BEASTIE BOYS “AWESOME: I F**KIN’ SHOT THAT” Issue #27

directed by Nathaniel Hornblower

By Christina Saraceno
Published: March 1st, 2006 | 12:00am

On October 9, 2004, 50 Beastie Boys fans at the band’s sold-out Madison Square Garden show were handed video cameras to record the performance. They were given one directive: shoot from when the house lights go down to when they go up. And one rallying cry: “One day you’re going to look back at this and think, ‘Awesome! I fuckin’ shot that!’”

Though edited by longtime Beasties collaborator, Nathaniel Hornblower (which we hear could be a moniker for Adam Yauch), those 50 fans are responsible for all the footage in the band’s first theatrical release. It’s a dizzying hour and a half of shifting points of view that capture everything wonderful and odious about the concert experience: the energy and the back of the head of the guy in front of you, the music and the disregard of personal space, the excitement and the trips to the urinal and concessions.

What’s novel here is not so much the fans’ perspectives, but the fact that the Beastie Boys, in their 20th year, are not simply celebrating themselves with a slick “Live From MSG” release. Instead, they’re wholeheartedly celebrating the fans who shot the footage, the 30,000-plus who filled the seats and the millions who listen. Even the most casual Beastie Boys fans will enjoy a performance that showcases the band as fine musicians with two decades worth of hit songs. What’s more, behind-the-scenes footage, full of charm and humor, reveals dedicated and professional performers. But maybe most impressive is the film’s reminder that these arbiters of cool were once three skinny, middle-class Jewish kids from New York who overcame novelty status to become some of hip-hop’s most venerable artists. And at 40, they still look good in matching jumpsuits. Now if that’s not awesome, what is?