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Screening NotesAt the height of their fame, the Sex Pistols inspired a London city councillor to observe, "Most of these guys would be much improved by sudden death." In a decade when England was racked by unemployment, strikes and unrest, its season of discontent had a soundtrack by the Sex Pistols. They sang of "Anarchy in the U.K.," and their song "God Save the Queen (She ain't no human being)" rose to No. 1 on the hit-charts but the record industry refused to list it. In The Filth and the Fury, a hard-edged new documentary about the Pistols, we see a Top 10 chart with a blank space for No. 1. Better than being listed, Johnny Rotten grinned.
The saga on the Sex Pistols is told for the third time in The Filth and the Fury. Not bad for a band that symbolised punk rock but lasted less than two years, fought constantly, insulted the press, spit on their fans, were banned from TV, were fired by one record company 24 hours after being signed, released only one album, pushed safety pins through their noses and ear lobes to more or less invent body piercing, broke up during a tour or the United States, and saw front man Sid Vicious accused of murdering his girlfriend and dying of a drug overdose. Director Julien Temple based his Great Rock and Roll Swindle (1980) on a version of the Sex Pistols story supplied by Malcom McLaren, their infamous self-promoting manager, and now, 20 years later, Temple tells the story through the eyes and in the words of the band members themselves. In between came Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy (1986), with Gary Oldman's shattering performance as the self-destructive Sid Vicious.
It wasn't what the band stood for. It was what they stood against. "Attack, attack, attack," says lead singer Johnny Rotten in the film. Now once again John Lydon, he appears along with guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook, McLaren, original band member Glen Matlock (deposed by Vicious) and even Vicious himself, in an interview filmed a year before his death. The surviving members are backlit so we cannot see their faces, which would have provided a middle-aged contrast to the savage young men on the screen; McLaren talks from behind a rubber bondage mask like those he and onetime girlfriend Vivienne Westwood sold in their boutique Sex.
McLaren claimed the Sex Pistols were entirely his invention and painted himself as a puppetmaster. Lydon, who calls him the Manager throughout the film, says, "There was never a relationship between the Manager and myself except he stole my ideas and used them as his own." The truth probably resides in between. I had a glimpse of the Sex Pistols in 1977, when McLaren hired Russ Meyer to direct them in a movie, and Meyer hired me to write it (McLaren and Rotten were fans of our Beyond the Valley of the Dolls). I wrote screenplay in Los Angeles with McLaren feeding me background a ideas. Then Meyer and I flew to London to meet with Rotten, Vicious, Cook and Jones. (Meyer, wary of McLaren's trademark bandage pants, insisted on sitting on the aisle: "If we have to evacuate he'll get those goddamned straps tangled up in the seats.")
I remember a surrealistic dinner
involving Rotten, Meyer and me ("We won the Battle of Britain for you,"
Meyer sternly lectured Rotten, while I mused that America was not involved in
the Battle of Britain and Rotten was Irish.) Rotten seemed amused by the fact
that Meyer was unintimidated by his by his fearsomely safety-pinned façade.
As we drove him home, he complained bitterly that McLaren had the band on a
salary of eight pounds a week, borrowed five pounds from Meyer and had us stop
at an all-night store so he could buy a six-pack of large and cans of pork and
beans.
The truth is, no one made much money off the Pistols, although McLaren made
the most. The plug was pulled on our film, Who Killed Bambi? , after a day and
a half of shooting, when the electricians walked off the set after McLaren couldn't
pay them. Meyer had presciently demanded his own weekly pay in advance every
Monday morning.
The Catch-22 with punk rock, and indeed with all forms of entertainment designed
to shock and offend the bourgeoisie, is that if your act is too convincing,
you put yourself out of business, a fact carefully noted by today's rappers
as they go as far as they can without going too far.
The Sex Pistols went too far. They never had a period that could be described as actual success. Even touring England at the height of their fame, they were booked into clubs under false names. They were hated by the establishment, shut down by police and pilloried by the press (The Filth and the Fury takes it's title from a banner headline that once occupied a full front page of the Daily Mirror). That was bad enough. Worse was that their own fans sometimes attacked them, lashed into a frenzy by the front line of Rotten and Vicious, who were sometimes performers and sometimes bear-baiters.
Rotten was a victim of a razor attack
while walking the streets of London; McLaren not only failed to provide security,
he wouldn't pay taxi fares. Vicious was his own worse enemy, and if there was
on thing that united the other three band members and McLaren, it was hatred
for Sid's girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, who they felt was instrumental in his drug
addiction. "Poor sod," Today's John Lydon says of his dead bandmate.
To see this film's footage from the '70s is to see the beginning of much of
pop and fashion iconography for the next two decades. After the premiere of
The Filth and the Fury at Sundance, I ran into Temple, who observed, "In
the scenes where they're being interviewed on television, they look normal.
It's the interviewers who look like freaks." Normal, no. But in torn black
T-shirts and punk haircuts, they look contemporary, unlike the dates ,polyestered,
wide-lapeled and blow-dried creatures interviewing them.
England survived the Sex Pistols, and they mostly survived England, although
Lydon still feels it is unsafe for him to return there. He now has an interview
program on VH-1 and the Web. Cook and Jones lead settled lives. McLaren still
has bright ideas. Vivienne Westwood has emerged as one of Britain's most successful
designers, and poses for photographs in which she bears a perfect resemblance
to Mrs. Thatcher. And as for Sid, my notes from the movie say that while the
Pistols were signing a record deal in front of Buckingham Palace and insulting
the queen, Sid's father was a Grenadier Guard on duty in front of the palace.
Surely I heard that wrong?
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
This year marks the Sex Pistols' own silver jubilee; or would, if the band hadn't self-destructed after 26 months of creative chaos unparalleled even in the annals of rock 'n' roll. Director Temple was there from the very beginning, a National Film School student who stumbled across the Pistols in rehearsal in 1975 and stayed to document their rise from underground heroes to media bogeymen and beyond. Temple already told the story once, as The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle in 1980, which he now admits was very much producer/manager Malcolm McLaren's version of events. The Filth and the Fury answers McLaren's entrepreneurial cynicism with John Lydon's still-seething wit.
A collage of Temple's original footage and contemporary broadcast material (pertinently mundane clips incorporating weather reports, adverts and news), the film has the sniff of '70s Britain all right: London swung out to dry, rubbish on the streets, nothing worth working at. Lydon's angry prole rhetoric has an element of rationalisation, but Temple captures Johnny Rotten in all his camp glory, Olivier meets Ken Dodd with a massive chip on his shoulder. Punk was raw rejection of all the second-hand shit rammed down young people's throats; it was ugly, unstable, untenable even, and long-overdue shock to the system.
Interviews with the surviving band members are conducted rather feyly in silhouette, presumably to preserve the integrity of their younger images. Fortunately, these guys themselves harbour no such inhibitions. Their recollections are frank, funny (about Glen Matlock), compassionate (Sid), and damning (about Malcolm, Nancy and more or less everyone else, come to that). Nostalgia isn't a punk emotion; instead, lets just flash a V-sign in recognition of that unknown artist who gave Winston Churchill a green mohican the other day.
Tom Charity, Time Out.
Starring
| Paul Cook |
| Steve Jones |
| Glen Matlock |
| Sid Vicious |
| Johnny Rotten |
