"Breaking a Monster," director Luke Meyer's insightful and disturbing documentary about the music business, opens with a home video from 2010 showing two boys jamming out in a basement den. Tiny-looking kids with their big instruments, singer-guitarist Malcolm Brickhouse and drummer Jarad Dawkins look awfully goofy as headbangers.
Friends since they were 4 years old, Brickhouse and Dawkins formed the metal band Unlocking the Truth with another friend, bassist Alec Atkins, well before the kids had started middle school.
By the time they entered eighth grade in 2014, the members of the Brooklyn trio had signed a $1.8 million contract for five albums with Sony Music Entertainment. Sony got itself a unique brand to market: a band of African American teenage boys who loved heavy metal and who excelled as musicians.
A year later, the band negotiated their way out of the contract. They released their debut album, "Chaos," earlier this year through indie label TuneCore.
What would make kids who dreamed of stardom all their lives run away from the big bucks? Meyer's film answers the question.
"Breaking a Monster" follows the band's fate from the moment film producer Alan Sacks signs on as their manager. Best known as one of the creators of "Welcome Back, Kotter," Sacks helps the kids land their Sony contract.
Thus begin the endless business meetings and discussions, the marketing campaigns and festival concerts, the news releases and TV interviews.
Sacks seems sweet, but he is pulled by two contradictory impulses: to treat the kids with respect while also pushing them through the soul-killing process the industry uses to transform ordinary people into best-selling brands.
"Breaking a Monster" is a revealing window into the industry. But it lacks a certain human component. Meyer shows little interest in the kids' background stories. We get next to nothing about their families, their home life, their friends, or their accomplishments at school.
It seems Meyer _ who is, after all, using the kids to create a product of his own _ may be almost as guilty of dehumanizing the teens as the industry he critiques.
