Danny Boyle's six-episode miniseries "Pistol," based on Steve Jones' memoir "Lonely Boy," inevitably has a memoir character. The plot of it is very familiar to everyone. The Sex Pistols, which have only existed on earth for three years, are like water droplets that evaporate into the atmosphere and become rain, irrigating pop culture for fifty years. They are found in countless stories and characters. Presumably for this reason, plot is the least important in this drama. The camera jumps up and down the ruins of memories with blurry colors and fast and slow speeds.
Because it comes mostly from one person's recollection, it often ends without a beginning. The character was still active one second, and the next second fell into the suffocating darkness of the fragment.
Steve Jones (Toby Wallace) jumps into the crowd, Johnny Rowton (Anson Boone) stares sickly, Sid Withers (Louis Partridge) ornaments) in love and drugs for a long time drunk. Malcolm McLaren (Thomas Brody-Sangster) arrives like a great magician every time he makes his appearance, barely visible in his black cape and top hat.

From left: Sid Withers, Johnny Rowton, Steve Jones

Unemployment in the UK in the 1970s was severe. Unemployment of youth makes society violent and restless, an eternal truth. The train of the times is moving fast, and some young people are left behind. So they picked up the tools scattered by the rails, sometimes weapons, sometimes wine bottles, sometimes musical instruments, depending on luck. With luck, I got an instrument, played a few chords, and the "Sex Pistol" was born. They formed a car of their own, and swooped along, faster than the train that abandoned them.
But this is a broken car without a doubt, driving all the way and dropping parts along the way. All the members of the car had their hair standing on end, their expressions were horrified, and the color of their acne was black, waiting for the moment when the last wheel of the car flew off and the car was completely scrapped. Johnny Rowton rejected Malcolm's suggestion to go to Brazil, and Steve Jones jumped on the bed anxiously, asking him: "Why can't you have a good time? Why don't we feel happy and relaxed for a moment, and the arrow is always on the line. Imminent?"
This is a TV series with only tense, chaotic memories, a rough and lazy plot, and the director's own humility borders on cowardice. He told the Guardian that he did not know "how this story relates to today". While he was delighted that FX had bought the story, he was "not sure if a non-British audience would resonate with the British story".
If so, I still want to shoot, it is pure love. I liked it so much that I refused to look at this band with a reflective and sober eye, and the social background at that time only appeared in the form of expansion films and briefings. Together, they form the noise floor, which sets off the "Sex Pistols" debut.
The director's greatest interest is simply to make the band young again.

Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood

He carefully selects the actors, let the actors who can't play the instrument learn to play (fortunately, the band is not good at technology), and let them really play and sing in front of the camera. This is a group of street idiots who may be good fighters in special times. They have nothing but one talent - no regard for themselves. They are good at using their bodies as containers to hold alcohol, medicine and all the emotions in the air, and release them at one time in the friction of human flesh in a small space.
Abstract words like mind, spirit, soul are far from them. While hippies seek love and peace, and life in poetry and music, dyslexic Steve Jones is stealing things and women, bluffing and fighting, before going on stage with stage fright.
Malcolm's strategic goal for them: to provoke the masses. Specific methods include live violence, offending the public in the mass media, and drawing a string of trick-or-treating ellipses at the Queen's enthronement celebration.
They have little respect for everything, including themselves and friendships. If the above charges aren't too bad, lack of self-respect and fighting each other is definitely bad enough. Malcolm has strict personality requirements for band members, and those who seem to be normal are eventually abandoned. The setting of "A Nest of Snakes and Rat" can't accommodate the good boy Gran Matlock (Christian Leith) of the middle class. He is as sweet as a Beatle, and knows music best among the four, but he can only chop off with a knife, ushering in the hopeless Sid Visas like mud. The lead singer Johnny Roton couldn't bear to see Malcolm saying he was leaving, thinking that his good brother Sid Withers would follow. Unexpectedly, Sid, lounging on the sofa, announced that he was the new lead singer of the band.
If they have friendship and self-respect, they will only be short-lived on the late-night seaside and on the tour bus, and then disappear like a spring dream.
Johnny Rowton boasts to reporters that he's a rock star with absolute honesty, and doesn't gloss over his gloating over his soon-to-be super-rich. The front of the "Sex Pistols" has a gleam of gold, enticing them to squint their eyes and reveal their desire to be a beggar and become a prince, turning their faces like gangsters as they scramble for limited seats.

Johnny Rawton

Malcolm is the star agent who is famous for all kinds of big scams, the leader of this gang of gangsters. He proclaimed that the "Sex Pistols" were hoaxes, that depravity and rebellion were hoaxes, and that all kinds of work schemes were hoaxes. These claims are both rebellious enough and idiosyncratic. But even the manipulative marketing genius Malcolm can't fully control his little brothers.
Getting out of control is one of the main charms of a rock star. There's always been a brief period in their careers where they teetered on the brink of being out of control. The audience looked up at them like an actor walking a tightrope, their blood boiling and freezing. So frightened, and thus become a fan. After this period passed, rock stars mastered the secret to appearing on the brink of being out of control, performing repetitively throughout their lives. Fans don't mind too much, continue to love them from memory, and relive the feelings of their youth.
The Sex Pistols really got out of hand. Instead of turning into skilled old artists, they disintegrated with Sid's suspected manslaughter and overdose.
Nancy's death can be described as a matter of course, like a dream in the camera. Death and disintegration are like a crystal resin that seals them in forever.

Sid's death

The "Sex Pistols" are not heroes, nor are they "anti-heroes." They are a group of young people who have just separated from their parents (there is a scene where they visit each other's parents to send records), and they are not ready to take responsibility. They only care about destruction and covet a golden future. You say, why does society want such people?
The band quickly became a sort of archetype when they themselves annihilated themselves (rather than society). Countless water droplets reflect their presence. Beneath their light, there is also a group of female punks. They leave a faint shadow in the chaos, and their stories have a beginning and an end, a catalyst and a footnote.
Maisie Williams' punk icon Jordan takes the train across London in a see-through raincoat, her naked breasts full of dead flies' eyes all the way. Vivienne Westwood (Dalula Riley) subverts the actor's screen image, with a pink punk head and tailoring clothes, mature, cold and tragic, like a punk version of Joan of Arc . The spirit of this female punk is pure and unutilitarian. She wanted to "set the city on fire", but her partner Malcolm said to her, "What do you know, go back and play with your needles."

Vivienne Westerveld (left) and Jordan

Sidney Chandler's Chris Head and Steve Jones fall in love on and off, teaching him how to play guitar on rare quiet nights. Chris Hyde's disappointment is out of proportion to her beauty. There were times when she thought she was finally getting into the band, each time her hopes were quenched by the presence of another male asshole. Hyde eventually formed his own band, "The Pretenders," and completed himself. There is only a hint of her later story in the play.
The most controversial female role is Emma Appleton's Nancy Spangen, the most famous of rock and roll history. Appleton's interpretation of the character is "an incomprehensible psychopath." The story of Sid and Nancy has been adapted to the screen - "Sid and Nancy" (Sid and Nancy, 1986). These two men are long dead, leaving nothing to help the world understand them. They are also the archetypes of mythology, and how the story is told is entirely up to the imagination.
The movie "Syde and Nancy" is a punk version of "Bonnie and Clyde‎ , 1967", and the two punks are played as a doomsday couple that is more gritty and gloomy than Bonnie and Clyde. They do not have a greasy love, but they are inseparable from each other. In this show, Sid and Nancy stage a vibrant youth love story. Sid's compliments to Nancy are repeated to the point of nausea. The two fell in love at first sight, you and I, all the corruption is just pure love accidentally stained with shit.
I prefer the 1986 movie version, but maybe the sweetness in the show is closer to the truth, after all, they were not in their twenties when they fell in love. Can't there be a little beauty in punk's life, even if they are "Sex Pistols".
Today, "Sex Pistol" is no longer deviant, but synonymous with warm nostalgia. Its stories were broadcast on TV, and the mainstream media wrote unsatisfactory but emotional articles about it. Only Johnny Lawton, as always, has become an old gangster (but still handsome) and still does not change his punk character. In order to prevent the show from using the music of "Sex Pistols", he will go to court with other members. The court has ruled that it can be used, and this "Sex Pistol" young doll has dark eyes.
Johnny Lawton also put down his harsh words: "It's thanks to me that these little Bs are what they are today." He felt that the show was useless, "just a middle-class fantasy." "It's a fairy tale that bears no resemblance to reality."
The director was very happy to hear it, and felt that Johnny Lawton, who was dissatisfied with Pepsi and was aggressive, was the genius in his mind. The friendly aftermath of this courtesy exchange highlights the magical effect of time. However, no matter how it changes, the existence of the "Sex Pistols" is still exciting. It's like there's always a market for horror movies, and shit jokes are always a trusted pastime.