Where to begin here. Its kind of impossible for me to imagine a world in which I DIDN’T see The Filth and the Fury at just the right time in my life. Let’s watch shall we.
The style, the message, the energy. All of these hit me like a freight train in my early 20s. The Sex Pistols music itself, I enjoy it in fits and spurts. But the whole punk rock mindset. The “us vs. them” mentality, the “we are going to make our own world and fuck what’s been offered to us”. This is exactly what I needed as an angry young man. And as an artist, the way in which this whole documentary is cobbled together from scraps and ephemera. After seeing this documentary I knew what I had to do with my life.
I remember that. Actually I remember only one part of the film, when Johnny Rotten went off on the people who all wore the punk rock style of rubber and leather, and how they are all lemmings with no individual identity. Made me feel a bit bad for the guy wearing those clothes in the audience.