lyneday
03-31-2006, 07:32 PM
In a new film, 50 untrained, probably drunken concert fans got cameras from the Beastie Boys
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | March 31, 2006
AUSTIN -- It began, like so many Tinseltown moments, with a cellphone -- in this case, a tricked-out mobile unit that records 30-second video clips. The phone was used by a young Beastie Boys fan to capture a shaky but atmospheric bit of concert footage a couple of years ago. The fan uploaded the clip to the Internet, Adam ''MCA" Yauch checked it out, and a new kind of concert movie was born.
''It captured the energy," says Yauch, bundled in a down jacket in an Austin Hilton meeting room with his bandmates Adam ''Adrock" Horovitz and Mike ''Mike D" Diamond during the South by Southwest festival. ''I thought it would be interesting to document a whole concert like that."
Kinetic is one way -- the demure way -- to describe ''Awesome; I . . . Shot That!," which arrives in theaters today. Sensitive viewers may want to take along an airsickness bag. The film was shot at a 2004 Madison Square Garden show by audience members, and the result is a white-knuckler of an ultra-lo-fi montage: 50 far-flung camera angles apprehended by 50 untrained, probably intoxicated Beastie Boys fans and edited in super-frantic fashion so as to maintain the DIY ''sincerity" (Yauch's word). In other words: abominable production values. A handful of high-resolution digital cameras were also employed, mostly for stage close-ups, but that footage was used sparingly in the final cut.
''It's less about our show and more about the audience's experience at our show," says Diamond.
A typical quick-cut music video feels like a slow-motion dream sequence compared with ''Awesome," in which there are a dizzying 6,732 edits. At the suggestion that watching their movie is not unlike enduring an especially abusive amusement park ride, Horovitz takes a break from the mound of food on his room service tray to concur.
''Yeah! That's really what it feels like! That's what we wanted it to feel like!"
Interviewing the Beastie Boys, it must be noted, is itself something of a ride. They're all around 40, but the three of them still behave like the class clowns who arrived on the scene in 1986 to become the first white rap group of significance. During a massively successful 20-year career, the Beastie Boys incorporated metal, pop, punk, wit, funk, and psychedelia and are now regarded as some of the most influential and adventurous artists in the genre.
Still, straightforward questions lead to mind-boggling non sequiturs. Riffs on imaginary beverages and a guy-staffed version of Hooters and various uncles named Freddy ricochet from chair to chair. The three are lined up in conversation -- Yauch on the left, Diamond anchoring the middle, Horovitz on the right -- the way they line up on a stage, spewing thoughts like a three-headed MC, jumping on each other's beats, filling space with gonzo, gleeful verbiage.
Here's what happened when a reporter inquired about favorite moments in the movie:
Horovitz: My favorite part is when I go flying in the sky.
Diamond: I like that one too.
Horovitz: It's bizarre.
Diamond: Although I have a lot of animosity towards it, my dancing routine with the young lady. Whom I don't know and with whom I've had no relations, I'd like to point out.
Yauch: You have that fantasy.
Horovitz: It happens at every show.
Diamond: It was an intimate moment.
Horovitz: I wish I could say this about myself, but Mike has a special connection with the people.
Yauch: There's this one shot right after Adam says we've got DMC in the house and we see this shot of this Arnold Horshack-looking guy with a Jewfro and gold chain on and he has a hairy chest and there's a lady next to him who's praying. I have trouble believing that shot actually came from this concert. I feel like it must have come from a Billy Graham outdoor thing.
Well, then.
Yauch, who under his longtime video-directing alias, Nathaniel Hornblower, is credited as director and producer of ''Awesome," found his cinematographers through a website posting in the days before the sold-out concert. When the 50 recruits arrived at the Garden to collect their cameras, they were given a simple set of instructions: start shooting when the Beastie Boys hit the stage and don't stop until the show is over. Hence the explicit visit to the men's room and one attempted storming of the backstage area. As for the film's title, it was unwittingly coined by Yauch's coproducer, who pumped his 50 charges with this bit of inspiration: ''You will be able to show this to your grandkids and say, 'Awesome, I [expletive] shot that.' "
That about sums up how Peter DeMarco feels about the experience. DeMarco, a 22-year-old fan from Albany, N.Y., had scored floor tickets, just to the left of the stage. He's pretty sure that his credentials (he'd made a student film in high school) and his strategically positioned seats (he pledged in his website reply to get shots of the band interacting with the crowd) put him in the final 50.
''There were two older guys behind me," DeMarco recalls. ''They must have been fans from 'License to Ill,' and they were cracking me up all night. Out of control. My shot of them during 'Brass Monkey' ended up in the movie. And at the premiere I was watching my favorite song, 'Open Letter to NYC,' and suddenly I see the camera flip and point toward my face. I was in it. Oh, man, I don't even remember doing that. It was awesome."
Yauch's job as director was, for obvious reasons, focused on postproduction, cobbling the million little pieces into a whole -- albeit a hyperactive whole -- with editor Neil Usatin.
''We kind of went song by song, figuring out how to make each one work," he says. ''And then also figuring out how to get an overall flow of the whole concert, get it paced right. We just kept playing around and chipping away to keep it interesting and keep it moving."
The band's main purpose may have been to capture the concert experience from a fan's-eye perspective, but the Beasties also succeeded in capturing their own still-palpable enthusiasm 20 years on. How, pray tell, do they stay motivated?
Horovitz: It's easy for me because I don't really do much work.
Yauch: I've got a new energy drink coming out that right now only the band is privy to. It's a mixture of grain alcohol, liquid nicotine, caffeine, and analgesics.
Diamond: And some jojoba oil.
Horovitz: And a spot of calendula.
Yauch: It also has Viagra. The stuff really gets you going.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | March 31, 2006
AUSTIN -- It began, like so many Tinseltown moments, with a cellphone -- in this case, a tricked-out mobile unit that records 30-second video clips. The phone was used by a young Beastie Boys fan to capture a shaky but atmospheric bit of concert footage a couple of years ago. The fan uploaded the clip to the Internet, Adam ''MCA" Yauch checked it out, and a new kind of concert movie was born.
''It captured the energy," says Yauch, bundled in a down jacket in an Austin Hilton meeting room with his bandmates Adam ''Adrock" Horovitz and Mike ''Mike D" Diamond during the South by Southwest festival. ''I thought it would be interesting to document a whole concert like that."
Kinetic is one way -- the demure way -- to describe ''Awesome; I . . . Shot That!," which arrives in theaters today. Sensitive viewers may want to take along an airsickness bag. The film was shot at a 2004 Madison Square Garden show by audience members, and the result is a white-knuckler of an ultra-lo-fi montage: 50 far-flung camera angles apprehended by 50 untrained, probably intoxicated Beastie Boys fans and edited in super-frantic fashion so as to maintain the DIY ''sincerity" (Yauch's word). In other words: abominable production values. A handful of high-resolution digital cameras were also employed, mostly for stage close-ups, but that footage was used sparingly in the final cut.
''It's less about our show and more about the audience's experience at our show," says Diamond.
A typical quick-cut music video feels like a slow-motion dream sequence compared with ''Awesome," in which there are a dizzying 6,732 edits. At the suggestion that watching their movie is not unlike enduring an especially abusive amusement park ride, Horovitz takes a break from the mound of food on his room service tray to concur.
''Yeah! That's really what it feels like! That's what we wanted it to feel like!"
Interviewing the Beastie Boys, it must be noted, is itself something of a ride. They're all around 40, but the three of them still behave like the class clowns who arrived on the scene in 1986 to become the first white rap group of significance. During a massively successful 20-year career, the Beastie Boys incorporated metal, pop, punk, wit, funk, and psychedelia and are now regarded as some of the most influential and adventurous artists in the genre.
Still, straightforward questions lead to mind-boggling non sequiturs. Riffs on imaginary beverages and a guy-staffed version of Hooters and various uncles named Freddy ricochet from chair to chair. The three are lined up in conversation -- Yauch on the left, Diamond anchoring the middle, Horovitz on the right -- the way they line up on a stage, spewing thoughts like a three-headed MC, jumping on each other's beats, filling space with gonzo, gleeful verbiage.
Here's what happened when a reporter inquired about favorite moments in the movie:
Horovitz: My favorite part is when I go flying in the sky.
Diamond: I like that one too.
Horovitz: It's bizarre.
Diamond: Although I have a lot of animosity towards it, my dancing routine with the young lady. Whom I don't know and with whom I've had no relations, I'd like to point out.
Yauch: You have that fantasy.
Horovitz: It happens at every show.
Diamond: It was an intimate moment.
Horovitz: I wish I could say this about myself, but Mike has a special connection with the people.
Yauch: There's this one shot right after Adam says we've got DMC in the house and we see this shot of this Arnold Horshack-looking guy with a Jewfro and gold chain on and he has a hairy chest and there's a lady next to him who's praying. I have trouble believing that shot actually came from this concert. I feel like it must have come from a Billy Graham outdoor thing.
Well, then.
Yauch, who under his longtime video-directing alias, Nathaniel Hornblower, is credited as director and producer of ''Awesome," found his cinematographers through a website posting in the days before the sold-out concert. When the 50 recruits arrived at the Garden to collect their cameras, they were given a simple set of instructions: start shooting when the Beastie Boys hit the stage and don't stop until the show is over. Hence the explicit visit to the men's room and one attempted storming of the backstage area. As for the film's title, it was unwittingly coined by Yauch's coproducer, who pumped his 50 charges with this bit of inspiration: ''You will be able to show this to your grandkids and say, 'Awesome, I [expletive] shot that.' "
That about sums up how Peter DeMarco feels about the experience. DeMarco, a 22-year-old fan from Albany, N.Y., had scored floor tickets, just to the left of the stage. He's pretty sure that his credentials (he'd made a student film in high school) and his strategically positioned seats (he pledged in his website reply to get shots of the band interacting with the crowd) put him in the final 50.
''There were two older guys behind me," DeMarco recalls. ''They must have been fans from 'License to Ill,' and they were cracking me up all night. Out of control. My shot of them during 'Brass Monkey' ended up in the movie. And at the premiere I was watching my favorite song, 'Open Letter to NYC,' and suddenly I see the camera flip and point toward my face. I was in it. Oh, man, I don't even remember doing that. It was awesome."
Yauch's job as director was, for obvious reasons, focused on postproduction, cobbling the million little pieces into a whole -- albeit a hyperactive whole -- with editor Neil Usatin.
''We kind of went song by song, figuring out how to make each one work," he says. ''And then also figuring out how to get an overall flow of the whole concert, get it paced right. We just kept playing around and chipping away to keep it interesting and keep it moving."
The band's main purpose may have been to capture the concert experience from a fan's-eye perspective, but the Beasties also succeeded in capturing their own still-palpable enthusiasm 20 years on. How, pray tell, do they stay motivated?
Horovitz: It's easy for me because I don't really do much work.
Yauch: I've got a new energy drink coming out that right now only the band is privy to. It's a mixture of grain alcohol, liquid nicotine, caffeine, and analgesics.
Diamond: And some jojoba oil.
Horovitz: And a spot of calendula.
Yauch: It also has Viagra. The stuff really gets you going.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company