Metallica documentarian Joe Berlinger was fascinated by the dynamic between James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JULY 15, 2004

By Steve Newton

Directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky spent the better part of three years working on Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, a two-hour-plus documentary that follows the veteran Bay Area metal band through the most tumultuous times of its career.

During that period, long-time bassist Jason Newsted quit the group, a full-time therapist/performance-enhancement coach was hired (for US$40,000 a month), and booze-hound vocalist James Hetfield entered rehab.

Through it all, the shattered group was struggling to complete St. Anger, its first studio recording in five years, with producer Bob Rock subbing in on bass. It’s the pulverizing, fury-driven riffs from that album that are the dominating soundtrack to Berlinger and Sinofsky’s movie, although neither’s musical taste veers toward head-banger territory.

As Berlinger explains on the line from his production office in New York, the real power of Monster comes from its unblinking analysis of what drives the 40-ish hard-rockers, in particular founding members Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich.

“I was always fascinated by the dynamic between James and Lars,” the director relates. “I mean, here you have James, a big, beefy, working-class Southern California tough guy who’d be just as comfortable under the hood of a car changing a distributor cap; and there you have Lars, a petite, urbane, upper-crust son of a famous Danish tennis star.”

The filmmakers originally hooked up with Metallica while helming their second documentary, Paradise Lost, which questioned the convictions of three teenagers for the brutal 1993 slayings of three children in West Memphis. A major part of the prosecution’s argument hinged on the assumption that the defendants were devil worshippers, mainly because they listened to heavy metal, and the absurdity of that idea caused Berlinger and Sinofsky to reach out to Metallica for soundtrack contributions.

“They really responded to our pitch that heavy metal was on trial as much as these innocent kids were,” recalls Berlinger, “but when I first called them I didn’t even expect to get through. I was labouring under my own stereotype of these guys; I assumed they were beer-swilling idiots who wouldn’t care about a miscarriage of justice. I was embarrassed that I had that stereotype once I met them and dealt with them, and they gave us all this music for free.”

Berlinger says that shooting Some Kind of Monster was the most fun he and Sinofsky ever had working on a film–“in part because there were no dead bodies”. The pair met in the late ’80s at Maysles Films, the same company that produced Gimme Shelter, which Berlinger describes as “the greatest documentary ever made”. The 1970 Rolling Stones film proved an important reference for his own Monster, which opens Friday (July 16) in Vancouver.

“I think Gimme Shelter‘s a brilliant film that obviously captures the flameout of the utopian dream of the ’60s,” he says. “It started out as a documentation of a concert tour, so it’s sort of a kindred spirit with us, because we started out just doing some behind-the-scenes album-making footage, and I really think we’ve captured a time and a place.

“The fact that the biggest heavy band of all time, absolute icons of macho aggression, the fact that they can go through this introspection and people can take it seriously as a film is very demonstrative of where we are at today. That it’s okay for people to ask for help.”

 

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