“I have a bunch of films that were destroyed, and Dig! wasn’t one of them,” says Ondi Timoner on a video call from LA. “Dig! can’t be destroyed. Isn’t that funny?” The 52-year-old filmmaker apologises for being late to our appointment: she’s working on four movies, handling the release of three new ones, and dealing with her house burning down in the LA fires. “My brother also lost his house that night, and the only hard drives he took were the DIG! XX drives. The masters for Dig! were at my studio, but most of my archives were on site and got destroyed.” Still, she’s trying to be positive. “There’d be the ability to do a DIG! XXX. It’s kind of a miracle.”

In 2004, Timoner’s debut feature, Dig!, won the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Two decades later, it’s being rereleased as DIG! XX, a remastered, reimagined cut with 40 minutes of new footage. The film was ostensibly about the love/hate relationship between two bands, The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and the warring words between their respective frontmen, Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe. Instead, Dig! captured an unstable music landscape and the lottery of which artists are celebrated: an insider explains how The Dandy Warhols “are the reason why people get laid off of record labels”, while Newcombe physically attacks his band members during shows.

In fact, Dig! is more enjoyable if you don’t particularly care for either group’s music. A cult comedy that’s more replayable than the songs it depicts, Timoner’s documentary is beloved for the outlandish quotes (“I sneeze, and hits come out” and “you broke my sitar, motherfucker”), the rambunctious energy of the director chasing both bands around the world for seven years, and a parade of disastrous BJM gigs, one of which was parodied on an episode of The Gilmore Girls titled “He’s Slippin’ ‘Em Bread... Dig?” Timoner remarks, “Dave Grohl told me he and his band watch it because it reminds them that no matter how bad they think it’s got for them, it’s not as bad as what it is for Brian Jonestown.”

Timoner’s original plan to follow 10 bands was scuppered when Newcombe, a self-destructive eccentric, proved too charismatic to be a sidenote. Newcombe then introduced Timoner to The Dandy Warhols, a fellow up-and-coming group who would jam onstage alongside him. However, their paths deviated: the Dandys joined Capitol Records in 1997, had radio hits backed with ludicrous music videos directed by the likes of David LaChapelle, and landed a cover shoot with Dazed magazine. Meanwhile, Newcombe struggled amidst drug addiction, personal drama, and audiences who turned up primarily in the hope he’d punch a guitarist.

Where once the bands pushed each other’s creativity, the friendship turned sour. When The Dandy Warhols have a magazine photoshoot, they turn up uninvited to where The Brian Jonestown Massacre members live in drunken, drugged-up, post-party grime. In response to the Dandys’ hit single “Not if You were the Last Junkie on Earth” being about Newcombe, BJM released a response called “Not if You were the Last Dandy on Earth”. The film’s hidden narrative is that the wrong band found fame: Taylor-Taylor deems Newcombe a songwriting “genius”, while the latter dismisses the Dandys as sellouts with vapid lyrics.

Making Dig! today seems unimaginable: both bands come off as more invested in petty drama than chord progressions. Compare it to Piece by Piece, a documentary about Pharrell that skips over his legal disputes and “Blurred Lines” controversy. “These days, music films are mostly puff pieces,” says Timoner. “They’re not authentic. The filmmaker’s not there at two in the morning, filming everything.” The final cut was edited from 2,500 hours of footage. “I wasn’t making this for fans of the band. It was about the collision of art and commerce. Can you maintain your integrity and reach a mass audience?”

“These days, music films are mostly puff pieces. They’re not authentic. The filmmaker’s not there at two in the morning, filming everything” – Ondi Timoner

The original Dig! was narrated by Taylor-Taylor, an imbalance that angered Brian Jonestown Massacre fans for years. For DIG! XX, which was edited by Ondi’s brother David Timoner, an additional voiceover is added belonging to the BJM’s tambourine player Joel Gion. “David and I felt Dig! was such a breakthrough film,” says the director. “At the time, the only other unfolding, suspense-driven documentary shot over time was Hoop Dreams. There was verité in the 60s, but in the 90s and 00s no one else was doing it. We wanted to once again take something old and make it new – but with a new perspective from the other band.” After considering an animated series, Timoner contacted Gion upon reading his published recollections. “He would Joel-ify lines and make them his.”

However, other band members haven’t been so supportive. In interviews, Taylor-Taylor has labelled Dig! “a terrible affair” (NME), “not accurate at all” (Alibi), and “an example of being manipulated by a shitty person” (Gonzai). Likewise, Newcombe told a journalist, “Ondi Timoner is a fucking greedy cunt, a liar, and I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.” Still, Timoner suspects they secretly adore the film. “Both bands had a chance to see it and sign off on it before its premiere,” she says. “Even though Anton officially came out against the film, he very much had approval over it.”

Does Timoner feel guilty about DIG! XX if Taylor-Taylor and Newcombe have spent two decades disowning the original cut? “I don’t feel guilty at all. When Courtney broke up with his girlfriend, he slept in my bed for months at a time. Just like two little schoolgirls, we’d stay up at night, chatting. Anton would come to our house and sleep on our floor all the time. We grew up together, from when I was 23 to 30. I did nothing but make something truthful to what was happening.” She adds, “Anton was begging us to finish the film. His career was in a troubled place when we finished it. In the original film, you see him getting hauled away by the police.”

A few years ago, Timoner released a director’s cut of Mapplethorpe, which raises the question of whether she’d revisit any of her other films. I ask about Brand: A Second Coming, her 2015 documentary about Russell Brand that he publicly refuted. “There’s something about that film that’s too personal, and he can’t bring himself to promote it,” she says. “It’s such a shame.”

She continues, “Obviously there’s all this controversy around Russell Brand now. People have come to me and said, ‘Will you participate?’ I have not wanted to participate because I don’t want to do that to any of my documentary subjects. I have a lot of respect for the fact that they let me in, in the first place, and trusted me. I would never be part of a campaign to slag Russell Brand. But I do have to say: the way he buried that film was very painful and hard for me.” She really wouldn’t want to revisit Brand given everything that’s followed? “I mean, sadly it appears the film burned in the fire. But We Live in Public might be revisited. It’s a classic.”

In the meantime, DIG! XX will have its cinema release in the UK, also where The Dandy Warhols found fame when “Bohemian Like You” was used for a Vodafone advert. In rewatching the film, I realise that I haven’t heard a single Dandy Warhols song released after Dig!, nor have I heard anything by The Brian Jonestown Massacre outside of the film. It’s actually Dig! and DIG! XX that reminds me of their existence.

“They’ve had massive success because the film penetrated Hollywood,” says Timoner. “Anton got the opening song on Boardwalk Empire. The Dandys continued to sell out 5,000-seat theatres when their records weren’t really selling. It’s not about that. They’re amazing musicians who continued to make great music. But Dig! is this ongoing commercial for both of them. I’m still waiting for my ‘thank you’ note.” She laughs. “Instead, both lead singers just slag the film publicly.”

DIG! XX is scheduled for a one-night-only screening in UK cinemas on March 25, with a limited release to follow from March 28