Doc Corner: Spike Jonze's 'Beastie Boys Story' + 'Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert'

By Glenn Dunks

If live experiences are one of the things you are missing most about being in isolation, then documentaries can be one small way of getting that groove back. Beastie Boys Story and Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert probably won’t be enough to recreate the experience—certainly, both are limited in their creative and technical scopes, nor are they the sort of concert extravaganzas that the subjects have released before—but for music-loving watchers, they may just offer at least something that approximates the joy of being among the throngs of others enthralled in musical rapture.

Beastie Boys Story in particular feels like a greater missed opportunity given it is directed by none other than Spike Jonze (he also directed the stage-show that it captures). But the band at its core are so interesting in their history and captivating in their stage presence that is almost doesn’t matter. Almost.

Jonze has rather simply filmed and slimmed down the spoken exploration through the four-decade long story of the Beastie Boys that was performed at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre last year and labelled it a “live documentary experience”, which isn’t quite accurate. Even if Jonze and editors Jeff Buchanan and Zoe Schack cutely keep in the show’s technical glitches and autocue mix-ups (staying through the credits for a recurring celebrity skit otherwise snipped from the show on screen).The two-hour film cuts down Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond’s three-and-a-half-hour show, humorously intercutting their on-stage history lesson in dad chinos and sensible sweaters with clips and photography from their teen years as punk musicians on through their discovery of rap and their evolving attitudes towards the youthful idiocy that made them stars in the first place.

With detours to Madonna and Dolly Parton, there is enough of the Boys’ irreverence here to satisfy, even if it cannot capture the magic of being in the room itself. Its strongest passage is its climax as Horovitz and Diamond use their platform to give a tender extended tribute to Adam Yauch whose death in 2012 brought about the premature end of the band. It was Yauch who launched Oscilloscope Laboratories (the producers of Beastie Boys Story, obviously) in 2008 and popularized the Free Tibet movement among other non-Beastie Boys achievements, and who pivoted the band’s image towards something more progressive. His life alone could have filled a documentary.

There are no live performances, which will disappoint some. But it does make a fitting companion to the more manically assembled Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! from 2006, though, which was one of the most invigorating and excitingly captured concert films you’ll see. And given its release on Apple+, a home viewing is very appropriate rather than a cinema or theatre where its lack of performances or the interactivity of the real thing might have be more glaring.

Directors Chris Perkel and Drew Thomas take a similarly un-flashy tack with Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert, the first pairing of this directing team after a series of solo music documentaries including Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives (the former) and appropriately Coachella (the latter). That 2006 documentary about the famed Californian music festival captured performances by Radiohead, Bjork, Arcade Fire, the White Stripes, the Pixies, Oasis and more at a time when just the word ‘Coachella’ wasn’t quite the entire universe of industry and its reputation was more as a modern equivalent to its most obvious festival forefather, Woodstock (justifiably so or not).

Unlike Coachella or indeed unlike Michael Wadley’s seminal Woodstock, 20 Years in the Desert isn’t a concert performance documentary (in that regard it fits quite well then with Beastie Boys Story), but rather a historical tour through the festival’s first 20 years. In a twist, of course, it’s being released in a year in which the festival has been cancelled and so it sits as the lone trip to the desert that anybody will be taking for the foreseeable future. The sole remnant of what I assume was meant to be a suite of celebrations.

The problem with this take on Coachella is that its back-story just isn’t particularly interesting. And the musical performances that make Coachella so famous are either completely absent or chopped up and edited into such small bits and pieces. While some performers gain more attention that others (Kanye West annoyingly; Beyoncé appropriately), the likes of Madonna, Daft Punk and even Prince are left to brief anecdotes and performance glimpses as the directors with editors Barry Mottier and R. Brett Thomas cram a hell of a lot of history in 104 minutes. The likes of Kraftwerk are namedropped and never heard from. It’s hard to not be disappointed especially considering all of the footage they clearly had access to.

I admired its attempts at critical examination, however, especially towards the dance music scene that rose in the background riding an ever-escalating wave of contemporary American acceptance (cresting with Daft Punk’s famous pyramid performance) and the festival’s late-stage acceptance of hip-hop and more recently music from Asia (like Blackpink) that mirrors the changing face of its audience. It believes its own hype, sure, but this is pure advertorial documentary filmmaking so one has to grin and bear it. Homecoming, this is not.

Like the Beastie Boys’ doc, I just wished the filmmakers had pushed themselves a bit more creatively. The end credits give us some graphic invention, but it’s a bit too late by that stage. Perhaps its status as a YouTube Originals production meant it never wanted to be anything more than a work of fan compilation made to fill a couple of hours for those longing for the festival. In that sense, it works to a minor degree.

Release: Beastie Boys Story is streaming on Apple+. Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert is streaming on YouTube.

Oscar chances: Nope to both. Maybe some technical nods at the Emmys, though?

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[Owl]

Another plane
Another train
Another bottle in the brain
Another girl
Another fight
Another drive all night.

-From «No Sleep Til Brooklyn»

This is the Beastie Boys' song that's always playing in my headphone whenever I step into the subway for the commute.