I’ll never forget the first time I heard the Sinatra standard “My Way”, while sitting in the balcony of an art house in Denver, chain-smoking Benson & Hedges ultra-light menthols, staring nearly hypnotized by the sight of sexy Gary Oldman transforming himself into the swaggering embodiment of punk rock, tearing through both cover song and screen. Sid and Nancy (along with Howard Deutch’s Pretty In Pink which also came out in 1986, and Martha Coolidge’s 1983 Valley Girl) was nothing less than a revelation to this teenager with Aqua-netted hair, Doc Martins and ripped fishnets, because it actually portrayed “my people,” spoke to me in my own musical language.
And my feeling of identification probably was not unlike that experienced by a certain segment of the movie-going public 31 years before Alex Cox paid tribute to the junkie romance of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, who witnessed another tale of fucked-up love, possible homicide, and enduring heroin chic. Heartthrob Frank Sinatra would not sing “My Way” in Otto Preminger’s groundbreaking 1955 The Man With The Golden Arm, but he would play the fictional Frankie Machine, another lean and hungry musician of dubious talent weighed down by both a needy blonde and a monkey on his back.
Over a year ago, I did a FilmCouch segment on High School Record, an indie comedy that played at Sundance and SXSW in 2005, and then was basically never heard from again. I was reminded of the film because I started getting really into this girl punk band Mika Miko, which is fronted by Jenna Thornhill and Jennifer Clavin, the two lead actresses in Record. Then, earlier this year, I started listening to No Age, a noise rock band consisting of two young men, one of whom, Dean Allen Spunt, also starred in Record. Looks like all the dots got connected, because now hipster music site Pitchfork is hosting streams of the film, in its entirety but broken into 8 chapters, for one week only. You can check it out here; I believe the week ends on Friday, so hurry up.
In, uh, honor of the news that John Lydon is getting the Sex Pistols back together yet again (crabby aside: you’ve got to wonder if he’s going to feel as sentimental next year when the first PiL record turns 30), it seems like a good time to take a look at the above scene from Julian Temple’sThe Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle. It’s Sid Vicious’s rendition of “My Way”, and if you haven’t seen it before, make sure you watch it through to the end. Coincidentally, Temple’s latest doc, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, comes out on DVD in the UK today before hitting theaters in the US in November.
In 2001, some punk ladies in Austin sparked a revival in Roller Derby. Hell on Wheels is their five year journey from fun loving friends to national sensation. Paul talks with filmmakers Bob Ray and Werner Campbell.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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