In interviews done at the time of the film's release, Julien Temple talked about the genesis of this film, and the reasoning behind some of the peculiar and novel gimmicks he used. Basically he had some out-takes that he had filmed for "The Great Rock & Roll Swindle", as well as some random British TV recordings from the 1970's that he had recorded on one of the first commercial VCR's. Temple wanted to use this material to tell the story of the Sex Pistols from their point of view, rather than Malcolm Maclaren's point of view presented in "The Great Rock & Roll Swindle". He said he included the ancillary material such as the video recordings to give a flavor of the times. The reason he gave for recording the living Pistols in witness-protection style silhouette (and Maclaren in a mask) was to hide their age and make it seem like the interviews were contemporaneous with the other footage, especially with regard to the interview of a non-silhouetted Sid Vicious in London's Hyde Park in 1978. In practice, the silhouettes are annoying and repetitive and make it hard to identify who is speaking on first viewing.
This film has exactly the same flaws as Temple's original effort, "The Great Rock & Roll Swindle" - its account of the Pistols' story is a biased, inaccurate, incomplete, poorly-structured mess, frequently interrupted by unnecessary, gimmicky, distracting, pretentious irrelevant inserts that have nothing to do with the main story. Only this time, instead of portraying the Sex Pistols as mindless puppets in a cynical commercial ploy by a clever manager, they are portrayed (implicitly via news footage from the 1970's) as idealists making political statements about their society, financially exploited by a useless Maclaren. Both slants are fantasy. The Pistols have repeatedly pointed out they were not political, although Rotten has in recent years started parroting some of the fantasies written about him and the punk scene by intellectuals; any quasi-political imagery foisted on the band was largely the doing of the supposedly useless Maclaren and his cronies. We see all the usual tricks of agenda-pushing documentaries, with isolated, possibly irrelevant snippets of visual interest (e.g. a fat racist squirming through a window to rant to a TV camera) edited together to imply relatedness. What's more, many of these clips appear to date from long after the Pistols formed. Likewise we see the bad guys (Maclaren and cronies) in unflattering shots and the good guys (the Pistols) in flattering or neutral shots. That's just childish, as are the sudden dramatic increases in volume every time a Pistols song starts playing.
Instead of Rock & Roll Swindle's cutaways to shots of Maclaren singing, mugging and pontificating, we get Olivier playing Richard III or TV ads or weather reports or forgotten comedians. These non-sequiturs are supposedly justified on the grounds of Rotten citing his influences or as a reflection of life in the 1970's, but it goes on and on and on long after the original point (if any) was made, until the original point is lost. When Temple was asked if there was any Pistols footage left unused after "The Filth and The Fury", he said there wasn't really, apart from additional concert footage which he considered redundant. This, I suspect, is the real reason for the excessive irrelevant footage, i.e. filler to get a commercial length for a feature film. I would dearly love to have seen the "redundant" concert footage instead. It would have been infinitely more interesting, entertaining and relevant. Temple's TV archives could have interest in their own right, but they belong in a separate documentary.
Ignoring the inept, pretentious directing, this film does have many priceless moments, and does reveal a number of obscure or unknown facts about the Pistols, although I was surprised at how little unused footage there really was, and how much was reused from the final cut of "Swindle". The Pistols are shown to be funny, intelligent and personable, far removed from the punk caricatures. The 3 Johns, and John's closeness to Sid, and John's crying over his dead friend are a revelation. So too, the Pistols' last concert before their American tour, a firemen's benefit with lots of young dancing children joining the band in a cream pie fight - not very punk, but oddly touching. We see footage from the Pistols' very earliest days, together with some of the bizarre early fans like Sue Catwoman highlighting the bohemian roots of the punk scene. We get to see footage of the disgusting Nancy Spungeon. In a remarkable stroke of luck, Temple captured skinny teenage punk fan Shane MacGowan, long before he was famous, doing an acapella rendition of "Anarchy in the UK" on the grounds of a council flat, and schoolteacher Sting playing a gay rapist in a scene from the abortive "Who Killed Bambi" movie. But by far the funniest scene in the film was the intro to a 1978 American TV music show, in which the Pistols were the most normal, most successful, and least ridiculous-looking band to appear on the program.
In summary this film was a wasted opportunity on account of the talentless director. But it's still essential for the odd gem of obscure Pistols footage, which even Temple couldn't mess up. If you want to see the definitive Pistols documentary, check out the "Never Mind The Bolloks" episode of the "Classic Albums" TV documentary series.
