Love Kills (Or Sometimes Just Lies Limp): Sid and Nancy 40 Years On

Sid & Nancy (dir. Alex Cox, 1986) 

An official theatrical film poster

 

 

I. 

 

Sid and Nancy - also known by the working title Love Kills [1] - was released 40 years ago. 

 

It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 14 May 1986 and was first shown in London at the Limelight Club on 20 July, before going on general release in UK cinemas the following month.

 

It's a biopic directed by Alex Cox, who co-wrote the script with Abbe Wool, starring Gary Oldman as the Sex Pistol Sid Vicious and American actress Chloe Webb as his punk paramour Nancy Spungen [2]. 

 

 

II. 

 

Oldman is a talented and versatile actor - not one of my favourites, though I don't dislike seeing him on screen - but his initial decision to turn down the role of Vicious (not once, but twice) was one I wish he'd stuck by. 

 

For one thing, he was already 27 when filming took place in 1985, which makes him too old to play a character who died aged 21. Also, by his own admission, he had zero interest in Vicious and punk subculture, wasn't a fan of the Sex Pistols, and found the entire story surrounding Sid and Nancy banal. 

 

Ultimately, Oldman only accepted the role at the urging of his agent and after learning that he was being offered a £35,000 fee to star in the movie [3]. 

 

However, to be fair, he did throw himself into the part with all his characteristic intensity once he agreed terms. Amusingly, he lost so much weight in such a short period in order to play Vicious that he was briefly hospitalised with malnutrition [4]. And at least Oldman came from a relatively working-class background, unlike posho actor Louis Partridge who played Vicious in Danny Boyle's ludicrous six-part mini-series Pistol in 2022 [5].  

 

Oldman - who went on to become an Academy Award-winning Hollywood actor - now rarely mentions Sid and Nancy and casually dismisses his own performance in the film.  

 

 

III. 

If Oldman, at 27, was just a tad past it to play Sid, Chloe Webb, pushing 30 when she took on the role of Nancy - who died aged 20 - was way over the hill (certainly by punk standards). 

 

So again, whilst she does a reasonable job, I think it would have been better - or at least more daring - to have cast 20-year-old Courtney Love in the role - one for which she submitted a video audition and was genuinely passionate about. 

 

Cox was deeply impressed by Love's youthful enthusiasm - and her acting ability - but eventually caved in to pressure from the film's financial backers and investors who insisted on a more experienced actress in the role. 

 

He did, however, create and write the minor supporting character of Gretchen for Love (a fictional New York junkie friend of the punk couple) so she could still be part of the project and this marked her debut feature film appearance (several years before she formed the band Hole and met Kurt Cobain).      

 

 

IV. 

 

Although Sid and Nancy failed to recoup its production budget at the box office, the film was received positively by most critics [6] and has since developed a cult following. Strangely, however, it is rarely shown on British TV and I don't think I've seen it other than at the cinema back in August 1986 - when I was less than impressed, as this diary entry makes clear:

 

Sophie and I woke up late. After lunch, we set off on a nice sunny day to King's Road. Boring! Nothing (and no one) caught my eye. From Chelsea to Kensington Market and Hyper Hyper. Still found nothing to excite. Everything seems to have stagnated. But perhaps that's a good thing - a precursor to a change of some kind. Or maybe not.   

      Got to Leicester Square at five-ish. Had something to eat in Pizzaland and then went to the cinema. It had been my intention not to see Sid & Nancy, but felt a strange obligation to do so - and Sophie had bought the tickets. The two main parts were well-acted, so kudos to Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb. Other cast members were less convincing - particularly David Hayman as Malcolm and Andrew Schofield as Rotten. 

      Ultimately, I came away asking myself what was the point of such a film other than to echo the 'Just Say No' anti-drugs campaign? The only thing worse than the ridiculous ending of the film was Joe Strummer's soundtrack. [7]

 

As I say, I don't think I've since re-watched the film - though I'd very much be interested to do so, one day, just to find out if it's as bad as I remember it. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Director Alex Cox used the title Love Kills throughout the writing and development process. Why this title was dropped (or relegated to the status of a subtitle) in favour of the more prosaic Sid and Nancy, I don't know, but one suspects there was probably external pressure to do so coming from the film's producers (particularly after a letter was received from a party claiming to own the title 'Love Kills' and threatening legal action).

      Clearly, it must have been a decision made late on, because by then Joe Strummer (formerly of The Clash) had already written the film's title track and 'Love Kills' was released as a single from the film's soundtrack in July 1986. Fans of Strummer will doubtless disagree, but it's a shit track and, personally, I much prefer the song written by Dee Dee Ramone also called 'Love Kills' and also dealing with the tragic story of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. This track can be found on the Ramones album Animal Boy (Sire Records, 1986). 

 

[2] For my own take on these star-crossed lovers, see the post titled 'I'll Put a Knife Right in You' (30 Dec 2020). For a rather more personal take on the story of Sid Vicious see 'Sweet Sixteen' (8 Feb 2022). And for a longer post in memory of Ms Spungen, see 'The Last of the Groupies' (26 April 2022).   

  

[3] I know there will be readers thinking that £35,000 doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it was considered a significant sum to pay a young and relatively unknown theatre actor at the time. Oldman has since revealed in interviews that he was only earning around £80 a week working with the Royal Court Theatre at the time - and that was in a good week (sometimes his income would fall to half that). Thus, for Oldman, £35,000 was a small fortune - one that allowed the purchase of a modest flat in London. 

      Readers need to also remember that Sid and Nancy was an independent British film - not a big-budget Hollywood movie. Total production costs were only around £2.7 million.   

 

[4] For those who might want to know the secret of such dramatic weight loss, apparently the knack is to live on a diet of nothing but steamed fish and lots of melon. 

 

[5] Don't get me started on Pistol ... See the post 'The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration' (30 Mar 2021). 

[6] Roger Ebert, for example, gave Sid and Nancy full marks in his review (25 Oct 1986). He concludes that Alex Cox has all the makings of a great director: "He and his actors pull off the neat trick of creating a movie full of noise and fury, and telling a meticulous story right in the middle of it." The review can be found on rogerebert.com  

      Thirty years later, Peter Bradshaw writing in The Guardian (4 Aug 2016) was equally enthusiastic, insisting that Sid and Nancy is a "welcome corrective to bland punk nostalgia" and calling it "Alex Cox's Beckettian masterpiece about those two prisoners of futility" and undiagnosed dysfunction.  

 

[7] This is an edited and slightly revised entry in The Von Hell Diaries (Sat 23 August, 1986). 

 

 

Bonus 1: the original trailer to Sid and Nancy (1986) - enhanced version by HD Retro Trailers.  

 

Bonus 2: the trailer for the 30th anniversary Blu-ray edition of Sid and Nancy (Studiocanal, 2016). 

 

 

Can Anyone be a Sex Pistol?

 Anson Boon / Johnny Rotten

 

 

I. 

 

For whatever reason, I'm still thinking about Danny Boyle's new six-part series based on the story of the Sex Pistols. And the question that keeps returning is this: Can Anson Boon convincingly play the part of Johnny Rotten? 

 

Or is it the case that, in order to truly inhabit a role, an actor needs the same lived experience [1] as the person they are portraying? Ultimately, what is the relationship between acting and authenticity?

II. 

 

Firstly, let me say this: I know why some people think it important that, for example, black actors play black characters on stage and film and that such roles aren't given to white actors wearing theatrical makeup. I understand the issues surrounding blackface and how it has lent itself to racial stereotyping and, indeed, racist caricature and can see why such a practice is now considered offensive (even when there is no wilful malice or disrespect intended by the actor playing the part). 

 

Similarly, I sympathise with disabled actors who time and again see roles for which they would seem to be ideally suited go to able-bodied performers. It seems discriminatory - and probably is discriminatory. For although the performing arts take place in an aesthetic space that is uniquely different to what most people think of as the real world, that space is not entirely separate from the latter and still unfolds within a wider cultural history and a network of power and politics, privilege and prejudice. 

 

As Howard Sherman writes:

 

"If we lived in a society, a country, where everyone was indeed equal in opportunity, then the arguments for paying heed to the realities of race, ethnicity, gender and disability might be concerns that could be set aside. But that's far from the case, and if the arts are to be anything more than a palliative, they must think not just of artifice, but also about the authenticity and context of what they offer to audiences." [2] 

 

Unfortunately, whenever someone points this out they are immediately told that the very essence of acting is people pretending to be what they're not; about performance, persona, and pretence; that it's not about the lived reality of an actor, who is paid to wear a mask not bear their soul or expose their true selves. 

 

However, as Sherman goes on to argue, the it's called acting defence is one that often serves to uphold a state of affars in which too many people have been marginalised and unfairly treated for too long; where the lived experience of those who don't determine the rules of the game - including the rules and conventions of the supposedly liberal world of the arts - has been denigrated or dismissed.      

 

 

III. 

 

Having said that - and this brings us back to Danny Boyle's project and the question I asked at the beginning of this post - one of the key lessons of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was that anyone can be a Sex Pistol, regardless of their background.

 

Why? Because it's all about attitude, rather than authenticity; style and swagger, rather than an identity rooted in one's so-called lived experience. As much as Boyle's castration of the Sex Pistols irritates me - click here - the idea that actors can only play people who are the same as them is clearly absurd. 

 

It can be vexing - I wouldn't say offensive - when posh people attempt to portray working class life, or straight actors play gay characters. But, as Julie Burchill says, "if an actor doesn’t look like he’s making fun of someone, we should trust him to give a part his all - and more credit to him if the part is outside of his experience" [3]. 

 

So, good luck to Anson Boon in his attempt to play Rotten! 

 

And good luck also to Louis Partridge as Sid Vicious and Maisie Williams as Jordan. These bright young thespians may never quite understand what was so phenomenal about the Sex Pistols, but that needn't detract from their performance and, as Burchill also points out, there's a danger in getting too uptight about all this: for such anxiety about casting "is merely the equity branch of the cultural-appropriation asshattery" [4]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This moral-ideological notion - increasingly used to negate objective reality - is one I have italicised throughout this post in order to indicate my own scepticism regarding its legitimacy. For those who are interested, it is discussed at length by Brendan O'Neill in a recent essay entitled 'The tyranny of "lived experience"', Spiked, (19 March, 2021): click here.    

 

[2] Howard Sherman, 'The Frightened Arrogance Behind "It’s Called Acting"', (2 August, 2016): click here. Sherman - an arts administrator, advocate and author - was Interim Director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts (New York), from 2013 - 2017. Although I'm sympathetic to his concerns, I worry that his arguments can be extended in a way that ultimately renders acting - and, indeed, even the imaginative creation of characters by writers - almost impossible. In other words, that a call for political correctness ends in a form of woke puritanism.         

 

[3] and [4] Julie Burchill, 'It’s called acting for a reason', Spiked, (21 August, 2018): click here.

 

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Castration

Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious as portrayed by Anson Boon and Louis Partridge

 

Director Danny Boyle irritated me in 2012 with his ludicrous opening ceremony for the London Olympics, featuring a twenty-minute tribute to the NHS, so when I heard that he was making a six-part TV series about the Sex Pistols (based on Steve Jones's Lonely Boy memoir), I began to prepare for a heavily sentimental take on the story.   

 

But, having now read further details of the project - including who's cast to play Rotten and company - and seen images released from on set, I fear what we are about to be offered is a revision of the past that exchanges sneering nihilism for an uplifting tale of smiling punks in touch with their feelings and struggling to live up to their bad boy image, whilst dealing with issues of abuse, deprivation, and addiction 

 

Even the title of the series - Pistol - speaks of castration; of a band rendered sexless and transformed from cocky young 'erberts with an eye for fashion into sensitive boys crying out for attention and who only wanted to be accepted by society and loved as people.*   

 

Still, as a friend of mine said, you never know; the project might be redeemed by a brilliant script (co-written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Craig Pearce) and some excellent performances from the young cast. I doubt it. But we'll see when the series airs next year.   

 

 

Notes

 

* John Lydon - who has already spoken out against Boyle's project - mocked this idea of poor misunderstood punks on 'Fodderstompf', the closing track of the first Public Image Ltd. album (Virgin Records, 1978): click here.  

 

For a related post to this one in which I discuss the relationship between acting and authenticity and address the question of whether anyone can be a Sex Pistol, click here.