The Filth and the Fury

'The Filth And The Fury' isn't only the best music-related documentary I've ever seen, but one of the best documentaries ever made on ANY subject. Julian Temple succeeds in blending archival footage of the band, various ads, rock videos, news reports, TV comedians, Olivier's 'Richard III', and recent interviews, and by this manages to put the Sex Pistols in a musical, political and CULTURAL context. If that sounds pretentious, the movie is anything but. It is fabulously entertaining but at the same time is a fascinating, insightful HONEST portrait that should appeal to both die hard fans and novices.

So few movies or TV shows treat music seriously, or show that it can be much more than mass-produced trivialized entertainment. 'The Filth And The Fury' does exactly that and is all the more powerful for it. A revelatory piece of film! I hope every rock'n'roll fan turns off MTV and watches this instead. If they did the music world would be a much better place.

The real story of punk rock will, apparently, never be told. I suppose that's because most of the surviving participants have too much ego invested; or because, as the years fade, and the original social context disappears, the meaning of Punk - at its inception - becomes harder to decipher and easier to forget.

I was in NYC in '76, when it was first breaking for the national press, and I hung around CBGBs under a number of pseudonyms, trying to write reviews and articles on bands that nobody ever heard of, many of them breaking up before I could dot the last "i" in the last paragraph. And I tried out a couple bands of my own, weird blends of Iggy and the Velvet Underground. But I was really an outsider (coming from upstate); and when the London scene started shipping singles over, I knew that, for whatever reason, my heart was really more into "Anarchy" and "White Riot" than the metal-surf-music of the Ramones or early Blondie. But this disjunction of 'right time wrong place' or whatever, allowed me to see the development of Punk in a way others seem content to ignore.

The fundamental problem that Punk never resolved (and current neo-punks are still struggling with it), is, whether Punk was to be a continuance of the "counter culture" of the '60s in different guise, or just another pop-music for sexually frustrated young people. This sounds like an empty theoretical issue, but it has one all-important concrete aspect to it no one can ignore - money. Did (do) punks make music to make music - or to make money? That question was never answered; or, perhaps, every punk answered (answers) it in his/ her own way. Yet once we begin adding up all the individual answers, most of them sure come out sounding like "money". Yet the memory of Punk survives largely because it seemed to be about anything other than money; so the dilemma continues.

That dilemma surfaces again in this film, especially in the discovery of the wretched rip-off Pistols manager Malcom McLaren pulled, not only on the audience, but on the Pistols themselves. The brief moments from the (thankfully unfinished) "Who Shot Bambi?" make it very clear that McLaren had not the slightest clue as to who the Pistols were, or what they represented. Yet he not only continued to guide their career after their break-up, but is warmly mentioned in Griel Marcus' scholarly history of Punk, "Lipstick Traces", which will probably bear influence on punk histories, long after the last "photo-album" paperback turns to dust. Yet it is clear that from the get-go McLaren's only interest was the profit.

The Pistols were right, and are right, to ignore questions concerning their "materialism" or "selling out", since they were never part of the hippies' 'anti-materialism' ideal to begin with, and because they never denied a desire for some paycheck (which they almost never got from McLaren). But also plain is their desire to make the music of the UK working-class slums from whence they came.

All of this comes to a head in the brief yet unforgettable tragedy of Sid Vicious - for whom music meant freedom, and money meant - heroin. But junky 'rockstars' don't play at commercial venues to make music. He ended up in NYC, which by then had a punk scene swarming with record-co.-exec vermin dealing dope and poseur sycophants trying to score. Eventually all that was left was the heroin, and it killed him.

This film won't resolve any of these issues; but it may help raise them, and place them in a proper light. I can't agree that it is a well-made film - the editing, which is very flashy, is also somewhat vapid, and goes out of control too often. But there's adequate reminder of the era of the Pistols here, and why it was many of us thought, at the time (and still believe) that the Pistols were the most important rock band in history.

The segment from the final performance at Winterland is worth the price of the film: same-old same-old music concerts are "no fun" and Jones and Rotten (knowing they've been betrayed by McLaren into performing for the corporate music world they hated) rub our noses in it until they've had enough and stalk off. If you can see this - and know what it's about - and still pay $200 to see Mick Jagger pull his wrinkled pud at you at the age of 65, you don't need a movie review, you need a psychiatrist.

If nothing else, this is the only Sex Pistols film (there are now at least 3) to make explicit and in-depth reference to the band members' working class roots, and the way that experience informed their project. This alone makes the film worth seeing, as it explodes the myth, fostered no doubt by their PT Barnum manager, Malcolm McLaren, that the whole project was an exercise in cynical nihilism and money grubbing. As the band members tell it, nothing could have been further from the truth. I believe them.

The film is cobbled together in large part from 2 previous Sex Pistols documentaries, "Rock 'n' Roll Swindle," (a McLaren project also directed, ironically enough, by F&F director Julie Temple) and "D.O.A," plus clips from BBS television and elsewhere that try to locate the Pistols in the political and social climate that spawned them. This effort, to give the Pistols a historical context, is by far the most valuable part of the film for those trying to understand how a bunch of working class stiffs, who could barely play their instruments, and who only released one album, could set off an explosion that reverberates in the music world--if increasingly faintly--even today.

Best part of the film: footage from their last, secret gig at a palace in a working class district (they had been banned from appearing anywhere in England) before embarking on their ill-fated US tour. It consists of two performance on Christmas Day, benefiting the families of striking local firefighters, who had been out of work for many months. The attendees consist of the local lads and lasses, none of whom are "punk" in any apparent sense of the term.

Before the Pistols performed, everyone eats Sex Pistols cake and ice cream; "Never Mind the Bollocks" shirts are stretched over the pubescent bodies of every bobby soxer. Then, after a thank you from the emcee, the Pistols launch into the searing "Bodies," its sarcastic refrain sung from the point of view of an aborted fetus ("I'm not an animal!/I'm an abortion..."). All the boppers dance like it's a sock hop, with the difference that everyone gleefully throws leftover desserts at one another. Steve Jones is shown playing guitar with his face covered in cake icing, beaming. In his reminiscence about the gig, Rotten grows wistful, saying it was easily their best memory as a band, and the last good one before it all fell apart.

I never knew the guys were such sentimentalists.

It's hard to believe that there once was a time when rock music could actually matter, when it was possible to actually escape the commodified rebellion that now sells Budweiser, Nike, and SUVs, when it was possible, however briefly to scare the pants of the political establishment. Young pop music lovers who swallow the meretricious rebellion of rap or grunge--whose self-important lyrics and idiotically monotonous rhythms make their authors rich off the weekly allowances of white middle class kids whose idea of rebellion is big loud subwoofers in the Corolla Daddy bought them for their 16th birthday--might profit from getting a glimpse of the Real Thing.

The rest of us, who were lucky enough to have been there when history was made, and who can still recall the opening chords of "Anarchy in the UK" blasting all traces of "More Than a Feeling" and "Take It Easy" out of our speakers cabinets and into the first circle of music Hell where they always belonged, can enjoy the film for what it teaches us about the power of ordinary, thoroughly obnoxious people to make their own history, and ours.

Another thing I learned from the film: if Tom Cruise were a junkie, he would look just like Sid Vicious.

In his documentary, The Filth and the Fury, Julien Temple chronicles the rise and the fall of the legendary punk rock band the Sex Pistols. Temple tells this story through accounts given to him by the still living Sex Pistols, as the opposing side to his other Sex Pistols film, Great Rock and Roll Swindle, which was told to him by the Sex Pistols manager, Malcolm McLaren.

Temple uses interviews with the band members to tell the story of the Sex Pistols and intertwines it with live footage of the band's concerts and a taped interview with Sid Vicious, filmed before his death. The band their formation, joining up with McLaren, firing Glen Matlock, replacing him with Vicious, their problems in the United Kingdom and the United States, and the eventual end of the band due to Vicious's heroin addiction.

The documentary really got inside of the Sex Pistols and showed a more human side of the band. While the band is often made out to be a bunch of rowdy, angry, punk rock kids, the documentary showed a different side to them. Footage is shown of the band during a children's benefit show and the band members are seen playing with and talking to the kids with huge smiles on their faces, their joy at being at the event evident. Johnny Rotten also spends a large amount of time at the end of the film discussing Vicious' heroin addiction and his guilt at being unable to help his friend before it was too late.

I really liked the live footage of the Sex Pistols shows, as it showed the band in their element and also did a lot to show what the scene was like when the Pistols were around, and I could see how little it has changed since then. The footage shown of the Sex Pistols on a British television show and clips of newspaper articles at the time also did a lot to show the band's image in the eyes of the media as well.

One problem with the movie was that live footage of the band would be playing and then the film would cut to scenes from a Shakespeare movie or other random scene, which completely detracted from the film. Every time one of those clips would cut in it would jar my attention from the story, and it definitely broke up the cohesiveness of the film.

I think the film did a good job capturing the image that the Sex Pistols gave off, while also contrasting it with more human images of them, like during the children's show. Overall, I think the film was very well done, though I would have liked to have seen more background on each of the band members, rather than the Shakespearean ode. I would give this film a 7/10 and would recommend it to anyone looking for information about the Sex Pistols.

The first Julian Temple documentary on the Sex Pistols, 'The Great Rock n'Roll Swindle' was a gimmicky treatment that suggested the creation of the band was all a clever confidence trick perpetuated by Malcolm Maclaren. In his version the Pistols were a personal creation that deliberately manipulated the media and the 'suits' that ran the music industry into paying out vast amounts of cash even when the band failed to produce any material.

This second version of events is a little more honest. Maclaren is shown to be a self-deluded egotist, the real driving force being 'Johnny Rotten', and the band, far from having the upper hand, were in fact ripped off financially by the very people they were supposed to be rebelling against.

It all ended in a shambolic final concert where Rotten wails out 'No Fun' for 15 minutes and then walks off with a smirking, 'Ever felt you've been cheated?'

Trouble is; this is a lie as well. The Pistols carried on after Lydon left; sad fun and games with the Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs and Sid Vicious' infamous rendering of 'My Way' being the 'highlights'. What's more, within months of Johnny Rotten's noble statement about not selling out at the end of the documentary, the Pistols reformed in the 21st century and gave progressively pathetic concerts.

It's still an interesting documentary but I guess the myth has now become so mixed up with the legend that anything approaching the truth is lost for ever.

This documentary does feature, however, an archive interview with Sid Vicious – whose real name was John, Lydon affectionately remembers - which I have never seen before. It says more about the times than anything else in the film. Although dressed in his trade mark Nazi t-shirt and initially punctuated with all the predictable anarchic attitudes, this veneer gradually slips away to reveal a young naïve man, who's life along with his heroin addiction was spiraling out of control.

No fun, indeed.