by Cole Smithey

The Filth and the Fury

The Sex Pistols managed to offend more people and leave more destruction in their wake than any other punk group. They accomplished it with a tight collection of text-book rock’n’roll songs that directly assailed the people they were fed up with — the spoon-fed public in general, and militaristic governments in specific. Their incendiary success was as much a symptom of the ugly social climate in London in the mid-seventies as it was their raw music. The Sex Pistols’ untimely demise signaled a weakness in punk music that record companies took as an excuse against signing and/or properly promoting such bands. Director Julien Temple (The Great Rock’n’ Roll Swindle, Earth Girls Are Easy) fleshes out ‘in traditional documentary style’ a balanced view of the band’s 26 month life span in interviews with band members Johnny Rotten Lydon (Singer), Sid Vicious (Bass Guitar), Glen Matlock (Bass Guitar), Paul Cook (Drummer), and the band’s Svengali manager Malcolm McLaren.

The Filth and the Fury is the first punk rock documentary to lay out, in an editorial style, a thorough linear account of the last major musical movement of the twentieth century by way of that genre’s fiercest example. There are so many live versions of the band playing and recording that you’ll be humming God Save the Queen and Liar for days. Temple interviews the Pistols’ surviving members in dark silhouette against a living room window to maintain the film’s focus on the Sex Pistols’ mid to late ’70s timeframe. There are tons of treasured punk related film clips, such as Marc Bolan a.k.a. T-Rex (Bang a Gong) speaking to the camera about his admiration of the Sex Pistols, and about their music as an expression of violence of the mind, rather than violence of the body. There are obligatory clips of the New York Dolls in the height of their career complete with a smacked-out Johnny Thunders playing guitar like a machete-wielding mercenary.

This is the movie that will fully inform any curious person as to which specific germs of societal and musical alienation provided such fertile soil for cool bands like the Dead Boys, the Ramones, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, the Dead Kennedys, the Clash, and Blondie to alter the sound of pop music with an energy and attitude that has not been seen since. Lydon’s depicted descriptions of various British vaudeville comedians whom he aped in creating his stage persona are juxtaposed with the relentless marching of military soldiers and a British populace under extreme poverty. The images instantaneously support the ironic and sarcastic delivery of the band’s mind crunching songs.

The Sex Pistols butted heads with EMI and A&M records before being taken on by Richard Branson’s Virgin record label to release the tabloid title inspired Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols. The band only released one album containing twelve songs that, as it turns out, stand up against every other twentieth century musical pioneer of limited output (i.e. Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson). Even the cherry-picked cover songs that the Sex Pistols chose spoke volumes about their knowing position as avatars of punk ethics. Roadrunner, Jonathan Richman’s bleak version of American suburban male lust, was the freshest two-chord love song to A.M. radio ever written. Stepping Stone, by the television manufactured band The Monkees, is an R&B-lifted paean to anti-materialism which comes across, in the hands of the Sex Pistols, as a heartfelt destructive remedy to commonplace class superiority.

One surprisingly sobering outgrowth of the documentary is the innocent picture that it paints of Sid Vicious as a harmless kid who, before joining the band, was Johnny Rotten’s best friend and the Sex Pistols’ biggest fan. Sid’s interview with Temple took place on a rare English sunny day before he was addicted to heroin, and it reveals a mildly repressed kid, gleefully claiming a territory of his individual space. Interviews with and about Sid’s diabolic girlfriend Nancy Spungen expose her as a prostitute and junky seeking to leach onto the Sex Pistols’ fame. It becomes clear that she, as much as the band’s greedy manager, was pivotal in ruining a band born from ruin. By the time the Sex Pistols played Iggy Pop’s No Fun for their one song set at the Winterland club in San Francisco in February of ’79, McLaren had stolen the band’s money and Nancy had turned Sid into a heroin zombie. Punk had become less than a minimum wage job; Johnny called the last song and the band called it quits.

Whatever It Takes

It seems like there is an American screenwriting conspiracy these days to instruct teenagers poorly, through re-hashed teen romance comedy movie formula, just how lackluster amour should be in the hands of nubile youth. With a dash of Cyrano de Bergerac, She’s All That, and a pinch of Risky Business, Whatever It Takes scriptwriter Mark Schwahn pushes two teenage couples through the motions of improbable cross-bred seductions by codifying teen male and female stereotypes. The cute smart girl turns out to be kinda dumb, the sensitive guy is sensitive to the wrong milieu — i.e. dumb, the dorky jock — dumb by definition — is too willing to condescend outside his milieu, and the stuck-up bombshell cheerleader has back hair, a creeping fungus on her feet, and is only interested in guys who constantly put her down.

So if you’re one of the impressionable teen males this cinematic dribble is aimed at, you’ll come away thinking that denigrating the prettiest girl in school to her face will get you laid. The message to teen girls is that you should become really good friends with your male of choice before giving it up to him. If all of this sounds crass, boring, or entirely predictable, then you already know more about teen dating than the physical act of watching this movie on a Sunday afternoon will do to get you and your date alone in the dark for two hours.

Pretty faces make the world go ’round, and it’s between those adorable glowing faces and the movie’s geeky secondary characters that Whatever It Takes’ hidden charms are to be found. If you’re willing to forget about things like plot and dialogue, and concentrate instead on beauty for beauty’s sake and the exuberant performances of Aaron Paul (as Floyd) and Eric Kushnick (as the stoner), then you’re likely to be sufficiently entertained. Floyd is the headbanger bell cow of, leading boy, Ryan Woodman’s (Shane West - Buffy the Vampire Slayer) trio of goofy buddies. Paul bounces off the scenery with a hyper-kinetic speed that glances off the screen as emphatic grace notes to his surroundings. His intensity is so manic and sincere that he motors the movie up a couple of notches. Eric Kushnick may well have really been smoking pot for his scenes as court jester to the action at hand. Kushnick blesses his all-too-brief appearances with a sense of ironic duty and parody that is infectious beyond his dark, squinty ‘stoned’ eyes.

In a nutshell this month’s teen formula goes — sweet sensitive accordion-playing guy, Ryan, has the hots for cheerleader Ashley Grant (She’s All That), the comeliest girl in school. Although Ryan’s best friend since childhood and next door neighbor Maggie (Marla Sokoloff - True Crime) is a far more obvious choice. Enter jock-hunk Chris (James Franco - Never Been Kissed) who holds the keys to Ashley’s heart, but lusts for Maggie, to cut a deal with Ryan to share information so they can each get the girl they want in time for — you guessed it — the prom. Splodgeness abounds and everyone gets their just desserts after their fiasco at matchmaking has been revealed and it has blown up in their faces.

By the time Ryan serenades Maggie with an accordion version of "I Melt For You" at the Titanic Dreams theme prom, cliché and teen attraction have given way to so much cat-eyed lust and sweaty-palmed pursuit that you’ll take comfort in the idea that the reality of American teen romance isn’t anywhere near this predictable. Forget what I said about the messages that kids will walk away from this movie with. They’re out there writing their versions of happy romantic accidents regardless of any Hollywood teen formula. Hollywood should be paying some of them to write screenplays.