Metallica: This Monster Lives (6 page)

The structure of our film also pays tribute to
Gimme Shelter. Monster
telegraphs its ending and uses a flashback structure to take the viewer on an epic journey
Gimme Shelter
also begins where it ends, with Jagger and the Stones reviewing the Altamont footage in the Maysleses’ editing room. We know from the start that someone has been stabbed to death; the events leading up to the killing are shown in flashbacks. The late Charlotte Zwerin, the codirector and editor of the film (and Bruce’s mentor), brilliantly turned the voyeuristic gaze back on the subjects of the film themselves. At various points, the film returns to Jagger watching the Altamont footage on a Steenbeck editing table. Confronted with tragic images for which he is partially responsible, he struggles to formulate a response. With the camera on him, he can’t turn away. As Lars Ulrich would discover twenty years later, the camera makes you feel like you have to say
something.

I’m not saying that
Some Kind of Monster
is as important and groundbreaking as
Gimme Shelter
(though it’s been rewarding to hear some critics make the comparison without knowing of our connection to the Maysleses or our conscious attempt to emulate their film’s structure). Nor do I want to trivialize the Altamont tragedy by giving Metallica’s struggles the same symbolic weight as the murder that occurred right in front of the Stones’ stage and what that death said about the souring of the Woodstock generation. The point is, you don’t have to be a Stones fan to be moved by the Maysleses-Zwerin film, and I’d like to think you don’t have to like Metallica or metal to respond to the themes in
Monster.
You just have to be someone who’s ever tried to connect to those around you in a fractious world that does so much to tear us apart.

CHAPTER 3

WEST MEMPHIS AND BEYOND

Publicity still from
Paradise Lost,
the film that first introduced us to Metallica. For more information on the case, go to
www.wm3.org
. (Courtesy of HBO)

If three kids hadn’t been railroaded by the American justice system, I probably never would have met Metallica.

Once the whirlwind surrounding
Brother’s Keeper
died down, Bruce and I weren’t sure what to do next. In 1993, Shelia Nevins, the doyenne of documentaries at HBO and a fan of
Brother’s Keeper,
sent us a small wire-service story buried deep inside
The New York Times.
Three teenage boys had just been accused of murdering three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, a small town near the Tennessee border. The teens had reportedly committed the murders as some sort of horrific ritual sacrifice to Satan. Shelia suggested there could be a documentary here. If so, HBO might be interested.

There was nothing in the article to suggest that the kids might have been wrongly accused. Their possible innocence wasn’t what piqued our interest. We were mainly fascinated by the idea that these three friends could commit such a horrible crime. A few months earlier, two ten-year-olds in Liverpool, England, had abducted and murdered two-year-old Jamie Bulger, a crime that
garnered international attention for its pointlessness and the age of the killers. The Arkansas murders seemed to me to be similarly inexplicable. Sensing an international pattern of disaffected youth, we thought we were going down to Arkansas to make a film about guilty teenagers, sort of a real-life
River’s Edge.

It didn’t take us long to decide that these kids were innocent. A lethal brew of Bible-thumping fundamentalism combined with shoddy local journalism, bad police work, and a narcissistic defendant who seemed to enjoy being in the spotlight had all coalesced into a modern-day witch trial. There was very little evidence connecting the three teens to the crimes. Besides a confession from a semiretarded defendant, which we and the defense team strongly suspected was coerced, there was another defendant, Damien Echols, who wore pentagrams because of his belief in Wicca, and—the smoking gun—listened to Metallica. Yes, the prosecutors had such a lack of evidence that they actually introduced Metallica lyrics into evidence at trial.
¹
That’s when we realized that these three teens were doomed.

We spent a year filming in West Memphis. We interviewed the families of the victims and the defendants, as well as both legal teams, and we filmed all the court proceedings. When it came time to edit the footage, we realized that we really needed to use Metallica’s music. Damien was particularly fond of “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” a melancholy plea to recede from the world entirely and therefore perfect for our movie. We did a little research and discovered that Metallica had never licensed its music for use in films. Even if the band made an exception for us, we reasoned, we surely couldn’t afford it. HBO was being very generous, but the value of Metallica’s music in the open market was probably equivalent to half of our entire film budget. Still, there was no harm in trying, because we really wanted to avoid having to hire someone to write some anonymous Metallica-esque score.

After digging up the name and address of Metallica’s management, an outfit called Q Prime in Midtown Manhattan, I wrote a detailed letter that laid out why we thought Metallica’s music was key to the film. We argued that heavy-metal music was on trial as much as these three innocent teens. We felt this was a relevant issue to dangle in front of Metallica, since metal had such a bad rap with parents. We mentioned
Dream Deceivers,
David Van Taylor’s recent documentary about a lawsuit that blamed the band Judas Priest for the
suicide and attempted suicide of two of its fans. We sang our own praises, explaining that
Brother’s Keeper
was a film that broke down stereotypes, something we wanted to do with these teenage Metallica fans.

Truthfully, I assumed it would be nearly impossible to get through to these guys, literally and figuratively. With
Paradise Lost,
I wanted to break down the common stereotypes people had about alienated kids who were into metal, but I had my own stereotypical view of metal bands. I assumed that Metallica couldn’t give two shits about cinema and real-life miscarriages of justice. I figured their nickname was “Alcoholica” for a reason: they were most likely a bunch of lazy, beer-swilling idiots paid too much money to make noise for other lazy, beer-swilling idiots. I sent off the fax, assuming it would be the first of many unacknowledged requests.

I hopped in my car and headed home for the day I was on the highway when I heard a strange ringing. I remembered that I’d just bought my first cell phone. It was one of those bulky “transportables”—a portable phone in a cubelike bag, much like a windup Vietnam-era field radio. I hadn’t yet figured out how to use it, so I punched buttons at random and tried not to run myself off the road. Somehow I managed to answer it. It was Bruce back at our office. He was patching me into Cliff Burnstein, Metallica’s manager.

“I got your fax,” Cliff said. “I loved
Brother’s Keeper.
”

For a second, I thought Bruce might be pulling a prank. “That’s cool,” I said tentatively “I can’t believe you’re calling back so fast.”

“I saw you guys do a Q&A opening night at Film Forum. Great film. The band loved it, too.”

We told Cliff why we wanted the music. A few weeks later, Bruce and I had a phone conversation with the band. They ultimately gave us the three tracks we requested—"Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” “Orion,” and “The Call of Ktulu.”
²
As we dealt with Metallica and its management and legal representatives, we were amazed at how fair and responsive everyone was. We were even more intrigued by the extreme disconnect between these guys’ public image and what they were really like offstage.

Paradise Lost
finally aired on HBO in 1996, after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival a few months earlier. We heard that Metallica were really proud of their connection to our film and the wrongfully accused defendants, now dubbed the “West Memphis 3.”
³
Lars in particular was really into the film as a piece of art. We spoke with the band a few times about making a Metallica movie, but the conversations never really got very far. Bruce and I made it clear
that to make a film about Metallica, we’d need to explore their personal lives, their offstage personas. We reiterated that we weren’t interested in making a standard on-the-road concert film. Lars’s interest had grown now that he’d seen
Paradise Lost,
but the idea clearly was not flying with the other guys. (In hindsight, I’m thankful for their reticence.
Some Kind of Monster
would have been some kind of bore if we’d made it during this period. There just wasn’t enough going on with the band on an emotional and interpersonal level.)

Over the years, we spoke with Lars several times about making a Metallica movie. (Courtesy of Bob Richman)

A few months after
Paradise Lost
came out, Lars invited us to see Metallica play at Madison Square Garden. He hinted that the band might want to revisit the film idea. Needless to say it was my first Metallica show. In fact, it was the first rock show I’d gone to since a stint following the Grateful Dead around during college fourteen years earlier. Before that, music had been almost completely absent from my life. When I was a kid, my father, who owned a lumberyard, blew his ear out using a ripsaw without ear protection. The injury left him extremely sensitive to even moderately loud sounds, so music played at a volume level audible to most human beings was basically forbidden in the house.

I showed up at the Garden not knowing what to expect. I discovered how great Metallica is live and how hard-core its fans are. The band members were clearly not the moronic metal-heads I’d envisioned—in fact, they were brilliant showmen. Hearing some of the music we used in the film brought a little lump in my throat. I’d grown up in a house devoid of music, I hadn’t seen live music in more than a decade, and here I was at a Metallica concert—as Metallica’s invited guest! I even had a backstage pass. I was pumped.

Toward the end of the show, a huge light tower came crashing down unexpectedly. Live electrical wires whipped around, throwing off mean-looking sparks. Crew members were frantically trying to get out of the way One of them became engulfed in flames. Others put out the fire, and the burned man, apparently unconscious, was carried away on a stretcher.

I was horrified. I was also a little stoned, so it all seemed real to me. “Do you think that guy’s okay?” I asked Bruce.

Bruce couldn’t believe I was so gullible as to fall for this gag. Apparently Metallica staged this “accident” every night on this tour. In any case, I had never seen anything like this before. I was hooked. (I found out later that the stunt was a nod to a real pyrotechnics accident that happened in 1992, when Metallica was onstage in Montreal, which left James with serious burns. The dark humor behind the gag appealed to my sensibilities, which made me want to explore further who these guys really were.)

After the last encore, we made our way backstage, hoping we could talk more about the Metallica movie idea. Lars, Jason, and Kirk were courteous—for a few seconds. They each had entourages and well-wishers to greet; we were just part of the amorphous backstage landscape. James was in seclusion, his bodyguard preventing anyone from entering his inner sanctum. This did not bode well for him letting us film him offstage—we couldn’t even get to his dressing room to say hello.

When I got home, I took out the cool Metallica shirt I’d bought on the way out, and realized that I’d mistakenly picked up a shirt advertising the opening band, Corrosion of Conformity Taking this as a sign, I threw the shirt in my closet and pretty much put Metallica out of my mind for the next two years.