Beastie Boys Sabotaged

The pantheon of great rock concert movies is small but distinguished. It includes such masterworks as Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz, the Maysles brothers' Gimme Shelter, and Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense. At their best, these films succeed both in capturing live performances in all their kinetic excitement and heart-thumping intensity and offer rare and candid insight into the musicians' personalities and artistry.

The new Beastie Boys movie, Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That! (An Authorized Bootleg), falls very short of the bar for rock movie greatness. The idea was simple. Beastie boy Adam Yauch (aka MCA), who directed the film using the pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblower, handed 50 lightweight digital cameras out to audience members at a sold-out concert in fall 2004 at Madison Square Garden.

"What inspired the idea of the movie was that Yauch had seen a fan posted a little bit of footage using a bit of a camera phone on their Web site, and that was inspirational," Beastie Boy Mike D recalls. The only instructions that the volunteer videographers were given were to "press the magical red button" at the start of the concert and keep on recording till the final number."

"Surprisingly, people were careful enough that they [the cameras] all got returned, and none got broken," Mike D continues, explaining that they held on to the volunteers' drivers licenses as collateral during the show.

The amateur cameramen were strategically placed throughout the arena in order to capture the concert from all possible distances and angles. In addition, five professional DV cameras captured the action up close. Yauch and the film's editor, Neil Usatin, sifted through the dozens of hours of footage and compiled the 90-minute film from the most interesting bits.

"Neil wanted to be sure that we weren't missing anything good, and he sat and watched every single camera from beginning to end," Yauch explains.

Unfortunately, this highly interesting concept does not translate well. There is nothing earth-shattering or revelatory about seeing the same concert from 50 different-but generally similar-views. In much of the footage, the cameras are either zoomed in on the stage so that the cameraman's actual position in the theater is indeterminable, or they are so far back that the stage is barely visible in the 35mm blowup. In fact, the footage shot by the DV cameras is so sharp and so vibrant that one wishes that they wouldn't cut to the handhelds quite so frequently.

Only rarely do the amateur camera operators manage to capture the strange and unexpected-a woman dancing precisely the same way as Mike D, a humorous mid-concert trip to the toilet. The coolest effect is a 50-way split that definitely outdoes Mike Figgis' Timecode and appears time and again. But on the whole, while viewing the finished product, one can't help but feel bad about Neil and all those wasted hours in the cutting room. As the film progresses, so to does Yauch's dependency on artsy effects such as strobing and other Final Cut Pro tricks.

"It was more of a decision in the editing room," says Yauch. "We started playing around with some things for different songs."

For all these reasons, Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That is a film whose appeal doesn't extend past its title. This is a pity, especially considering what a great performance the band gives-a performance that only the DVs are capable of capturing.

The performances of 23 favorites such as "Sabotage" and "Shake Your Rump" are energetic, quirky, and colorful-thank God the sound was recorded in multi-track and mixed later rather than with the crummy camera mics. Part of what makes the performance so exciting is the improvisational shenanigans of their DJ Mix Master Mike, who keeps the Boys on their toes.

"A lot of times, what we'll do is start with the first verse, which we'll do over the main beat of the song, and after that, it's a free-for-all. He'll [Mix Master Mike] just throw beats in, and we have to figure out how to make our lyrics work over the beats. It keeps it interesting and keeps us on our toes," says Yauch.

Mike D agrees: "The sample thing for the film was actually one of the bigger hurdles in making it. Mike throws so many different things in from different places." The concert also features a colorful selection from the Beastie Boys' wardrobe.

"We got free stuff from Adidas, so that helped our decision-making process," says Beastie Boy Ad Rock. "I like the jumpsuits the best of all of the things."

Mike D chimes in: "We also had Jean Paul Gaultier design us a full line of clothes for the show, but we didn't wear them. It didn't come to fruition."

The band also dedicates its performance of "Sabotage" to President Bush. Mike D explains: "On that tour, definitely, because that tour took place leading up to the American election, and then, dishearteningly, past it, so that was definitely something that was big on our minds. It's not like it has to be about politics, but it's an incredible medium and can serve right for that."

Should we expect more forays into political terrain from the band? The answer, at least for Mike D, seems to be no. "I'm currently working on a big album by Faith Hill," he says. "I do some of the digital editing, some of the special effects, and the graphics, the album cover, the airbrushing ... and I play the glockenspiel, too."