Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

(Paramount Home Entertainment, 1.25.2005)

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster is what we all thought every DVD would be like before "Super Special Collector's Limited Premiere Edition" became synonymous with trailers, a promo doc, and cutting room scraps: an enhancement of the movie-watching experience. Oh, this 2-disc set has deleted scenes all right -- 40 of them, part of the 10 plus hours of exhaustive, if not daunting, bonus footage -- culled from the 1600 hours of tape that filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky shot as Metallica fell apart and fell back together while making their "St. Anger" album.

Originally, Monster was conceived as a VH-1 making-the-album series a la "The Osbornes" before the band opted for a feature instead. The final film alone is a two and a half hour monster but, watching the deleted scenes, you start to wonder what might have been if the project had stayed its original course. Some of the footage is just snippets: the band bowling, drummer Lars Ulrich whining that no one told him to wear a Hawaiian shirt to guitarist Kirk Hammett's 40th birthday party, etc. Others, like a surprise LA gig and Q&A sessions at film festivals, play like mini TV episodes. Berlinger and Sinofsky comment on several of the scenes, and their justifications for axing each shows how documentary filmmakers must shape "reality" to tell a story. But who wouldn't want to see more of Lars and Kirk sampling a work in progress to Ja Rule while singer James Hetfield's rehab stalls the band's creativity and Ja's posse shoots craps in the recording studio?

All those cut scenes -- some hilarious, some revealing, many both -- create a kind of "Metallica: The TV Show" cut of "Some Kind of Monster" in your head. That's a show I would have watched every week and I didn't care about Metallica one bit until Lars started crying about Napster, at which point I began hating them.

Like so many documentarians, Berlinger and Sinofsky were in the right place at the right time, capturing a band that really does look like it might roll over and die at any moment. Which is a lot funnier than it sounds, thanks mostly to group therapy sessions that rival This is Spinal Tap for laughs and yet turn dramatic as the band starts opening up, airing its dirty laundry, and finding reasons to keep making music. -- Joey Tayler