"I don't think me Mum will like the part about the heroin."

April 12, 2010 11:41 AM

"'Fucking huge,' said McLaren. He told us what sort of a film he had in mind. His ideas didn't involve a plot or a story line. As I recall, his only concern was that it star the Sex Pistols. Russ proposed 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' meets 'A Hard Day's Night.'" Roger Ebert reflects on the Sex Pistols film that never came to be, "I wrote one scene which I particularly liked, involving Johnny Rotten encountering a storefront Church of Scientography, and being persuaded to be "clocked" on something called an H-Meter. This was a device hooked to a steering wheel and an accelerator, which somehow..."
posted by geoff. (25 comments total)

Ebert is one of those characters that you wouldn't believe if he were written as fiction.
posted by dirtdirt at 11:43 AM on April 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

Casting was already underway. Marianne Faithful had been signed for the tricky role of Sid Vicious's mother.

An excellent casting choice. I wish this trainwreck actually got made.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 11:56 AM on April 12, 2010

Ooooh! Ebert tweeted that he was writing this yesterday and I was looking forward to it.

P.S. Even if you hate Twitter, sign up and follow Ebert. He is wonderful.
posted by brundlefly at 11:58 AM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

He is wonderful, but he does post approx. 10,000,000 tweets every minute. Be warned!
posted by Threeway Handshake at 12:01 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

No need to follow Ebert yourself; just follow any other random six people and you will see every single thing he posts re-tweeted multiple times.
posted by drjimmy11 at 12:11 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

My God, this is fantastic stuff. It's full of little throwaway lines that are just howlingly funny:

Russ by now had privately confided that McLaren was full of shit and the Pistols would never have made it in the Army.

posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:12 PM on April 12, 2010

Ebert is just fantastic. He seems to keep getting better and better. At the Movies did not prepare me for this.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:15 PM on April 12, 2010

Ebert was a bit like Zelig on acid when he was younger. How the hell did he end up in all these situations? And writing Beyond the Valley of the Dolls? How did someone like that end up as one of the most famous film critics? ("Critic" being less academic than some circles demand ...)
posted by krinklyfig at 12:17 PM on April 12, 2010

Between Ebert and Hugh Hefner, those guys have lived like few others. If this life is about collecting wild stories and experiences, those two must have it all sewn up. Thanks for this FPP!
posted by dbiedny at 12:20 PM on April 12, 2010

A few years ago Ebert talked about his experiences working on Who Killed Bambi with the guys from Sound Opinions. I can't listen to it at work today, but I remember some really funny stuff about going out to dinner with Meyer and the Pistols. You can check it out here.
posted by hydrophonic at 12:26 PM on April 12, 2010

Man, I love that shirt (but prefer this pose). Neither are safe for work.
posted by peeedro at 12:38 PM on April 12, 2010

I was going to complain that we don't need to FPP every single thing that Ebert writes, but, lately, I'm not sure that's true.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:08 PM on April 12, 2010 [6 favorites]

I was going to complain that we don't need to FPP every single thing that Ebert writes, but, lately, I'm not sure that's true.

Every time Ebert posts something on his blog, there's a pretty good chance it'll be the best thing I read online that day. The better ones, that week or month.
posted by kmz at 1:11 PM on April 12, 2010

What sort of crazy life has Ebert led that he's only now gotten around to telling the story about his involvement with the Sex Pistols?
posted by shakespeherian at 1:23 PM on April 12, 2010

He's a film critic. It's all orgies and machine guns for them.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:26 PM on April 12, 2010 [3 favorites]

What sort of crazy life has Ebert led that he's only now gotten around to telling the story about his involvement with the Sex Pistols?

Perhaps his health battles have encouraged him to tell the stories he might otherwise have held onto until his old age (or even just kept to himself).
posted by tommasz at 1:37 PM on April 12, 2010

Russ Meyer, Sid Vicious and Roger Ebert once sat in the same room together and had a conversation.

That basically blows the curve on "six degrees of separation" for all time.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:49 PM on April 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

I love this:

"What do I want with the fucking army?" Rotten said.

"You listen to me, you little shit. We won the Battle of Britain for you!"

I reflected that America had not been involved in the Battle of Britain, and that John Lydon (his real name) was Irish, and therefore from a non-participant nation. I kept these details to myself.

All those moments in conversation where you wonder what it would be like to be a fly on the wall? That fly = Mr. Roger Ebert.
posted by artlung at 1:52 PM on April 12, 2010 [2 favorites]

I would watch this movie. I would also watch a movie about the attempted making of this movie, and I would watch a movie about making the movie about making the movie of this movie.
posted by maxwelton at 2:20 PM on April 12, 2010

[following a description of a scene in which Sid Vicious starts to make love to his mother, who has just mainlined heroin]

Sid Vicious studied it. Russ, Malcolm and I studied him. He read carefully, smoking. Finally he closed the screenplay.

"I don't think me Mum will like the part about the heroin."

What if, goddamnit. What fucking if.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:32 PM on April 12, 2010

Well, Julian Temple made The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle. It's not the Ebert/Meyer movie but it is pretty amazing all on its own.

An interesting double-bill is this one (sleazy exploitation Sex Pistols biopic with McLaren calling the shots) with Temple's later The Filth And The Fury -- which chronicles the same events, only in a much more journalistic fashion. Which is to say the two films are something like the truth versus the myth.

That said, having seen both several times, The Filth And The Fury may be the 'better film' but I'd rather watch The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle again any day.
posted by stinkycheese at 2:41 PM on April 12, 2010

What sort of crazy life has Ebert led that he's only now gotten around to telling the story about his involvement with the Sex Pistols?

Or possibly the death of McLaren got Ebert to thinking about those times, and so he wrote.
posted by hippybear at 10:43 PM on April 12, 2010

Ok sorry but Valley of the Dolls was the dumbest movie ever made. I mean, DUMB. I know it was written on the fly but this was worse than written on the fly.

So I'm glad this was never made. I liked a Hard Days Night but it doesnt' need to be ruined with a VoD. The lasting impression VoD made on me was that last nipple scene. WTH?
posted by stormpooper at 6:19 AM on April 13, 2010

Ok sorry but Valley of the Dolls was the dumbest movie ever made.

Yes, that may be true. But Roger Ebert wrote Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, which is an entirely different movie.
posted by hippybear at 10:05 AM on April 13, 2010 [1 favorite]

Glad I did a search before I posted this....

Ebert has posted the script for "Who Killed Bambi?" on his site and it's just as fascinating a piece of cultural history as you'd (or at least I'd) want it to be (or at least the bit I was able to read over lunch time)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:56 AM on April 26, 2010