"Hit So Hard" Follows Patty Schemel, Drummer for Hole "Every junkie's like a setting sun," Neil Young warns in his classic feel-bad drug song, "The Needle and the Damage Done." You have to wonder if Patty Schemel, a drummer for the band Hole who soared high - sent aloft on fame, talent, drugs and all the familiar rock "n" roll rest - only to crash terribly low, ever listened to that song. In "Hit So Hard," a documentary about her fast and brutal times, Ms. Schemel talks about her early musical influences and those formative years when she played along to anything on the radio, except perhaps for this one cautionary lament. Variance Wells/Well Go USA Patty Schemel, a drummer for the band Hole, in "Hit So Hard." Then again, as a female drummer, Ms. Schemel followed another beat. Born in 1967, she formed her first band with her brother, Larry, when both were teenagers in Seattle. More groups followed; a local scene began to blow up into the grunge movement; and in 1987 she went to a concert at which she heard a band that she later realized was Nirvana doing Creedence Clearwater Revival covers. She and Kurt Cobain became friends. He became a rock star, married Courtney Love, had a child, died. Ms. Schemel joined Ms. Love's band, Hole, and went on to a level of fame. She drank, did drugs and became an apparent lost cause until she crawled out of her very dark place. "Hit So Hard" is the touching story of how and why Ms. Schemel ended up in her own private hell and how and why she made her way out again into the world of sunshine, sobriety and puppy dogs. Literally: she now runs a dog care service in Los Angeles. Directed and edited by Ms. Schemel's friend P. David Ebersole, "Hit So Hard" largely follows the same rise-and-fall trajectory as a lot of music biopics, though its openly sympathetic approach feels rooted in a real friendship rather than in sensationalism or industry boosterism. There's a political angle too, because Mr. Ebersole frames Ms. Schemel's story within both a feminist and a lesbian context, a move that positions her as something of a leading figure in the history of women in rock. That's a history that Ms. Schemel appears to have given little thought to back in the day, including when she was touring the world with Hole, playing before screaming crowds in Japan and Paris, and striking poses for Rolling Stone. You see a fair amount of those times, both onstage and backstage, because when Ms. Schemel wasn't handling a pair of drumsticks she seems to have been carrying a Hi8 video camera. She recorded everywhere - in the wings, in bed, on the bus - though, given the absence of on-camera drug use, not exactly everything. The visual quality of the material she shot is crummy, both palsied and smeared, but the decrepitude of the images also underscores that these blurry times would soon deteriorate. While Ms. Schemel's losing and then winning battle with drugs and alcohol is predictably poignant - all addicts may be like a setting sun, but they're also real people - Mr. Ebersole smartly steers the movie away from the strictly personal. Using talking-head interviews with musicians, notably women like Phranc, Nina Gordon (Veruca Salt), Debbi Peterson (the Bangles) and Kate Schellenbach (Luscious Jackson), he sketches a story about the American music industry and entrenched sexism that could easily be spun into another documentary. This is Mr. Ebersole's first feature, and while he makes some bad choices - mostly by overediting and rushing the pace, and with showy chapter titles that zip into the frame - he tells a significant story about one woman that's more than just hers. Hit So Hard Directed and edited by P. David Ebersole; written by Mr. Ebersole and Todd Hughes; music by Roddy Bottom; produced by Mr. Hughes and Christina Soletti; released by Well Go USA and Variance Films.