"i told her look i know a lot of folks around town probably been telling you that damn he just a crook i defiantly done some things that i shouldn't be proud of but we can do it by the book" - '1980' - Rehab
"Ha ha - ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" - Johnny Rotten at the last Sex Pistols' show
1980. Reagan is elected President, Thatcher is Prime Minister, and Pac Man is put onto the market -- all of which ensure that the civilized world will have little in the way of spare change for quite some time. In music news, AC/DC loses Bon Scott, the whole world loses John Lennon, and a film comes out that attempts to put the final word in on what was, in essence, probably the most influential band to come out of England since the Beatles (Except for the Clash, of course)
That would be the Sex Pistols. And the movie would be The Great Rock N Roll Swindle -- a "mockumentary" in which film student Julien Temple presents for the camera rock Impresario Malcolm McClaren's rather idiosyncratic explanation as to how he not only managed the Sex Pistols, but was actually responsible for the rather rackety-blam trajectory the band took.
And that's because, in the words of Baldrick from Black Adder, the whole loud and sordid tale of drugs, violence, and rude words was a ten-part cunning plan by Malcolm to steal our money. The cancellations, addictions, and tragedy were all somehow calculated in advance to make a load of dosh and run for it before anyone realized that this hip, new band was unable to play, hated each other, and on the road to implosion.
(All that plus Tenpole Tudor singing 'Who Killed Bambi' - what more could you ask for?)
Wait, you're not buying it? Then you are indeed wise, my son. This movie takes the truth about what happened and ass-bangs it through a concrete wall. It makes FOX News look downright truthful, and trust me when I say that's saying something.
But I come not to fact-check McClaren, nor to bury him -- as both of those have already happened, in turn. If you want a better view of what happened to the Pistols, watch Temple's other work on them, The Filth and the Fury. And, as we know, Mr. McClaren popped his clogs not that long ago. Cancer, they say.
I come instead to praise what is, actually, the first proper badfilm I've talked about since I started this experiment (other than my look at Plan 9 from Outer Space). The Swindle is a gloriously bad movie, consisting of equal parts narcissism, surrealism, and lies, held together with animation, film clips, and strange set pieces that tell more about what was going through McClaren's mind at the time than any sense of what actually took place in that all-important year when punk rock literally exploded (while the Sex Pistols literally imploded).
But at the same time, on a certain level where black is white, night is day, and rock and roll is disco, it IS the truth -- even if it never happened.
The basic story is this. We follow Malcolm and his partner/student in crime (Helen of Troy) around England as Steve Jones chases after him, wanting his share of the money that Malcolm apparently got out of this scam. All the while, Malcolm cheerfully explains to Helen how he invented "the punk rock," taking the time to spell out his ten part merchandising strategy.
Lesson One: How to Manufacture Your Group
Lesson Two: Establish The Name
Lesson Three: Sell The Swindle
Lesson Four: Do Not Play, Don't Give The Game Away
Lesson Five: How To Steal As Much Money As Possible From The Record Company of Your Choice
Lesson Six: How To Become The World's Greatest Tourist Attraction
Lesson Seven: Cultivate Hatred: It's Your Greatest Asset
Lesson Eight: How To Diversify Your Business
Lesson Nine: Taking Civilisation To The Barbarians
Lesson Ten: Who Killed Bambi?
Which all add up to make a narrative that is uneven and takes a lot of strange turns, encompassing a visit to Johnny Rotten's prim and proper voice coach, phone interviews with record bigwigs with terrible hair, and a very nasty harangue about the band's sexual preferences from a woman with ants on her face (!!!). We also see, though animated sequences, what happens when the early version of the band (with Glenn Matlock) gets on plane for parts unknown, and a later version of the band (with Sid Vicious) gets invited back to a record label.
Toilet stall sex, vomit, and the press never looked so bad.
But it's after we're 2/3rd of the way through that the film really goes strange. For some reason we can never really follow (civilization to the barbarians?) after the Pistols seemingly die on stage in San Francisco, Steve Jones and Paul Cook head down to Brazil to team up with the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs. The resulting terrible jam sessions attract the attention of Nazi in hidingMartin Bormann, who convinces them to sail up the river and sing "Belsen was a Gas."
Yeah.
Of course, this is going on because Sid -- the only person who ever made a swastika t-shirt look good -- is in jail in New York. In fact, the movie ends with a collage of news articles telling us that our beloved Mr. Vicious has died, which I am told was forced upon them by the movie powers that be in England.
Before that, though, the film ends with a symbolically emasculated Steve Jones having been positioned just where McClaren wanted him -- almost as if he'd planned it all. Which he clearly did not. Cue the animated video for "Frigging in the Rigging." The End.
There's a lot to be said about this timeframe, and this is just one piece of the larger puzzle that was the Sex Pistols. But if you can turn off the pieces of your mind that want to shout "bullshit!" every time Malcolm opens his very wide mouth, there are a lot of sublime but horribly beautiful bits.
* The whole "gordon riots" sequence at the start in which Malcolm assembles his players, one by one, as cosplaying Londoners riot and prepare to hang and burn them in effigy.
* The soft song as Malcolm and Helen paste up posters singing the praises of Moors Murderer Myra Hindley.
* The disco versions of "Pretty Vacant" and "Anarchy in the UK," performed as Malcolm throws bottles at the band.
* The entire sequence as "Martin Bormann" stalks the half-pistols through Rio's carnivale just to get a place in the new band.
* Tenpole Tudor's delightful turn as a singing movie theater worker. "The Sex Pistols? I thought they were een... BRRRAZEEL?"
And, of course, the scary but strangely sweet (and ultimately sad) sequence in which Sid Vicious, rocking that swastika shirt, stalks through the streets of Paris as a band plays a french version of "Anarchy in the UK" on an accordion. In it, Sid alternates between his manufactured image of a stupid, violent thug, and the broken man-child that was silently weeping behind the facade -- going from threatening someone with a blade to jumping up and down in joy as he sees a sweetie through the window, then splattering what he didn't eat in a streetwalker's face.
"Will you marry me, Sid Vicious?" she asks the camera. Poor boy could have done a lot worse.
Punk rock has a lot of people who want to dissect and explain it, and a lot of people who cry bullshit on such intellectual explorations, and insist that it's got to be lived to be understood. It doesn't have a lot of dissections that are so willfully bullshitted into existence, though. If you want a decent understanding of what happened, read "England's Dreaming" by Savage or see "The Filth and the Fury." If you want to understand Malcolm McClaren beyond those two points, this movie is essential viewing.
A badfilm classic, The Great Rock N Roll Swindle might be hard to find on video store shelves, but it's worth the quest.