Sid Vicious in "The Filth and the Fury."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film an: Stars: Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious Director: Julien Temple Rated: R, with strong profanity, drug use, nudity and violence Length: 104 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(July 14, 2000) -- You know you've struck a nerve when a public official says you'd "be much improved by sudden death."

That's what a London official said about the Sex Pistols, as recorded in Julien Temple's fascinating new documentary, The Filth and the Fury.

Temple's energetic profile of the short-lived but influential British punk band employs old and new interviews, archival footage and humorously blended TV and film clips. As a running motif, Temple uses often-funny segments from Laurence Olivier's Richard III, starting with the appropriate "winter of our discontent" speech.

Temple was hired to make the film by the surviving members of the notorious Pistols.

Curiously, the latter-day interviews of the principals are all backlit, hiding their modern-day looks. We'll presume they want to be remembered for how they looked during their brief explosion of fame, more than 20 years ago.

The Filth and the Fury is an energetic, no-holds-barred look at the improbable rise, furious flash and quick fade-out of the Pistols.

They tell of repressed, working-class childhoods, display outrageous street theater and engage in foul-mouthed rages against the system, against their manager, against their audience, and against one another.

Most of the many bands that followed in the punk revolution offered mere noise and vague rebellion -- the Sex Pistols hit home by doing it first, and featured the darkly charismatic performances and edgy lyrics of its front man, Johnny Rotten.

The Pistols formed in 1975, under the aegis of Malcolm McLaren, working out of his infamous S&M leather shop in London. (McLaren wears a black leather mask for the modern interviews.)

Guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook were sometime-musicians and occasional thieves who were teamed with vocalist John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten). The first bassist was Glen Matlock.

The band made its reputation through outlandish, often violent club performances around London.

News reports surfaced about spiked hair, safety-pinned noses, torn clothes, rebellious attitudes and irreverent songs attacking God and country. It was the birth of a counterculture.

When the Pistols appeared drunken and disorderly on a BBC-TV evening talk show, their foul-mouthed escapades led to tabloid reports labeled The Filth and the Fury.

The Pistols' biggest records -- Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen (She Ain't No Human Being) -- formed a one-two punch against the British establishment.

As the film depicts, Rotten pushed out Matlock, whom he never liked, and replaced him on bass with the band's longtime biggest fan, the wildly erratic Sid Vicious. Though Vicious couldn't play worth a darn, he brought the group an onstage outrageousness that nearly surpassed Rotten.

But Vicious also brought along a girlfriend, a drug-addicted hooker named Nancy Spungen whom everybody else in the band hated. And she brought heroin to Vicious, making him ever more disruptive.

"I could take on England," Rotten says. "But I couldn't take on a heroin addict."

Vicious' troubles combined with disputes between Rotten and McLaren to trigger the band's breakup after barely two years.

But in that time, the Pistols fired off one of those periodic rounds of rebellion that give rock 'n' roll its edge.

And that's what makes The Filth and the Fury an important, intriguing documentary.

"We did what we had to do," Rotten says, "and that's why we didn't survive. Only the fakes survive."