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

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

geoff. — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:41:11 -0800

"'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..."

By: dirtdirt

dirtdirt — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:43:45 -0800

Ebert is one of those characters that you wouldn't believe if he were written as fiction.

By: Slack-a-gogo

Slack-a-gogo — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:56:22 -0800

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.

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:58:12 -0800

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.

By: Threeway Handshake

Threeway Handshake — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:01:49 -0800

He is wonderful, but he does post approx. 10,000,000 tweets every minute. Be warned!

By: drjimmy11

drjimmy11 — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:11:28 -0800

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.

By: Joakim Ziegler

Joakim Ziegler — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:12:52 -0800

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.

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:15:50 -0800

Ebert is just fantastic. He seems to keep getting better and better. At the Movies did not prepare me for this.

By: krinklyfig

krinklyfig — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:17:22 -0800

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 ...)

By: dbiedny

dbiedny — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:20:36 -0800

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!

By: hydrophonic

hydrophonic — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:26:17 -0800

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.

By: peeedro

peeedro — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:38:23 -0800

Man, I love that shirt (but prefer this pose). Neither are safe for work.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:08:50 -0800

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.

By: kmz

kmz — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:11:18 -0800

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.

By: shakespeherian

shakespeherian — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:23:11 -0800

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?

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:26:06 -0800

He's a film critic. It's all orgies and machine guns for them.

By: tommasz

tommasz — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:37:58 -0800

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).

By: Joey Michaels

Joey Michaels — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:49:52 -0800

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.

By: artlung

artlung — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:52:00 -0800

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.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:20:54 -0800

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.

By: Halloween Jack

Halloween Jack — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:32:05 -0800

[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.

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:41:29 -0800

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.

By: hippybear

hippybear — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:43:54 -0800

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.

By: stormpooper

stormpooper — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:19:59 -0800

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?

By: hippybear

hippybear — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:05:16 -0800

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.

By: MCMikeNamara

MCMikeNamara — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:56:49 -0800

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)