“I was blown away”: Why did James Hetfield make a movie about porn addiction?
No one’s really expecting to learn a lesson when listening to any lyric that James Hetfield ever penned.
He didn’t want to preach from a pulpit in Metallica, and even when he looked up to some of his greatest musical storytellers, he was more interested in working through his own personal battles than telling everyone how they should live their lives. But he was fallible, and he wanted to be there to help those who were fallible as well, even if it meant talking about stuff that was a little more risque.
Because, really, no member of Metallica could claim to have been squeaky clean behind the scenes. Hetfield was never the kind to be a massive druggie by any stretch, but considering how far he had come as a drinker by the time he started working on Some Kind of Monster, he really needed to figure out who he was in rehab before he even entertained the idea of coming back to the band.
But aside from working through his own struggles, he started to see that there were other people working through their problems as well. It’s one thing for anyone to not be able to put down the bottle, but Hetfield was willing to put his hand up and talk about the dangers that can come with pornography addiction after spending some time working with director Justin Hunt for the film Addicted To Porn: Chasing The Cardboard Butterfly.
Most artists wouldn’t have touched this kind of film with a six-foot pole, but when Hunt talked about the film after the fact, he was flattered that Hetfield would use his platform to champion this problem, saying, “I was blown away by the effect it was having…We’re both fathers and husbands, and realise that we have names and skills that can bring attention to the issue. He knows the value of his name and being involved but I think he believes in me because I fight to do what’s right. I think he finds a certain level of integrity in what I do. I’m sure he’s seen plenty of people deal with this issue – they don’t say ‘sex, drugs and rock’n’roll’ for no reason. He just wants to make a difference.”
Granted, it’s always going to be an uphill battle for any rock star to talk about these kinds of problems to a certain degree. They have a reputation to think about at the end of the day, and while Hetfield was always about giving his fans the best experience possible, he was also taking a risk of sounding like a disgruntled dad if he even entertained the idea of making a film about being on the straight and narrow.
But the version of Hetfield that exists today is a lot different than the limbering beast that everyone got used to back in the 1990s. Everyone might like the idea of him being this monstrous alpha-male presence every single time he plays, but even if metalheads had problems with him showing his feelings, there was no reason to think that he was any less of a musical god for opening himself up.
If anything, Hetfield’s maturation over the last few years is one of the best arcs that he could have taken. He’s the first to admit that he has a lot to learn about the kind of person that he wants to be, but the fact that he is open to talk about his feelings and lean on his bandmates when he feels that he doesn’t have the answers is the kind of thing that many fans could take to heart instead of trying to suppress their feelings whenever they hear their favourite bands.
There might be some people who are bound to clown on Hetfield for contributing to a movie like this, but the fact that he was able to let his guard down is the kind of bravery that you don’t see all that often in metal music. Plenty of frontmen like to talk up how brave they are, but the true legends in their field are the ones that take steps into areas that they know will be a little more controversial.
