Metalheads

A NEW DOCUMENTARY DELVES INTO THE DARK SIDE OF METALLICA

Making an album can be murder. Just ask Metallica, the subject of a morbidly fascinating new film by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, the documentarians behind Brothers Keeper and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. "It's not like what happened in Metallica's world was like losing an eight-year-old child or being accused of killing your brother," Sinofsky says, referring to the subjects of those earlier films, "but for them this was probably the deepest and most troublesome period of their lives." When Metallica invited Berlinger and Sinofsky to the studio in 2001, the group was recovering from the departure of longtime bassist Jason Newsted and the P.R. fallout over its attack on Napster. Things would get a lot worse before they got better. Prodded by relentless group therapy, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich—the LennonMcCartney of heavy metal—engage in an epic on-screen ego war, which is postponed but not resolved by Hetfield's five-month disappearance during rehab. "I think we witnessed the turning point," says Berlinger. "This band was either going to crash and bum after a very respectable 20-year run or they were going to be around for another 20 years." Metallica finally released St. and Anger Sinofsky in June plan 2003, to debut and Some Berlinger Kind of Monster at Sundance and then selfdistribute it. How does the group feel about revealing so much? "In the beginning, it was a little awkward to sit there and look at yourself in all these wacky-ass, compromising situations, but that went away a lot quicker than I'd thought," says Ulrich, whose pal Sean Penn called the film "groundbreaking." According to Sinofsky, "It's everything that Let It Be could have been, but the Beatles were too chickenshit to show what was really going on. It's Let It Be with balls." MICHAEL HOGAN