DIG! at the Auckland International Film Festival

Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe proves a bit of a brawler.

When Anton Newcombe gets in a fight, he will make you laugh. But by the end of film-maker Ondi Timoner's rock'n'roll documentary, DIG! you will hate Newcombe.

He is a crazed - sometimes it's drug induced, sometimes it's just natural - musical genius whose verbal violence is matched by his physical tirades.

But, as the leader of San Francisco band the Brian Jonestown Massacre (BJM), you have to admire his songwriting, which sounds like it was written in the 60s rather than the mid-90s.

In DIG!, which opens tonight as part of the Auckland International Film Festival, Newcombe starts his first fight early on.

BJM are playing LA's famous Viper Room in front of the music industry elite. Five songs in, he snaps and starts a brawl. Later, someone asks Newcombe if that's blood on him. His deadpan reply: "Yeah, from people's faces."

That fight, says Timoner, was when she knew she was filming something special.

"When I shot the Viper Room I had no idea if this was a one-off experience, whether he's just had a reaction to something that night, or if this was a trend.

"There were nine or 10 record companies in the room and he's in a fist-fight by the fifth song. I couldn't believe it."

But DIG! - shot over seven years - is not just a story about Newcombe. It's the story of two bands, the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandy Warhols. In the movie the bands befriend each other, collaborate and then it gets nasty when their careers take different paths. The Dandys become successful, while BJM dissolves to the point where Newcombe is playing solo.

Timoner started out making a documentary about 10 bands on the verge of being signed by record labels to find out what happens when "art meets industry".

"I wanted to see what would happen to them as they began to do business. But then we became engrossed in the music of the Dandys and the Brian Jonestown Massacre and the fact that they had this relationship with each other, and such different approaches to the business, made them perfect to hone in on," she says.

Courtney Taylor, front man for the Dandy Warhols, is no angel either. He wants to be famous. But, Timoner says, unlike Newcombe, Taylor is not going to try to kill someone if they play the wrong note.

"Courtney's an egomaniac too. He can be very mean but he has an understanding with the people working with him and supporting his vision and his dream. And he has the bigger picture in mind.

"The whole story is stranger than anything I could ever have written," Timoner says. "The whole point of doing this was to try to make a [documentary] film that unfolded over time like a dramatic narrative film."

Timoner gets close to the bands and shoots everything from drug binges to late-night death threats and Newcombe's drug-fuelled argument with a girlfriend.

Newcombe has experienced a revival since the documentary came out, including a spot at the Lollapolooza music festival, a feature in Rolling Stone magazine, and a support slot on Patti Smith's latest tour.

But he has been scathing of the film. He told the Guardian he was talked about as a "musical genius" yet only "shambolic" live footage was shown of his band.

But Timoner, who admits she and Newcombe "won't be sitting down to tea any time soon", defends the footage. And rightly so. The scratchy filming of the fight at the Viper Room portrays Newcombe's riotous behaviour perfectly.

"Anton is the king of negativity," she says, "and when I first found out that Anton was against the film, I heard from many people that he was telling them to go and see the film because it's going to win an Oscar. And then he tells the press another thing. But would you expect anything else from him? He has to fight against anything that's good for him.

"If anything I cleaned him up for the film. I had a cut that I thought was really right on and much darker in terms of Anton's behaviour and people said, 'I hate this protagonist - good story, great footage, but I can't stand the protagonist long enough to watch the film'. So I took out a lot of the darker stuff.

"He's been terrified of success his whole life.

"He was playing to 10, maybe 20 people when I finished the film, and now he's playing to huge audiences and that was probably everything he was afraid of.

"He definitely has some genius in him, otherwise he's inept. But did I make this movie as a fan of both bands? Eventually, yes."

* Where: Sky City Theatre

* When: Today, 10.15pm; July 10, 8.45pm; Tuesday, 4pm.