Also Sprach Zarathustra: Phish brings on the space funk

Worst off are the fans: the Phishheads interviewed all come off as drugged-out moronic goofballs who just beamed down from Planet Zork. Sure, there's a fair amount of extraterrestrials in the Phish scene, but there are also professionals, lawyers, programmers, teachers, and Ph.D.s who can, in fact, write or speak in complete sentences and hold down jobs. People with brains follow Phish for their inventiveness and their willingness to take risks. By picking out the flakiest fans with the rattiest hair, Philips does the band and its fans a real disservice, confining them further to a ghetto of weirdos instead of giving them their due as a bunch of adventurous, exciting, and accomplished musicians with fans who are able to sustain their interest outside of the music industry's ridiculous attention span and hyper-commercialized pandering to pre-teen audiences.

There's also a purposeful mix-up in the chronology of events. While it makes sense for Philips to built toward a big climax at Phish's summer festival in Maine which attracted 70,000 heads, it's irresponsible to announce via title card that it happened a year after it really did. It costs him all credibility, and it's simply poor filmmaking.

More of this Feature • Part 1: Beamed Down From Planet Zork

Join the Discussion Bittersweet Motel Let me know if you agree about Bittersweet Motel. Post in the Forum Documentaries "What subjects do you think would be interesting to include in a series about documentaries?" deepcheers Phish "What do you think Phish will play first when they return from the hiatus?" Riled99

Related Resources • Documentaries • Documentary Film Festivals • Documentary Directors • Documentaries A-Z

From Other Guides • Jam Bands: Phish • Jam Bands: Bittersweet Motel • Bittersweet Motel Review

Elsewhere on the Web • Andy Gadiel's Phish • Phish.com • Phish.net • Official Movie Site • etree.org

So what we got here, really, is a half-assed (and literally backwards) rockumentary rather than a serious attempt at understanding what the particular fascination with Phish is. Phillips says that when he first heard about the band, he was "surprised how big this thing was," but other than briefly asking a girl with angel wings on her back and a guy from Planet Zork about it, he makes no effort at all to come to grips with why exactly people would see dozens of concerts and collect hundreds of CDs by the same band. The often-quoted connection to the Grateful Dead comes up without being examined or explained. Nothing in Bittersweet Motel will change anybody's ideas about the band and its music. If you're a fan, you'll be glad to own it for the live footage, but if you're not, you might as well not bother. (I'm surprised you even read this far.)

In the end, Phish is a bit like licorice, religion, or trainspotting - a documentary can't really explain what it is that keeps some of us coming back. In a way, Phillips' project was doomed from the start, even if he had approached it with more rigorous interest in its subject. A quick search on the Internet would have turned up many more articulate and insightful explanations than any of the interviews in the movie, but words will only ever do so much. The fascination with Phish does not lie in any one of their songs, not in some stoned fratboy's half-baked comments, and it's not Trey Anastasio talking on and on. It probably can't be summed up in an 80-minute film - especially not one that wastes precious time on showing the band shopping for whips in a Spanish gun shop. Phish is what happens when these four musicians plug in and start to play in front of an audience to whom every note matters. The best documentary about Phish is still a Phish concert.

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