Metallica: This Monster Lives (21 page)

The extraordinary scenes with the two Ulrichs almost didn’t happen in front of our cameras. A few days after Lars and I had our “take a leak” argument, he called us in New York to say that his father was coming to the Bay Area
to look at some Marin County land Lars had recently purchased, on which he planned to build his dream home. Maybe we’d be interested in tagging along, Lars said. Frankly, we thought it sounded too tangential to make it into the film, but Lars was so clearly making an effort to be more accommodating to the filmmaking process that Bruce and I decided we couldn’t turn him down. We were both in New York trying to deal with the hundreds of hours of footage we’d shot so far, so we flipped a coin to see who would take one for the team and head back west to film the Ulrich men. I won. Bruce got on a plane.

It’s a good thing one of us did. At the time, all we knew about Torben was that he had been some sort of tennis pro in Denmark. We had no idea he was such a character, or that Lars considered him such a confidant and valued his opinion of Metallica’s music.

Bruce and cameraman Wolfgang Held met Lars and Torben at a gas station in the Marin County town of Tiburon. They all got in Lars’s car and drove up to one of the highest spots in Marin, far from any other houses. They got out of the car and split into two groups. Wolfgang stayed near the car with Phil and Torben, while Bruce followed Lars down a trail, filming him with the PD-150. Bruce was wearing headphones that allowed him to monitor the conversation that Wolfgang was filming between Phil and Torben. Hearing that the talk had turned to Torben’s relationship with his son, Bruce wisely steered Lars back to rejoin the others.

When they got back to the car, Bruce suggested that Torben and Lars continue to talk about their relationship. Bruce was able to tell instantly that this was a conversation that the father and son had never really had, about things that had always remained unspoken. Bruce picked up on Lars’s nervousness and also on the intense love he had for his dad. Phil clearly latched onto the moment as well. When I first looked at the dailies of this scene, I was a little surprised by how aggressive Phil was being toward Lars, urging him to talk about his fears of pleasing his father. Standing in the hot sun on a mountaintop with your dad, talking about feelings in a language different from the one you heard at home as a kid, egged on by a therapist while a video camera hovers nearby—therapy doesn’t get much weirder than that.

This was one of those times during the filming of
Monster
when I felt a little uncomfortable with Phil’s approach—not only because it seemed a bit too aggressive, but also because Phil was subtly adopting the role of “director” by attempting to create a moment that wasn’t evolving naturally I was ultimately grateful that he engineered such a powerful scene, but it could have been
merely an awkward exchange that would have been of no use to the film. He certainly wasn’t grandstanding, but I did think he was placing a little too much faith in the cathartic nature of our cameras, as well as in his belief that they served to keep his clients “honest” and less likely to shy away from difficult subjects. Phil’s behavior in this scene is a good example of how his presence could be a mixed blessing, but in this case Phil’s methods resulted in one of
Monster’
s best scenes, and his therapeutic instincts paid off in one of my favorite lines from the film. As Torben looks down at the ground and strikes some yoga poses, Lars struggles to articulate why it’s hard for him to discuss his insecurities with his dad present. Cocking his head in Torben’s direction, he says, “Some of the fear of status quo comes a little bit from this direction over here.” Torben keeps staring at the ground.
¹

It’s a line that reveals a lot about Lars’s character, and also reveals how different he is from James. Whereas James’s character and approach to music seems to be fueled by the absence of family—the attendant anger and resentment but also the guarded self-protective instinct—Lars is fueled in part by a desire to please his father, to measure up in his eyes. One of the many ways
Monster
humanizes the guys in Metallica is by showing how Lars, despite his massive success, pointedly seeks his father’s approval. Because
Monster
is a film about the son’s band rather than the father’s legacy, you don’t really get a sense of just how intimidating a figure the father has probably always been to the son. Torben was, first of all, a professional tennis player from the ’40s through the ’90s, competing at Wimbledon several times. In 1976, he was the number-one ranked player on the seniors circuit. He has worked as a cultural journalist for Danish newspapers, made and acted in several films, and had his paintings exhibited in galleries. He was also a musician with strong ties to the jazz world. He played clarinet, flute, and saxophone in jazz bands; jazz luminaries would often crash at the Ulrich house while on tour. Lars told me that he can remember being eight years old and getting up in the morning to make himself breakfast because his parents were still sleeping after a night hanging out with jazz luminaries. Dexter Gordon, who often crashed on the Ulrich’s couch, is Lars’s godfather.

The more you learn about Lars’s background, the more bizarre it seems that he became the world’s fiercest metal drummer and that he joined forces with a Southern California working-class guy like James Hetfield. If
Monster
had taken a different form, the film might have spent more time on Lars’s formative years. Bruce and I actually traveled to Copenhagen and filmed a guided tour by
Lars. It was immediately clear that even in a socially progressive country like Denmark, the Ulrichs were part of the upper strata of society. Lars stood in front of his boyhood home (which is now a fertility clinic) and talked about how his European sensibilities contributed to Metallica’s unique musical alchemy. He even showed us the exclusive country club where he took private lessons, being groomed to follow in his dad’s footsteps. “Because of my last name, I was king shit around here,” he recalled. “Then I moved to L.A. and I was king dogshit.”

There’s a point in
Monster
where Lars talks about how, during Metallica’s early days, he’d often feel very alienated by the macho breast-beating of James and original lead guitarist Dave Mustaine. I thought it was an incredibly brave thing to admit on camera, highlighting both the reality of Lars’s privileged background and his current obsession with making sure Metallica remains relevant in the music world while maintaining a singular identity. There is, of course, no reason why a rich kid can’t feel adolescent aggression; plenty of rock-and-roll bands have taken their cues from the banality of their suburban upbringings. But I don’t think that explains how Lars parlayed his passion for metal into forming the world’s biggest metal band. Far from rebelling against his parents, this is a guy who, even at 40, still runs his band’s music by his dad, whom he considers the ultimate bullshit detector. He trusts his culturally erudite father to understand the intricacies of this ear-bleeding, youthful music.

When considering the structure of the film in the postproduction process, I searched for a way to use the Copenhagen footage, but Bruce felt it came off looking too much like something you’d see in an episode of
MTV Cribs.
I didn’t wholly agree, but I did think the material felt tonally different from the rest of the film, because it was less observational and more staged for the cameras, so I let it go. I don’t regret the decision, but had I figured out a way to include it, viewers of
Monster
might have been better able to notice the deep, complex emotions that run through the Torben-Lars scenes. Especially the point where Torben torpedoes the band’s idea to lead off the album with a droning, echo-laden intro, one of the few decisions Metallica had made about the new album at that point. The song itself arose out of one of those musical epiphanies that musicians live for. One night during the Presidio period, James, Lars, Kirk, and Bob went to a concert by Sigur Rós, Icelandic minimalists known for mesmerizing musical dreamscapes. Blown away by the show, all four went straight back to the Presidio, where they spent the rest of the night jamming on a theme inspired by Sigur Rós.

I wasn’t there, but I’m guessing the session was kind of like one of those
all-nighters favored by adolescents and college students (the brief time of life when a regular sleep schedule isn’t enforced by parents or day jobs), when adrenaline, inspiration, and more controlled substances fuel intense bouts of creativity. By the time the sun comes up, you’re convinced you’ve created an artistic masterpiece. As we mature, we tend to take a more realistic view of these unhinged creative sessions; the things we made during the blush of youth don’t seem so brilliant in hindsight. Imagine being a rock star, paid to remain in this arrested state. Now imagine being a rock star like Lars, for whom parental approval is still important, having to hear from your dad that the result of one of these evenings sounds like unfocused dicking around. When we see Torben tell his son that this song “just doesn’t cut it,” the look on Lars’s face simultaneously communicates adolescent petulance, adult exasperation, and the special panic reserved for those times when you think you’ve done something subpar in your parents’ eyes. But I like the way the moment becomes tender when the two break out in laughter and Lars throws a wadded-up piece of paper at his father. It’s clear in that instant that fear of the status quo isn’t the only thing that comes from “this direction over here.”

CHAPTER 12

KARMAS BURNING

09/13/01
INT. ROOM 627, RITZ-CARLTON HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO - DAY

Phil oversees a therapy session with Lars and original Metallica lead guitarist Dave Mustaine.

LARS:
It’s difficult for me to comprehend that the only thing that you feel when you look back at the last twenty years is rooted in [being kicked out of] Metallica.

DAVE:
Okay, I’ll explain in as simple terms as I can, just to make it really easy: I had nothing. Then I had everything. Then I had nothing again. And it was okay going from nothing to everything to nothing. But then having someone stand on the back of my head and keep me underwater made it even harder for me. I would read quotes from you guys that said I was never meant to be in the band, I was just filling a spot, I was just the temporary guy, I was a fucking loser and a drunk—all the horrible things that were said immediately after my firing. I agree, I should have been fired, because I was dangerous, because of my [drinking]. But to watch for so many years as the band continued to become successful,
and to never hear you address the way I was let go … My God, Lars, you guys woke me up and said, “You know what? You’re out.” And I asked you, “What? No warning? No second chance?” And you guys said, “No, go.” Good God, man, I didn’t get a … I didn’t get a chance. And maybe for some people, you know, eighteen years is a long time. For me it seems like yesterday that I woke up, and I looked up, and I saw the guys that I love, my extended family … You gotta remember, all I had was my mom. And you and James. We had dreams together. And I sold everything to join that dream. And then it ended. And I agree with you for doing what you did, because of my disease. But don’t kid yourself.

LARS:
What do you mean?

DAVE:
I mean, if … There were ways to address, you know, what was going on. You know, with, with my problem. And who I am sober is totally different from who I am drunk. We never gave it a try. We never gave it a chance. Would it would it have worked? As much as I loved being with you guys, I’m sure it would have.

I went back and forth between San Francisco and New York so many times while making
Monster
that sometimes I felt like any other working guy on a daily commute. Flying cross-country became so routine for me that I don’t recall why, a few days before I was set to fly to San Francisco on a Tuesday morning in early September, I changed my ticket to leave on Monday night. Whatever the reason, I wound up traveling to San Francisco on the night of September 10, 2001. I checked into my hotel, looked over my notes for the next day’s shoot, and fell asleep. The shoot was scheduled for ten
A.M.
When my phone rang a few minutes after seven, it jolted me awake. Our production manager, Cheryll Stone, was on the line. Her voice was shaking. “I assume we’re not shooting today”

I was still half asleep. “Huh? Why aren’t we shooting?”

“Turn on the TV”

I did and immediately saw an image of the World Trade Center. Except
there was a plume of smoke obscuring the South Tower. Or was the South Tower not even there? What was going on? It slowly began to sink in that the building had collapsed just minutes earlier. They were showing images of a plane slamming into it, and now it was gone.

Someone was pounding on my door. Wolfgang, our cameraman at the time, burst into the room. He was panicking because his apartment in New York was just a few blocks from the World Trade Center, and he couldn’t get through to his wife. He sat down next to me and stared at the TV. I was still having trouble processing what was happening. A few minutes later, the North Tower was gone, and the awful reality of what we were watching became clear.