They'll Always Be An England: The Making of The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle
As told by the people who were spitting mad before, during and after the shoot.
Paul Cook (actor, The Teamaker/drummer): The film was Malcolm’s idea.
Malcolm McLaren (actor, The Embezzler/band manager): If you have four rock stars who can’t play, why not make a film with four actors who can’t act?
Jeremy Thomas (executive producer): In August 1977 I was approached by 20th Century Fox Productions to meet Malcolm McLaren with a view to co-producing a film starring the Sex Pistols to be directed by Russ Meyer entitled Anarchy In The UK. The idea appealed to me because I thought the film could break new ground in the cinema. The combination of Russ Meyer, known for his bombastic sex thrillers, and the Sex Pistols was obviously a fascinating proposition.
Jonathan Ross (Jonathan Ross): Meyer collaborated with film critic Roger Ebert on a script and in the summer of 1978, flew to London to begin work on Who Killed Bambi? as the project was then known.
Jeremy Thomas: The project had to be aborted because of the inability of Russ Meyer and myself to have any communication with John Lydon and John Beverly [Sid Vicious], who eventually became extremely aggressive.
Russ Meyer (first-choice director): I got the feeling that Lydon and Vicious were dangerous people.
John Lydon (actor, The Collaborator/vocalist): Meyer was just going to turn it into a tits-and-arse movie. I didn’t want to be a part of his regime.
Julien Temple (writer-director): John seemed to think that Meyer was an ‘American fascist’ who didn’t understand the whole punk scene.
John Lydon: After I met Russ Meyer, I felt really shabby about the whole thing.
I hated him from the first moment I saw him - an overbearing, senile old git.
My original choice as director was Graham Chapman from Monty Python but he behaved gloriously badly to Malcolm. That put the mockers on that.
Jonathan Ross: Meyer managed to complete just four days of filming with the Pistols.
Russ Meyer: It was a very depressing experience.
Alex Cox (filmmaker, Sid And Nancy, Repo Man, etc.): McLaren dumped Russ Meyer, an established director of over 20 pictures, and hired Julien Temple, a 23-year-old whose only real qualification for the job was that he’d gone to a lot of Pistols concerts.
Julien Temple: When I saw them play, it was clear to me that I should stop what I was doing and find a way of working with the Pistols. I was shocked with how relevant they were.
Alex Cox: I think Malcolm McLaren hired Julien because he thought he was just some kid he could push around.
Julien Temple: I was initially attracted by the ferocity and originality of the Pistols. Not as musicians but as a band, an attitude. When the Pistols played Leeds in 1976, all the kids in the audience felt that they had to wear safety pins, tear their clothes and spit at the band. I still remember that amazing image. When Rotten finally came off stage, it was like Agincourt. There were these massed volleys of gob flying through the air that just hung on John like a Medusa. It was like green hair or snakes.
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