New to VOD this week: ARTIFACT
Bartholomew Cubbins (AKA Jared Leto)’s indictment of the modern recording industry made its debut at Toronto last year, where it won the audience award. It went on to screen at SXSW, DOC NYC, and Melbourne, among other fests. The doc is now available worldwide on iTunes.
Filmed over the course of two years, Leto’s engaging film chronicles his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, as they record This Is War, the follow-up to their best-selling second album while fighting a staggering $30 million lawsuit waged against them by their record album, BMI. While fans of the band, and music doc lovers generally, will appreciate the behind-the-scenes of the three-man band as they craft songs under the guidance of legendary music producer Flood, the film is far more interesting in its laying out of the arguments against the antiquated business practices of the record industry. As Leto and his partners face the possibility of a career-ending court fight, former BMI executives, attorneys, and other musicians detail the outrageous economics of the music business, where even a multi-million bestseller can leave a band in serious financial debt to their label. The latter comes off as an ever more greedy and clueless corporate tool even as it faces extinction, more than willing to sacrifice its artists in pursuit of a vanishing profit. While Thirty Seconds to Mars manage to figure out a somewhat workable solution, Leto’s film serves as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of the modern music industry and a call for an alternate model.
what (not) to doc 