YoungRemy
03-24-2006, 06:45 PM
DirtyPete gets a shout out! Way to Go Peter, from the NY times to the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032400393.html
Giving Fans an 'Awesome' Task
The Beastie Boys Put On a Show, and Put Cameras in Some Unlikely Hands
By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 26, 2006; Page N01
AUSTIN
There is but one approach to talking with the Beastie Boys: Pop some Dramamine, buckle up and hold on tight.Wordspileup. Things shift quickly. In conversation, as in music, video and now film, the iconic New York rappers tend to be hilariously frenetic, to the point that they leave you dazed and confused.
Consider how the discussion unfolds/unravels when the Beasties are asked about their favorite concert movies, in light of their own concert documentary, "Awesome: I [Expletive] Shot That," which opens Friday.
" 'Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii.' But I'm not really sure if that's a concert film because -- " "I recommend 'Purple Rain.' " " -- the audience is dead." "What about 'Belly'?" "If you play to, like, ghosts, does that count as a concert movie?" "Can you get 'Tougher Than Leather' on DVD?" "Or 'Krush Groove'?" "Sorry that I'm eating. But I'm dying. Fry?"
Some footnotes, reader: "Purple Rain," "Belly," "Tougher Than Leather" and "Krush Groove" aren't actually concert movies, but feature films that starred musicians. The Beasties themselves were in 1985's "Krush Groove" and 1988's "Tougher Than Leather."
Anyway, the Beasties -- Adam "Adrock" Horovitz, Michael "Mike D" Diamond and Adam "MCA" Yauch -- have come to the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference not to play Ebert and Roper but to pimp the experimental "Awesome: I [Expletive] Shot That!"
"This movie's about a guy who's returning from Vietnam," Yauch says, deadpan.
Horovitz: "He's returning just now ? That's weird."
Ha. Ha.
Actually, "Awesome" is an audacious take on the creaky genre for which the group handed out cameras to 50 ticketholders at a 2004 Madison Square Garden concert, instructed the fans to shoot whatever they wanted during the show, and then sifted through the wreckage of all that shaky, low-resolution footage shot from various, oft-bizarre vantage points. The concert was also captured on 11 high-resolution digital cameras, though that footage was used sparingly.
The result is a dizzying 90-minute film that features a staggering 6,732 edits and comes across like a bootleg mix video on speed, with images of the band mashed up with footage of fans dancing and egging each other on and taking bathroom breaks, of Madison Square Garden employees playing air guitar, and, for some reason, of Ben Stiller.
There may be subliminal messages, too, but there's a cone of silence surrounding that possibility. "Man, I wish I could divulge that," says Neal Usatin, the film's supervising editor. "There's definitely some stuff for people to check out; I'll just leave it at that."
"Awesome" is not "The Last Waltz" or "Gimme Shelter." And it is not for everyone.
"When it played at Sundance, some people walked out of there -- maybe more film-type people," Diamond says. "And they were going, 'This is really loud, and there are a lot of edits, and aaaaaargh! It's too intense!' They couldn't take it."
Says Usatin: "It's really subversive, this kaleidoscopic and violent presentation that at the same time is seductive. It reaches out and smacks you across the face."
Yauch, who directed and produced the movie using his longtime video-directing alias, Nathanial Hörnblowér, likens it to a punk-rock record: "It's pretty intense, but it's meant to be like that." The distributor, ThinkFilm, describes "Awesome" as a movie that "prismatically and kinetically" captures the experience of a Beasties show.
The idea for the project came when Yauch stumbled across an Internet post featuring grainy footage of a Beasties show shot on a cellphone. "It looked cool," the rapper says. "I thought we should hand out cameras to fans and have them document a show. But we didn't really mean to make a concert film. It just kind of turned out this way."
Says Horovitz: "We were also like, 'Hey, we're playing in the Garden. Maybe somebody should videotape it.' "
So a call for camera operators went out on the Beastie Boys Web site. There was no shortage of volunteers, as the show was long sold out: Despite the constant churn in hip-hop, the Beasties are as popular as ever two decades after the release of their (obnoxious) landmark "Licensed to Ill" disc, which became the first rap album to reach No. 1.
"Did we mention that the show was sold out?" Horovitz says.
As the fans gathered backstage to collect their cameras, they were told, in a pep talk, that years from now they could watch the movie and say: "Awesome, I [#%&!@] shot that!" Hence the title, about which Yauch shrugs: "It seemed funny at the time."
The fans also received a simple set of pre-show instructions: Keep rolling during the entire concert. Sitting off to the side of the stage, Peter DeMarco did just that, focusing mostly on the Beasties and the fans up front.
"I didn't get out of my seat," DeMarco says by telephone from Albany, N.Y. "I wanted to get the best stuff I could to make sure I got into the movie." Did he ever: The film's final cut includes DeMarco, a 22-year-old middle-school teaching assistant, acting as the fourth Beastie during "An Open Letter to NYC."
"I was singing the lyrics to the song, and I guess I pointed the camera at myself," he says. "I didn't even remember doing it. I saw it at the movie's premiere, and I was like, 'Oh my god, THERE I AM!' Crazy."
So of course DeMarco's parents are dying to see his star turn. Right ?
"Ummm, well, my dad definitely wants to go; but my mom -- she isn't sure she can sit through 90 minutes of it."
The movie cost roughly $1.2 million to produce, though about half of the budget was spent on sample clearance thanks to the group's DJ, Mix Master Mike. "He's in detention for a little while," Diamond says. "He was throwing in all sorts of beats that aren't on our records. The sampling clearance hurt."
But not as much as the editing process, apparently.
That took a year, says Yauch, who worked closely with Usatin to piece the film together. Frame. By. Frame.
"I wouldn't say I ever regretted doing it, but there were certain moments where I was like, 'Man, I have to get away from this and do something else,' " Yauch says. ("Not me," says Diamond. "All I did was sip champagne.")
"I had no idea what I was getting myself into," editor Usatin says. "I've never done anything like this. I think Adam had a vision, but we didn't have a sense of what it was going to be until we got into it and started chipping away at the footage. We found so much good stuff. Everything in the film is very deliberately chosen, even though there are some images that you might think we just randomly chose. But it was a lot of hours."
Especially given that Usatin ultimately watched every minute of every one of the 50 fan recordings.
"This paranoia came over him," Diamond says. "Like, 'Oh my God, am I missing something cool?' He watched all of the footage at double-speed. And after that, he was never the same. I think it hurt him a little bit."
At this point, the conversation turns to the possibility of using "Awesome" as a torture device, which prompts a clock-watching publicist to pull the plug.
Awesome.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032400393.html
Giving Fans an 'Awesome' Task
The Beastie Boys Put On a Show, and Put Cameras in Some Unlikely Hands
By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 26, 2006; Page N01
AUSTIN
There is but one approach to talking with the Beastie Boys: Pop some Dramamine, buckle up and hold on tight.Wordspileup. Things shift quickly. In conversation, as in music, video and now film, the iconic New York rappers tend to be hilariously frenetic, to the point that they leave you dazed and confused.
Consider how the discussion unfolds/unravels when the Beasties are asked about their favorite concert movies, in light of their own concert documentary, "Awesome: I [Expletive] Shot That," which opens Friday.
" 'Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii.' But I'm not really sure if that's a concert film because -- " "I recommend 'Purple Rain.' " " -- the audience is dead." "What about 'Belly'?" "If you play to, like, ghosts, does that count as a concert movie?" "Can you get 'Tougher Than Leather' on DVD?" "Or 'Krush Groove'?" "Sorry that I'm eating. But I'm dying. Fry?"
Some footnotes, reader: "Purple Rain," "Belly," "Tougher Than Leather" and "Krush Groove" aren't actually concert movies, but feature films that starred musicians. The Beasties themselves were in 1985's "Krush Groove" and 1988's "Tougher Than Leather."
Anyway, the Beasties -- Adam "Adrock" Horovitz, Michael "Mike D" Diamond and Adam "MCA" Yauch -- have come to the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference not to play Ebert and Roper but to pimp the experimental "Awesome: I [Expletive] Shot That!"
"This movie's about a guy who's returning from Vietnam," Yauch says, deadpan.
Horovitz: "He's returning just now ? That's weird."
Ha. Ha.
Actually, "Awesome" is an audacious take on the creaky genre for which the group handed out cameras to 50 ticketholders at a 2004 Madison Square Garden concert, instructed the fans to shoot whatever they wanted during the show, and then sifted through the wreckage of all that shaky, low-resolution footage shot from various, oft-bizarre vantage points. The concert was also captured on 11 high-resolution digital cameras, though that footage was used sparingly.
The result is a dizzying 90-minute film that features a staggering 6,732 edits and comes across like a bootleg mix video on speed, with images of the band mashed up with footage of fans dancing and egging each other on and taking bathroom breaks, of Madison Square Garden employees playing air guitar, and, for some reason, of Ben Stiller.
There may be subliminal messages, too, but there's a cone of silence surrounding that possibility. "Man, I wish I could divulge that," says Neal Usatin, the film's supervising editor. "There's definitely some stuff for people to check out; I'll just leave it at that."
"Awesome" is not "The Last Waltz" or "Gimme Shelter." And it is not for everyone.
"When it played at Sundance, some people walked out of there -- maybe more film-type people," Diamond says. "And they were going, 'This is really loud, and there are a lot of edits, and aaaaaargh! It's too intense!' They couldn't take it."
Says Usatin: "It's really subversive, this kaleidoscopic and violent presentation that at the same time is seductive. It reaches out and smacks you across the face."
Yauch, who directed and produced the movie using his longtime video-directing alias, Nathanial Hörnblowér, likens it to a punk-rock record: "It's pretty intense, but it's meant to be like that." The distributor, ThinkFilm, describes "Awesome" as a movie that "prismatically and kinetically" captures the experience of a Beasties show.
The idea for the project came when Yauch stumbled across an Internet post featuring grainy footage of a Beasties show shot on a cellphone. "It looked cool," the rapper says. "I thought we should hand out cameras to fans and have them document a show. But we didn't really mean to make a concert film. It just kind of turned out this way."
Says Horovitz: "We were also like, 'Hey, we're playing in the Garden. Maybe somebody should videotape it.' "
So a call for camera operators went out on the Beastie Boys Web site. There was no shortage of volunteers, as the show was long sold out: Despite the constant churn in hip-hop, the Beasties are as popular as ever two decades after the release of their (obnoxious) landmark "Licensed to Ill" disc, which became the first rap album to reach No. 1.
"Did we mention that the show was sold out?" Horovitz says.
As the fans gathered backstage to collect their cameras, they were told, in a pep talk, that years from now they could watch the movie and say: "Awesome, I [#%&!@] shot that!" Hence the title, about which Yauch shrugs: "It seemed funny at the time."
The fans also received a simple set of pre-show instructions: Keep rolling during the entire concert. Sitting off to the side of the stage, Peter DeMarco did just that, focusing mostly on the Beasties and the fans up front.
"I didn't get out of my seat," DeMarco says by telephone from Albany, N.Y. "I wanted to get the best stuff I could to make sure I got into the movie." Did he ever: The film's final cut includes DeMarco, a 22-year-old middle-school teaching assistant, acting as the fourth Beastie during "An Open Letter to NYC."
"I was singing the lyrics to the song, and I guess I pointed the camera at myself," he says. "I didn't even remember doing it. I saw it at the movie's premiere, and I was like, 'Oh my god, THERE I AM!' Crazy."
So of course DeMarco's parents are dying to see his star turn. Right ?
"Ummm, well, my dad definitely wants to go; but my mom -- she isn't sure she can sit through 90 minutes of it."
The movie cost roughly $1.2 million to produce, though about half of the budget was spent on sample clearance thanks to the group's DJ, Mix Master Mike. "He's in detention for a little while," Diamond says. "He was throwing in all sorts of beats that aren't on our records. The sampling clearance hurt."
But not as much as the editing process, apparently.
That took a year, says Yauch, who worked closely with Usatin to piece the film together. Frame. By. Frame.
"I wouldn't say I ever regretted doing it, but there were certain moments where I was like, 'Man, I have to get away from this and do something else,' " Yauch says. ("Not me," says Diamond. "All I did was sip champagne.")
"I had no idea what I was getting myself into," editor Usatin says. "I've never done anything like this. I think Adam had a vision, but we didn't have a sense of what it was going to be until we got into it and started chipping away at the footage. We found so much good stuff. Everything in the film is very deliberately chosen, even though there are some images that you might think we just randomly chose. But it was a lot of hours."
Especially given that Usatin ultimately watched every minute of every one of the 50 fan recordings.
"This paranoia came over him," Diamond says. "Like, 'Oh my God, am I missing something cool?' He watched all of the footage at double-speed. And after that, he was never the same. I think it hurt him a little bit."
At this point, the conversation turns to the possibility of using "Awesome" as a torture device, which prompts a clock-watching publicist to pull the plug.
Awesome.