BEASTIE BOYS CHALLENGED BY F–KIN MOVIE

Beastie Boys not only gave fans at SXSW an look into their movie, Awesome: I F–kin’ Shot That, they also performed and gave a keynote speech. Back in New York, the band talked to us about the movie, which is set for theatrical release on March 31. There’s a one-time theatrical screening March 23.

The movie was shot by the fans who were given cameras to film the band and the audience at their October 9, 2004 concert. Beastie Boys Adam Yauch and Mike Diamond talked about the biggest obstacle in making the film.

“You know what? We haven’t been asked that question yet. We’ve been asked a bunch of questions…. An obstacle. Well getting it done, initially, it wasn’t that crazy from when the idea happened to when it occurred. It was like three days of pre-production. It was like, Yauch had this idea, and we knew we had the New York show coming up. He had seen something on the internet that someone shot on a camera phone that kind of gave him the idea. Like, ‘OK let’s hand out 50 cameras to the crowd.’ So that all happened… It was almost, I would say it was, afterwards. The editing was crazy, which we didn’t have to mess with it. Yauch and the editor Neal [Usatin] had like 61 cameras and however many hours of footage. That was crazy!”

The film’s producer Nathaniel Hornblower, AKA MCA, and Ad Rock added that editing was a struggle.

[Hornblower, MCA] “Yeah, I’d say that if I had to pick the biggest obstacle it might almost be too many options. There were so many options it was almost overwhelming. There were certain songs we decided we’d only cut from DV cameras, and there were six DV cameras and those were pretty easy to cut. You look at the six options and you can sort of figure out how to do it, but when when you have 61 different angles to cut from, it’s pretty overwhelming. [Ad Rock]”That’s some crazy-ass s–t.”

The film, Awesome: I F–kin’ Shot That!, captured performances of 24 Beastie Boys classics including “Brass Monkey,” “So What’cha Want,” “Root Down,” and “Intergalactic,” among others.