Metallica: This Monster Lives (51 page)

APPENDIX: THE OSLO INTERVIEWS

In December 2003, I traveled to Oslo, Norway, to let Metallica reflect on the last two and a half years of their lives spent under the glare of our cameras.
Some Kind of Monster
began and ended with Metallica’s cooperation, so it seems only fitting to give them the last word.

Lars:
In February and March of 2001, when we started talking about how Metallica was going through an interesting and unusual and potentially challenging time, we told you guys to grab your shit and come out to the West Coast without really having any idea what we were getting ourselves into—number one, what the band was getting itself into, and number two, what you guys as filmmakers were getting yourselves into. In retrospect, the unknown quality was great. It’s daring, it’s challenging, and I think that’s what maybe connects us to each other, what allows us to throw around precious words like “artists” or whatever we selfishly call ourselves. To be honest, I’m not sure I ever had a vision so much as a faith in the project itself. Between you two as filmmakers, and the four of us who form the entity known as Metallica, with a couple of the Q Primers floating around, I had faith that there was a great film of some kind here. Or, if not great, then unique and unusual, which to me is always in the direction of greatness, [
laughs
]

Kirk:
When we agreed to do this, we had no idea what was on the horizon. Jason was still in the band, and the whole project was in a more embryonic stage. It was business as usual. It was extremely fortunate from your perspective that the cameras were there when all this stuff started raining down. After the first two or three weeks, there was so much interpersonal shit we had to deal with that I just forgot about the cameras. I was too busy thinking about what was right in front of me—the health and welfare and future of my band. After a while, the cameras just became invisible, because I was dealing with all the other situations that were being thrown at us.

James:
This film is sending a damn good message—that you can overcome things, you don’t have to feel stuck. You don’t have to stay the way you are, no matter how comfortable you think you are. Myself, I didn’t think I could change: “I don’t know anything else, I don’t know
any better. What if it’s worse?” It’s amazing, how scary the unknown can be.

Lars:
This is not just another fuckin’ run-of-the-mill glorified look at how cool we are in our little rock band, playing in front of 20,000 people a night while you capture us walking into a dressing room with a towel around our neck, going [
whines
], “Oh, this is so difficult, we’re bleeding for our audience and our art!” All that bullshit that most of these films end up being.

James:
You know, it took my family saying good-bye to me, throwing me out of the house, for me to realize what I was doing, who I was, how dependent I was on certain things, and how unhealthy that was. You know, I wanted to be back with my family because I needed someone to show me how to live. [
laughs
] But now I love being with my family, because I can show
them
some things. You know, we need each other, but we’ll be okay without each other. That’s progress, you know?

Kirk:
Now that the film is done, I realize that we’re showing a side of ourselves that a lot of bands don’t usually show. We’re just tearing ourselves open and exposing our raw emotions to the audience. And, you know, I have a little bit of reservations about that, but ultimately I’m okay with it, because it’s the truth. It’s who we really are. I mean, there’s no script. The only script is the script of our own lives. I just think it’s fortunate that you guys were there. It almost felt like it was meant to be. I think it was just a stroke of luck, really, that you guys were there to film it all. You know, film us in our darkest hour, because we’re used to being filmed during our brightest, most glamorous hours, and for some reason I feel like this film balances everything out. You know, all the glamorous side of Metallica, of being one of the biggest bands in the world—I mean that’s great and everything, but there is a flip side, the darker side of the band that no one else sees. And this film captures the darker side of Metallica. And it balances it out. I never felt self-conscious, and after a while it just wasn’t an issue that the cameras were around. You can clearly see that in the movie. I mean, I hardly ever address the cameras fully. And it’s warts and all. Through half of the movie, I look like crap, like I just woke up. [
laughs
] None of us look like roses. This isn’t
a film that will transform us into some sort of glamorous or elegant band. The reality of it is that we’re just as human as anyone else. None of us look particularly good, none of us look particularly bad. We’re just human, you know?

Rob:
I was so focused on what I needed to do, and also excited to be there jamming with Metallica, that I actually kind of
wanted
the audition to be filmed. I was more worried about the personal stuff, like, Are these guys going to ask me crazy personal questions, and what’s the deal with these cameras? But as far as the actual performance, I was kind of excited, ’cause then, hey, you know, this will be documented. I’m rocking out with Metallica!
[laughs]
If there was going to be some sort of interview where I’d have the camera in my face, that was gonna be weird, but I just dealt with it.

James:
I think this film is special because bands don’t normally go through something like this.
People
don’t normally go through something like this. The normal feedback I’ve gotten from record-company people and others who know us—or at least know the “us” that they want to know-is, “Wow, it was almost like I shouldn’t be watching, it’s kind of voyeuristic.” And then there’ve been people who’ve said, “Boy, James, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you were portrayed in kind of a bad light.” [
laughs
]

Lars:
I never knew how it was gonna play out until it was about five
P.M.
on that Monday up at Lucas’s ranch, when I saw all the bits tied together in a dramatic form. When you came out there and showed us the film, that was the first time I realized there was a dramatic thread to the last two years, and that you ended up with another potentially great Berlinger-Sinofsky film. I was nervous going into the screening, but three hours later I had shed all nervousness and divorced myself from the fact that that was me up there. As soon as the dramatic thread came into play, I became immersed in the film as I hope other people will. I didn’t sit there looking at double chins or the weird-ass lack of showers, or any of that stuff. I was able to step outside myself as a member of Metallica and just be a human being who’s interested in the process and results of documentary films.

James:
As a “cast member” sitting in the audience watching it, it felt really strange. As time goes on, I think I’ll watch it a little more and get more comfortable with it. You know, if it were a film that we were acting in, I think I would be watching the shit out of it and critiquing myself. But, you know, it’s just us, so, “Okay, I lived that, now bring on the next moment.”

Kirk:
The film has a percolating quality to it. When I watched it, it put a lot of thoughts into my head. I had my reservations, but for the sake of the film you can’t have too many. You can’t think about yourself. You can’t say, “Oh, I don’t want that to be shown because I said the wrong thing or I look like crap because I was sick or whatever.” To start chopping it up like that, you wouldn’t have a film, ’cause the film is so much about
that.
So I’m glad we as a band didn’t make any major changes. I mean, what could we change? The whole experience changed me quite a bit, and I hope the other guys feel the same. And, you know, like I said, there are some parts of the film that I could probably say, “Do we really need that part?” But then you wouldn’t have a complete picture. It’s like, do I want my pride to be satisfied, or do I want the truth to be told? And I thought it was very important for the truth to be told. Watching the film was kind of a vindication of what I felt while I was experiencing it. When I saw those experiences on film, I totally just relived them again and felt a lot of the same emotions. When you step outside yourself and view yourself more objectively, you see yourself in a different light. And I definitely had a reaction to that. It was a positive reaction, but it was just funny feeling things all over again, things I hadn’t felt since that spring and summer of 2002.

Lars:
Looking back on the close to three years we spent on this project, it’s been an incredibly interesting learning experience. And I love the two-dimensionality of it, how I got to be a subject of the film as well as somebody who, I guess, was helping to drive it along as a project. I think we developed not only a friendship but also a respect for each other and a kind of thing where you guys really were part of the team–not just outsiders documenting it. We could’ve just as easily turned the cameras around. Maybe we
did
a couple of times, and you guys, in your humbleness, chose to minimize your presence.
I think it’s certainly interesting how the film played a role in all of the other creative processes. There was a kind of perverse beauty to the fact that the film was affecting what was going on, and I’m glad there’s a nod to that in the film. There’s a new kind of gray area between reality TV and documentary, stuff that’s somewhat staged, and I don’t want to mention any names or anything, but we’re probably all aware of who that might be. I’m proud of the fact that we did not stage anything. You guys were either there, or you weren’t there. I do think your presence elevated what was being captured, especially in the therapy sessions, which got very intense and very naked. The cameras made us realize that we could not bullshit each other. There was no half-assing
things, because the cameras captured every nuance and every emotional expression to the fullest.

Oslo, Norway, December 2, 2003 (Courtesy of Joe Belinger)

James:
People get different things from the film. People get the things they need, when they need them, and I know that for a fact. You can shove the message in people’s face all you want, but if they’re not ready for it, they’re not ready for it. It doesn’t mean they’re less of a person, or above it all. They just don’t need to hear it right then. You hear it when you need it. What’s that expression—“When the student’s ready, the teacher appears.” That’s so true. And I was ready.

Lars:
Whenever Metallica has done creative projects, whatever they may be, we’ve always felt that we had to answer to no fucker—it was just the band and, you know, its managers, sharing the creative direction of where the project was going. For the first time ever in our twenty-year history, because the record company was paying the bills all of a sudden, the record company started making creative suggestions and even creative demands. And that was a new place for us to be, an unusual and awkward place for us to be. We decided to stand up for you guys and decided the record company should have no role in deciding where this project was going. We had to basically buy back our own work, in order to retain the control we desire of anything Metallica-related.

James:
This movie is kind of like me telling on myself, in a way. The whole demystifying of the image … You know, that image was a big part of what kept me in my addiction and kept me bullshitting myself. There are times when it’s easier for me to go through life with nobody knowing what I’m thinking. Or I can walk into a room like this loose cannon, where no one knows what’s going to happen, so it keeps them at bay. It fueled my isolation and fueled a lot of my hatred for the world. It’s like, I wanted to fit in, but I definitely did
not
want to at the same time. Because I grew so comfortable with the “no one really knows me” part of my existence. So I believe the demystifying is going to help people understand that, at the end of the day, we are human. We are not these “metal gods” that you speak of. [
laughs
] We have a great gift, but we are human beings put into strange situations—sometimes on pedestals, sometimes thrown down sewers.

Kirk:
It will be interesting to see how this ages. I’m gonna make a point of watching it in five years, in ten years, just to see how it ages.

James:
You know, nobody thought this film would be the big deal that it is now. Yeah, starting off as some promotional TV commercial, and then getting to this, is great. And no one was murdered. There didn’t have to be a murder for it to be a good documentary like your other ones.

APPENDIX: SOME KIND OF CREDITS

Appendix: Some Kind of Credits (A Partial List)

Opening Credits (Cards)

A Third Eye Motion Picture Company Release