In the history of aborted band-makes-a-movie projects, perhaps only the Beatles’ supposed “Hobbit” and the Rolling Stones’ “A Clockwork Orange” rate higher on the WTF? scale than the unfinished, barely started “Who Killed Bambi?,” the Sex Pistols-Roger Ebert-Russ Meyer collaboration. And the man who brought together the most dangerous band in late-70s Britain, the titan of chest-crazed cinema, and the most important American film critic since Pauline Kael together was one Malcolm McLaren.
McLaren, who owned London’s infamous “SEX” shop with girlfriend Vivienne Westwood before helping create John Lydon’s Sex Pistols, died of cancer in Switzerland on Thursday at age 64. So ends one of the more fascinating lives of the last half-a-century. In a lifetime of far-out stories, the “Who Killed Bambi?” saga might be the most quintessential McLaren tale. Ebert, who was tasked with writing the screenplay for the film, posted a wildly funny, strikingly detailed breakdown of the story on his blog on Sunday, and its required reading both for Pistols junkies and Ebert-o-philes. And as Ebert-heads already know, the famed critic wrote three films with Meyer “Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls,” “Up!” and “Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra Vixens.”
The filth-and-fury-filled story begins with a groggy phone call: “‘I need you out here,’ Russ Meyer told me on the phone in 1977. It was 6 a.m. He could not conceive that I might still be asleep. ‘Have you heard of the Sex Pistols?'” It continues with a script that opens with Johnny Rotten being “clocked” on an “H-Meter” at a London “Church of Scientography” and some Sid-and-mother incest and drug use. Naturally, the more outrageous ideas came from McLaren himself who, when questioned by Meyer and Ebert about some of the more salacious material said, “Nah. The more shocking, the better.” The film even got as far as casting including Marianne Faithful as Sid Vicious’ mother (!), P.J. Proby (an American born, Brit pop star) and Jon Finch.
It was destined to crash and burn, and, of course, it did for a variety of reasons including financing and cold feet by Fox. But the Brian Epstein of punk continued to carry the film flame. What followed was Julian Temple’s “The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle,” an occasionally splendid — Sid Vicious’s sneering “My Way” is one of the era’s indelible images, and was gorgeously recreated by Alex Cox in “Sid and Nancy,” right down to the applauding, massacred dowagers — but mostly dreary cash-in on the waning days of Pistol-mania. (Lydon had departed by this time.)
Ebert closes his remembrance with the news of McLaren’s passing. His online journal continues to offer a unique insight into one of filmdom’s sharpest, most incisive minds, never more so when Ebert himself has a starring role. —Christopher Schobert