About LS.n


 
 

Review: The Filth and the Fury
by Jordan Hoffman

published 4/3/00

REVIEWS HOME



Jordan Hoffman is LeisureSuit.net's Queens-based Senior Editor.



MOST RECENT YAK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE:

Subj: (C)ulture
Our revolution in the 60's, here in the states ran smooth out gas like an old car by the roadside. As a social statement it appeared to me that the inmates won the war afterall was said and done, in Britain. Thanks to you all, each week a load of music rag's would show up in receiving for the Gibson Guitar company where I worked, and 4 of us could barely wait for our lunch break to sit and read about what the Brit's had gotten into last week.

-- bootspur
May 31, 2007 at 6:35AM

Read more or post your own





Be cool like us!
Are you getting our weekly update?





It's GOOD to share!
E-mail this article to a buddy

Listen--I'm not punk. One of the main selling points of Julien Temple's latest blow job to the England's Dreaming days was that the resulting wad of cinema, a new doc called The Filth and the Fury, was playing at Film Forum, and that Film Forum's only a few short blocks from Carmine Street's Bagels on the Square. Planning your day around some good nosh? That's not punk.

After the flick, as I picked at my sesame bagel with garlic and herb cream cheese, I wondered, was that a good film? The answer, without question, is yes. It told its story well and uniquely. The problem with it, and one that I should have been able to predict before I even sat down, is how I so very much wish people would stop proselytizing on the early days of Punk.

The first two thirds are quite remarkable. Using found footage, Temple assembles a non-linear barrage of time and place: mid-70's England. It was a terrible time for economic disparity, more so than usual it seems. There were broken political promises, palls on any sort of 60's optimism, and dreadful garbage strikes. A bunch of loser kids with no futures kept meeting in a cool shop that sold weird outfits and records owned by Malcom McLaren. Among them were Glen Matlock, Paul Cook and Steve Jones, who were forming a band. McLaren, acting as manager, suggested they dump their other singer and hire the dramatic, flamboyant, and Ritalin-deprived John Lydon, later to be re-christened Johnny Rotten.

Temple does a good job of exposing the traditional side of the infamous Johnny Rotten persona. Juxtaposing him with British music hall archetypes, one can see, now that the shock value of Punk has dwindled, just how old-school Rotten's antics really were. The Sex Pistols' point was this was angry assault music for the masses--music anyone could make. However, few performers have the innate glow that Rotten had (and still has, to a certain extent.)

The old saw continues: Matlock (who wrote most of the Pistols' best material) wants to tone down the renegade angle of the group, the band kick him out and hire their number one fan and Punk-scene golden boy John Ritchie, who is renamed Sid Vicious. Never mind that he has no idea how to play bass.

Sid is seen again in archival footage (much of it Temple's own) in his famous swastika T-shirt. The film tries its hardest to portray him as "little boy lost," though, cropping the frame to show his un-Punk chubby cheeks, or nodding off during an interview. John Lydon (as Rotten is called in the new footage) tries to spin how Sid's death was manipulated by his wife/murder victim Nancy Spungen, Malcom McLaren and the Media. He even gets sentimental, remarking that Sid was his friend, and that he came into the band as a fan and had "no idea what he was getting into." This is total bullshit. Sid was ever much part of the scene before hand, and was as much a bruising idiot as the rest of the group. That he fell into heroin addiction was just luck of the draw. One of them had to.

The final third spirals deep into catty, anti-Punk nonsense. All the subjects still hold grudges and blame one another for this disaster or that. Listening to the rock n' roll Rashamon is just a drag. It's 20 years ago: get over it!! I realize, though, that this is not the fault of the film or Temple, it's just a by-product of a documentary on petty, stupid people.

Temple's editing and use of sound design is top-notch. I also like how all the faces from the current interviews are obscured; do we need to see the Sex Pistols all grown up?

The biggest revelation for me (other that seeing a baby-faced, dye-job Shane MacGowan sing "Anarchy in the U.K." with an equally youthful and drunk Siouxie Sioux) was just how well the songs hold up. The Sex Pistols' music was only one part of their story, everyone will tell you that. And I can't recall the last time I sat down and played "Never Mind The Bullocks." But I found myself really enjoying "Holidays In The Sun" and "God Save The Queen." Maybe it's just because they remind me of 9th grade, or maybe it's because they actually rock. Who knows? All I know is that we'll never get rid of the cult of the Sex Pistols, so we may as well embrace their brand-name version of desperate, idiotic behavior. And I hope someone with as suave a filmmaker's touch as Julien Temple does a doc on me some day.


Your name:

Subject:


Comments:

Forward a copy of this yak to the LS.n Editors

Forward a copy of this yak to this article's author

If you want to get an e-mail if someone responds to your yak, give us your address below. It won't be made public.

THE YAK SHACK


Name: bootspur
Subject: (C)ulture
-- May 31, 2007 at 6:35AM
Our revolution in the 60's, here in the states ran smooth out gas like an old car by the roadside. As a social statement it appeared to me that the inmates won the war afterall was said and done, in Britain. Thanks to you all, each week a load of music rag's would show up in receiving for the Gibson Guitar company where I worked, and 4 of us could barely wait for our lunch break to sit and read about what the Brit's had gotten into last week.

Name: Max
Subject: above
-- Nov 15, 2005 at 1:25PM
First, its simple, Sid was an ass hole, Rotten was and has always been saying the truth, Cook and Jones have no sayin, niether does matlock. Maclaron is a dick and we all no it.
Second, Monkey Boy, when Jordan Hoffman says "written" he doesnt mean the lyrics. Also, all the songs you mentionbed monkey boy are the most comercial. And anotehr thing, What the fuck is a jew doing writing about the Pistols? Your all well brought up little shits, fascists, who get everything in life served for you...
bye

Name: agi
Subject: re: above
-- May 22, 2004 at 9:55AM
the one who is singing with
mcgowan is not siouxie

Name: Monkey Boy
Subject: RE: Editors respond
-- Mar 11, 2002 at 2:57PM
I have read most if not all books about the punk era. Hell I lived it! First off you give credit to Matlock for writing the "best" songs. You are foolishly mislead by him. "God Save the Queen", the Pistols best song, was written by Rotten. "Did you no Wrong", re-written by Lydon. "17", Lydon. "Liar" "No Lip"..., Lydon, or bastardized re-words of other artists. The only song that Matlock can truly take credit for is "Anarchy in UK". "My Way", Viscious. The majority of the other songs were band collaborations, and rewording of other songs.

Everything Malcom took credit on is Johnny Rotten, through and through. The clothes, the music, the style, the attitude. All of it! He and that skank, Vivenne, stole and marketed what Rotten was doing! PERIOD!

As to Rotten "fucking the corpse" of Viscious? How dare you! Sid was Lydon's closest friend. Lydon did everything he could to rid Sid of that whore Nancy, and the drugs. But the herion was stronger than Sid's will and John's ability. So yea in SF in '78 Lydon "washed" his hands of him.

In response to Lydon's "only talent ... is the slow valve release of his brash persona". Have you ever heard of PiL?

So to close, try reading (seeing) more than that dribble "Filth and Fury", especially something from someone on the outside looking in. He might have been there but he does not grasp the true aura of "punk" (another BAD example is "Sid & Nancy"). Try talking to Idol, Hynde, Siouxie, Paul Cook.... Funny how they disagree with what the "flick" shows.

Name: The Editors Respond
Subject: Re: Review: The Filth and the Fury
-- Jan 24, 2002 at 2:08AM
Iris, you ignorant slut.

John Lydon has been fucking the corpse of Sid Viscous on every talk show couch since the decline of the Pat Sajak Show. The only talent Lydon ever had is the slow valve release of his brash persona. He knew just when Temple wanted him to well up and he hit his mark perfectly. I'd love to see the outtakes.

And how anyone could miss an idiotic brute like Sid Viscious is quite a mystery. Lydon's done quite well for himself. You think he wants Viscous vomiting up cheap gin all over his furniture? If he came back from the dead Lydon would pick him up by the lapels of his Swastika-laden shirt and dump him out with the trash.

Name: Iris
Subject: Review: The Filth and the Fury
-- Jan 24, 2002 at 1:54AM
Insinuating that John was foolish for defending Sid and getting "sentimental&qu ot; over the death of someone who was his BEST FRIEND is just another example of how way too many people expect legendary figures (rock artists in particular) to "live the legend" (i.e., expecting Lydon to be jaded concerning Sid's passing and the events that led up to it). I found this review to be very insensitive to the nature of John's grief for Sid.

Name: Chris
Subject: Review: The Filth and the Fury
-- Apr 8, 2000 at 9:45PM
I'd like to be able to buy records owned by Malcolm McLaren too....

Name: Alex
Subject: the Filth & the Fury
-- Apr 6, 2000 at 9:29PM
I agree that there's been more than enough misty-eyed, revisionist reminiscence regarding the salad days of Punk Rock, but if you're going to write about it, do your homework: Nancy Spungen was Sid's girlfriend,not his wife. Also, it's BOLLOCKS, not BULLOCKS.
Lastly, I found your comment that Sid did indeed know what he was getting into and was fated to die of a herion addiction both woefully presumptious and frankly rather insensitive. I mean, how the hell would YOU know?


This page is best viewed with the latest version of the Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.

© Copyright 1998-2001 LeisureSuit Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved.
Some content is copyrighted by the author and is used with permission. No portion of this page or its content may be reproduced, in part or in whole, electronically, in print, or in any other form or by any other means, without the written consent of the LeisureSuit.net editors. Contact us at webmaster@leisuresuit.net.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]