“I’m not a sad sack,” says John Lydon. “The more problems you give me, the better I look.”
The Public Image Ltd. frontman and former “Mr. Johnny Rotten” has been reflecting lately on the last four decades of his career, the time in which he separated himself from the Sex Pistols and became a post-punk pioneer, exploring arty indulgences and mantra-like rock. Over the past eight years, he’s reviewed his life story while participating in interviews for a new documentary, The Public Image Is Rotten. The film offers...
The Public Image Ltd. frontman and former “Mr. Johnny Rotten” has been reflecting lately on the last four decades of his career, the time in which he separated himself from the Sex Pistols and became a post-punk pioneer, exploring arty indulgences and mantra-like rock. Over the past eight years, he’s reviewed his life story while participating in interviews for a new documentary, The Public Image Is Rotten. The film offers...
- 9/21/2018
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
When John Lydon begins a warm and humorous conversation by saying, “Hello, I am very much alive for anyone who is interested — don’t worry though, I’ve been working hard at not being,” you know he’s taking the piss. For all of his notorious snark and cynicism, the thing that comes through loudest in his post-Rotten, post-Sex Pistols career with Public Image Ltd. (a.k.a. PiL) is how joyful and hard-working he is, and how ebulliently he speaks of those who’ve stuck with him — including his wife, Nora Forster, and this longest-ever line-up of PiL, with whom he’s collaborated for ten years.
That unity hasn’t always been there, which is the point of the recently released and currently screening Lydon/PiL documentary, “The Public Image is Rotten.” Then again, it’s been that mash-up of musicians, old pals and frenemies that have made up what is 40 years of PiL,...
That unity hasn’t always been there, which is the point of the recently released and currently screening Lydon/PiL documentary, “The Public Image is Rotten.” Then again, it’s been that mash-up of musicians, old pals and frenemies that have made up what is 40 years of PiL,...
- 8/21/2018
- by A.D. Amorosi
- Variety Film + TV
Tabbert Fiiller on John Lydon: "I never thought about that in relation to Annalisa. There's also, like, he was very shy as a child and then, certainly after or during the Sex Pistols…" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Following the world première at the Tribeca Film Festival of The Public Image Is Rotten, shot by Yamit Shimonovitz, director Tabbert Fiiller went with me into the John Lydon style that took us to Comme des Garçons, Julian Schnabel and pajamas, Muriel Spark's The Public Image, John Waters at a PiL concert, and wildlife. Beastie Boys' Adam Horovitz, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, and Moby count PiL as an influence.
John Lydon: "John is so good with words. I was just trying to keep up. We shot every day."
John Lydon's Public Image Ltd. started out as Keith Levene, Jah Wobble, and Jim Walker,...
Following the world première at the Tribeca Film Festival of The Public Image Is Rotten, shot by Yamit Shimonovitz, director Tabbert Fiiller went with me into the John Lydon style that took us to Comme des Garçons, Julian Schnabel and pajamas, Muriel Spark's The Public Image, John Waters at a PiL concert, and wildlife. Beastie Boys' Adam Horovitz, Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, and Moby count PiL as an influence.
John Lydon: "John is so good with words. I was just trying to keep up. We shot every day."
John Lydon's Public Image Ltd. started out as Keith Levene, Jah Wobble, and Jim Walker,...
- 5/5/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Blisteringly caustic as ever, John Lydon nevertheless reveals himself as an occasionally sentimental sort in Tabbert Fiiller’s fitfully revelatory and charming documentary, “The Public Image Is Rotten,” screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. Ostensibly a documentary about Lydon’s epochal post-punk band Public Image Ltd., the movie turns to be more a portrait of the man himself. This makes sense, given that the band was a Lydon project from the start and he’s the only member remaining from its 1978 founding.
Continue reading Anger Is Still An Energy In John Lydon Doc ‘The Public Image is Rotten’ [Tribeca Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading Anger Is Still An Energy In John Lydon Doc ‘The Public Image is Rotten’ [Tribeca Review] at The Playlist.
- 4/27/2017
- by Chris Barsanti
- The Playlist
While his fellow Sex Pistol Sid Vicious went with the tried-and-true path to Rock Myth status, dying early, Johnny Rotten took a different route — ditching the band at the peak of its fame, returning to his birth name to front a new group whose roster rarely stayed the same for long. A cult band that never became a household name or acquired Pistols-level notoriety, his Public Image Ltd is celebrated in Tabbert Fiiller's The Public Image Is Rotten. A serviceable introduction for those with a passing knowledge of the band or none at all, it will be unconvincing for...
- 4/25/2017
- by John DeFore
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
TWhat is the world coming to when Johnny Rotten is the cheeriest, most positive person in the room? That’s the way it seemed on Friday night at the Tribeca Film Festival, when the documentary “The Public Image Is Rotten” had its world premiere, and John Lydon — known for spewing venom and spittle in equal measure during his days in the Sex Pistols — followed the screening with a slightly unhinged Q&A in which most of his answers fairly reeked of positivity and light. He talked about the importance of books, about how the best kind of political statement is to.
- 4/22/2017
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
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