Julien Temple
Much of the sound of punk rock's early days was defined by the Sex Pistols. The images that audiences who never saw the live performances have come to associate with that sound were defined by Julien Temple. Born in 1953 in London, Temple was inspired to become a film director by the films of French surrealist Jean Vigo. His connections to the punk rock music scene made for a logical channel for his interests: his collected documentary material on the Sex Pistols became a short entitled "Sex Pistols Number 1". In 1980, this documentary was superseded by the more ambitious The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, which blended animation, documentary, and staged footage in presenting the story of the rise and fall of the band from the perspective of band manager Malcolm McLaren. While the result could not be called unbiased or objective, it was nonetheless a huge success, and propelled Temple into a career making music videos for the then-newlyborn MTV. In parallel to this work, he continued to create feature films, including Absolute Beginners (1986), Earth Girls are Easy (1988), and Pandæmonium (2000). In 2000, Temple returned one more time to the story of the Sex Pistols, creating the documentary The Filth and the Fury, which presented an image of the band that surviving members felt was "truer" to their story. Julien Temple's most recent film returns to his roots as a punk rock documentarist, in this case for the late Clash founder and frontman Joe Strummer (Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, 2007).
