The Beastie Boys headlined the Summersault festival in 1995-96. Photograph: Madman Entertainment<\/p>\n
At the time, Davis was newly married to Michael Diamond, better known as Mike D of the Beastie Boys. (She\u2019s \u201cTammy D gettin\u2019 biz on the crop\u201d<\/a> on Intergalactic. They\u2019re now separated, but still close \u2013 Diamond was one of the first people to see this film.) She was also fresh from directing Billy Madison and had dozens of music videos under her belt \u2013 including Sonic Youth\u2019s MTV classic Bull in the Heather, starring Bikini Kill\u2019s Kathleen Hanna. \u201cI was always filming\u201d at Beasties and Sonic Youth shows, says Davis, which meant she could be both a friend and a fly on the wall backstage.<\/p>\n She and Hanna paired up early and semi-seriously decided they were making a documentary \u2013 \u201cyou know when you find your best friend at summer camp and come up with a project to do together?\u201d \u2013 with Davis shooting live sets, and Hanna interviewing their peers in green rooms and behind portable toilets.<\/p>\n The footage is raw and the live sound is rawer. Davis did waver on whether she should take the opportunity to tidy them up; Pavlovic offered to track down cleaner audio he knew to be somewhere in Australia\u2019s national youth radio station Triple J\u2019s archives. \u201cAnd then, in the end, all the bands were like, \u2018No, we like this\u2019, they liked the sound.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike D of the Beastie Boys, who director Davis married in 1993. Photograph: Madman Entertainment\/Melbourne International Film Festival<\/p>\n Her sons, Skyler and Davis Diamond \u2013 now in their early 20s, with their own project Very Nice Person<\/a> \u2013 also convinced her not to polish too much. \u201cI showed them early cuts and they liked when my camera would go out of focus. They were like, \u2018Keep that in, Mom, that shaky camera \u2026 That makes us feel like it\u2019s real\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanna is the film\u2019s effervescent anchor, and Davis\u2019 gaze becomes the audience\u2019s POV. \u201cI really wanted you to feel what it\u2019s like to be on a festival tour and backstage,\u201d she says. \u201cAt no point does it cut to another person\u2019s point of view. And I also didn\u2019t want to cut to everybody now.\u201d<\/p>\n After Davis\u2019 \u201cicebreaker\u201d questions \u2013 what are you reading? What\u2019s your favourite colour? \u2013 Hanna hits them with big ones: what is being on stage like for you? And how do you manage the boundary between public and private personas? Watching these indie-rock stalwarts, some already veterans and some still green, grapple with this question from a peer is perhaps the most intimate part of the film \u2013 from Hanna being visibly discombobulated by a flirty Beastie (Adam \u201cAd-Rock\u201d Horovitz, who she later married) to a startlingly willowy, doe-eyed Dave Grohl describing the terror of being behind a mic instead of a drum kit.<\/p>\n \u2018At no point does it cut to another person\u2019s point of view\u2019: Davis filming Bikini Kill\u2019s Billy Karren. Photograph: Madman Entertainment\/Melbourne International Film Festival<\/p>\n Davis didn\u2019t know Grohl well at the time, even after her years in the Nirvana\/Sonic Youth circle \u2013 \u201c[Backstage] I would always talk to Kurt [Cobain] because Kurt was obsessed with movies and film, so he would always try to ask me a million questions!\u201d \u2013 and she was struck by the starkness of the newly minted frontman\u2019s growth over those short weeks. \u201cI just see this vulnerability of somebody that was always in the background, the drummer guy that you don\u2019t really talk to so much,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd you see that he finds his voice by the end of this tour. Seeing that progression was just so beautiful to me. He just gets through it.\u201d<\/p>\n Eschewing narrative crutches like voiceover or talking heads preserves the time-capsule bubble in both directions, even as the audience knows the grief lurking out of frame. Cobain\u2019s death in 1994 was still fresh in the rearview, but the subsequent 30 years have often been cruel too; Grohl, most notably, would lose another bandmate,<\/a> more friends. The Beastie Boys came to an end in 2012 when Adam \u201cMCA\u201d Yauch died of cancer aged 47.<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of was making a film that showed the loss of our youth,\u201d Davis says, matter-of-factly. \u201cAdam is so alive in that footage, it\u2019s just so beautiful, and there\u2019s nothing hinting that one day he\u2019s not going to be there. And the same with seeing Jimmy [Swanson, Foo Fighters roadie who died in 2008], Dave\u2019s best friend, he\u2019s no longer with us \u2026 There was this sense of what has happened before, but also the loss that happens after.\u201d<\/p>\n Davis also sees the advent of the internet and smartphones as \u201ca loss of innocence\u201d for live music in particular: \u201cThere\u2019s no phones \u2013 when the audience reaches out, there\u2019s a direct connection. And in a year or two, all that\u2019s going to be lost.\u201d<\/p>\n The Best Summer isn\u2019t the first time Davis has mined her own archive. Working at Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s production company in the early 80s and then an LA gallery, she befriended Jean-Michel Basquiat, and filmed a rare, intimate interview. When the artist overdosed in 1988, a grieving Davis initially stashed her footage away, but later turned it into a short film, then a feature-length documentary<\/a>. After a screening, Davis says she was approached by women who \u201cwere so struck by how he looked at me in the camera and how he spoke to me, knowing that that\u2019s not how he would ever talk to a male interviewer \u2026 [They] were like, \u2018it\u2019s the first time I really noticed how a girl behind the camera can really have an impact on who they\u2019re speaking to\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n One of Davis\u2019 guiding principles is to inspire young women in film and she\u2019s refreshingly proud of her younger self\u2019s raw camera work. \u201cMost of those songs are one take, one operating take,\u201d she grins. \u201cI\u2019ve done 150 music videos and I operated a lot myself. So when I watch it back now, I look at it and go, \u2018Wow\u2019. My camera skills were always dope.\u201d<\/p>\n Watching The Best Summer as an Australian of a certain age, the nostalgia is searing. Not just for 90s festivals, but for the whited-out glare of high summer, an extended family squinting on sun loungers and chatting on battered couches, just like home camcorder footage of baking hot Christmas Days.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the biggest criticism I got on this, like, \u2018oh, we\u2019re watching Tamra Davis\u2019 home movies\u2019,\u201d the director laughs. \u201cYeah, maybe you are! And what a great home movie I had \u2026 In a way, I was trying to make a film that also inspires just one girl to make a movie. Maybe you could make a movie about your cool group of friends and tell a story and show us your world.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Images](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/515.jpg\")
\u2018My camera skills were always dope,\u2019 says Davis on her early career music videos. Photograph: Madman Entertainment\/Melbourne International Film Festival<\/p>\n