Shout! Factory has announced that the infamous Sex Pistols film The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle will be issued on DVD later this spring. The film is expected to be in stores on May 3rd in the US and May 16th in the UK. The DVD release includes a new audio commentary by director Julien Temple (The Filth & The Fury, Absolute Beginners). From the press release:
Originally released to U.K. theaters in 1980, The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle is a fictitious biography of the Sex Pistols (John Lydon, Sid Vicious, Paul Cook, Steve Jones) and their grandiose manager Malcolm McLaren. McLaren, in full Machiavellian swagger, divulges his recipe (albeit bogus) for creating the band - Ã la The Monkees - as part of a grand plan to bilk record companies and hoodwink disaffected youth around the world. Written and directed by Temple while still a film student, the movie careens back and forth between riveting performance footage (shot in England and the U.S.) and farcical skits of the band, record company executives, and an assortment of irreverent characters. Though taken as a spoof, the film's real intent was to poke fun at, even deflate a bit, the idolatry that surrounded the band at the time. Also included are bits of news footage, archival material on the band - some real, and some phony - and amusing animated interludes. As the film's original tagline stated, The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle is the film that incriminated its audience.
Swindle began as a project called Who Killed Bambi?, which was written by Roger Ebert and directed by Russ Meyer. That project existed for a mere two days before funding troubles put a halt to filming. McLaren and Temple took charge of the production (albeit with a completely different script) in the period after the Sex Pistols' final show in San Francisco. Johnny Rotten had left the group by this time and had little to do with the film, which includes footage of the remaining members playing with exiled British train robber Ronnie Biggs among other odd sequences. As mainly a pop culture experiment on the part of McLaren, the film has been criticized for further distorting the already skewered history of the band's short existence.