MOVIE NIGHT: 'Dig!' with Joe Coscarelli

This week on Bandsplain, Yasi and New York Times culture reporter Joe Coscarelli revisit Dig!, Ondi Timoner’s influential 2004 cult documentary that immortalized The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. They discuss the band’s intertwined legacies, the broken friendships and broken sitars, why Dig! is the platonic ideal of the music documentary, plus last year’s extended cut release, Dig! XX. Be sure to check out Joe’s book Rap Capital: An Atlanta Story CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guest: Joe Coscarelli @joecoscarelli Producer: Rob Sundermann Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like Bandplain? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really hate this band! Whatever. I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 0:40Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist. But today's episode is a little different. Today's episode is about the beloved 2004 cult classic music documentary, Dig. If you've never seen Dig, you're fucking up, babe. In fact, go watch it right now. Come back when you're done.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  1995. This is the year I met Anton Newcom and his band, The Brian Jones Town Massacre. This is the story of us and our bands over seven years.

• 1:14Yasi Salek?

  My guest today, you guys, what a treat, what a pleasure. Star of print and screen, New York Times culture reporter and co-host of the New York Times PopCast, Joseph Coscarelli. Welcome to the show, Joe.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Oh, you hit me with the full name?

• 1:29Yasi Salek?

  Government name, babe. That's how we do it over here.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  I like it. I like it. Thanks for having me.

• 1:35Yasi Salek?

  It's a real treat to have one half of the dynamic duo of the New York Times PopCast on this show.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Look, I've been trying to claw my way on for many years, but you just don't like any of the four bands that I like.

• 1:49Yasi Salek?

  It's because you keep asking to do severely canceled bands. And I'm just trying to engender some goodwill out with the people.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Look, we're post-cancellation, and it's important to take on thorny topics.

• 2:04Yasi Salek?

  I agree. I so agree.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  If not us, then who?

• 2:07Yasi Salek?

  If not The Ringer's Bandplain, then who?

• 2:13Yasi Salek?

  Well, Joe, luckily, we did align on this topic. Again, if you're still listening and you haven't watched this, I think that's weird, but you make your own choices. Dig is TLDR. It was a documentary from 2004 that kind of closely followed two bands, the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols, directed by Andy Timmer, was shot over like six or seven years, starting in 96 and wrapping around 2002 or 2003, and was compiled from over 2,500 hours of footage. It's a real Richard Linklater, boyhood-ass documentary. And again, the TLDR is like, I think people love it because it's a fucking insane trainwreck

• 2:58Yasi Salek?

  of a situation that you just would never see anymore because it's bands that were not yet known, who were very willing to be completely authentic in themselves on camera. And also, it was just like a brilliant casting of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, namely Anton Newcombe, who is the frontman and most consistent member, and then also kind of contrasted with their frenemies, the Dandy Warhols, who were getting major label love and signed and sort of taking the more like straight and narrow path towards pop band success while the Brian

• 3:41Yasi Salek?

  Jonestown Massacre were just not doing that. Is that semi-accurate? I mean, we'll get into more of the weeds of it, but...

• 3:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, this is like a documentary about an extinct concept called Selling Out. I'm sure that that's something you guys talk about a lot on Bands Play, but it doesn't exist anymore. But it's, yeah, it just, it has this tension between, you know, commercial success and being a cult favorite, you know, the idea of a musical revolution versus like just trying to make as much money as possible and like...

• 4:20Yasi Salek?

  Like any money at all.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Money at all. Yeah. And it does it through these two groups, which are like perfect foils for each other. Specifically their front men, Anton, as you said, the sort of mad genius and Courtney Taylor, AKA Courtney Taylor Taylor. We'll get to the second Taylor, I think, at some point. And he's just like this smug, pretty boy, who is obsessed with the guy he can't be, who's like the actual sloppy drug addict genius.

• 4:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  And yeah, it's just male ego clashing over and over and over again. And that's why you love it. Well, it's an incredible amount of access, which again, you don't get anymore. These bands, most crucially, are not in charge of the documentary, which is the only way you can get a good music documentary.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  And like, you know, not to show my cards too early, but to me, this is like, just, it's, it's up there with Don't Look Back, Truth or Dare, the Lil Wayne documentary, the Carter, you know, and Dig.

• 5:31Yasi Salek?

  Monster.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Some kind of monster. To me, like, those are the best. We just named the Mount Rushmore of music documentaries.

• 5:38Yasi Salek?

  That's the real top five. God, Truth or Dare.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, you know, and, and it came to me at a very influential and important time in my life.

• 5:46Yasi Salek?

  Did you see it at, in like, when it came out in 2004? Were you in high school?

• 5:52Speaker 03

  So I was in high school. I lived in shitty suburban Florida. I played in a very bad garage band. And I believe I saw it because my mom came across it on the Sundance Channel, like not long after it came out. It was a big hit at Sundance, I think. And then, I don't know if this even still exists, but there's a Sundance movie channel.

• 6:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  And my mom was basically like, you boys will love this, you know, to me and my band.

• 6:23Yasi Salek?

  Okay, cool, mom. Alert.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I, I really am grateful for that. And I very soon after, I guess I bought. The DVD, maybe I saw it on Sundance and then I bought the DVD as soon as it was available. And at this point, I think it's like my most watched movie of all time, I would say. Like, I've seen it more than a dozen times. I know basically every line. When COVID first happened and we were all like watching movies from afar with our friends, you know, like my best friends from high school and I like pressed play at the same time on our laptops, like on FaceTime, you know, like this is like, so it's like both very emotional for me personally,

• 7:09Speaker 03

  but it's also, I came to realize later, like the entire blueprint for my career and everything that I've tried to do since then, in all of my work at the New York Times and the book I wrote, you know, it's just like, I've just been trying to recreate, dig, in, yeah, everything that I've ever done.

• 7:31Yasi Salek?

  In what sense? Like in the sense of like the authenticity of it?

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, and specifically like getting in on the ground level with interesting people who have a chance at something and following them along on that journey. So to me, like the, my North Stars, like for journalism, in, in, in an artistic sense, whatever, for whatever that's worth, are like Hoop Dreams and Dig, which are essentially the same movie.

• 7:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Andy Timmer talked about that a lot, about how Hoop Dreams inspired her.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Right. Hoop Dreams is like the other greatest documentary of all time, following, you know, high school basketball players in Chicago. And yeah, it just, I guess the lesson for me is like, these archetypes work as stand ins, like this hyper-specific world diving into, you know, these bands from Portland and San Francisco, or these high school basketball players in a random inner city, like they can stand in for a whole universe. And the losers are often more interesting than the winners. So this is like, literally, I did this for my book, Rap Capital with Atlanta Rappers. I just found three young rappers, embedded with them for years and, you know,

• 8:48Speaker 03

  one became Lil Baby and the others didn't. But so that's like, again, that's just like, I just rip off Dig like constantly.

• 8:57Yasi Salek?

  Were you familiar with either band when you first saw the documentary? Did you, had you heard of them?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  No, totally went in totally blind. And that's the other thing that's cool, I think, about this movie is like it's now they're like, oh, here's an Apple Music special about your favorite pop singer. And literally only the fans of that singer will ever watch it and probably not even most of them. But you can watch this movie not knowing who these guys are, what this world is. Like, you don't even really have to like music, you know? It's like it's timeless. It's like it's a Greek myth, you know, like on, on some level. It's not about whether you care about the Dandy Warhols or the Brian Jones Sound Massacre. But it also has a thing where you can very easily and cleanly like fall on one side or the other,

• 9:47Speaker 03

  especially as a young person where you're like, oh, like fuck the Dandy Warhols, like they suck. And, oh my God, Brian Jones Sound Massacre, like a mess of a band, but with like two or three classic albums, at least.

• 10:00Yasi Salek?

  Also, if you have a penchant for the 90s or the 60s, just visually this film is arresting, like both just like how everyone looked and also how like respectfully shitty the quality of the film is. Like, which is so charming. Yeah, I mean, it's not, it was filmed, but it looks like found footage. Because, you know, on Detonator, I was 23 years old when she started to make this film. Her and her brother, David, who produced it, they were like out of Yale. And like, this was like basically their first real thing they ever did. And a lot of it was just shot on like Mini DV and like, I think there's something really appealing about that

• 10:43Yasi Salek?

  because it kind of almost bolsters the authenticity of it. Because you're like, oh, yeah, like this shit is not like MTV sheen. Like, they were like in the van, you know?

• 10:53Speaker 03

  Literally, and you get to see the making of the movie as it goes. Like, they're so often breaking the fourth wall. Like, I think the first time you meet Anton is the first time that he's meeting Andy behind the camera.

• 11:05Yasi Salek?

  On his birthday, yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then he just keeps being like throughout the movie, like, I'm gonna make your movie better. Like, follow me, you know, like, we're gonna do this.

• 11:12Yasi Salek?

  Well, let's talk about that because I actually do kind of think, like, while, I don't want to take anything away from. The filmmakers, because obviously, like, I think a lot of it does boil down to the edit, which we can also talk about later. But like, Anton Newcomb is like a once in a lifetime subject for anything, really. But he is like, you could say that this documentary is about Brian Jones massacre and Dandy Warhols, but it's really about Anton Newcomb.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's about a self-destructive genius.

• 11:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and he's not just like the star, but like, like you said, he's the architect. Like, he initially, Andy Timmer wanted to do something called The Cut, which was like, I'm gonna follow 10 unsigned bands in like, the race to like, whatever, get it together and win. Which eventually MTV copied with Bands on the Run, which I never watched. But instead, she meets Anton Newcomb, she hears the Brian Jones massacre, she's like, this is amazing, what a cool 60s band, and her friend's like, nope, that band is active right now, they live in San Francisco. And she meets him and he's kind of like, oh no babe, you don't need 10 bands, you need me and my friends at Dandy Warhols. And he kind of like, takes over the storyboarding of this film.

• 12:28Yasi Salek?

  And like, it wouldn't have been as, anywhere near as good without him, and without him kind of like dictating, he chose, he chose the like, tension of the film, too.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, he plays her the Dandy Warhols. He says to her, tell me you've never heard the Dandy Warhols before. And she goes, I've never heard the Dandy Warhols before. And he's like, listen to this. And yeah, and then you're like down the rabbit hole with this guy. And to me, the coolest part about him being like the engine and the architect of this is, you know, spoiler alert, if you haven't seen it, like, they don't really make it. I mean, they still exist, he's still alive, so that's one version of making it.

• 13:06Yasi Salek?

  I'm gonna push back on that.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:09Yasi Salek?

  Because actually, it's one of those interesting things where like, with the long arc of time, they are kind of, in a way, doing better than the Dandy Warhols. I would say, like, they probably play the same sized room, if not, like, they're playing in LA this Friday and Saturday, and like, I think it's at the Terracotta, I'm quite a big room. Like, they are, they have like a respect and an occult level of following that has sort of remained the same size, if not bigger. Throughout this whole time and and the Dandy Warhols might have peaked, but they waned. You know, like.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  The Dandy Warhols are all real estate agents now, according to the 20th anniversary cut.

• 13:52Yasi Salek?

  You know what, which makes total sense. They all seem to come from like, remember the one part, which I thought was very interesting, where they were like, we all come from unbroken homes.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  The most well-adjusted band in America, as they call themselves.

• 14:03Yasi Salek?

  And and there's even one part where Zia McCabe, they're talking about like their success in Europe. And this is like a bit later in the film. She's like, I don't care what country we're successful and I just want to buy a house. And I was like, yeah, she probably did buy a house.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  And now she wants to help you buy a house.

• 14:18Yasi Salek?

  She would like to help you purchase a home.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  No, but that's what I was getting at was like, he became the immortalized rock star.

• 14:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  That he always was destined to be, but not because of the music, because of the film. Like, the movie is what immortalized Anton, I think, as much as any of the music he put out. Like, I think those rooms are full because of this film.

• 14:44Yasi Salek?

  Do you think so? I don't know. I kind of feel like I came across and maybe like we've, we talked about this off mic and I love to dox myself on this show, but like, I definitely stumbled into an entire like world of like Brian Jonestown massacre worshipping musicians. Like in the early 2010s, like 2012, 13 time. Um, yeah, I did date a burger record musician. Thanks for asking. Actually, more than one.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Congratulations.

• 15:11Yasi Salek?

  You know what?

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Congratulations to both of them.

• 15:13Yasi Salek?

  I don't have any shame in my game.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  You're gonna name names?

• 15:17Yasi Salek?

  Nope.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Of bands, at least?

• 15:19Yasi Salek?

  Real heads, no. Um, and yeah, like, they don't love the Brian Jonestown massacre because of, like, they're, they love, I mean, Genesis Puridge.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  But they're also signed to Burger Records.

• 15:33Yasi Salek?

  They were. I don't know if anyone signed to Burger Records anymore respectfully, but.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  But you know what I mean? That's like a low, relatively low ceiling.

• 15:40Yasi Salek?

  Even like Genesis Puridge was not in that film saying, the Dandy Warhols.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 15:46Yasi Salek?

  Watch, watch that band, you know? I do think like they have a level and he makes, this is jumping way ahead and it's not a spoiler because this is a documentary, but. At the end, he makes, you know, what seems, Anton Nukem makes what seems like is an outlandish claim that like, there would be no white stripes if it wasn't for him, but he's not wrong.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  Totally. I do think like, they have the benefit of being early on rock revivalism.

• 16:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  Because they were putting out these albums in the mid 90s that were trying to be the 60s, and even the band name and, you know, all the references, the sideburns, et cetera. Like, they were very, very, very early. But I think of them as like casualties of a music scene that then gives birth to the bigger thing. Like, that's the other thing I love about this movie is like, you can map it on to literally any music scene. Like, Brian Jonestown Massacre are like, young Scooter of Atlanta rap music. You know what I mean? Like, you can think, like, there's like a million, yeah, like, forgotten, sort of like,

• 16:53Speaker 03

  cult faves, like, connoisseur picks. And they are like the necessary sacrificial lamb for a music scene to sort of blossom and come up. Like, you have these warring sides of the Danny Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre, and one has hits. You know, we'll talk about the fact that both of these bands are connected to two of the greatest teen shows of all time, and they'll live forever through that also. But, you know, but Danny Warhols have hits.

• 17:23Yasi Salek?

  I guess if the other band had been like Green Day, I feel like the starkness of the contrast would be a lot more like, I think what's interesting about this is like, the, the tail end of selling out ended up just being like, sort of mid, you know, like, like, you sold out and that was fine. And I, again, I don't, you know, we are post cancellation and we're post-selling out. But like, they didn't, it wasn't like they had cemented a 50-year career in front of them with the, you know, Danny Warhols musical on Broadway and like Grammys and stuff. Like, I can't even really tell who won in the end, like.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  No, I mean, the Danny Warhols got the fate that they deserved, which is being popular in Europe, you know?

• 18:10Yasi Salek?

  You know, much maligned.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Was that too mean? You winced.

• 18:13Yasi Salek?

  I did, because I, I kind of feel like I'm a little like, the myth of the pure artist is like, a little like bristly to me. Like, I'm just like, oh, this shit again. You know what I mean?

• 18:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 18:27Yasi Salek?

  Not again, because obviously this is very early and it's great, but it's like, it's so destructive. It's so like damaging to be like, well, you can only really be an artist if you're like, pure as the driven snow, absolutely insane, drug-addled, you know, tanked with a miserable childhood that you'll never work through. Like, these are not, this is an archetype, but it's not the only way to be an artist. And I do feel like, I, again, there's 20, whatever, 400 hours of footage. I'm curious, you know, I don't know how, I don't think Anton Newcom probably could come off any different. I think you could watch all 2,400 hours of that. And like, we see in Dig XS, which we're gonna get into, which has 46 more minutes.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Of Tara Subkoff, yeah.

• 19:14Yasi Salek?

  Of Tara, so well, unfortunately, like, four minutes of Tara Subkoff, 40 minutes of Anton Newcom being insane and being like, I telepathically talked to Charles Mann. Like, at every point, it's like, you're like, oh, it's just this, again and again and again. Whereas like, I bet you Courtney Taylor, Taylor, had a lot of other stuff to say, you know, like.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  So you think he got a bad edit? You think he got a villain edit, like in reality?

• 19:39Yasi Salek?

  I think he might have gotten a villain edit, you know?

• 19:41Speaker 03

  But he's also just a villain. I mean, you know, there's the classic scenes of him really being full of himself. I can think of three off the top of my head. There's like, I sneeze and hits come out, you know, which he's sort of like, making fun of himself for fighting with the label when they reject his first album. There's him getting into it with David LaChapelle.

• 20:01Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Being like, you made me look bad.

• 20:03Yasi Salek?

  But I would love, that's not what he's saying. I find that one really interesting. What he's saying is, I look too pal, I look too pop star. Like, he's actually.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  What did you think you were getting from a $400,000 music video directed by David LaChapelle?

• 20:17Yasi Salek?

  Babe, these are like Portland, like. You know, respectfully, these are like village people. Like, why did you think they were extremely savvy? Like, they were playing shows of the Brian Jonestown massacre and doing mad amounts of cocaine. Like, they're not exactly making the best and wise. They don't have a creative director on board being like, here's how you should look. I mean, yes, I think he's kind of hateable because he's gorgeous and he-

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Is he gorgeous?

• 20:46Yasi Salek?

  In that, I think in that, yeah, he's like, you're really struck when you look at like, they all are actually. Anton Newcomb is quite gorgeous too. Like, you're like, these are just such beautiful, the beauty of youth, but also those two are particularly like beautiful bone structure and like kind of magnetic. And they're kind of, there really are two sides of the same coin because Anton Newcomb is also super full of himself. You know, it's just in a different way, right? It's, that's why, I think that's why the movie is so captivating because you're like, they're not that different, you know?

• 21:16Speaker 03

  Well, I'll, I'll, I'll say one more thing, which is that, you know, the, the last sort of Courtney bad soundbite is when his cousin or whatever is like, I need a little bit more money.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  And Courtney's like, I write all the songs, all the songs, and I give you half of them, like, why? You know, like, he's just like, he can't believe. And then the songs that he writes are like Bohemian Like You. You know what I mean? It'd be different if like Anton's full of himself and then you hear him at his peak. And again, he has 500 songs and like five of them are incredible. Uh, maybe a dozen max. Uh, but at least he has a dozen masterpieces, like Courtney Taylor, Taylor has zero masterpieces.

• 22:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay, well, Bohemian Like You is a good song.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Well, it's a good song for a Vodafone commercial, you know?

• 22:11Yasi Salek?

  And for me to put on and sort of vibe to, okay, you're not a Veronica Mars fan, I see.

• 22:25Speaker 03

  No, I am. I am a Veronica Mars fan. And but I think "We Used to Be Friends" is a little bit better.

• 22:40Yasi Salek?

  I really like Bohemian Like You for some reason. It's such a 90s song, even though it wasn't, did it come out in the 90s? Is that the time?

• 22:45Speaker 03

  No, I think, yeah, maybe in 90s. But yeah, it's like, it's a bad version of The New Radicals. So like, it's a worse version of You Get What You Give, right?

• 22:56Yasi Salek?

  That's a really difficult to say, because like, that's, New Radicals, You Get What You Give is like, the worst version of anything. Like, it's already-

• 23:06Speaker 03

  And then there's the Danny Warhols.

• 23:07Yasi Salek?

  And then we got back to Geese somehow, all regularly back to Geese.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  I mean, their album is literally called 13 Tales From Urban Bohemia. Like, that's just like, like, they're just like, have a blinking sign that's like, "We suck." Like, we're a horrible band.

• 23:22Yasi Salek?

  But what makes, what's interesting to me, and I guess we're kind of jumping around, talking about the film and also the subject of the film, which I think is totally fine. But I was kind of interested, like, I was like, okay,

• 23:36Yasi Salek?

  Anton Newcomb respected them.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Did he?

• 23:39Yasi Salek?

  Well, this is the question. Like, I don't think he's like, playing four-dimensional chess to the level that he was like, "Let me cast this band because they suck and they make me look good." Like, I don't know if he's that craven. Like, I don't, that doesn't really fit into his personality that we were being presented. I don't know the man.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:57Yasi Salek?

  You know, so I think it, and you kind of see it in the thing. It seems like there was some, like, initial love and respect. And like, this is the band from our scene, which I also don't understand, because I'm a pretty, like, big expert of the scenes of the 90s. And I'm like, what scene even was this? Like-

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like, it's definitely like, half a scene, right? Or a quarter of a scene. And they were trying to make a scene. But I agree that some of the magic of the movie is that you see their relationship sour in real time. And then Courtney can't let it go.

• 24:29Yasi Salek?

  Right, because he's, because he's obsessed, or at the time, anyways, this is all-

• 24:34Speaker 03

  With authenticity.

• 24:35Yasi Salek?

  No, because he's obsessed with Anton Newcomb.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:38Yasi Salek?

  He's obsessed with this man that he considers to be an actual genius and he kind of knows he's not really on that level.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's Amadeus.

• 24:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  Which is funny because he dresses up as Amadeus in the movie, but yeah, he's Salieri.

• 24:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. And Anton Newcomb is like Jon Hamm in Mad Men, like, I don't even think about you. You know? Like, he's like, unless I'm like, kind of forced to, like, I don't really think about you guys. Like, I'm thinking about telepathically making an album with Charles Manson, like, I'm busy, you know?

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Right, right. As a non-genius, like, I get it.

• 25:13Yasi Salek?

  Same.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  I understand where Courtney is coming from, but to me, the most offensive thing that he does is not really anything that he says that's full of himself, but it's like the section where he's slumming it with them, where he is like starved for motivation.

• 25:26Yasi Salek?

  Couldn't agree more.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  And he goes on the road with them to just watch them, to just be near the car wreck and be like, "Ugh, it's so cool, we're in the gas station strung out, like, oh, who are we gonna fight tonight?" You know, he's just like, he's so like, he has such a hard-on for like, actual mayhem because he's such a fake, you know?

• 25:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that, I mean, that one part wasn't as offensive to me as when they come and use the Brian Jones Townhouse.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 25:55Yasi Salek?

  For the set of their photo shoot.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, that's like, they couldn't be more literal.

• 26:01Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Like, with the, like, more on the nose with their poser-dom to be like, "We have friends who are actually cool, let's go do our photo shoot at their house after they throw a big party with Harry Dean fucking Stanton."

• 26:14Yasi Salek?

  Right, which I think I noted in my, uh, fun fact section of the doc that the reason he was there is that he was friends with the father of Peter Hayes, who briefly played in the Brian Jones Townasker, who formed Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. His father was named Michael Bin or Bean, and he was in a band called The Call in the 80s and was friends with Harry Dean Stanton. And they had played a show at Spaceland, and Harry Dean Stanton came to the show and then just came to the after-party.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  So you don't think Harry Dean Stanton just loves H and young hippie chicks?

• 26:47Yasi Salek?

  Um, why not both?

• 26:50Yasi Salek?

  Porque no los dos.

• 26:57Yasi Salek?

  I didn't mention this up top, but like while both front men were like pretty on board with the documentary throughout the making of it, even according to Andy Timmer, were shown cuts and were like, no, no, it's this is fab. Anton Newcomb, like the minute it came out, distanced himself, he wrote like, kind of like a scathing open letter.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:20Yasi Salek?

  That was like, should I pull it up, actually? Let's pull it up.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  You want to do a dramatic reading?

• 27:26Yasi Salek?

  Thanks for taking the time to ask how I feel about this project. I care very much about my work. I always have and hope that that was made clear in the film. I have no desire to interfere with the filmmakers in any way. And until very recently, I never bothered to view any of the footage. So here's a discrepancy. I was shocked and let down when I saw the end result. Several years of our hard work was reduced at best to a series of punch ups and mishaps, taken out of context, and at worst, bold faced lies and misrepresentation of fact. He actually points out, because this is where this leads into what I would love to talk to you about. He points out that like, there's that footage of them getting arrested in Georgia.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 28:05Yasi Salek?

  And it's kind of made to look like he's arrested for having drugs, but it was really Andy Timmer who had drugs. And by drugs, I think it was a joint.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:12Yasi Salek?

  Even in the scene of the house and coming to do the photo shoot, you, you hear Andy off camera talking to Matt Hollywood, one of the greatest names of all time of the Brian Jonestown massacre, being like, Matt, Matt Hollywood, there's a bunch of people showing up at your house. They're all here to do a photo shoot and your house is a mess. What do you think about that? And it's like really giving like, the bachelorette producer like stirring shit up, you know? And I'm like, how much? I would love to kind of know, like from the horses mouths, like, how much of it was sort of like?

• 28:48Yasi Salek?

  Pushed towards there being friction, you know?

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Welcome to documentaries, babe.

• 28:53Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  I just think that that's like, that's the game. And that's why they're not journalism, like even though they resemble journalism so much. They're just not journalism because the filmmaker is a participant. But even the things that you're saying and the breaking of the fourth wall that we were talking about earlier, like the fact that she left in her sort of prodding Matt to get mad about it. Like, that makes her a character. Like, I don't believe, like, out of context. Like, come on, you're like, how many guitarists do you have to punch on stage before? Like, the context doesn't matter.

• 29:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. How many, how many sitars do you have to buy with the gas money that you guys needed to get to Los Angeles?

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just like, I just don't have any sympathy for subjects in general. You know, maybe I'm just jaded.

• 29:41Yasi Salek?

  Hot take, no subject. Report, you're a Times reporter, Joe Coscarelli. I have no sympathy for any subject.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  No, come on. I, I, I was being glib, but I just mean like, they knew what they were getting into. They knew how they were acting. And in fact, especially for Anton, the movie makes him look.

• 30:01Yasi Salek?

  Cool as hell.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  Sure, but also cool as hell. Yeah, like, if you want to be a rock star, be a rock star and don't regret it after the fact.

• 30:10Yasi Salek?

  Andy Timmer pointed out that one of his ex-girlfriends said this, and I think it's spot on. Like, if you want, if you're gonna be a rock star, like, uh, like Anton Newcomb, you would never support a documentary about yourself. It's not cool to support a documentary. It's cool to say, fuck this shit, you know?

• 30:24Speaker 03

  So it's like. At the end, at the end, not participating in general, but at the end, yeah, you have to disown it.

• 30:28Yasi Salek?

  You have to disown it, so it makes sense.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  And again, like, I mentioned the Carter, like, the Loane documentary, you know, from 15 years ago or whatever. And it's the same thing, like, it's the best portrait of Loane you'll ever see because it's no holds, no holds bar. And then he tried to sue them from, to stop them from releasing it. And it's impossible to watch because of it, but that's what makes it good. It's the same thing with Dylan, you know? It's like, you have to be antagonistic towards your, uh, documentarian if you're a rock star and you want to make a good movie, you know? It's like, it's all part of the, it's all part of the stew.

• 31:04Yasi Salek?

  I think what's more interesting is that.

• 31:08Yasi Salek?

  Courtney Taylor Taylor came out against it, but not for five years.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:13Yasi Salek?

  Well, which totally makes sense because it is. It is the thing of like, at the time, they were on top of the world. And it was cool. And we have a documentary and this is great. But then five years passed and you're still.

• 31:28Yasi Salek?

  That's who you are. Like you're sort of, because they, that's why I kind of brought up Green Day or like, Metallica is a good example. Like we talked about some kind of monster. Like, those documentaries kind of work because you don't think of Metallica only as some kind of monster. You don't think about Dylan, you know?

• 31:43Speaker 03

  It's one small piece of the legacy, whereas this is the entire legacy.

• 31:47Yasi Salek?

  Kind of the legacy, you know? And I think Courtney Taylor Taylor, probably, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but probably like five years later, that's 2009. It was like, oh, we're just the dig band now.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Right. And also self-awareness is not his strong suit. Otherwise, he wouldn't have said some of the things that he said. But I think, and I've had this with profile subjects in the past where it's like, they read it when it comes out and they're like, this is great. You really captured me. And then they hear the reaction of everyone being like, look at this buffoon. And then they're like, oh my God, they made me look like a buffoon. You know what I mean? So I think like, when enough people quote to Courtney Taylor Taylor, I write all the songs.

• 32:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, or I sneeze and hits come out or whatever.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  And like five years later, you know, like eventually he's like, oh, like, did that make me look bad? You know, like after the haze.

• 32:37Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if it's just that like, I'm mature and aged now.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  You do seem really mature in this podcast.

• 32:43Yasi Salek?

  Are you calling me old? You already said, I had a meltdown off camera because I have to wear these dumb headphones and Joe was really mean about it, honestly. He's not supportive.

• 32:56Yasi Salek?

  I just found myself on this re-watch and like, like you, I've probably seen this now 10 times. I found myself kind of like being on Courtney Taylor Taylor's side. We were the first time, and I think maybe I've also suffered at the hands of enough like mentally ill narcissistic musician geniuses. Or those who who consider themselves so. Yeah, aspiring to be so, um, who love French women or whatever, but like, it's like, I just kind of was like, you know, neither one of you, like, actually, like, I kind of get it, like Courtney Taylor Taylor was like, I'm working with what I got, babe, like, I write these songs, this is my vibe, like, I'm not trying to start a revolution, I don't want to start a cult,

• 33:40Yasi Salek?

  I'm not trying to really exorcise any demons, I just like, kind of want to make music for a living and have fun with my friends and like wisely chose cocaine over meth, very wise.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  And heroin, yeah.

• 33:53Yasi Salek?

  And heroin and kind of kept it going, kept it moving. Cause like you look at the footage of the Danny Warhols playing, they were cool, they look fucking cool.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  Zia really helps with that.

• 34:02Yasi Salek?

  Zia looks so cool, never wears a bra, just like gorge.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, just best supporting actress, you know, and the great moment near the end, shout out to Nomi Frye, this is her favorite part of the movie where Zia just offhandedly is like, I buy all the coke.

• 34:16Yasi Salek?

  I buy all the coke and they take all my cigarettes, but it's fine because I get to be in a cool band.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  No, they definitely have something and I'm selling them sure and I am like, there's something about this movie and having seen it literally when I was 16 that allows me to tap into my snotty punk phase, you know, and sort of like, I revert back to that version of myself, like, I don't care about selling out, like, I write about rap music, like, I'd much prefer pop to indie rock, you know, I'm like, I don't, I don't begrudge anyone's success, but I do begrudge them bad music and I think that that's why.

• 34:52Yasi Salek?

  That's your issue.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  And so it's the combination of the two where I'm like, sure, they have hits and I respect hits above most other things and the Danny Warhols do legitimately have, you know, two or three hits, uh, I just don't think they're very good. And yeah, I'm just like, it's just more fun to lean into Courtney Taylor Taylor as the heel, which I think on some level, again, I was faulting him for a lack of self-awareness, but I do think he knows he's a little bit of a heel and I think Anton also. Is self-aware about playing up the rivalry and trying to make the Danny Warhols look bad. They invoke Oasis quite a lot.

• 35:34Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  They invoke The Beatles and The Stones. They don't invoke Taking Back Sunday and Brand New because it didn't exist yet.

• 35:41Yasi Salek?

  Hadn't happened yet.

• 35:42Speaker 03

  But to me, like, if I could.

• 35:43Yasi Salek?

  And I'm pretty sure to this day, Anton Newcombe does not know who those people are.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  No. But the fact that they were writing songs back and forth, like, we haven't talked about Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth, and then Anton responding with Not If You Were The Last Dandy On Earth and handing out the vinyl in front of their, like, record label showcase or whatever.

• 36:03Yasi Salek?

  It's so great. It's really great.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  The scene of Matt Hollywood literally belting his arm, getting ready to shoot up while listening to the Danny Warhols Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth, and just being like, "Ha ha, these guys suck. Like, where are my drugs?"

• 36:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Like, can we talk about Matt Hollywood for a second? Like, the, the, one of the most tragic figures in film history.

• 36:27Yasi Salek?

  Right, because he, you're like, "Oh, this is the only sane person in the entire documentary, and no one's listening to him."

• 36:36Speaker 03

  When Anton says to him, "I never do anything wrong. That's why I don't say I'm sorry."

• 36:42Yasi Salek?

  That's why I don't say I'm sorry. One of, one of his top, I mean, he has a lot of, like, quotables, but that's like, that's top five, for sure.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  We're Fucking White and Come When I Call, you know, another, another classic.

• 36:53Yasi Salek?

  And obviously, you broke my, you broke my catar, motherfucker.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  You broke my catar. And Is That Blood On You? Yeah, from people's faces.

• 37:01Yasi Salek?

  From people's faces, yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  But no, Matt Hollywood, like, I actually, so I rewatched the movie like you. I watched the 20th anniversary cut last year when it came out at IFC with Andi and Adam Shore, the A&R guy.

• 37:15Yasi Salek?

  Yes, he's prominently featured in the film.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  Yes, where he's like, A and R, it's so easy. Everyone should do it. And Andy's like, is this your first signing? He's like, yeah, that was a great, a great little detail. And then I watched it today. It was my almost two year old daughter's first time seeing Dig.

• 37:32Yasi Salek?

  She loves it. She's so, she's super into like music.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  From school today. Yeah, she was, she was dancing a little bit, but no, I had the thing which I often have watching sports when I realized like, oh my God, Matt Hollywood is 26 years old, like his, like his mom picks him up at the airport when he quits the tour. Like, you know, I'm just like, I cannot believe that these people are not only younger than me at this point, but like way younger than me.

• 37:56Yasi Salek?

  Way younger, way younger. It's disturbing.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  I know. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, like he was really trying to keep his head on straight in this hurricane. As a young person, like he really believed in the art and the music. And I, that's why I think like, Matt Hollywood is a more sympathetic version of Courtney as somebody who can't quit Anton, like just wants to be in the presence of a genius, but isn't so annoying about it.

• 38:27Yasi Salek?

  But he is kind of annoying about it.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Of course. I mean, he's a dude, he's a guitar player in a indie rock band. Like, what do you expect? And he's 26.

• 38:35Yasi Salek?

  That is really like one of the more fascinating, that's why I keep saying like, this is a documentary about the Brian Jonestown massacre with like, support from the Dandy Warhols for context. But like, one of the most fascinating things that you see unfold is the dynamic of, again, with love and respect, there's really only three Brian Jonestown massacre members that you need to care about. And it's Matt Hollywood, Anton Newcomb, and Joel Gion, who we haven't really talked about yet, who is like,

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. How have we gone this far?

• 39:04Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  It's actually crazy that we've gone this far without saying Joel's name.

• 39:08Yasi Salek?

  I think it's crazy because like, he really is like the emotional support person of the entire documentary.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:14Yasi Salek?

  He narrates the Dig XX, which is great. And he's so funny and he's so charming. But also he's so magical in the way that he is able to absorb the insanity and sort of like negativity and whatever is coming from Anton. Kind of mollify it like and you can tell he's like annoyed but not like he's just

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Not really.

• 39:35Yasi Salek?

  Like LOLs about he's like just wasted four years of my life. Oh, well, haha. Oh, you want to take a Polaroid and make me a fake ID so I can fly and sign the fucking record contract because Anton is too strung out to get on a plane? Uh, you got it. I've never been on a plane. Let's go.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  He's so magical. He's, yeah, he's the audience surrogate. He's like the conscience of the movie. He's the comic relief. He's the coolest looking one, you know, he's just like, he's, ah, I just love him so much. Uh, and I'm glad that if no one else sort of took up the mantle of like being proud of this movie, like he's made it his whole career.

• 40:15Yasi Salek?

  If no one got me, Joel Kian got me.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, like he got to be in Gilmore Girls because of this, which we've been dancing around.

• 40:23Yasi Salek?

  Dig XX, which is the 20 year anniversary version, which we've sort of alluded to a couple of times here. Came out last year. They added 40 minutes. By and large, I don't think that this is a watchable version unless you're like obsessed with this movie and need to see every like extra detail. Yes, of course. And me too. Sure. But like, don't watch that first. Don't watch that.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  It ruins the movie. It ruins the documentary as a film, but it's great footage.

• 40:52Yasi Salek?

  It's amazing extra footage, but you realize like the pacing and the like taut 90 minute-ness is like so crucial. What were your favorite, we're gonna get to the Gilmore Girls bit through this because that's in there, but what were your favorite extras that were dropped into Dig XX?

• 41:10Speaker 03

  So we alluded to this earlier, but it turns out Anton Newcom dated it girl, fashion designer, former Chloe Sevigny bestie Tara Subcuff for a while in the middle of this, which is just not mentioned in the original film at all, but you get like a little mini tsunami tragic love story.

• 41:33Yasi Salek?

  Like within like four minutes, not even. And it's very beautiful and you're like, because she's so beautiful and you're like, and there's so much tender emotion. And you're just like, wow, this is like, could have been a short film.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like a Safdie Brothers movie about being in love with a heroin addict. It's like, it's like Heaven Can Wait, but in four minutes at the end of Dig XX. Like, that was really special for me, at least.

• 42:01Yasi Salek?

  Huge imitation of Christheads like myself.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I just had no idea.

• 42:06Yasi Salek?

  I didn't know that.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Like, that those people had ever crossed paths, that they existed in the same universe or timeframe. But then Joel talking about his Gilmore Girls cameo, because for years, and I mean literally years, I thought it was a hallucination of mine that there was a Gilmore Girls episode that making fun, or, you know, alluding to Dig.

• 42:35Yasi Salek?

  Don't they, like, quote it literally?

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, like, it's, yes.

• 42:40Yasi Salek?

  It's season six, I believe, episode 10, maybe? That sounds about right.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  He's slipping him bread, Dig. This came out November of 2005, so like, almost immediately after the film.

• 42:54Yasi Salek?

  Nobody was more on top of music and pop culture than the Gilmore Girls, one of the greatest shows of all time, even though season six is slipping a little bit, if we're gonna be honest, but...

• 43:02Speaker 03

  Totally agree, all around. And I'll take season six over, you know, any other show, basically.

• 43:07Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  Unreal. But no, the first time I saw this, like, late at night, you know, catching up on Gilmore Girls in 2006 or '07 or whatever it was, like, I was just like, no way, like, I can't believe it. So it's, it's Lane's band, right?

• 43:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Hep Alien.

• 43:26Yasi Salek?

  Thank you very much.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  With your boy.

• 43:28Yasi Salek?

  Sebastian Bach, one of my favorite people to ever exist. Obsessed, have you ever looked into Sebastian Bach's CV? I won't bore you with it now, but you should later just go, like, take a, take a whirl around his Wikipedia. He's the Dzecikis man. He's one of the most interesting and fun people alive. He was on multiple seasons of Gilmore Girls.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And pretty funny, pretty good comic performance in this show. But yeah, they have a, they have a record label showcase and it devolves into Brian Jones had Massacre at the Viper Room, down to Joel and the broken sitar and blood from people's faces. And I was just like, this is cra- like, this is crazy. And I promise you, I promise you, I Googled this every year for more than a decade, and there was no mention of it on the internet, except like in the comment section of an episode recap, like from some defunct television blog. And so I sent this to you, but like I tweeted about it in 2001. I was just like, nobody talks

• 44:29Speaker 03

  about the fact that there's a Gilmore Girls C-plot ripping off Dig.

• 44:33Yasi Salek?

  Because until the Gilmore Girls revival happened, people weren't really talking about my man Gil, Sebastian Bach, and also Joel Dionne. I mean, Sonic Youth was on the show as like,

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. As buskers.

• 44:45Yasi Salek?

  Buskers, yeah. I mean, a lot of people have been, have had cameos on this show. I'll use this platform to just say that Lane Kim deserved so much better than this storyline. Like, this is not how my girl needed to end up with some like loser musician who mistreated her and got her pregnant.

• 45:06Speaker 03

  But you know why this happened?

• 45:07Yasi Salek?

  Why?

• 45:09Speaker 03

  Because Dave Rogowski had to move to California to star in the OC. She, Dave was her one true person.

• 45:16Yasi Salek?

  I know. I know.

• 45:17Speaker 03

  And he had to go where the sun shone brighter than Stars Hollow.

• 45:22Yasi Salek?

  They couldn't have written her better off into the sunset than this. I'm still upset about it.

• 45:31Speaker 03

  Look, Adam Brody should have saved a lot of women in those years, you know?

• 45:35Yasi Salek?

  Everybody wants us, now he's...

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, he just couldn't, he just couldn't be in two places at once. He couldn't be on two television shows at once.

• 45:43Yasi Salek?

  There's also an incredible line in that episode where Lane asks Rory if she'll be her DA Pennebaker, which is, I'm like, these references are not for like everyone, but like when you get it, you're just like, goddamn, this is the best show that's ever existed on any level.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  They are very, very, very advanced. And I'm still picking stuff up, rewatching these seasons for like the 10th time, much like with Dig. But yes, so in the 20th anniversary edition, there's like a little... Tributary, a little subplot where Joel is like, and then I was on Gilmore Girls.

• 46:15Yasi Salek?

  And the show, yeah.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  From the show, which like, again, totally ruins the flow of the movie. But it was like, so nice to be like, okay, I'm not crazy. Now this is all, because I was, when I was watching that movie, my very first question for Andy after the screening was going to be, what the fuck is up with the Gilmore Girls thing? How did that happen? And then I saw it in the new cut of the movie and I just, I just felt like, okay, like it all makes sense now.

• 46:45Yasi Salek?

  You were like, thank God, the question has been answered. What did you?

• 46:48Speaker 03

  And I think, yeah, the, the Venn diagram, you know, the Venn diagram of Gilmore Girls fans and Dig fans, I just think was not that large for many years, probably.

• 46:57Yasi Salek?

  But maybe.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  Like the two of us and then a couple of Banzplane listeners. Uh, but now I think it's probably bloomed now that both of them have had such long tails on streaming.

• 47:08Yasi Salek?

  What did you make of the alternate narration in XX? Cause we, we didn't mention, like, part of what really makes Dig original work, and I don't think it could have existed without it, is Courtney Taylor's narration, like, which was a last minute thing. Um, I listened to an interview with Andy Timmer and she was like, the only reason we even stopped filming was because I got pregnant and I was like, I have to end this fucking movie. Like, I can't be like pregnant, having like Anton Newcomb scream at me on heroin or whatever. And so.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  Sounds dangerous.

• 47:44Yasi Salek?

  Sounds dangerous. So like, they kind of like find like a natural ending of like the Troubadour show and people throwing fruit and stuff. But even then they're doing the edit and they were just like, cause once you said that, I was like, oh yeah, like this movie would make no sense if it didn't have the narration of Courtney Taylor Taylor. Like, it's too all over the place.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  It's the other thing that's Amadeus about it. It's Cagliari as your guide through the story being like, I was once in the refracted life of this insane piece of work, you know? Like that, that, that really grounds the. Film. And so to me, the new narration, again, while novel and fine for a super fan who's seen this movie as many times I have, like, I do have like a really bad case of demoitis with it, where I'm like, oh, that's not how it's supposed to sound. That's not supposed to be the scene. You know, like, I don't love remakes or a direct, you know, after the way after the back director's cut.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Like, I'm just like, I'm like, I'm like a canon guy, you know, like, I like a canonical version.

• 48:50Yasi Salek?

  Did you take anything away, though, that was like, because I feel like maybe part of it was intended to like, tip the scales in terms of like, who got to tell the story, you know, and having like the other side a bit. Like, I kind of searched for that throughout and I, I just like, I'm not sure the scales needed to be tipped.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  Certainly not by Joel. Like Joel's not really on the scale, you know what I mean? Like Joel's like shaking the tambourine under the scale.

• 49:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  Like, uh, just causing chaos. He's just a little.

• 49:22Yasi Salek?

  I wonder if it's, did you ask him when you were doing the, the Q and A, did you ask if it's caused any friction? His like sort of continued involvement with supporting and being part of, because he's still in the band. He, he quit and then rejoined.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  Uh, after he wrote his like Kickstarter autobiography?

• 49:40Yasi Salek?

  Patreon.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Sorry, excuse me. Um, again, it's fan service. It's like for the people who love the band from this movie. It's debatable what percentage of their crowds are that. Like you go and sure you want to see Anton, but especially if he's more chill than he used to be, question mark. Uh, you want Joel out there too, like, and it's the same with all these rock bands. Like every band from 25 or 30 years ago, for the most part, like no matter how much these guys hated each other, they're like, all right, like, we gotta just, we have to have some semblance of the original lineup to make these ticket prices worth it, you know?

• 50:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. And especially with Brian Jones, Tom Asker, because like Joel stands in the middle. He's kind of is weirdly the front man, even though he only plays tambourine and does vibes, you know, like.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  He doesn't do any, he's just a hype man.

• 50:33Yasi Salek?

  His vibes, he's absolute vibes. And that was an important figure in many bands.

• 50:44Yasi Salek?

  I know we've jumped all over the place, but I kind of just want to like, for funsies, go through like, our favorite and most memorable moments of Dig.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  I've already spent so many of them.

• 50:54Yasi Salek?

  I know, but if we've missed anything. I do feel like we need to mention Anton Newcomb's great early on quote, "Until they can write the letter that I'm writing, they are the postman and I'm the letter writer, period, end of discussion." He has a bit of a Donald Trump thing going where he's like, a sassy drag queen, you know? In a way that's like-

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Anton is camp, for sure.

• 51:19Yasi Salek?

  Exactly, like, period, end of discussion. Or when he like-

• 51:23Speaker 03

  He's talking about the label, right?

• 51:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, he's talking about any label, labels in general. Or he, also when he says from stage, "We're gonna get the greatest record deal in history because we're smart."

• 51:36Speaker 03

  That's traditionally how it works, right? The smartest people get the best record deals.

• 51:41Yasi Salek?

  The sitar part is really great. That was one bonus of XX is that with the additional context of the fact, I think you don't know in the first Dig that he'd spent all of their money on multiple sitars for this tour and they had no money. Like, that just kind of makes the like, broken sitar so much more poetic.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. That's, that's a really, that was, that was the best part of Dig XX, other than Tara Subkoff and the where are they now? Like, I did really like seeing the marriages, the real estate licenses, the festival appearances.

• 52:17Yasi Salek?

  Everyone eventually becomes a real estate agent. I've kind of learned this in my-

• 52:20Speaker 03

  Everyone in a band eventually becomes a real estate agent.

• 52:23Yasi Salek?

  I wonder if my burger records, Bose, are both selling real estate now? I should look, I should look them up.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Just another random moment, it's not funny, but the little section about Anton's parents and his upbringing, I think is really good. His mom talking about him getting arrested over and over again in Newport Beach, like, growing up in an affluent community, and then the dad being like, "Ha, he sent me his album, thank you." Thank God for mental illness.

• 52:52Yasi Salek?

  Well, the dad who had schizophrenia and was like a an alcoholic. I mean, I thought that part was actually really genius to put it and really humanizing. And it was like very gentle towards Anton and like I kind of forgot how the mom was like pretty like harsh towards him, you know, which again, I'm sure that was a nightmare son to raise, given the things, but like she does kind of like start off by being like he had like the most like, you know, wonderful upbringing. And then she's like, well, maybe he didn't have every advantage. I mean, he didn't have a dad. And like, and then it cut to his dad who's like a schizophrenic recovering alcoholic and you're like.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Right. And the and then dad, you know, you get the text on screen. It's like the dad killed himself on Anton's next birthday. You know, so again, that's why I don't really buy this complaint after the fact that the movie is like sensationalist. You know, because it really does also humanize them. Like if it just wanted to be a highlight reel of buffoonery, like it could be, but it has a heart. It has a heart.

• 53:53Yasi Salek?

  You can tell that there's so much love and tenderness towards all the subjects from the filmmaker. Like you can feel it in the filmmaking. Like I I didn't think that like I like even what you're referring to as buffoonery, because you hate Courtney Taylor Taylor.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  No, I meant Brian Jones' massacres onstage buffoonery also.

• 54:14Yasi Salek?

  Like even the Courtney Taylors like quips and like sassiness or whatever. The way that it's presented in the film, you can tell that it's like the filmmaker's charmed by it, you know, like

• 54:27Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 54:28Yasi Salek?

  It's not kind of being spectacle like the part where he's like

• 54:31Speaker 03

  It's great material.

• 54:32Yasi Salek?

  It's great material. Yeah. But when he's like dancing in his underwear on the European tour and he's like talking about the cities he's excited to go to.

• 54:39Speaker 03

  The bullets, we didn't talk about the shotgun shells.

• 54:42Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  When Anton drops off a goodie bag, including shotgun shells with their individual names on them. Like after the relationship sours, that's another just just, you know, just like who who thinks of this stuff? And it's very un. Indie rock, like it's, it's like, has a, it's more theatrical, it's more Oasis, it's more, yeah, it's more hip hop. Like, and I was gonna say, like, the scene where after they finally get the record deal and Anton's running around the record label office, like telling them he's gonna make them all a bunch of money, like being like, oh yeah, I play the accordion, like, just like, schmoozing all the, like, so reminiscent of the scene in the Kanye doc, the Genius doc,

• 55:26Speaker 03

  where Kanye is like going around Def Jam trying to be like, I'm the man, like, listen to me, listen to me, like, pay attention to me, like, I'm gonna make you all this money, you know, it's like, that, I love that parallel. Like, Anton is, Anton is a mixtape rapper, like, he's putting out many albums, he's like, it cost me seventeen dollars-

• 55:44Yasi Salek?

  Seventeen dollars to make, thank god for-

• 55:46Speaker 03

  Thank god for mental illness. And then he makes, he's making memes, he's making proto memes on his computer, he's making his own album covers, like, it's very hip hop, like, it's very both DIY, and he's like, he's a proto, you know, internet rapper.

• 56:01Yasi Salek?

  Soundcloud rapper, yeah.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I just, I, I really love that about him.

• 56:06Yasi Salek?

  R.I.P. Anton Newcomb, you would have loved Soundcloud, just kidding, he's still alive.

• 56:10Speaker 03

  And I bet you he loves, like, XXXTentacion, you know what I mean? Like, I think, like, he could see some kinship there if he knows what that is, or like, a little peep, you know?

• 56:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. The part where he's like, do you have a California ID? We need to go pawn one of my guitars right now to make three hundred dollars to do this photo shoot? Again, scrappy.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  And he's like, I'm gonna make this a good scene in your movie, when you go up Runyon Cannon, or whatever, you know, I don't know where that, tell me where that is, LA person, like, and then they literally zoom in on the Capitol Records building, and he's like, I don't need them.

• 56:45Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. You know what is a real missed footage that I really wish was in here? In 94, which is during the scope of this filmmaking, you just brought up Oasis, so there's a very famous Oasis story, which we told on the Oasis episode, which I don't even know if I either didn't know this detail or didn't include it.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 57:04Yasi Salek?

  So Oasis famously played, um-

• 57:07Yasi Salek?

  I want to say it was the whiskey in LA in 94 and they basically nearly broke up because they Liam did a bunch of meth, they all did a bunch of meth, I think, except for Noel. And the show was terrible and Noel like absconded to San Francisco and wouldn't answer anyone's phone calls. Um, the opening band was a little band called Brian Jonestown Massacre. And guess who gave them the meth, babe? Guess who provided the methamphetamine? And I was like,

• 57:33Speaker 03

  Unbelievable.

• 57:34Yasi Salek?

  Unbelievable. Of course it was them. Of course. Like they're at the scene of the fucking crime sabotaging Oasis.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  I was gonna say like active sabotage.

• 57:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think there, there's an interview with Joel Gion, he's like, we just didn't tell them that it was meth. Like they're like, they thought it was, he said something like, he like, they thought it was like 50, 50 pence British cocaine. And it's not, babe.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  AKA meth in America.

• 57:58Yasi Salek?

  And that really sent me to the moon. I was like, not Brian Jonestown Massacre, literally fucking cackling away while like Oasis is having a methamphetamine fueled meltdown that like happened at their hands. And then Noel leaves the band for like, you know, but we got talked tonight out of it. So we can thank Brian Jonestown Massacre.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can't believe that that's not in the film or even mentioned, uh, in the, in the new cut. It seems like it would be. Um, oh, Kelly Deal, Scott Schreiner cameo.

• 58:26Yasi Salek?

  So wonderful. At, at, um, Reading Festival. Kelly, Kelly Deal being like, love you guys. And I'm like, do you?

• 58:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. You, what she's like, and she literally says, she says, oh, I'm so glad I like them because they're so nice and cool. And I'm like, you're still, you're still lying maybe? Like, I don't,

• 58:45Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. They're so nice.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  You know, Kelly Deal's tells probably facially better than I do, but I thought she,

• 58:51Yasi Salek?

  This is the 2000s, early 2000s, babe. Kelly Deal is perhaps not, you know, the most sober person at Reading Festival. I'm not sure. I don't want to cast aspersions. I don't know. But like,

• 59:02Speaker 03

  Right, right. I mean, she comes across self-possessed in that 10 second scene.

• 59:06Yasi Salek?

  Bohemian like you. I love it. Fucking golf. So that's great.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  But yeah, just seeing them in the context of, Breeders and Weezer, you know, at a, at a rock festival, like I just like, that really grounds you in the moment. So much of this movie could be taking place in the 60s or 70s because you're not really seeing the outside world most of the time. So just those little moments that jerk you back into reality, like seeing Weezer's bassist.

• 59:34Yasi Salek?

  There's so many, Weezer's bassist who's estranged wife had like an insane gun skirmish with the police out here.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  Whatever happened to that?

• 59:42Yasi Salek?

  I'm not really sure, but.

• 59:43Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't think the New York Post followed up on that enough.

• 59:47Yasi Salek?

  I think, I think she's, I think she's off. I think it got worked out, but I was like, what in the what?

• 59:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, like a, a car chase and a standoff.

• 59:56Yasi Salek?

  The whole thing. And like Eagle Rock. The footage of the Reading Festival also, I think, served such a great purpose because it's really high quality because by then, you know, it's six years in, I think they had some money or like, actually I did read how they funded the, the film was they offered to make an EPK for capital for the Dandy Warhols. And then they sold that for six grand and then they started selling other EPKs and doing music videos. And that's what basically funded them going along and making, uh, Dig. Cause you, you have to wonder like, who paid for this, you know? But that, and they had day jobs and stuff, but that footage is so crisp and clear and it's, it's when the success is there. So it kind of works really perfect where you're like, oh, now it's like,

• 1:00:39Yasi Salek?

  let's go time, you know, like we've arrived, like we have good footage now because these people are kind of pop stars, at least in Europe.

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  And the fates of the bands are so far at that point, like, you know, Brian Jonestown, they get their TVT deal, whatever. Anton descends further into drug fueled mania, Dandy Warhols are making all these albums.

• 1:01:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, cut straight from Reading to like, the Adam Shore going, or someone going, I guess TVT lost a lot of money on the Brian Jonestown massacre record. And you're like, that's a really incredible, uh.

• 1:01:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Uh, I have to ask you, like, this is like, uh, you know, uh, gather around kids, like, Auntie, did you ever go to Courtney Taylor Taylor's version of Warhol's Factory, which he built with all the money he made from the Vodafone commercial? Like, they made some big, like, complex in Portland? Like, you only see it for a split second, but I was reading a little bit about it, like, a big, you know, studio collective, something. Like, he bought a block.

• 1:01:44Yasi Salek?

  Does it still exist?

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  I don't know. Uh, but I figured if anyone would have been there in the glory days, it would have been you.

• 1:01:49Yasi Salek?

  In Portland in 2004? Why would I have been in Portland in 2004? I was in New York City in 2004.

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  All right, but, you know, yeah, I do like, uh, as soon as Brian Johnson insists on moving to Portland, and then they're immediately disappointed.

• 1:02:06Yasi Salek?

  I know.

• 1:02:07Speaker 03

  And he's like, are you finding this inspiring? And he's like, it's dismal.

• 1:02:10Yasi Salek?

  It's dismal. It's so funny. You're like, damn, Portland dragged.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  But like, you, yeah, like, not wrong, you know?

• 1:02:17Yasi Salek?

  Then they have to live in a cold warehouse because the Dandy Warhols won't let them all move in.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Really great.

• 1:02:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a really, it's a really special film. You could never make it again. Nobody would do cocaine on camera. Nobody would be that messy, talk that messy. I will say, you can tell it's the 2000s by the end because of Courtney's haircut.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:02:39Yasi Salek?

  And it ends in like a really, this is, this is the most villainy thing, I think, Courtney Taylor says, which is near the end, where he says, about the Brian Johnson mascara, they were absolutely our favorite band, but it's like you set loose a pack of 14-year-old boys from abusive homes into the ghetto. And it's like, yeah, let's go hang out with them, but they're gonna end up in prison. Like, that's actually like, the most fucked up thing he says, because it's cruel.

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's like, he's like, I'm literally slumming it with these disgusting cretins.

• 1:03:08Yasi Salek?

  These, yeah, these like, but like, from broken, like, these like, poor disenfranchised, like, emotionally, like, traumatized people, you know?

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Yasi Salek?

  And you're like...

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, like he really, he really just said it. Andy Tomoner is like, I spent eight years making this movie and then he just said it.

• 1:03:29Yasi Salek?

  And then he just said the quiet part out loud. And then it kind of ends with Anton going to jail, right? Like, that's kind of the-

• 1:03:35Speaker 03

  And not being allowed to see his son, who is now an adult, which is also really scary.

• 1:03:40Yasi Salek?

  I didn't really get that. I felt like he was being a little dramatic. He was like, no, I'm never gonna see my son. I'm like, you're going to jail for three days. It's three days.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Because you kicked a guy in the head.

• 1:03:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you're not gonna see your son. It's not because he went to jail for three days, it's for other reasons.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  It's because you're a crazy drug addict, yeah. No, I don't know how that family situation worked out. But I bet you Anton's son is in a badass band.

• 1:04:02Yasi Salek?

  I hope so, or he's a real estate agent. He's a real estate agent. He works for Courtney Taylor Taylor at the real estate company in Portland. Because All Things Are Connected, the other day, a listener of the pod DM'd me and said, "You're giving real trouble every day energy." And I was like, I don't know what that means. So I asked Sean Fennessey, who's a film connoisseur, and he said-

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  Sure, heard of him.

• 1:04:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and he said, "Oh, he's probably referring to Beatrice Dahl, my queen. It was in that film, but you should just watch it. It's a Claire Janney movie." And I was like, okay, I'm trying to watch more films, I'm becoming cultured. So I watched it. I don't know if you've seen this film.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  I haven't seen that one, no. I'm a Claire Janney fan, but I haven't seen that.

• 1:04:44Yasi Salek?

  It's a horror movie about these people that have contracted a tropical disease that turns them into psychosexual cannibals. Beatrice Dahl is a psychosexual cannibal.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Let's go.

• 1:04:56Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, that's what reminded, that's the energy.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  You took that as a compliment?

• 1:05:01Yasi Salek?

  I was just a little thrown off by it. Is that a compliment?

• 1:05:04Speaker 03

  Did you see it when you watched the movie? Like, did it speak to you in that way? Did you feel seen?

• 1:05:10Yasi Salek?

  I was like, I'm, am I beautiful, like, or mysterious? I don't know if I'm cannibalistic. I brought that up, there's a reason. Because it's Vincent Gallo, Beatrice Dahl, and the woman who plays Vincent Gallo's newlywed wife is a woman named Trisha Vesey, who I then Googled, because I'd never seen her before. She's really pretty, she's got like, she had like a little like- And Seberg haircut there and was like just as gorgeous. I was like, why have I seen this actress more? So I Googled her and the first thing that, not the first thing, but in the Wikipedia thing that comes up is that partner Anton Newcomb. And I was like, it's all one thing. It's all connected.

• 1:05:44Speaker 03

  Unbelievable. What do you think of Anton's new look? Like his aged look?

• 1:05:49Yasi Salek?

  He's like, it's giving.

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  Really long.

• 1:05:51Yasi Salek?

  Neil Young.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  He looks like the, or the Undertaker meets Neil Young.

• 1:05:54Yasi Salek?

  The Undertaker. Amazing. Well, I mean, I guess he would have been of age during peak wrestling times. And he is from, from, from Orange County.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  But you're right with the hat, the way he has the Neil Young hat.

• 1:06:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and even like, or even.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  Wide brim.

• 1:06:09Yasi Salek?

  Near the end of Dig, when he's getting the chops that are bigger and bigger, it's like starting to more Neil Youngify. One thing you do really see in these things, and this is with all the love and respect in my heart, is that like, damn, like, young junkies can be so beautiful. And then,

• 1:06:26Yasi Salek?

  I'm going against my own theory here though, because one of my main theories is that being a long time heroin addict actually preserves you in amber. Because most long time heroin addicts actually age really well. Like Evan Dando is a good example.

• 1:06:38Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, Dando, yeah.

• 1:06:39Yasi Salek?

  But even like Keith Richards, you know, like, pretty good, all things considered, you know, like, mostly when you kind of like, take that in. So I'm not really sure.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  But the difference between, I was gonna say, but the difference between Dando, certainly Richards, and Anton is.

• 1:06:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, money and success.

• 1:06:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. So money is the real thing that preserves you in amber.

• 1:06:58Yasi Salek?

  You need to eventually go to the dentist.

• 1:07:00Speaker 03

  Right. I was gonna say the teeth are really the tell, uh, with Anton, which like, you know, they were bad at the beginning of the movie. I'm like, they're really bad.

• 1:07:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:09Speaker 03

  By the end of them. But at least he doesn't have the, at least he doesn't gone full.

• 1:07:13Yasi Salek?

  Can you imagine if he got full of the years?

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  Maybe he has. I haven't seen his teeth.

• 1:07:17Yasi Salek?

  Anton Hollywood?

• 1:07:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, like Cardi B style, just like, fresh.

• 1:07:22Yasi Salek?

  Got a bag and fixed those teeth.

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, new teeth. Anton, Anton Newcomb never got a bag and probably never fixed his teeth.

• 1:07:30Yasi Salek?

  I think we're very blessed. To have such a film.

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 1:07:36Yasi Salek?

  I don't think we'll have it again.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  Although, like, again, I think you can make it not about rock music. I think there's some, there is a world where you could match this energy, even a music world, probably. Anywhere there's creative energy, there is this mix of admiration and rivalry and trying to make it out.

• 1:08:02Yasi Salek?

  But do you feel the stakes have been removed? I think that was like, I guess, you said it at the top, like, the idea of selling out doesn't exist anymore. And I, and also the sort of flip side of that is that, like, the stakes are not as high anymore. Unless you're like, you'd have to follow pop stars, aspiring pop stars, you know? Because for anyone else, I mean, maybe for, you did it with rappers, I guess it's rappers.

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  Well, and also, and not to just sell for a remote, but like, another thing that I made in the New York Times was like this little mini documentary about an aspiring pop star, Dominic Fike.

• 1:08:38Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  Who had these really high stakes where he was signed to this multimillion dollar deal when he was in jail. And, you know, he has this broken family and all these people he needed to support. Came, you know, was living out of motels when he wrote the song that became his big hit. And we followed him for, you know, six months or whatever, as he tried to make his debut album. But the reason that could never be dig is because we didn't have the time or the resources to really strap in. Like, he's still trying to make it in some way, like, which is cool narratively. Uh, but it's really hard to be on that journey for long enough to get the payoff, the arc, uh, that Andy gets.

• 1:09:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you don't get six years probably anymore.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  Of access.

• 1:09:27Yasi Salek?

  Well, and also, like, it's so much, everything happens so much faster, right?

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 1:09:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's just, it's interesting. You guys should watch it. If you watch it on the Criterion channel where it lives right now, you will get treated or forced to watch a message from Dave Grohl in the beginning because of the law that, I don't know if you guys are aware of the law, that Dave Grohl has to be in every single music documentary that exists. So he's there calling it his favorite.

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  Stolen valor. I feel like Dave Grohl, not a true dig head. Prove it, you know? Quote, quote, 75% of the movie. Back to me and I'll believe you.

• 1:10:05Yasi Salek?

  Tell me about the Gilmore Girls aspect. How come you were never on Gilmore Girls, Dave Grohl? If you were a real head, you would have been on Gilmore Girls.

• 1:10:13Speaker 03

  Facts.

• 1:10:14Yasi Salek?

  But also Jonah Hill is called at Shakespearean and he's not wrong.

• 1:10:17Speaker 03

  I, see, I believe that Jonah Hill is a-

• 1:10:19Yasi Salek?

  I do too. He's a real one.

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  He's a real one and he was, he was like the right age in 2004, I think, for this to like hit him harder.

• 1:10:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:27Speaker 03

  Oh, can I just shout out Andy's other movie, We Live in Public, which is-

• 1:10:31Yasi Salek?

  I was gonna say-

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  Also a fucking masterpiece.

• 1:10:34Yasi Salek?

  It's incredible. It doesn't-

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  With an Anton-like character?

• 1:10:37Yasi Salek?

  Totally. I, it's so funny that I was gonna bring this up. I, I saw it a long time ago. I didn't have time to re-watch it for this, but I remember being so blown away by it. Yes, it's Anton-like character, this guy who like kind of tried to invent reality TV, right? Like-

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, and streaming. I mean, he invents, like, he's the original iShow Speed.

• 1:10:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? Like Josh, yeah, Josh Harris, he's like a dot-com millionaire who then spent all the money he made after the first bust, building an immersive, real-world style warehouse in New York where everybody was filmed 24 hours a day, after he was like already filming him and his girlfriend 24 hours a day in their apartment.

• 1:11:22Yasi Salek?

  In the middle of the-

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  Oh, it's like, this is, I mean, like, this movie is so, so, so good. Like, it's as good as Dig to me and like more relevant to-

• 1:11:34Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely more, way more relevant to what's happening today. It's not, it doesn't have like the fun rock and roll sheen to it, but it's like so, so interesting. Yeah, you guys should definitely watch it. Also shout out Andy and David Timmer. Again, I don't have my tiny violin from the American Girl story, you guys. It is an on-rune, but they also lost their homes in the Altadena fires and my heart goes out to them. Thank God the Dig footage was, for some reason, not-

• 1:12:02Yasi Salek?

  Lost, it was somewhere else.

• 1:12:03Speaker 03

  No, but she did the, the day that I met her and got to watch the film and speak to her about it, uh, which was very meaningful to me. It was the day after she found out that her home had burned down.

• 1:12:13Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  It was still, she was coming back from Europe.

• 1:12:17Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:12:17Speaker 03

  Uh, stopping in New York. She hadn't even, she hadn't even been back to LA yet. And yeah, she was basically like, all the merch, all my Dig merch, you know, like all the, my copies of the DVD. You know, people were like, oh, we'll give, we'll bring you some, you know, like we'll, we'll bring, we'll give you whatever we have. Like a lot of, I think Dig ephemera was lost to the fires, which is really sad. Um, but I'm glad, yeah, that she got to put out this director's cut before all of that happened.

• 1:12:46Yasi Salek?

  I am too. And that's, I'm, I'm really glad we finally got to this episode because it's part of the reason we didn't do that episode. Back then I was a little busy. Um, this was so great. I mean, I feel like we could talk obviously three more hours about Dig and, and the Courtney Taylor Taylor of it all, and the Anton Newcom of it all.

• 1:13:07Yasi Salek?

  There's a lot.

• 1:13:07Speaker 03

  But people should just watch the movie.

• 1:13:08Yasi Salek?

  People should just literally watch the movie. Once again, I must stress, please, uh, please watch the original. And then if you love it, watch the XX, because I think if you try to watch the XX first, it might turn you off a little bit. Unless you are just like a Brian Jonestown massacre and Danny Warhol scholar and you've never seen this film, I don't know if that would.

• 1:13:28Speaker 03

  That'd be really, that'd be really weird. Do you have a favorite Brian Jonestown massacre album?

• 1:13:33Yasi Salek?

  I think it's probably Thank God For Mental Illness, because that's just like the one I got into first.

• 1:13:40Yasi Salek?

  Cause I worked at a record store, so you really can't know, not know about Brian Jonestown massacre. But yeah, it's like that, that like kind of three album arc.

• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, that stretch, that 96, 97 stretch. Satanic Majesty's Second Request, Thank God For Mental Illness, and then Give It Back, which I think is probably their actual peak. Um, but yeah, and the ones that after that are, there's diminishing returns, I think, from there, but that little stretch.

• 1:14:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, there's a little, we have My Bloody Valentine at home, sure, but it's still good. It's still good. Um, they also, they, I have seen them play live a bunch of times and it's fucking awesome. They are really good.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  See, I've never seen either of these bands, I think in part because. The movie is like too meaningful to me and I don't really like I I need them to be forever in my head in fuzzy VHS footage, not like, not like wrinkly onstage.

• 1:14:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, well, Joe, this has been, it's been a real delight and a treat. And I will say that I told your partner, John Caremonica, not Carrie, who we love.

• 1:14:47Speaker 03

  Not my wife.

• 1:14:49Yasi Salek?

  Not your wife, your partner. Um, that you beat him to being on Band's Plan and he said that you were the opening act.

• 1:14:57Speaker 03

  Wow. Well, this is also my opening act.

• 1:15:00Yasi Salek?

  Me beating you and John against each other.

• 1:15:04Speaker 03

  But this is also my opening act because I'm gonna do a band, whether you like it or not.

• 1:15:08Yasi Salek?

  You will, you will be doing it. I will be calling on you one of these days. Joe, thank you again. This has been a real treat.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:15:16Yasi Salek?

  And come back next week for a new episode of Band's Plan.

• 1:15:29Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Band's Plan. Our guest today was Joe Coscarelli. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video animation and graphics are by John Richter. Executive producers for Band's Plan are Gina Dalvec and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon and graciously recorded by Carlos De La Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tubber Rupert, and also Sean Fennessey, Carrie Batan, and the real real. I'm on my bullshit again. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Band's Plan on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 1:16:20Yasi Salek?

  Joe, do you have any more questions before we roll tape?

• 1:16:25Speaker 03

  Not if you, not if you trust me to just go.

• 1:16:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I trust you, even though you've been sort of mean already today.

• 1:16:34Yasi Salek?

  Sort of a hostile, bit of a hostile guest.