Rushed portrait of a short, frenetic and remarkable life A pop music, media, and addiction documentary of the short life of DJ Adam Goldstein, who became famous and influential and died young of drugs.
A blogger and self-declared big fan of DJ AM who saw this film at the Hot Docs festival expressed disappointment at its superficiality. He writes "it feels like director Kevin Kerslake wasn’t able to get access [to] enough people who knew him before the film was completed," and wisely concludes "If you, or any member of your family has [ever] struggled with addiction you might benefit from seeing the documentary, but [for] those looking for something about DJ culture, there is not much here." Kerslake uses his music video experience to produce one long speed-freak buzz of a film that is a mix of lots of things about Adam Michael Goldstein, working title DJ AM. As we who know nothing about the turntable scene, or even what DJ's do -- and after this movie I still don't -- I did learn that this man was the leader in the field, a monster of dedication and accomplishment, who took it to a new level of fame, respect, and high pay. He got a million-dollar contract at Vegas. When he began at twenty or so, he and his colleagues were working for a few dollars a night and some beers.
Many talking heads, mostly white DJ colleagues (introduced with giant print identifications of their names, so big they're more art work than information) who say how much they loved and respected Adam and how worried they were for him when he was one of two who survived, with severe burns, the crash of a private plane in which the other four all died -- and he insisted on working harder than ever at his high-profile career, that included not only cross-country gigs it terrified him to have to fly to, but the MTV addiction-recovery program "Gone Too Far," which made him a high-profile recovering addict (11 years clean) just when painkillers for his injuries were making his own sobriety very, very precarious.
Probably, like Philip Seymour Hoffman, who suffered a similar fate after a longer clean and sober period, Goldstein had begun practicing his addiction again for some time in secret before the fatal overdose in his New York apartment at 36. The addiction story, arguably the film's stronger element, is valuably augmented by a number of recordings of what appear to be Goldstein's actual shares at various Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which show how deeply he "got" what addiction and recovery are all about and how committed and grateful to the program he was. Almost self-destructively dedicated to the service of other addicts in recovery, he was as passionate a recovering person as he was in all he did, using drugs, DJing, collecting colorful sneakers. (The
Widipedia bio, which provides information missing here, says, "Goldstein was an avid sneakerhead, owning over 600 pairs" by 2006.) The film does give the outlines of his life, including his overweight problems, his addiction to alcohol, prescription drugs, and crack cocaine, and his rough experience with rehab at 16. Mr. Goldstein, also an addict who was gay and died of AIDS when AM was young, was not his real father, a fact the boy learned from his mother (to her later regret) early on, a blow to his self-esteem. His mother took him to live in Los Angeles after an early life in Philadelphia.
We get some feel for his looks and his personality, since he was often filmed. He was a pretty but overweight boy, a pretty but overweight man, but then after gastric surgery after getting clean and sober became a thin, sexy and handsome man. After the plane crash we see him start to fill out again and lose his sharpness. A sense of duty to other DJ's whose status he had raised, and doubtless addiction to the work, using it as the only escape from drugs, leads him in his last year to push himself when he should have been regrouping. Needless to say, the hectic club scene where the turntable art is practiced is a dissipated drug-addled one in itself.
But as the Hot Docs online reviewer points out, and due to the ADD flicker of the unrelentingly high-speed editing, we don't get to go into any depth about Goldstein's personal life. His mother is one of the many talking heads, and provides her viewpoint, but her well-considered remarks don't reveal much. The best parts of the film are its scattered excerpts of Goldstein speaking, is a fragmentary but warm portrait of a man passionate about his art and for all his inner demons taking massive pleasure in his work, who cared more about recognition from black DJ's he admired (and working with them) than the endless performances at parties of celebs like Tom Cruise, Leo DiCaprio, or Madonna. It is clear that his prowess was widely recognized and he is respected and missed by many. He appeared as himself in "Entourage" and
Iron Man 2, and the latter was dedicated to him after his death.
Kerslake has done many award winning and cutting edge music videos as well as films on human/animal rights and social justice and adverts for big-name brands. Not so much experience, it seems, in documentary (though he has done one on the making of a Bob Marley remix album). This is a fascinating, complex story. Maybe it is true as Dennis Harvey says in
his Hot Docs review of
As I AM for
Variety that it's "an entertaining look at a talented turntablist who (for better or worse) pioneered his profession’s attainment of rock-star status in terms of glamour," etc. But for many the the jittery, relentless style of this film would keep it from being "entertaining." Kerslake did not consider that his jazzy, hyper kinetic editing may not suitable to an extended biographical film that considers many phases in a complex life. After a while the sameness of the film's look and pace numbs us. Every film, even the most suspenseful and high-speed, grows stronger and more dramatic only by taking occasional breaks, pausing for a breath.
When he recites what he says is the only rap he ever composed, it's the only reference in the whole film to Goldstein's being Jewish -- 1% of the film. Thus this is one of those occasions when the Jewish Film Festival almost seems to be appropriating something that more rightfully belongs to everyone.
As I AM: The Life and Times of DJ AM, 97 mins., debuted at Tribeca and also Hot Docs. Screened for this review as part of the 2015 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
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