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I'll say three and a half stars. This is the inside story of the making of the Metallica documentary called "Some Kind of Monster." The primary filmmaker, Joe Berlinger, wrote the book, with help from someone named Greg Milner apparently. I've seen the movie and thought it was pretty good but this gives a lot more detail and gives information that couldn't be fitted into a movie. Here's what I liked best, 1) the stuff about Metallica and the extra details that the movie didn't show, 2) the reasons why some material that was filmed didn't make it into the movie, 3) way in which the material was often presented out of chronological order in order to show the "essence" of the story rather than an absolute straight ahead telling, and 4) the reactions of Metallica to the movie. Other than the fact that I don’t really buy the “essence� comment, I liked all this material.

What I didn't care as much for: a lot of information given by Joe Berlinger about his previous documentaries and how much he grew as a person while making this one. I'm in no way, shape, or form a movie buff or even interested in the whole field of film. This material might prove much more interesting to someone who is. The one thing I did find interesting was that Berlinger is the guy who handled the filming of Blair Witch 2, which was critically lambasted but which was actually far superior to the original Blair Witch movie. That movie was a completely faked documentary, or mockumentary. In other words, Blair Witch 1 was one of the silliest moments in film history. Berlinger talked about how he didn’t like the concept of the mockumentary and I absolutely agree with him and this upped my respect for him considerably.

All in all, I liked the book quite a lot. It was perhaps a little long, and I might have liked a little more selected pieces of dialogue from the band, but it was worth my time.