To borrow a trope from Arizona Cardinals head coach Dennis Green, The Dixie Chicks are who we thought they were.
   Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck's well-made documentary about the group's tribulations in the wake of lead singer Natalie Maines' unfortunate remark about President Bush to a London concert crowd on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq reveals them to be your basic All-American country-pop entertainers -- pleasant and bright enough, but the girls least likely to call attention to themselves by popping off on controversial political subjects.
   Then Maines -- perhaps looking to express solidarity with the anti-war demonstrations taking place in London at the time -- told the audience at Shepherd's Bush Empire theater, "We're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." The offhand remark was reported by The Guardian, picked up by The Associated Press and almost immediately resulted in a backlash in the culturally conservative country music community. Boycotts of Dixie Chicks concerts and recordings were organized, and many country radio stations stopped playing their records. Within a few days it was clear they had alienated a considerable segment of their core constituency.
   Though Maines issued a clarification of the remarks almost immediately after the incident, it wasn't a slip of the tongue. Even before the Shepherd's Bush concert Maines had criticized macho country singer Toby Keith, discounting the jingoistic lyrics in his chart-topping hit "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" as "ignorant" and saying she preferred Bruce Springsteen's songs. (The film doesn't make this chronology clear, and viewers might be led to believe that the Maines-Keith feud was sparked by Maines' comments in London.) While she might have said what she said primarily to curry favor with a British crowd -- one of the reasons many found Maines' remarks inappropriate was that she made them "on foreign soil" -- she regretted only the form, not the substance.
   Though none of the principals sat down for a formal interview, Kopple and Peck seem to have had absolute access to the Chicks during this tumultuous period, and their old-school cinema verite style has advantages and drawbacks. We witness some remarkable moments -- as when, immediately after the injury inflicted by Maines' statement becomes apparent, bandmate Martie Maguire flippantly suggests that if someone asks her about it, she'll simply say, "Well, I didn't say anything."
   Aside from this early and only half-serious hiccup, the band (Maguire and her sister Emily Robison) remains tremendously supportive of Maines, even though the remunerative consequences of her gratuitous comment are grave. While Maines comes across as more a reflexive contrarian than an intellectual, she is a feisty and talented woman, and one can infer from the film that she quickly came to see the rift with the country music establishment as an opportunity to strike out in a more pop context. Maguire and Robison, interesting and somewhat Machiavellian characters in their own right, seem to have little choice but to follow Maines' lead, whatever their misgivings about moving away from the mainstream country context they had conquered. (The Dixie Chicks started out as a bluegrass group and only obtained full-fledged stardom after Maines joined them in 1995, replacing the older and more traditionally country-sounding Laura Lynch.)
   While we get plenty of significant detail illuminating the Chicks and their predicament (their manager, Simon Renshaw, emerges as master manipulator and mensch), the respectful distance the filmmakers keep from their celebrity subjects allows some things to go unchallenged -- the American Red Cross, for instance, didn't reject a million-dollar contribution from the Chicks out of hand; they declined the donation because it was on the condition that the organization endorse the group's coming tour. Had they given the money without strings attached, it would have been accepted, and it would have been nice had the filmmakers been more scrupulously skeptical of some of the self-serving assertions their subjects make.
   On the whole, however, the documentary is hardly the Bushbashing festival some might expect. It does raise some important and interesting questions about the fiduciary responsibilities of a band that has grown into a brand, and the chilling effect of highly consolidated mass media. (What's interesting about the Dixie Chicks affair isn't so much the nastiness of the "redneck" backlash but the extent to which corporate bean counters were complicit in the group's blacklisting.)
   And it presents us with an appealing portrait of some talented, if none too adventurous, pop entertainers whose aspirations sometimes outstrip their abilities. It's instructive that some of the best music The Dixie Chicks have ever made is on the album they released in response to the controversy -- the film has a lovely little bit with producer Rick Rubin that has more to do with music-making than image rehabilitation -- and that the album is still pretty mild stuff artistically. The Dixie Chicks are fine musicians but, as Maines seems to realize, they're hardly "important" artists. They deserve to be cut some slack for an ill-considered ad lib -- no one should take them all that seriously.
   

pmartin@arkansasonline.com Shut Up and Sing
   BCast :
Documentary with The Dixie Chicks, Rick Rubin, Adrian Pasdar

Directors:
Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck

Rating:
R for language

Running time:
92 minutes

This story was published Friday, December 08, 2006