Joe Strummer : The Future is Unwritten

I've posted my interview with Julien Temple about Strummer:

http://blogs.citypages.com/pscholtes/2007/11/interview_with.php

It's playing in Minneapolis this week at the Lagoon, and tonight (unrelated) I'm going to see an all-female Clash cover band at Pi, the lesbian bar. Oh, and I quit my job last week!

He's in love with rock and roll whooaaah!

Mark Jenkins has a short interview with Temple at the Washington City Paper black Plastic Bag blog site. Temple says he never mentions the Give 'Em Enough Rope album because he, Temple, didn't like it!

I just saw the movie tonight. The doc was pretty good although I could have lived without the commentary from Johnny Depp and Bono. It's Strummer warts and all---he was not always a good guy and there's lots of sadness in the movie. Class issues are covered as well as Strummer turning on people he was friends with or played music with. Plus his going from hippie to pubrock to punk to rockstar to whirled music rocker. But there is also awesome 77 era footage of the Clash and fun later stuff with Joe as a dj. Julien Temple, apparently because Strummer liked campfires, has folks who knew or were related to Strummer plus celebs (John Cusack, Matt Dillon) sitting around campfires in NY, London, and LA talking about Joe. Temple incorporates stock footage--like from the animated version of Animal Farm--that sometimes works but not always.

Going to see this tonight!

i liked the pre- and post-clash parts, i guess because i didn't know as much about them. the clash parts seemed pretty perfunctory, and of course too joe-centric (there's a sort of off-hand acknowledgment that mick wrote most of the music). i liked how it was sort of a post-rave revelation to joe that he'd been a hippie all along.

Perhaps they were Joe-centric because the film is about Joe.

yes hence "of course".

i love joe, i just felt kind of bad looking at mick in the movie too. looked in rough shape a bit, and nobody was making a movie about him. there was a jones in strummer/jones! etc.

Yeah, faced!

But, it's not like Joe was getting loads of attention in his late years, either.

i know. that made me feel bad. i like how the movie has the exact trajectory as "behind the music," except the crises are all sort of existential.

Why wouldn't Clash bassist Paul Simenon participate in the movie?

yeah his absence was notable and unexplained.

My guess: The same reason "Give em enough rope" wasn't in it.

They really gloss over a lot of Clash detail, and even a lot of Clash big stuff, because the movie is not about the Clash.

I mean, I had to keep reminding myself of that, because I'd be like "What? We're already in Sandinista!?" and then realize he is only 26, and there is an hour to go.

My guess: The same reason "Give em enough rope" wasn't in it.

-- Mark G, Sunday, 25 November 2007 20:25 (Yesterday) Link

Temple told the Washington City Paper's Mark Jenkins that he did not like that album (and I think that Joe was not that crazy about it). Are you saying that Temple does not like Simenon? I was guessing that it was the other way around.

for actual story-of-the-clash stuff, the don letts documentary is pretty good.

What!

I mean, I enjoyed it, but it gets a lot of basic shit wrong!

It is nice that it includes the Bond Street footage, though. Lots of the footage is nice. Some of the info is wrong or out of order, etc. But yeah, I was being a little harsh, it's good that it exists.

really was stuff wrong? i didn't notice. it was on ovation one afternoon while i was cleaning the house, i guess i wasn't paying much attention.

(this is probably true of lots of movies i recommend to people...)