I got to see the Joe Strummer movie, The Future Is Unwritten, with Townsman Chickenfrank the other night. It’s funny, as I was getting ready to go, with Hrrundi’s latest anti-hippie rant (only the first in a series that I’m sure he thinks will finally convince us of his point of view on this matter) fresh in mind, I was wondering if I could somehow tie my thoughts on the life and works of Strummer into refuting my good friend’s latest cry for help. And as it happened, this Julian Temple memorial service of a biography played right into my hand!
What the film lacked in Clash nerdboy musical analysis (eg, no complete song performances, no scenes with engineer Bill Price pulling up tracks from the master tapes, no in-depth discussions of how a cool track on, say, Sandinista was built from the ground up), it made up for in love. Bucketfulls of love! Using tape recordings of Strummer telling his own tale and a vast array of unseen (at least by my eyes) footage, including childhood home movies; a very early Clash rehearsal; and a holy grail for me, actual footage of The 101ers (!!!), Temple structures the film around campfire reminiscences by friends, former bandmates, lovers, and the like.
In what first seemed like an unnecessary act of Insider Cool but what I would come to see as a warm, egalitarian touch, Temple does not flash any names under the speakers, so when you’re not seeing the obvious characters, like Steve or Mick Jones, you have to figure out for yourself if you’re seeing an old love, a bandmate from The 101ers, John Cooper Clarke, or Zander “Snake” Schloss. I think one of the points of the film was that Strummer had built a broad community in his years and any one of us might have felt a part of it. No one’s flashing subtitles under your face or my face, so why should the folks on the screen have their identities highlighted? For the most part, it kept the focus on what each person had to say about Joe. There were exceptions, of course (Johnny Depp in his Captain Jack get-up), but even Bono worked hard at being one of the admirers.
One of the highlights for me was seeing Topper Headon looking so healthy and well-adjusted. Compared with footage of him from his final days in The Clash along with my memories of him looking at death’s door a few years ago in that Don Letts film on the band, Topper is looking like he’s turned a corner, sitting on the beach in his pink v-neck sweater. Drummers that great need to stay free.
But onto the hippie/punk stuff…
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