Free Metallica: This Monster Lives by Joe Berlinger, Greg Milner

“We love the idea,” John Hegeman, the marketing guru at Artisan said. “But we need to start shooting in February no matter what. So if you think you can write this script in six weeks, you have the job.”
    Now, you may be asking yourself why, if I felt so righteous about the wrongs The Blair Witch Project committed against the noble art of documentary filmmaking, I didn’t refuse to have anything to do with the sequel. Good question. I felt like Larry Kroger, the Tom Hulce character in Animal House, in the scene where a devil and an angel perch on his shoulders, each vying for his soul. As I was pondering whether to take this job, the angel kept reminding me that making this film was a risky proposition, for all the reasons I’d already given Artisan. The devil whispering in my ear kept telling me that this was a cool way to enter the feature world, to break with my partner, and earn some quick cash. I was offered a generous directing fee and some attractive box office “bumps” (bonus money for hitting certain box office benchmarks.) Also, I knew the film would do very well on video, so my Directors Guild of America residuals might take care of my kids’ college education. But I also really believedthe hot air Artisan was blowing up my ass, about how eager they were to do something unique with this film. So I quickly cowrote a script with screenwriter Dick Beebe for a movie called Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, and showed it to the people at Artisan. They liked it, and I got the green light.
    This wasn’t my dream film, and I knew it ran the risk of being compared unfavorably to its blockbuster predecessor. But up to that point, everything I’d ever done had been so critically acclaimed that I felt like the odds were in my favor. Surely the critics who were the biggest supporters of my work would respect the fact that I was trying to do something different with this sequel. Truthfully, I have always enjoyed the challenge of creating a worthwhile film when the odds are against me. As someone who’d documented stories that unfolded in front of the cameras, I was accustomed to spending large amounts of time and money to make a film without knowing if there ultimately would be a film. If Delbert Ward had been acquitted, or if no charges had been filed against him in the first place, Brother’s Keeper would never have been made. If James Hetfield had never gone into rehab, if the therapy with Phil had just ended abruptly and the new music Metallica was making was mediocre, there might not be Some Kind of Monster.
    So I threw myself into making Book of Shadows. It took just six weeks to write the screenplay, three weeks to cast the film with unknown actors, and then—boom—there I was, on the set of a $15 million feature film, with a mile of trucks and a crew of hundred people. I spent several months shooting it in and around Baltimore. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. I was sending the dailies to Artisan and getting nothing but praise back from them. The crew was happy and the cast loved it. I was making a movie that made fun of the idea of making a movie, and I thought I’d nailed it.
    The studio saw and approved some early cuts in May and June 2000. Finally, at the end of July, I turned in my director’s cut. We had a very tight postproduction schedule—the movie was scheduled to open in two months—so I assumed the studio wouldn’t demand many changes to my final cut, especially since my early cuts had been approved. But now Artisan had a new marketing executive. Judging by her reaction to the film, she probably hadn’t looked at any of the earlier material. According to her, I had made the wrong movie.
    “We don’t want an edgy adult satire that takes a twist at the end,” she said. “We want a teen slasher movie. We need blood.” She paused and added, “And lots of it.”
    “But I didn’t shoot a teen slasher movie.”
    “Well, then we’re going to turn it into one.”
    What happened