cut/ Dixie Chicks' supporters root for lead singer Natalie Maines to be president. Photo courtesy of The Weinstein Company
INFO BOX
'Shut Up & Sing'
Now playing
Main Art Theatre, Royal Oak
Fifteen words.
That's all it took to turn country music's the Dixie Chicks into a right-winged dartboard. And, as the documentary "Shut Up & Sing" portrays, these conservatives were hitting their target.
Before the best-selling female band of all time became a political punching bag, Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie McGuire were down-home darlings.
And the film proves they still are.
Directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck weave candid snippets of intimate family footage backed by the Chicks' tunes and their race to save face but remain true to their politics.
The result is triumphant.
Any other band may have lost their ground and fizzled. But although Maines' comment, which as shown in the film was more of a casual aside, blew the top off their career, Robison and McGuire stood beside her. As the country trio's album sales and radio airplay sank, the group – and their manager and publicist – fumbled to defend themselves to an audience that turned their backs.
"Has beens." "Traitors." "Dixie Twits." The Chicks heard and read it all from blogs they surfed, protestors at their shows and country redneck Toby Keith. The film follows the feisty Bush-basher backstage as the Chicks' crew decides how to stick it to Keith. Maines explains that, if anyone asks, her T-shirt that says "FUTK" means "Fans United Together in Kindness." Of course she doesn't expect anyone to believe that.
In return, anti-Chick fans wore "FUDC" shirts to their shows, in which Maines notes she wanted to tell them, "We love your signs, but what do you have against Dick Cheney?"
The continued controversy of Maines' comments on foreign soil snowballed, causing country stations to blacklist their music, Sony Records to reconsider their profitability and death threats to roll in.
Before hitting the stage in Dallas, Maines reads a threat that says she'll be shot during that show. Kopple and Peck build tension with briskly paced scenes of the Chicks getting off of their plane in Dallas, making their way into the venue and eventually heading out to the stage – all the while the thought of them being shot looms among them – and us.
To further the tension, the film shifts between 2003, when Maines made the anti-war comment, and 2005 as the Chicks and their entourage worked to reestablish themselves both professionally and musically on the intimate "Taking The Long Way."
Told from multiple angles, the documentary works because the filmmakers focus on the sisterhood of the Chicks and their ability to pull themselves back up as they attempt to re-brand the group. All three of them.
Together.
An engaging look in to their personal lives, intersected by a professional blow, makes the documentary a sympathetic look at real women who got more backlash than they bargained for – or even deserved. At its core, "Shut Up & Sing" shows that even free speech doesn't come without a price.
