Entertain Me: A Film About the Deftones

Entertain Me has all the great stories about how the band got together, what it was like in the early years, and all the other shit that we as fans love to hear, but it also flips it, and talks about the price you pay when touring non stop for years, being in the studio for months and years, and how just being in a band effects not just you, but your family and friends. That might be where it gets depressing. Yes, there are moments that are not so happy, both in interviews and on the road.

“ENTERTAIN ME” was a tour documentary filmed while the band was promoting White Pony that Maverick wisely decided upon shelving. And it’s for the best really, because as it shows, not all was sunny and bright in the deftones camp. After relentless touring across the world for 5-6 years, and in addition to their tireless gigging in the years prior, the band had become fairly exhausted. Most obviously affected by the stress is Moreno, no longer the soft-spoken shy young man of various earlier interviews. Instead, he is resentful of his label, and of his fame. And, as witnessed to a marginal degree, his own pattern of substance abuse was beginning. Granted, it’s a bit self-indulgent, and the band doesn’t appear to be suffering or display it as much as for example Radiohead would present on their “Meeting People Is Easy”. And weirdly enough, the internal problems weren’t the worst thing occurring for them; after years of refining and retooling themselves into the beast of burden they’d become, deftones were actually becoming irrelevant. And the harbinger of their doom was opening for them as they toured the UK. — Maxwell Cavaseno (http://lyingaboutiguanas.tumblr.com/)