Sex Pistols-Filth and the Fury

The Filth and the Fury is the second movie Julien Temple made about The Sex Pistols. His first effort was The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, which was released at the tail end of punk rock's first wave in the 1970s. This earlier effort was criticised for being too skewed towards the Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren's version of events about the band. The Filth and the Fury tells the story from the viewpoint of the bandmembers themselves.The title of the film is a reference to a headline that appeared in the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mirror after an interview on ITV's Today presented by Bill Grundy. See EMI and the Grundy incident on the Sex Pistols main article.Temple's documentary charts the rise, decline and fall of the Sex Pistols from their humble beginnings in Shepherd's Bush to their disintegration at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Temple puts the band into historical context with Britain's situation in the 1970s through archival footage from the period. This film was seen in some ways as an opportunity for the Pistols to tell their side of the story, mostly through interviews with the surviving members of the group, footage shot during the era, and outtakes from The Great Rock and Roll Swindle.