The Future Is Unwritten

Julien Temple had the good fortune to be at film school in 1976, the perfect time to capture the beginnings of English punk. He filmed early Sex Pistols and Clash in black and white when they were unknown bands. This early footage was put to use in both his Sex Pistols films and now, in 'Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten.'

The opening of the film is the first time Joe Strummer ever recorded White Riot. Temple explains, "There's some footage of him singing that in the studio of the film school I was at. We snuck The Clash into this weird old studio with huge old tape machines on a Sunday night and they got a free recording session out of it."

Temple believes there were similarities between Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer, saying, "The big thing for them was the audience was as important as the band. They are very individually intelligent with their own way of looking at the world and their own code of living, particularly Joe, who's a philosopher that other people can use. Joe created a kind of way of living that was very accessible to a lot of people in its inclusiveness and honesty. He's a more conflicted guy (than Rotten), but maybe that's to do with his background."

The film draws on photographs and home movie footage of the young Strummer, born John Mellor in Turkey and raised in a variety of different countries, calling on recollections of friends, family, musicians and film-makers, sitting around campfires, an activity Strummer enjoyed throughout his life.

"The basic idea behind punk was to be true to yourself," he suggests. "I think Joe would have approved. I wanted to make it true to his spirit," explains Temple.

The split between The Clash's Mick Jones and Joe Strummer was a punk tragedy, one they both regretted, but Temple believes Strummer eventually recovered, opining, "I felt that he'd reached a period of happy peace with himself, following a very torturous decade after The Clash, where he was in real turmoil about what had happened, and very disoriented and guilt-ridden and in a dark place." According to Temple, "He'd managed to climb out of that and reinvent himself in a more generous sense by allowing who he'd been as a kid and a teenager before The Clash, coming back to the Joe Strummer we'd seen with The Mescaleros, moving into something really interesting by the time he died."

Some of the interviews are not complimentary but Temple says he didn't set out to sanctify Strummer, who would have hated that, explaining, "I wanted to show the flaws because that's what made him Joe Strummer. Unlike a lot of people, he wasn't ashamed of them. He actually confronted them and used them as part of his creative attack." Temple sees Strummer as a contradictory person, who tapped into those contradictions as a source of energy rather than a source of fear or embarrassment. He explains, "I tried to show that. I don't think any hero's perfect. I'd like him to be an inspirational human being."

The film is underscored with a soundtrack money couldn't buy. Temple marvels, "There is this Joe effect. When people knew it was for Joe and we were giving money to the Strummerville charity, which has been set up to give young kids access to making music, a lot of people were very keen to help. Once The Clash allowed us to use the songs, the Elvis people and Dylan agreed." The "Joe effect" extended to the LA Fire Department, with a firewoman allowing a campfire to be lit when Temple told her it was "for Joe".

The film's title, 'The Future Is Unwritten', was taken from a Strummer doodle on the cover of the Know Your Rights single.

"I liked it because I think it summed up quite a lot about Joe. There's an optimism about him and a sense that he created his own future which is different from what was expected from him as a young kid," Temple explains. "He trail-blazed his own way through life and I think that's what people should be able to feel, that they can decide their own future, rather than have it decided for them, and the way to do that is to stand up, demand it, take it and live it."

Temple hopes that aside from appealing to Clash fans, his film will inspire young kids who see the film "to do something with their futures and the future in general, from seeing what Joe had to say."

And what is written for the future of Julien Temple? Is he going to keep on documenting British punk? "No," he laughs, "I think I've done enough of that now. I'm gonna do one more about The Kinks because I loved them when I was small, but I can only do films like this about people I love."

Suzy Ramone

'The Future Is Unwritten' is now screening at Palace Cinemas - to win a double pass see the Prize Frenzy(tm)