METALLICA Filmmakers: We Wanted The Band To Talk Things Out With JASON NEWSTED

METALLICA documentary filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky recently spoke to U-Wire.com about the much-anticipated "Some Kind of Monster" project, which is expected to receive a theatrical release this summer. The following are excerpts from that interview:

U-Wire: Did you ever try and get the band to sit down with Jason Newsted? During the film Lars sits down with Dave Mustaine. Was there an effort to sit down with Newsted and the band or was that never going to happen?

Berlinger: "There was a lot of intrigue and there were times when they were very close to ... and when you say I'm sitting down, we observed Mustaine and Lars, but it's not like we initiated that [it was part of the therapy process with Phil Towle]. But the Jason/METALLICA meeting was talked about many times and for different reasons it didn't come together and I just don't think Jason was ready to ... Jason made this break and I don't think he was ready to speak to them."

Sinofsky: "It seemed that they'd always get close and something would come up from both parties, whether real or imagined. I know once they were supposed to meet on Thursday with him and then they announced their Summer Sanitarium Tour and so they had to go to Los Angeles. And then when they said can you meet us on Friday he had plans and I think since then, they have not actually tried to sit down and actually talk out any of the issues that would leave them resolved, which is a shame. It shouldn't be 20 years."

Berlinger: "One of the interesting things that happened to us, which we'd like to avoid, is it put us in kind of an uncomfortable position. We became sort of a conduit for information. Whenever we filmed Jason, the band wanted to know what was said. And because these guys were paying the bills, we felt like we couldn't say, 'We can't tell you.' But we had to be careful in what we said because we didn't want to inflame them in a sense. And Jason wanted to know what the band was thinking and so we sort of, for a little bit there, became go-betweens and we were literally brokering the meeting of them."

Sinofsky: "In a way, we almost were."

Berlinger: "We sort of were because we were a conduit for information and so we were sort of letting each side know what the other side was feeling about having a meeting and it sort of put us in an uncomfortable position."

Sinofsky: "But us, as filmmakers, we were trying to get that, we wanted that meeting. We thought that would be a great part to the film. Of course we hadn't done controller [individual] moments yet so anything we could sort of nudge them and say, 'It would probably be a good idea just for you guys to get this out of your system.' When they would ask Joe and I what he said when we saw him we would say, 'Well, why don't you ask him yourself? Get together.' But, sadly to this day, they haven't."

Berlinger: "In fact, we invited Jason to the premiere at Sundance, hoping that he would come and see the whole experience of the film and he would see that METALLICA has grown and changed and that maybe there would be a place for him in the extended family and we didn't hear back from him, so we were a little disappointed."

Read the entire text from U-Wire's interview with Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky at this location.