Clips, Claws

Julien Temple (born November 26, 1953 in London) is an English film, documentary and music video director. more...

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Biography

Temple grew up with little interest in film until he discovered the works of director Jean Vigo when he was a student at King's College, Cambridge. This, along with his interest in the early punk scene in London in 1976 led to his friendship with The Sex Pistols, and he began to document many of their early gigs. His first film was a short documentary called Sex Pistols Number 1, which set out to show the rise of the band from 1976-1977 in a series of short clips from television interviews and gigs.

This led to Temple making The Great Rock And Roll Swindle, another documentary, telling the story of the band from the viewpoint of their manager, Malcolm McLaren, as band members Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious had left. The film told of the rise of the band as apparently manipulated by McLaren and how he had shaped the band throughout their short career. Much of the 'facts' given by McLaren were disputed by John Lydon (who had dropped the Johnny Rotten name after leaving the band), who accused McLaren of using the film to attack him personally. This helped split opinion on the film as although it was praised for attempting to capture some of the punk scene of the time, it was seen as too skewed towards McLaren's vision.

Controversy aside, Temple was praised for his mix of animated scenes, documentary footage, and specially shot footage which he used to tell McLaren's story. This helped launch Temple into a career making music videos, something he would be best known for much of his career. Temple's next theatrical release was the short film Jazzin' for Blue Jean featuring David Bowie which was released as a support feature to The Company of Wolves. By 1985 Temple was now well known for being a director of successful music videos but had not yet directed a major film.

In 1986 he had the offer to direct the film version of Colin MacInnes' book Absolute Beginners by Steven Woolley of Goldcrest Productions. Absolute Beginners was one of the most expensive films in British history and the fate of the studios involved (as well as several careers) were riding on the success of the film. The film was a musical and not a straight adaptation of the book and this led to the film being heavily criticised for a lack of narrative, as well as being called a series of badly linked music videos.

The film was critically panned in the UK and a massive commercial flop, which resulted in Goldcrest going bankrupt and the British film industry entering a period of decline. Temple found himself being blamed personally for the failure but the film proved to have a small following in the United States. This led to Temple being offered the film Earth Girls Are Easy as well as a series of music videos for such artists as Janet Jackson.

Read more at Wikipedia.org