Danny Boyle tried to capture the anarchy of the Sex Pistols

“Is it spit?” asked a man from most of the 100 Club, a small underground space with red walls, with the smell of spilled beer, cigarette smoke and a thousand lost nights just off Oxford Street in central London.

Yes, they were spit on. The club was the scene of one of the first performances Sex Pistolsand in June of last year it was re -created for gunsa six -part series about the British band, directed by Danny Boylewhich will broadcast Hulu in the United States and Disney+ in other territories beginning May 31.

Sex Pistols are the “philosophers and the dress code” of the punk revolution, says Boyle, who seems to be everywhere on set, talking extras about audience behavior, checking cameras and peering monitor while the actors perform the song bodysuits and the public went mad.

“I tried to make the series chaotic and true to the Pistols’ manifesto,” the director said in a recent interview. That means taking an experimental approach to filmmaking: “We’ll do the whole scenes, the whole presentation, not knowing if we got the ‘right’ take or not. Everything you were taught not to do.”

Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who has the virtue of playing the band’s manager Malcolm McLaren, thinks Boyle’s approach is unlike anything he’s experienced before on a set. “You feel something could go wrong, but you can trust Danny and go ahead and experiment – very much Sex Pistols!”

The result is a charged, visceral, cubist portrait of the flamboyant rise and explosive fall of the Sex Pistols, whose short existence from 1975 to 1978 caused punk rock to be a global phenomenon and where anarchic songs (god save the queen, Pretty vacant) became songs for the unaffected.

Written by Craig Pearce, the series is based on memoir Tales of a Lonely Boy (Stories of a sad boy), by Steve Jones, the band’s guitarist. But while Jones ’story is“ a wonderful way, ”Danny Boyle explained that he and Pearce sought to paint an integrated picture of the whole group and the’ 70s world where it began.

The band originally consisted of Jones, singer John Lydon, known as Johnny Rotten, drummer Paul Cook and Glen Matlock on bass, who were replaced in 1977 by Sid Vicious. The first episode begins with a montage of archive footage: the queen of Britain waving her heart to the people, a slapstick scene from the long series of films carryinga performance by David Bowie, striking workers and garbage piled up in the streets.

When we first see him, Jones (Toby Wallace) is busy stealing stereo equipment from a Bowie concert. (The singer’s lipstick is still on the microphone.) Jones and his bandmates are visibly angry, bored and “trying to scratch enough for another pint of beer,” the guitarist told them as they discuss how the band should dress.

“It’s hard to overestimate how classy and moribund British society was for these guys,” said Craig Pearce, who knew Jones, Cook and others close to the band before he started writing most of the script in his native Australia. in the early months of the pandemic.

“The promise of the Swinging Sixties was not fulfilled; the freedom of rock ‘n’ roll did not materialize for most young people,” Pearce said. “There’s a feeling that if you’re born into a particular class, you can’t escape. You have to accept what was done to you.” Then, he continues, “this group of kids who said ‘you’re sleepwalking through life'” came.

Boyle, he added, has always been his “dream director” for the series. “We couldn’t believe it when he said right away that he wanted to do it.” Boyle couldn’t believe it either. “Music throws me a lot, but I never imagined doing the Pistols,” he said. “I followed John Lydon’s career very closely and his hatred of others was no secret.”

But after reading Pearce’s script, Boyle immediately said yes. “Which was ridiculous,” he laughs, “because I don’t even know if we’re going to have music, the most important thing.”

And music?

Lydon objected to the use of Sex Pistols music and the series itself, but eventually lost the legal case when a judge ruled that the terms of a deal with the band gave Cook and Jones the most votes. Danny Boyle mentioned that he tried to contact Lydon during the court dispute. He added that he hopes the series will “show the genius and humility” of the leader.

The director also said that while he read and researched hard and talked about everything he could find associated with the band, he eventually trusted his intuition in developing a strategy for the series.

“I grew up in a working-class environment like Steve and the others,” he says. “We’re the exact same age and I’m a music obsessive. I had to explain to the artists what the ’70s was; they just didn’t realize how little stimulation there was, how you waited all week for Thursday to show up! ” the lifeline of the New Musical Express newspaper! “

Before filming began, the actors who played the band members spent two months in “band camp,” going through the day-to-day routine of music lessons, voice training, and rehearsals. in motion. Boyle once talks to them about the ’70s and shows them pictures. Later, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith led the British electronic music group Underworld, they spent a lot of time playing together.

The director said that in most cases he avoids combining the cast with trained musicians. “I don’t want anyone locked up in a expertise“, He pointed out, and added that Jacob Slater, who plays Cook, is a great guitarist, but he needs to learn to play drums. He also decided not to do any post-production work in music.

“Like the Pistols, we just have to get up and, not as perfect as we are, do it,” said Sydney Chandler, who plays American singer Chrissie Hynde. Chandler’s character is one of the few memorable women in the series, along with designer Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley), Nancy Spungen (Emma Appleton), and punk icon Jordan (Maisie Williams).

As for the band members, “we don’t want them to be awards or cartoons,” added Anson Boon, who plays Lydon and who, like his character, never sings. “Pistols make a raw, angry wall of sound, and we want to capture that essence by trying not to make an imitation.”

Playing a character who is also a real person is scary but fascinating, says Toby Wallace, who got to know Steve Jones a bit before filming began. “We talked a lot about his family and later on he gave me the first guitar lesson I ever really had.” The series describes Jones’ sad childhood, which Wallace felt was the center of the character’s “anger and frustration,” he says, and led him to create “a gang that represents the unrepresented.”

For Boyle, working on the series informed him of the importance of the Pistols beyond music. “They were a small group of working-class men who broke the order of things, more than the Beatles,” he maintained. “That has particular resonance in the UK, where the way you expect to behave is very ingrained.” The Pistols, he added, gave their fans permission to do what they liked, to mess up whatever they liked, to shape their lives in unique ways.

“They gave meaning to vanity,” he said.

By Roslyn Sulcas (The New York Times)

Translation: Roman Garcia Azcarate

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