I think you do, too, okay? [But] if you’ve shut down, to some extent, because it’s easier to think there won’t be a future for Metallica, then a side effect is that you won’t put in the energy to keep it alive. There may not be a Metallica, but [you] have a
choice
about how to approach that [possibility]. Maybe it’s a bit dramatic to put it that way, but …

KIRK:
I, in my heart of hearts, don’t think that he’ll walk away. I’m definitely not denying that could happen, but in my heart of hearts, I don’t think he’ll walk away.

LARS:
I don’t think that he will
willfully
walk away, but I think that what could potentially happen is that it’ll become too difficult for him to–

KIRK:
I don’t think that will happen. I just don’t think that will happen.

LARS:
I don’t think it would ever be so cut-and-dry that he would call up and say, “I’m out, later, good luck.” I think it would be more something that would show its signs [gradually]. When we sit down and make music again … who knows what lyrics are gonna come out of him. Who the fuck knows? Is it still gonna have that … “AAARRGHH”? Will there still be a kind of nerve or fire? I don’t know. Gotta admit, you saw him at the [treatment facility]. Did he look like a guy who was gonna go up onstage and fucking stand in front of the red light and sing “The Thing That Should Not Be”?

KIRK:
No, not at all.

LARS:
It looked beaten out of him. I’m not saying he’s not gonna come back; I’m just saying, I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. But I know … where we are right now, and right now, it doesn’t look like it’s there. You can’t argue with that.

When James slammed the door and walked out of our lives, we thought we had a great dramatic moment, the kind of cinematic realism that verité filmmakers live for. We all figured it was a climax of sorts, but not a final act. We soon discovered, of course, that James had checked himself into rehab for an indefinite period. Again, this seemed like a momentary setback for the band, and possibly even a boon for the film. It never crossed our minds that we might have just witnessed the last time James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich ever made music together. Or that our film was coming dangerously close to disintegrating in front of our eyes.