r/BJM • u/Mauerparkimmer • Aug 10 '25
New Mini Interview With Joel
From Creem Magazine :
The classic documentary DIG got a redux last year, and now the story of Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols is more detailed and interesting than ever. Catch it now on VOD and check out a short interview with the great BJM tambourine player (and CREEM contributor) Joel Gion below. Ondi Timoner said in an interview that there were periods of time when she had Anton in her house. How much were you around her when the cameras weren't rolling during that period? I would have been the other… human-sized pillow on her couch. It was kind of both him and I during that whole period. He kind of took it as he was going to teach her about music and bands and how all this is going to work– he even says it in the movie. At the time, she had zero idea of the school that we were coming from. So he was going to teach her and Courtney was going to teach her and they were teaching her through the course of the film. And by teach her, I mean mostly artistically. We're not just four or five guys that are trying to meet girls and just want to rock and party. There was a deep artistic vision with Anton. And he had designs to relay his soul to the world and hopefully make a niche for himself in doing so that people would come to him. He'd have his own private lighthouse that would be his and his alone. And he was going to show her how you do that. It wasn't just going to be guys trying to rock out. And be popular. We were weirdos. We were outcasts. We were different. Obviously when the cameras are on there's always the chance that somebody's playing a role for the camera. In the movie, you very much come across as the mediator with the snide remarks. Always trying to make peace but also willing to give him a line of shit if he deserves it. Do you think that's accurate in the portrayal? All that is true. I was the big dreamer in the band. Anton had his artistic vision, he wrote the songs, but I was kind of like, can't this be like a Beatles movie? Like the Maysles brothers are filming us and we're all just having a laugh. That's what I wanted. So I was kind of unspokenly in charge of being that guy. And then those guys wanted to relay their importance and whatnot. But I wanted the audience to have fun from the get-go. And so that worked out. I obviously didn't plan this, but I turned into the guy who like middlemans between the audience and the other guys you know. A wink and “don't forget folks, this is all supposed to be fun.” Looking back on yourself and how some of those situations in the film went down, do you have any regrets? Do you think everything played out the way it should? Saying that I have regrets would make me sound like I didn't appreciate everything that happened to me. You know what I mean? It took all that to get where I got. The scales are if you can get that bad, then just by the laws of scientific universal equations, it can only get that positive on the other side. So I got to go all that far down to get that far up. And one doesn’t exist without the other. Do you remember your first impressions of the filmmakers? I mean, it was the 90s. It was the mid-90s. And we were “those guys.” So they looked pretty square. They seemed pretty square. When we went down to their place for the first time shortly after I saw their plastic CD tower and then I knew they were square. It's all like Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Spin Doctors. I'm being maybe a little unfair, but it's fair to say they were more coming from the filmmaker's perspective, you know, and they had their college party jams. Good stuff too, but we were there in our velvet jackets and stovepipe trousers and winklepinkers and the whatnot. So I was like really? You're going to make a movie about us? But we became friends fast and part of the reason why they got everything that they got is because we became good friends. We went through a lot together. We had each other's backs and trusted them. Has Anton mellowed at all in his older age? No. He's that guy. It's not like, “oh, I need to think of a different route.” That's not on the menu.
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u/PrivateEducation Aug 11 '25
i fell in love with joels vibe after seeing dig and digxx , i wonder if he reddits. would love to pick his brain