Indie documentary Dig! didn’t need to be improved upon, but its director Ondi Timoner has done just that. by Robert Ham Back in 1996, young filmmaker Ondi Timoner had an ambitious plan: She would follow 10 young underground rock bands for one year and film them, as they all reached for their respective grip on a brass ring of fame, success, and financial solvency that—thanks to the world-altering arrival of Nirvana—suddenly seemed within reach.  But as the project, dubbed The Cut, moved forward, Timoner was drawn to the Brian Jonestown Massacre, a scuzzy gang of '60s psych-pop revivalists from LA with two impossibly charismatic members—hyperprolific front man Anton Newcombe and tambourine player Joel Gion. And the BJM wouldn't stop hyping a band from Portland, the Dandy Warhols, that trucked in a more bubblegum glam sound, but were part of Newcombe’s foggy plan to foment a musical revolution. So Ondi Timoner and her brother/ partner-in-film David Timoner decided to train their cameras on the two musical acts, as they made their play at mainstream success, following them both over the course of eight years. They captured the bands' mutual appreciation turn into a weird rivalry, as the Dandys began making waves and playing festivals in Europe, and the BJM continued to find new ways to self-destruct.  The resulting film Dig!, released in 2004, was an incredible document of the post-grunge musical landscape and a bleakly hilarious film. For one, you get to watch the ego of the impossibly-handsome Dandys frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor go from comfortably large to the size of a small moon, as his band levels up. On the other side, we see the BJM’s prospects quite literally collapse in a heap, via onstage fights, altercations with audience members, and Newcombe’s mental health spiral. Frustrated by the Dandys’ good fortune, Newcome releases a 12-inch single with the cutting anthem “Not If You Were the Last Dandy on Earth!” and sends the band a package that includes shotgun shells with the names of the Dandys written on each one. The reputation of Dig! was already sterling, with its many quotable lines—“You fuckin’ broke my sitar, motherfucker,” and “The Beatles were for sale. I give it away”—becoming part of the underground rock lexicon. The ultimate stamp of approval came from both Taylor-Taylor and Newcombe publicly condemning the film as pure sensationalism. (Taylor-Taylor might have a leg to stand on if he hadn’t served as the film's narrator.) Dig! is terrific and didn’t need to be improved upon, but somehow Ondi Timoner has done just that with Dig! XX. Timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the original film’s release, this super-sized version of the documentary adds 40 minutes of footage and new contextualizing voiceover from Gion—the aforementioned tambourine plater. Outside of an eye-roll-inducing intro from Dave Grohl, the fresh material is fantastic, adding extra layers of hilarity and melancholy to the tale. Timoner intercuts an original clip of Taylor-Taylor badmouthing the group's former drummer Eric Hedford for leaving the group with a new interview with Hedford rebutting each spurious comment. We also get vintage footage of Newcombe, with a straight face and huge pupils, insisting that he had telepathically collaborated on a song with Charles Manson.  However, the most crucial addition to Dig! XX, is a coda that fills in what happened to both bands following the film’s initial release. Timoner touches on the post-BJM lives of several members and gives a nod to Dandys keyboardist Zia McCabe’s current, secondary career as a realtor, but not much else has changed. Newcombe has gone on to live a comfortable, drug-free life in Berlin and continued to release copious amounts of BJM music, but he also destroyed another lineup of bandmates, after clocking then-guitarist Ryan Van Kriedt in the head with a guitar onstage in Melbourne in 2023.  The beauty of Dig!, either in its original form or this amped-up one, is that your interest in either band isn’t necessary for you to find the humor and pathos in it. The hubris on display throughout—be it a shirtless Taylor-Taylor marching around the streets of New York, griping about the major label system, or the admission that Newcombe blew money meant to ferry the BJM to an industry showcase on sitars—is universally captivating. Whether they’re soaring or crashing, you won’t want to miss a moment of the journey.  Dig! XX screens at Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy, Mon Feb 3, 7 pm, tickets here.