The Filth and the Fury

Twenty years after he made The Great Rock`n`Roll Swindle, a brilliant episode in the saga of the Sex Pistols, director Julien Temple reconstitutes the history of the group, or better, allows the components of the band, themselves - and not their entrepreneur and musician Malcolm McLaren - to tell their story. Compiled as from documented material from the seventies, mostly as yet unknown, from recent interviews, and from a long conversation with bass-player Sid Vicious in 1978, shortly before he died in Hyde Park, London, the film shows an authentic portrait of one of the most influential bands in the history of rock. The Sex Pistols were in existence for little more than two years, from November 1975 until early in 1978, and, although the band did not invent punk, it was most certainly the group that made it famous the world over, with the launch of the single that revolutionized pop music. Never Mind the Bullocks became the theme to the music of all of a generation. Three chords and three minutes were enough to say all that had to be said. The Sex Pistols were the first to use the expression "fuck" on British television - an irritated response to growing social inequality in England at the time to sum up their rejection of all of the false promises made by a corrupt government.