Review: ‘Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics’ starring Sting, Ben Stiller, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Bourdain, Deepak Chopra, A$AP Rocky and Sarah Silverman

May 18, 2020

by Carla Hay

Rob Corddry in “Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics”

Directed by Donick Cary

Culture Representation: This documentary interviews a predominantly white male group of entertainers who talk about their experiences taking psychedelic drugs, and the movie features a diverse group of actors doing comedy skits about psychedelic drug experiences.

Culture Clash: Despite these drugs being illegal, almost all of the people interviewed say that they don’t regret taking psychedelic drugs.

Culture Audience: “Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics” will appeal to people who just want one-sided comedic stories about taking psychedelic drugs, because the movie’s agenda is to exclude any stories about the drugs’ long-term negative effects on health.

Nick Offerman in “Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

In its overexuberance to portray psychedelic drug taking as something that’s harmless or something to laugh about later, the documentary “Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics” sinks to new lows of exploitation by prominently featuring two celebrities whose tragic, self-destructive deaths are definitely not funny. The documentary’s filmmakers (including director Donick Cary) made the morbid and tacky decision to display the filmmakers’ interviews with Carrie Fisher and Anthony Bourdain in this parade of celebrities who mostly glamorize taking psychedelic drugs.

Fisher died in 2016 of drug-related causes. Bourdain committed suicide in 2018. They both struggled with mental-health issues and drug addiction and admitted to taking a lot of LSD and other psychedelics in their lifetimes. Needless to say, Fisher and Bourdain are definitely not examples of how psychedelic drugs can help people with mental-health problems and drug addictions. And yet, the documentary pushes the scientifically unproven agenda that psychedelic drugs are beneficial to people suffering from drug addiction and mental-health issues.

But hey, why let these tragic deaths get in the way of making a documentary where these now-dead people are shown joking about their acid trips, as if those drug experiences couldn’t possibly be harmful to them? They’re certainly not going to talk about the negative side effects of “bad trips,” such as suicidal thoughts, depression or psychosis. After all, this movie wants people to believe that psychedelics are “shiny, happy drugs,” without giving a thoroughly honest look at the down sides too, because the film is so focused on having people endorse these drugs.

And there’s a reason why the filmmakers only included entertainers in this documentary that glamorizes psychedelic drugs. Imagine a documentary that featured a bunch of health-care workers, emergency responders, schoolteachers or airplane pilots joking about their experiences doing psychedelic drugs, and many of the interviewees giving the impression that they still do psychedelics on a regular basis. It wouldn’t seem so “harmless” then, would it?

Therefore, it’s no surprise that the documentary focuses on people (some more famous than others) who are in showbiz, where illegal drug abuse is flaunted and often celebrated. The average person in a regular job would not be able to get away with bragging in a Netflix documentary about their drug experiences.

Nor does the average person have the kind of money that rock star Sting has, to fly to Mexico whenever he wants, just to take peyote in an elaborate shaman ritual, which he describes in vivid detail in the documentary. Almost all of the people in this film can easily afford to indulge in taking illegal drugs and do not have to worry about how they’re going to pay for any medical treatment or legal issues if things go wrong. It’s one of the reasons why the documentary glamorizes these drug experiences, because there are some negative consequences to illegal drug taking that the “average” person can’t casually dismiss as easily as a well-paid entertainer can.

In addition to Sting, there are several other entertainers in the documentary who talk about their psychedelic drug trips or say that they’ve used psychedelic drugs: Ben Stiller (who’s one of the documentary’s producers), Nick Kroll, Deepak Chopra, Will Forte, A$AP Rocky, Nick Offerman, Shepard Fairey, Lewis Black, Paul Scheer, Rob Corddry, Andy Richter, Judd Nelson, Sarah Silverman, Jim James, Diedrich Bader, Rob Huebel, Reggie Watts, Natasha Lyonne, Adam Horovitz, Mark Maron, Rosie Perez, Donovan, Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann, Brett Gelman, Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon and David Cross.

One of the problems of doing a documentary like this is that you never really know how much people could be exaggerating or lying about these drug experiences. Many of the people interviewed are comedians and actors—two professions that are notorious for people fabricating things about their lives in order to get attention. Therefore, this documentary should not be considered very “realistic” by any stretch of the drug-addled imagination.

The psychedelic stories are re-enacted in one of two ways: through animation or by having live actors do a scripted skit. The animated segments (from Sugarshack Animation) are among the best aspects of the documentary. The scripted skits are hit-and-miss.

One of those misfires is miscasting Adam Devine as Bourdain in a re-enactment of Bourdain’s description of a drug-fueled, Hunter S. Thompson-inspired road trip that he took when he was a young man in the 1970s. Devine is known for having a sweet and goofy persona, while Bourdain was the complete opposite, which makes the re-enactment wrong from the get-go.

Even worse, the story that Bourdain tells isn’t even that funny. The road trip included Bourdain and a male friend picking up two women and partying heavily with them in a hotel room, including ingesting several drugs, such as LSD, alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. One of the women overdosed, and the others thought she was dead. So they just left her unconscious on the floor while they tried to figure out what to do, according to Bourdain.

Bourdain, while high on LSD, says that he imagined that there would be police coming to arrest them, with helicopters, searchlights, and a S.W.A.T.-like team surrounding the room. And then the woman suddenly regained consciousness and started to dance as if nothing had happened. Someone could’ve died from ingesting drugs while you were partying with that person, you had a LSD-induced panic attack about being arrested, and that’s supposed to be funny?

A better re-enactment that accomplishes its intended humor is Natasha Leggero dressed in a “Star Wars” Princess Leia outfit, for Fisher’s tale of being high on LSD while in New York City’s Central Park. During that psychedelic experience, Fisher says she spent a great deal of time being upset at seeing an acorn “misbehave” on the grass. During another acid trip on a beach, Fisher vaguely remembers she might have been topless when a bus full of Japanese tourists stopped right in front of her and they recognized her.

And in a somewhat clever casting switcheroo, Corddry plays Scheer in the segment that re-enacts Scheer’s psychedelic story, while Scheer plays Corddy in Corddry’s re-enactment. Meanwhile, Kroll portrays himself in his re-enactment about how he and a group of male friends were high on LSD at a Malibu beach, and the friends covered him in kelp as a prank. He then imagined himself to be a kelp monster and chased them around the beach. (Things weren’t so funny the next morning when he woke up covered in bites from whatever small animals were in the kelp.)

Most of the psychedelic trips described in the documentary are about hallucinations, experiencing colors in a different way, or losing a sense of time or memory. And there are the typical stories of “revelations,” along the lines of “I saw inside my soul,” “I saw how connected the world is” and “I found out the meaning of life is to love everybody.” Some of the people interviewed also give advice by saying it’s better to take psychedelics with trusted friends and to avoid looking in mirrors while under the influence of psychedelics.

A$AP Rocky (one of the few people of color who’s interviewed in the film) tells one of the documentary’s funniest stories, about how he took LSD with a beautiful female companion. During the course of the time they had together, they started having sex. And he swears that he saw a rainbow shoot from his penis during this encounter. “I don’t even like rainbows,” he quips. (Needless to say, the re-enactment for this story is definitely in animation form.)

But for every entertaining story like that one, the documentary has a story that’s basic or boring. The Grateful Dead was considered the ultimate psychedelic rock band, so you’d think one of the Dead’s drummers would have some hilarious stories to tell. Wrong.

Kreutzmann’s anecdotes aren’t that interesting or revealing, unless you consider it’s fascinating that he tells a story of coming home to his parents’ house after staying out all night while he was on LSD, and hallucinating that his breakfast meal of eggs were moving on the plate. He also mentions that he once couldn’t finish performing at a Grateful Dead concert because he was hallucinating that his drums were melting. Yawn.

Being stoned on psychedelics at a Grateful Dead show is also predictably mentioned by some of the interviewees, such as Corddry and Maron. (The late Fred Willard has a cameo as a Deadhead hippie in the re-enactment of Maron’s psychedelic story.) Garant comedically describes how you can tell the difference between someone having a “good trip” and a “bad trip” at a Dead concert, because someone having a “good trip” will lean forward while walking, while someone having a “bad trip” will lean backward while walking, as if they’re afraid of where their head will go.

Sting, who says he’s had good and bad psychedelic trips, mentions that facing his own mortality was one of the most frightening things he ever experienced while under the influence of psychedelics. He also describes the first time he took peyote. It was at a farm in England, where he was unexpectedly asked to help a cow give birth while he was tripping out on the drug. He was told that the cow would die if he didn’t help, and when the calf was born, Sting says he finally understood the miracle of life.

“I think it’s a valuable experience,” says Sting of taking psychedelic drugs. “Whenever I’ve had a bad trip—and I’ve had many—I’ve realized it was what I needed. Sometimes, you need to have your ego taken down a notch or two. On the other hand, you can have immensely rewarding experiences. My feeling is that it balances out.”

Stiller is one of the few celebrities in the documentary who talks about disliking what he says was his one and only experience with LSD (when he was a young man in the ’80s), because it was a bad trip. He says that he was hoping that it would be an enlightening experience, but instead he spent the approximately six-hour acid trip feeling “fear and anxiety.”

“Immediately, I started to freak out and get really scared,” Stiller remembers. “I started staring at my hand, doing the cliché thing of of pondering what my hand was.” His paranoia during the acid trip was made worse, he says, when he and the friend he was with at the time began walking around New York City and saw the parade floats that were going to be in the upcoming Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Stiller says that he hallucinated that the floats were chasing him, like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the “Ghostbusters” movie.

Perez and Silverman each say that the first time they took LSD, it was by accident. Silverman said that it happened when she and some comedian friends were hanging out at a diner in New York City, when a hippie stranger walked in and handed her a tab of LSD that she took without even asking what it was. Her story isn’t as coherent as some of the others, since she recalls laughing and crying with a group of people in public and then ending up in someone’s car with the driver (who was also on LSD) forgetting how to drive.

Perez said she got “dosed” when she was out with her sister on New Year’s Eve in their hometown of New York City, sometime in the late ’80s. They went to a nightclub, where she was offered some fruit punch as a drink. Little did she know that the punch was spiked with LSD. Perez says that she  hallucinated that the dance floor had turned into waves, and she ended up rolling around with her breasts exposed.

Her trip intensified when she got home and imagined that her body had merged into her bed. Perez says she didn’t do drugs or drink alcohol at this time in her life, so when she was told that she was having an acid trip, her first thought was that she was going to hell. She says that the experience led her to seek therapy, which helped her get over her “Catholic guilt,” so she thinks getting rid of her religious hang-ups was one good thing that came out of the experience.

Speaking of guilt trips, the movie pokes fun at the ridiculous, over-the-top and usually badly acted public-service announcements (PSAs) aimed at preventing people, especially young people, from taking psychedelics. Offerman pops up occasionally throughout the film in a parody of a science professor who talks about the effects of psychedelics. NBCUniversal’s “The More You Know” PSA campaign is mocked with “The More You Trip,” whenever one of the interviewees gives advice on what to do or what not to do when taking psychedelics. (For example: “Don’t drive while on acid.”)

The “ABC Afterschool Special” is given the satire treatment with the documentary’s “LSD Afterschool Special,” a multi-part segment that has actor/comedian Adam Scott as the host of a 1980s-styled PSA film with a plot of nerdy high schoolers (played by Haley Joel Osment and Maya Erskine) going to a house party and being tempted into the “evils” of taking LSD. It’s a funny idea but it’s executed poorly.

On a more serious note, “Have a Good Trip” also attempts to promote the theory that using psychedelics is the best way to treat depression and other mental-health issues. Dr. Charles Grob, a psychiatry professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, is interviewed about his research in this area. Not surprisingly, he’s a proponent of using psychedelics to treat these issues (how else would he be able to continue to get research money), but the documentary fails to present other scientific points of view.

The only other non-entertainer interviewed in the film is Zach Leary, son of famed LSD guru Timothy Leary. And what he has to say is very predictable and reveals nothing new at all: “DMT is like the express ticket to primordial ooze. If you want to see what it is to be an organic being and absolutely watch your ego dissipate into nothingness, smoke some DMT, and you’ll get there right away.”

Although some people in the documentary, including Dr. Grob, caution that taking psychedelics isn’t for everyone and can have damaging effects for some people, any of those “bad effects” stories are shut out of the film. It’s like doing a documentary about bungee jumping and refusing to talk about the people who got seriously injured or killed from this risky stunt.

Celebrity spiritual guru Chopra, who says he experimented with psychedelics in the past, is one of the few people in the film who admits “you run the risk of psychosis” from doing psychedelics. Of course, the film only presents stories from people who say that they have “happy endings” from taking psychedelics. And two of those people are now dead because of self-destructive reasons, so viewers can judge for themselves how “beneficial” psychedelics really are in helping people with serious health issues such as depression and addiction.

One of the more irresponsible things about the documentary is that it leaves out any talk of acid flashbacks. Naïve people who see this film as a guide to taking psychedelic drugs might think that once an acid trip is “over,” the drug has left the body, the way that alcohol can leave the human body through urine after a 24-to-48-hour period if no more alcohol is consumed. But the scientific reality is that, depending on the dosage, psychedelic drugs can stay in the body for a variable period of time, and that can lead to unpredictable and random “flashback” trips.

How people feel about “Have a Good Trip” will depend largely on how much they worship celebrities and take their words as gospel. The psychedelic anecdotes in the film should be taken for what they are—stories from people who are in the business of creating fake personas and making things look more glamorous than they really are.

The people who were chosen to be interviewed for this documentary also have the privilege of being less likely to be arrested for illegal drugs. (With few exceptions, most of the people in this film have a certain level of fame.) And they are less likely to have their careers ruined by a lot of psychedelic drug use, compared to people who don’t live in such a privileged bubble. It’s something to think about whenever you hear a celebrity in a certain income bracket openly brag about using illegal drugs.

Netflix premiered “Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics” on May 11, 2020.

Review: ‘Beastie Boys Story,’ starring Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond

April 24, 2020

by Carla Hay

An archival photo of the Beastie Boys in “Beastie Boys Story.” Pictured from left to right: Mike “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz. (Photo courtesy of Apple TV+)

“Beastie Boys Story”

Directed by Spike Jonze

Culture Representation: This Beastie Boys documentary is a recording of a storytelling, multimedia stage presentation in the group’s hometown of New York City, with surviving Beastie Boys members Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond as the narrators telling the story of how the Beastie Boys became the first white rappers to have massive crossover success.

Culture Clash: The highs and lows of the Beastie Boys’ career included experimental music that went against what was popular at the time; bitter legal disputes over unpaid royalties; and fighting stereotypes of their early image as mindless “party boys.”

Culture Audience: Aside from the group’s die-hard fans, “Beastie Boys Story” will appeal mostly to people who are nostalgic about rock-infused hip-hop music from the late 1980s and 1990s, when the Beastie Boys were at their peak.

Adam Horovitz and Mike Diamond in “Beastie Boys Story” (Photo courtesy of Apple TV+)

In October and November 2018, Adam Horovitz and Michael Diamond—the surviving members of the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum hip-hop /rock trio Beastie Boys—did a brief theater tour that was a multimedia, live presentation of their bestselling, critically acclaimed 2018 memoir “Beastie Boys Book.” The tour (which visited New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London) was then extended to three additional shows in April 2019, in Philadelphia and New York City. Footage from the tour’s last stop at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn is the basis of this documentary, directed by longtime Beastie Boys collaborator Spike Jonze.

The Beastie Boys no longer exist as a group, since founding member Adam Yauch (also known as MCA) tragically died of cancer in 2012, at the age of 47. Horovitz (also known as Ad-Rock) and Diamond (also known as Mike D) dedicated the book and the tour to Yauch, who is lovingly and respectfully remembered. The documentary is essentially Horovitz and Diamond standing on stage, reading “Beastie Boys Book” excerpts in chronological order from a teleprompter, while archival photos and videos play on a big screen in the background.

Under other circumstances and with the wrong people, it could have been an awfully dull or pretentious stage show. But the entire show, as presented in this nearly two-hour documentary, is humorous, emotionally moving and overall an entertaining ride. The show also pokes fun at the fact that Horovitz and Diamond are reading from a teleprompter.

And there are a few segments when director Jonze can be heard on a loudspeaker, interrupting the show to say that he’s not going to play a videoclip or he messed up and missed a video cue. Some of these “mistakes” could have been staged (it sure seems that way), but even if these “flubs” were pre-planned, it achieved the intended result: to make the audience laugh.

People who don’t care about the Beastie Boys’ music can find something to like in this movie, whether it’s the candid way that Horovitz and Diamond admit that fame went to all of their heads when the Beastie Boys’ first album (1986’s “License to Ill”) was a smash hit, or the vivid descriptions of the group’s evolution from being bratty party boys to mature musicians who now cringe at the sexist lyrics they had in their early songs.

Yauch is described as the leader of the Beastie Boys, a group he co-founded in New York City in 1981. He was the one who took the most creative risks and the one who was the most likely to encourage other people to also push boundaries and explore new skills and interests. Diamond was viewed as the biggest “clown” in the group, and he admits that he spent much of the Beastie Boys’ heyday in a haze of drug abuse. Horovitz was often perceived as the “cool heartthrob” of the Beastie Boys, and he’s definitely more dominant than Diamond during the stage show. However, Horovitz also reveals a vulnerable side—he gets so tearful and emotional when talking about the Beastie Boys’ last concert with Yauch that he asks Diamond to finish what Horovitz was supposed to say on the teleprompter.

People unfamiliar with the history of the Beastie Boys might be surprised to find out that the group’s original lineup included drummer Kate Schellenbach, a friend from their teen years. Schellenbach would later become the drummer for the all-female rock band Luscious Jackson, whose lead singer Jill Cunniff was also a teenage friend of the Beastie Boys members. Horovitz expresses regret about Schellenbach being ousted from the Beastie Boys when the group decided to change its image to being full-on “bad boys,” in order to get a record deal.

“Licensed to Ill” was released on Def Jam Records, which was co-founded by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons. Rubin was the group’s producer, while Simmons managed the Beastie Boys. At the time, Beastie Boys idolized Run-DMC, the pioneering rap trio that was signed to Def Jam and was also managed by Simmons. Rubin and Simmons saw an opportunity to market to the masses a white, “bad boy” version of Run-DMC. It worked. “Licensed to Ill” became one of the biggest-selling debut albums of all time (it’s sold 10 million copies in the U.S.), spawning the breakthrough crossover hit “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party),” which remains the Beastie Boys’ most famous song.

Within two years, the Beastie Boys went from being the opening act for Madonna (a gig they got only because Madonna’s manager thought Run-DMC’s asking fee was too high) and the opening act for Run-DMC to headlining their own arena concerts. By the time the Beastie Boys were ready to make their second album in 1988, they had severed ties with Def Jam’s Simmons and Rubin over unpaid royalties and started over with a new multi-album deal with Capitol Records.

The Beastie Boys were also burned out from constant touring, and they took time apart from each other, which is when Horovitz moved to Los Angeles and started a fledgling acting career. Part of the documentary includes a self-deprecating look at Horovitz’s feature-film acting debut with his starring role in the 1989 dramatic movie “Lost Angels.” Yauch and Diamond also soon relocated to Los Angeles. Horovitz confesses that during this period of time, “I continued to run away from everything I was feeling” to escape from the grief of personal issues, such as his mother’s death from cancer in 1983.

But because the Beastie Boys had experienced fame and fortune so quickly, they went overboard in spending money on that second album, 1989’s “Paul’s Boutique.” They rented a high-priced house in the Hollywood Hills, indulged in a lot of expensive studio time, and partied too much. The house was owned by showbiz couple Alex and Marilyn Grasshoff, whose closet was raided by the Beastie Boys and inspired the 1970s fashion in the Beastie Boys videos for “Paul’s Boutique.”

The “Paul’s Boutique” album was a flop when it was first released, and the Beastie Boys went from headlining arenas for their first album to performing at nightclubs for their second album. It was a humbling experience that would’ve broken a lot of bands, but it just strengthened the Beastie Boys. They began to value the importance of staying true to their creative vision and not listening to other people telling them who they should be. The sample-heavy and richly layered “Paul’s Boutique” is now an influential hip-hop classic that has gone multiplatinum.

The Beastie Boys further evolved, by relying less on sampled music and creating their own sounds, playing their own instruments, and starting to sing more on their songs. The result was 1992’s “Check Your Head” album (featuring the MTV psychedelic hit “So What’cha Want”), which further solidified the Beastie Boys as a group that could easily blur the boundaries between hip-hop and rock.  Diamond says, “It wasn’t until the end of the ‘Check Your Head’ tour that I actually, confidently considered myself to be a musician.”

The group’s biggest comeback came with 1994’s “Ill Communication” album, which featured the hit “Sabotage” and a popular ’70s-inspired police detective chase video for “Sabotage” that was directed by Jonze. The “Sabotage” video was nominated for five MTV Video Music Awards, including Video of the Year, and the song received a Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance.

By the mid-1990s, the Beastie Boys had relocated back to New York City, after the tragic overdose death of their close friend Dave Scilken in 1991. The group had also started a record label (Grand Royal), and Yauch had directed several Beastie Boys videos under the alias Nathanial Hörnblowér, a fictional Swiss persona who wore traditional Swiss clothing and campy disguises. The documentary includes footage from the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards, when Yauch (dressed as Nathanial Hörnblowér) crashed the stage and did a protest interruption when R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” won the award for Breakthrough Video over the Beastie Boys’ “Sabatoge.” Unlike Kayne West’s MTV VMA stage bumrush of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech in 2009, this Yauch/Hörnblowér interruption was all in good fun and intended to be comedic.

Yauch also became deeply involved in social issues, such as Tibetan freedom rights. His spearheading of the Tibetan Freedom Concert, which was an annual event that began in 1996, is fondly remembered in the documentary. (In 2008, Yauch also co-founded the independent film/music company Oscilloscope Laboratories, which is not mentioned in the documentary.) Horovitz describes Yauch as a “once-in-a-lifetime friend,” while Diamond says that as close as Yauch was to his bandmates, he still remained a “conundrum” and a “contradiction” because he was so unpredictable.

The Beastie Boys’ 1998 album “Hello Nasty” is cited as one of the group’s favorites. The album spawned the hit  “Intergalactic,” which has a Nathanial Hörnblowér-directed video that parodied Japanese Super Sentai shows. (The “Intergalactic” video is shown during the documentary’s end credits.) The “Hello Nasty” album was a another smash hit for the Beastie Boys, and it resulted in them winning their first two Grammy Awards: Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group (for “Intergalactic”) and Best Alternative Music Album.

“Intergalactic” also won Best Hip-Hop Video at the 1999 MTV VMAs, which honored the Beastie Boys in 1998 with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. Although the Beastie Boys released three more studio albums after “Hello Nasty,” these albums—2004’s “To the 5 Boroughs,” 2007’s “The Mix-Up” and 2011’s “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two”—get hardly any screen time in the documentary, compared to the previous albums. It’s probably because the filmmakers know that the Beastie Boys’ most popular music was from the 1980s and 1990s.

The documentary also shows Horovitz and Diamond giving credit and showing appreciation to several of the collaborators and colleagues that the Beastie Boys had along the way, including Schellenbach, the late John Berry (who was an original guitarist for Beastie Boys), manager Paul Silva, songwriter/musician Money Mark and producers Mario Caldato Jr. (also known as Mario C.), Matt Dike and the Dust Brothers.

People who’ve already read “Beastie Boys Book” won’t discover anything new by seeing this documentary. There’s no behind-the-scenes footage of the book tour, other than a brief montage in the beginning of the movie that shows fans waiting outside the theater and talking about who’s their favorite Beastie Boys member. And there appears to be not much ad-libbing or spontaneity during the show or interaction with the audience.

The only exception to audience interaction is outtake footage in the middle of the end credits that shows Ben Stiller, David Cross and Steve Buscemi standing up in the audience, and interrupting the show with comedic scripted dialogue when Horovitz and Diamond talk about “Paul’s Boutique” flopping. These scenes, which were obviously filmed at different performances, are better off as outtakes, since they don’t fit the flow of the rest of the show.

However, the documentary overall doesn’t rely on a lot of gimmicks. Only a few props are used on stage, such as a giant reel-to-reel tape recorder that’s brought out when a story is told about how Beastie Boys first discovered layered sampling in the recording studio. And there aren’t too many distracting cutaway shots to the audience. (This is not a kid-friendly movie though, since there’s a lot of cursing throughout the entire documentary.)

“Beastie Boys Story” is a well-edited and engaging visual capsule of the group’s history. At the very least, this documentary might make people curious to check out more of their music or to read “Beastie Boys Book” to get a deeper dive into more of the group’s fascinating stories.

Apple TV+ premiered “Beastie Boys Story” on April 24, 2020.

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