Tool Academy

Give filmmakers Ryan Page and Christopher Pomerenke credit for selecting perhaps the most stultifying viticultural subject this side of Jesus Christ: Maynard James Keenan, the notoriously standoffish frontman of Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, makes wine. And he makes it in Northern Arizona, a region that boasts agricultural subtlety and growth potential to go along with all those dust devils and prickly pears.

Blood Into Wine, which screens at the Troc Saturday night, attempts to chronicle Keenan's desire to create — music, a bit, but mostly wine. His passion led him to purchase land in the Verde Valley, where a group of small towns has sprung from a long-dried-up lake bed. The doc glosses over the roots of Keenan's interest in the field, but that's to be expected: He has, as he explains, built his career around "not giving away the whole farm."

With Merkin Vineyards (a merkin is a pubic wig) and the associated Caduceus Cellars, Keenan and partner/mentor Eric Glomski are perched upon "the frontier of viticulture," setting out to prove that the soil can produce good grapes, a task described by one Napa Valley winemaker as "trying to make wine on the moon."

While many celebrity oenophiles have taken to Top Chef and other hyper-gloss launching pads to promote their labels, Keenan is shown getting dirt under his fingernails, wielding spades and pruning vines alongside a small group of friends and employees. He humbly cedes much of the credit for his operation to Glomski, whose ruddy cheeks and toothy smile sit in stark contrast to Keenan's near-perpetual perf-art deadpan.

It becomes clear early on that this is more than a vanity hobby for Keenan — he tackles the harvest with the same unblinking fervor as a summer tour. And for all the plaudits he earns from interviewees for pioneering Arizona's burgeoning wine industry, the star keeps his head down, stressing that he's not in pursuit of any kind of look-what-this-rock-star-can-do notoriety. As separate as he may like to keep his pursuits, it's rather surreal to hear the guy responsible for songs like "Stinkfist" and "Hooker with a Penis" complain about a pack of wild boars busting through a hole in his fence and feasting on his grapes.

There are a few cameos by Keenan's celebrity associates — Milla Jovovich (sometime Puscifer singer), Patton Oswalt, Bob Odenkirk. Keenan feigns disgust in faux interview segments featuring Phily's Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker as a pair of chinos-wearing assholes.

The most touching moment of Blood Into Wine, however, has nothing to do with Keenan's music career, nor his famous friends. In an intense segment, Keenan breaks down when discussing "Nagual del Judith," a 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon dedicated to his deceased mother. (It's later judged by Wine Spectator honcho James Suckling, but we won't give away the verdict.) Keenan spread her ashes over his acreage growing the Cab's  grapes so Judith, who lived as an invalid for most of her adult life due to an aneurysm, could finally experience what it's like to travel. It's incredibly sad, but it's also a rare, rich look into Keenan's trials as a person, and not a prog-metal demigod.

(drew.lazor@citypaper.net)

Blood Into Wine, with pre-screening performance by the Technophobes Sat., March 20, 11 p.m., $9, Trocadero, 1003 Arch St., 215-922-6888, thetroc.com.