The
Filth and the Fury
Rated
R
Opens
Friday, May 5.
The Sex Pistols'
first performance was an opening act for Bazooka Joe, which
featured bassist Adam Ant.
London Councilor
Bernard Partridge said of the band,
"I think the Sex Pistols are the antithesis of humankind.
The whole world would be better for their non-existence."
Julien Temple
says of the Sex Pistols, "They encouraged people to believe
that they didn't have to do 20-minute drum solos to say
something worth listening to."
In the mid-1970s, young filmmaker Julien Temple fell for
the Sex Pistols' wonderful, horrible punk rock and began
filming their uproarious gigs every chance he got. But Temple's
ensuing film, The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, came
off as silly and gave too much credit to the band's egomaniacal
manager, Malcolm McLaren, who cast himself as the Pistols'
punk-rock puppeteer.
Now Temple is back to tell the Sex Pistols' side of the
story. The Filth and the Fury brings crucial redemption
to both the director and his subjects. "For the last 20
years, people have exaggerated and blown up the Sex Pistols
into something they never were," John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny
Rotten) said recently. "I think the truth is far more shocking
and far more interesting."
Temple presents the band's meteoric rise and fall as a
kind of leather-clad Shakespearean tragedy, with McLaren
as grand betrayer. Considering how a band that only lasted
26 months helped spawn so many sub-genres and scenes that
thrive today, it's actually a fitting comparison. The Sex
Pistols weren't the first punk-rock band, but they are long
overdue in wrestling back from McLaren proper credit for
their work. And in light of the tremendous do-it-yourself
idealism that was born from punk, it's downright vital that
the real truth about the Sex Pistols--not the legend--be
told.
The story begins in mid-'70s Britain, where economic gloom
has given working-class kids like Lydon and Steve Jones
no hope, no future and--most importantly--nothing to lose.
From their first 1975 gig at St. Martin's College, the band's
feverish songs and a fearless attitude got them noticed
fast. But after a notorious, profanity-laced TV appearance,
a series of club bannings soon made playing in England virtually
impossible. On tour in America (now with Rotten's pal Sid
Vicious on board), the band was ravaged by drug addiction
and media hype, which McLaren encouraged as if it were all
part of the act. You can't blame Rotten for asking the audience
at the band's last performance, in San Francisco's Winterland
Ballroom in 1978, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
Recalling documentary virtuoso Errol Morris, Temple weaves
interviews (shot in near-darkness, as if Rotten and company
are witnesses to their own crimes) with classic, rarely
seen performances and kitschy stock footage (most notably
Olivier's Richard III). Along the way, Temple also
unearths data unknown to all but a few rabid Pistol-heads:
Sid Vicious was named after a hamster, and Johnny Rotten,
rock's ultimate angry man, actually has the ability to cry.
It was a risky move for Temple to go where so many other
rockumentarians--including himself--have gone before, but
The Filth and the Fury pulsates with enough ingenuity
and middle-finger-flipping spirit to earn its right to be.
And, once and for all, we need never mind the bollocks about
these punk pioneers.
"We managed to offend everybody we were fucking fed up
with," says Rotten, contemplating the band's enduring legacy.
"All I want is for future generations to just say fuck it."
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
