The Filth and the Fury
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The Filth and the Fury is a 2000 rockumentary film about the Sex Pistols directed by Julien Temple.
About the film
The Filth and the Fury is the second documentary about the Sex Pistols directed by Julien Temple. His first effort was The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, which was released at the tail end of punk in the 1970s. This earlier effort was criticised for being too skewed towards the Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren's version of events about the band. The Filth and the Fury was seen by critics to be a more balanced version of the events, with the band themselves telling their own story.The title of the film is a reference to a headline that appeared in the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mirror after an interview on ITV's Today presented by Bill Grundy. The Sex Pistols were a last minute replacement, and the interview with Grundy procedeed with Grundy (who was allegedly a notoriously heavy drinker) goading the band into saying "something outrageous", as well as flirting with a 17 year old Siouxsie Sioux (who was part of the Bromley Contingent). Grundy made a remark about meeting her after the show, which provoked Steve Jones to call him a "dirty bastard" [link], and the show descended into what The Mirror described as "the filthiest language heard on British television".
The Today programme was only shown in the London area, but thanks to the next day's tabloid press the entire country soon knew who the Sex Pistols were and what punk was. The Mirror ran the headline "The Filth and the Fury" the next day on their front page to describe the Grundy incident. This entire incident is included in detail in Temple's film.
Temple's documentary charts the rise, decline and fall of the Sex Pistols from their humble beginnings in Shepherd's Bush to their disintegration at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Temple puts the band into historical context with Britain's situation in the 1970s, and interviews with the surviving members of the band, as well as drawing upon archive footage including outtakes from The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.
See also
External links
- [US website]
- [The Sex Pistols on Film]
- [Video of Bill Grundy's interview with the Sex Pistols]
- [Sex Pistols fansite]
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