Metallica: This Monster Lives by Joe Berlinger, Greg Milner Page A

cameras will destroy the intimacy of therapy, to which James responds, “What intimacy? What the fuck are you talking about?”—you get a sense of what James was going through. He’s smiling, but it’s a smile that says he’d rather be anywhere but there. Even outside room 627, you could tell that James was uncomfortable. When the band sits around patting each other on the back about the great music they’re making, James is silent. “You don’t seem too psyched,” Lars says.
    All I could decipher was that something wasn’t quite right with James. Much later, when it was time to begin editing Monster , I was struck by how much James’s unease is obvious on-screen. Perhaps there is something to Phil’s belief that our cameras brought out the truth. James, though he was ableto resist this pressure, was nonetheless no better able to remain perfectly mute. He might not have been talking out loud, but our cameras were listening hard.
    I don’t think I was any better at keeping my insecurities to myself. I still had no idea that we were capturing so much emotional complexity. I was afraid we weren’t capturing much of anything, and toward the end of that second week I was determined to be proactive. I decided that if the therapy and studio material wasn’t sufficiently compelling, then we needed to go deeper. One day as we began filming, I heard Lars mention a meeting he’d had with Bob the night before, to discuss their thoughts on how the new music was progressing. A few minutes later, as Lars sat behind his drums warming up, I walked up and tried to get his attention. At first he didn’t see me—or pretended not to. I waved a little to get his attention.
    “Hey, Lars, I heard you and Bob had a meeting about the new album.”
    He stared straight ahead, pumping his feet on his trademark dual-kick drum setup. “Uh-huh.”
    “You know, you really need to tell us about everything that goes on that we might want to film.”
    “Okay” he said tentatively.

    Cinematographer Bob Richman shoots James. (Courtesy of Annamaria DiSanto)

    James with his daughter, Cali (Courtesy of Bob Richman)
    “I mean, if we’re going to make an effective documentary about you guys making this album, we need to—”
    He swiveled around to face me. “Hey!” That’s all he said. Then he swiveled back and kept pumping his feet. I took that to mean, “I’m Lars Ulrich, the drummer of fucking Metallica, the biggest band in the fucking world, and don’t tell me when to invite you to tag along with a camera.” All he needed to say was that one dismissive word: “Hey!”
    The band decided to take a three-week vacation after the second week. There was a small impromptu party at the Presidio studio on the last night before the break. James cut out right after work was done, barely saying goodbye, but everyone else stuck around. Sean Penn, a close friend of Lars’s, had been hanging around the studio that day, although he made it very clear that he wasn’t interested in appearing in the film. (“I don’t want to be like Warren Beatty in Truth or Dare. ”) Someone handed me a bottle of vodka.
    I was hanging out with rock stars and a movie star, kind of buzzed at two A.M. when Lars walked up and presented me with one of those ethical quandaries that come with making documentaries.
    “You want to go hit some bars with me and Sean?”
    Did I? Well, yeah, sure I did. Maybe Lars was trying to make up for snapping at me, although it was clear that we were all off the clock, that this wouldjust be a social call, a chance to hang out, not something we’d film. I pondered this invitation for a second and decided its social nature was exactly what made me uneasy.
SOME KIND OF MONSTER
The first time we see Metallica at the Presidio in Some Kind of Monster , they improvise over a riff played by James. As the jam gets going, he ad-libs vocals by lifting some lyrics from the Metallica song “Fuel.” That happened on our first day of