Sundance Film Festival 2022 Screening – MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM was a LOT to take in. Following the burgeoning New York music scene of the late ’90s through to its eventual dissipation over the next decade, this music doc relies strictly on original footage and interviews to immerse viewers in the real world it is depicting. The coverage is dense and thorough in its recounting of nearly every plot point that transpired between a clatch of musicians using never before seen footage. For music fans, this is a feast of music and history. For outsiders, the takeaway lingers as a doc on the increasingly stresfull toll of success in a mad world of chaos. Based on the book by Lizzy Goodman, directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern honor their subject dutifully, but perhaps a little too much.

The film starts with rapturous footage of the teeming island of Manhattan. pulsating with people, energy, ideas, and nearly every artistic and musical expression under the sun, New York City is romantically cast as a city of dreams and nightmares for the taking. We meet the players, an assortment of musicians from bands no one had ever heard of yet including Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Strokes, Interpol and LCD Soundsystem. The early footage and pictures are breathtaking in their exposure of nascent talent. Looking to the 2000’s each of them had nothing but golden hopes for the future. Altruistic ideas of musical expression married with success paved their path into a new millennium.

Their worlds, and ours for that matter, were irrevocably changed on September 11th, 2001. Not just for the obvious reasons but because the world was finally learning about them in a time when a new beginning was sorely needed. The scene explodes and the early ’00s music scene was born. A line in Goodman’s afterword to her book read ‘We were all chasing New York City. And for a few magical years, we caught it’. Soon traveling the world and playing everywhere became routine for this young group of musicians. That’s when the stress, the infighting, and the battles with demanding producers and outlets began. This was back when MTV was still MTV and they were literally the only way for artists to connect with their fans on a grand scale. Then came the iPod. Then came Napster and Limewire.

MEET ME IN THE BATHROOM is described as an experimental film in that it utilizes only video or audio from that exact time and place. A sort of media immersion is used to convey a story, a time and place, and a zeitgeist all in one. Lovelace and Southern’s concept is bold and their execution impressive. But unless you are a fan who ravenously soaked in the available media of the era and pursued these artists, something might seem amiss. The archival footage is exhaustive and wonderfully utilized but it feels consistently removed. It’s great as a neutral recounting of history but it lacks the emotional heft of any hindsight that current interviews would have offered. A great concept, well-executed, that didn’t fully work. It’s still a raucous flashback to a shining era of music

7 Out of 10