At
Comic-Con musicians Robert Trujillo, Lars Ulrich and producer Charlotte Huggins
talked to Collider about Nimród Antal’s Metallica Through the Never, starring
Dane DeHaan as a roadie who goes on a mission during the band’s live
performance.
“Collider:
What does this film add to the Metallica experience that a fan doesn’t get,
just by going to one of the band’s concerts?
ROBERT TRUJILLO: Well, there is a narrative.
There’s a thread. There’s a whole other surrealistic journey and
imagery. That is the key ingredient in this film. We’re performing
well. It sounds killer. The impact of the stage, and all the stuff
that’s happening with that is incredible, but at the same time, you’ve got this
other side to this journey, which is what (director) Nimród Antal
created. And then, there’s what you see in Dane DeHaan, and everything
that goes with that. You can compare it to things, like Mad Max or Fight Club. It’s hard to
pinpoint, but it really works. It was trial and error. For Nimród
to have taken on the undertaking of creating a story with a thread, and marry
it to our music and our performance, is a huge challenge. A lot of directors
thought, “This is nuts! I’m not taking this on!” He had the passion
and drive to do that.
LARS ULRICH: What Metallica always tries to
do, as we go around and play a lot of the same cities, over and over again,
year after year, is to give a different experience. We try to never play
the same venues, or if we play indoors, we’ll play outdoors, and all that type
of stuff. It’s always about just trying to do a different kind of
experience. This movie will hopefully add to that variable of different
experiences. Some Kind
of Monster, even though it’s obviously very difficult for us to watch, was
an interesting experience. We always look for creative outlets and
creative endeavors that are unusual. After 32 years, we just don’t want
to get stuck in the grind of doing a record, every three years. So, I can
guarantee you that nobody has ever seen a film quite like this, and we’re proud
of that. The Metallica fans and the people that are really, really
passionate about what we do have never seen Metallica quite presented in this
light, so that’s pretty exciting.
CHARLOTTE HUGGINS: In the course of making
this movie, I got to see nine concerts, over the period of about a month and a
half. We rehearsed in Mexico City, in front of about 40,000 people.
Those were interesting rehearsals. And then, we shot just steady-cam in
Edmonton and we shot the full movie in Vancouver. By the end of it, I
really had a sense of the concert-in-venue experience, and the movie is so much
fun because you get that bigness since it’s 3D and it’s giant screen with the
IMAX thing, but then you get to get really close. The band really wanted
shots where you see from their perspective, out to their fans. You get to
be on stage and see what it looks like to look out. It’s actually really
a connected experience.
…
Is
it bizarre to see yourselves in 3D?
ULRICH: Over the years, it’s almost like you
get a third-person relationship with it. You can find so many faults, the
minute you start looking at it like that. It’s like, “Oh, my god, look at
my receding hairline! Oh, my god, I’m five pounds overweight!” You
know what I mean? So, I have the ability to compartmentalize all that
stuff. I don’t get very insecure about that. It’s not a waste of
time, but you just deal with it. You can’t put too much emotion into
it. I haven’t seen the film on an IMAX screen yet. That’s gonna be
pretty trippy. I’ll be like, “Look, there I am, 30 feet tall.” It’s
fun. The whole thing is a little surreal. We appreciate the fact and
revel in the fact that we can make movies. We appreciate the fact that we
can be autonomous. We don’t have to take financial help. It’s
pretty cool that we can just live in our own little bubble and do all these
crazy things. I guess that seeing yourself on a screen is something that
you get used to. Let’s face it, these days, there’s really nothing that
you do that doesn’t get filmed.
After
so many years as a musician, touring and making albums, is it challenging to
keep it fresh and interesting?
ULRICH: Well, we have the luxury of just
marching to our own tune and going all over the place. I think Metallica
lives in this little bubble. We just do our own thing. We’re not
part of any trends or waves or fads. We can just do our own thing, all
the time. It’s a great luxury. I don’t think we were really
appreciative of it until recently, and really understood that it is what keeps
us alive. It’s great to be able to have the freedom to run around and do
all this crazy stuff, and at all cost, avoid making another record, just to
piss our managers off.”
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