Sid and Nancy

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Movie
German title Sid and Nancy
Original title Sid and Nancy
Country of production UK , USA
original language English
Publishing year 1986
length 97 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Alex Cox
script Alex Cox ,
Abbe Wool
production Eric Fellner
music Joe Strummer et al. a.
camera Roger Deakins
cut David Martin
occupation

Sid and Nancy is a biographical feature film from the year 1986 . It tells the love story between Nancy Spungen and the Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious . The director was Alex Cox . The film premiered at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival .

action

It is October 12, 1978: Sid Vicious is sitting on his bed in the Chelsea Hotel room and is questioned by the police about the woman who is covered in blood and lifeless in the bathroom. He is arrested, taken to a New York police station and interrogated. This is where the flashback begins, in which Sid looks back on his relationship with Nancy Spungen.

Sid and Johnny Rotten riot through the streets of London while drunk and, standing on the bonnet, kick in the windshield of an expensive Rolls-Royce to spray paint on a dog sitting in it. Then they visit the extravagant prostitute Linda, where they continue to drink and eat a plate of beans . This is where Sid meets Nancy for the first time. He is initially unimpressed by her, but invites her to a Sex Pistols concert.

The two meet again by chance the next day. Sid watches Nancy get turned away by her drug dealer and runs after her. He hasn't used any hard drugs so far, but asks Nancy to get some for him. She takes his money and disappears. Sid sits in the street in the pouring rain, waiting in vain for her to return. Days later, he and a friend found Nancy's pink garment bag on the street. As they browse through the clothes, Nancy appears. She got caught in a drug raid and is on the run. Sid's friend takes them home with him, where Nancy and Sid inject heroin and spend the night together. From then on, the two are inseparable.

Nancy and Sid, now both junkies, sink into a world of drugs. Constantly intoxicated, they live out their emotional worlds out of lust and frustration, passion and aggression and move away more and more from reality, whereby the young couple, overwhelmed by all the practical tasks of everyday life, neglects the household of a shared apartment. Furthermore, the couple's active vocabulary is limited to rude swear words like asshole , shit , fuck you! and cunt . Sid becomes more and more unpredictable and shows a bondage towards Nancy that causes the manager of the Sex Pistols to intervene. He persuades Sid to take part in a two-month tour of America without Nancy's company. Nancy only agrees to this plan when Sid is promised a house for it. The band's first dissatisfaction with its limited musical repertoire, the cause of which is seen by Johnny and the other band members in Sid's insufficient bass playing, but manager Malcolm McLaren sticks to Sid as the figurehead of the Sex Pistols and personified icon of the punk movement (quote from the movie by Malcolm McLaren, played by actor David Hayman : " Sidney is more than just a normal bass player, he is an absolute disaster. He is a symbol, a metaphor . He embodies the whole dimension of the nihilistic generation. He is an anti-type " ).

The Sex Pistols' tour of the United States is not a success. The tension in the band grows and Sid, who feels lost without Nancy, reacts with self- injuries by scarring his bare chest with blood and increasing aggression. The band eventually breaks up. Sid, disoriented about his future, flies back to London. During the flight he gets drunk and uses so many drugs that he has to be hospitalized immediately after landing. After leaving the hospital, Sid and Nancy travel first to Paris and then to the United States. There they visit Nancy's grandparents, who are helpless in the face of the couple, who have slipped completely into an illusory world of megalomania and overconfidence, depression and aggression.

Nancy tries her hand at being a manager. She manages to organize three concerts for Sid. These end in disaster, because Sid can no longer concentrate and can barely stand on his feet on stage.

Drug use increases, nightmares and surreal trains of thought intensify in both. The couple spends the days barricaded in front of the television in their room at the Chelsea Hotel. After a room fire caused by Nancy with a burning cigarette, they are moved to room 100. Here the downward spiral continues and violent clashes are increasing. Sid, who tells Nancy that he wants to go back to London and get clean, is attacked by a completely hysterical Nancy who feels threatened by his words. In the course of the tussle, he seriously injured Nancy with a knife. The two then go to sleep, hugging each other. Nancy later wakes up covered in blood, goes into the bathroom and collapses there dead.

Sid, who went through cold custody while in custody , is released on bail. He goes out to eat pizza and then meets Nancy in a surreal scene on the Hudson River , who comes to pick him up in a yellow taxi . The film ends with the fade-in: "Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose on February 2nd 1979. Nancy & Sid RIP ."

Film music

No. title Interpreter
1. Love Kills (Title Track) Joe Strummer
2. Haunted The Pogues
3. Pleasure and pain Steve Jones
4th Chinese choppers Pray for Rain
5. Love kills Circle jerks
6th Off the boat Pray for Rain
7th Dum Dum Club Joe Strummer
8th. Burning Room Pray for Rain
9. She Never Took No for an Answer John Cale
10. Junk The Pogues
11. I want to be your dog Gary Oldman
11. My way Gary Oldman
11. Taxi to Heaven Pray for Rain

criticism

“The social backgrounds are sacrificed to a mostly superficial description of the milieu, which ultimately promotes the creation of legends. The ambiguity of the staging, which has been smoothed out for mass tastes, is also evident in the sometimes unfocused actor management. "

- Lexicon of International Films

“Cult director Alex Cox (" Repo Man ") staged this modern, broken version of Romeo and Juliet in the style of a docudrama of high authenticity. With the American Chloe Webb and the British Gary Oldman, two brilliant actors were available for the leading roles. "

- ZDFkultur

“In his morbid portrait“ Sid & Nancy ”(1986), which only follows very loosely biographical facts, the Briton Alex Cox tells of the last two years of the Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious in shrill colors and tones [...] The gaze of the then 32-year-old British [...] only observes the external events in a rather eclectic way, while we can hardly make any assumptions about the psychological relationships. "

- Neue Zürcher Zeitung

“Cox and his actors succeed in telling a precise story in a film full of noise and anger [...] The amazing thing about“ Sid and Nancy ”is the many subtle insights that the film gives us into the relationship [. ..] Beneath all their leather and chains, beneath their torn T-shirts and steel-studded boots, a deeply conventional relationship between an ambitious woman and a man who was still a child emerges. "

- Roger Ebert : Ebert Digital LLC

background

In Sid and Nancy , Courtney Love , the singer and guitarist of the grunge rock band Hole and later widow of grunge rock musician Kurt Cobain , plays her first film role as Nancy's friend Gretchen, who lives in New York City. The working title of the film was Love Kills , which is partly continued as a subtitle. During the casting phase, director Alex Cox initially considered casting the main male role of Sid Vicious with actor Daniel Day-Lewis . Regarding the role of Sid Vicious, actor Gary Oldman showed no interest at first, as he could not identify with this character and never followed the British punk movement closely and therefore declined, as a classically trained actor who comes from serious theater, the role offer twice. His agent and the fee eventually convinced Oldman to take on the role. In order to come close to the spindly appearance of Sid Vicious, Oldman subsequently lost a lot of body weight with the help of a diet based on steamed fish and watermelon. Courtney Love originally applied for the female lead of Nancy Spungen, but instead director Cox created the small supporting role of the American junkie girl Gretchen in the script especially for Love, because the film's investors had specified the lead role with an already experienced one Cast actress. The following year, 1987, Courtney Love was allowed to take on one of the leading roles in the film Straight to Hell , directed by Alex Cox. In the run-up to production, Anne Beverley, the mother of Sid Vicious, tried to prevent the film from being shot. After a clarifying meeting with director Alex Cox, Anne Beverley changed her mind and bequeathed leading actor Gary Oldman a metal necklace with padlock from her son's private collection so that Oldman could wear the necklace in the film. Like her son Sid, Anne Beverley died on September 6, 1996 of a heroin overdose.

In a short, silent guest appearance in the film Sid and Nancy, the punk rock singer Iggy Pop appears as the husband of the white-clad couple who are being shown through the Chelsea Hotel by the director after Sid Vicious fell down the stairs there. During the filming, actor Gary Oldman sings his own interpretations of the songs I Wanna Be Your Dog by Iggy Pop and The Stooges and My Way by Frank Sinatra . The film also features the hard rock song Paranoid by Black Sabbath . Towards the end of the credits, the film team thanks a number of people under the section Special Thanks To , including Joe Strummer , Lech Kowalski , Luis Buñuel and Dee Dee Ramone .

In 2007 the guitarist Slash revealed in his recently published autobiography that all members of his hard rock band Guns n 'Roses had been independently asked to play a supporting role in the film Sid and Nancy for a scene in a dim music club. Although all band members came to audition, only guitarist Slash stayed until the end of the test recordings during the casting.

In his autobiography Johnny Rotten - No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs: My Life with the Sex Pistols , published by Hannibal in 1995, John Lydon , who is the singer of the Sex Pistols under the stage name Johnny Rotten , describes his deep displeasure the feature film Sid and Nancy in clear terms. Lydon criticizes that director Alex Cox never contacted him regarding the realization of the film project and instead consulted Joe Strummer, the singer of The Clash , as an expert advisor. Only supporting actor Andrew Schofield, who plays the red-haired Johnny Rotten in the film , met with him in New York City to discuss the script when the film was already finished. Afterwards, the film team invited John Lydon to an official screening of Sid and Nancy , after which John Lydon said to director Alex Cox when the two first met during the screening that he, the director, should be shot. Lydon is also bothered by the Scouse accent of actor Andrew Schofield, which can be heard in the original English-language film , which does not correspond to his own speech. Last but not least, Lydon accuses the film of slandering him for being jealous and jealous of Nancy Spungen because of her relationship with Sid Vicious, which is not true. Only those scenes that take place in the run-down Chelsea Hotel in New York City should be mentioned positively in Lydon's opinion. In addition, John Lydon thinks Gary Oldman is a very good actor, who, however, does not meet the real character of Sid Vicious in terms of acting.

Awards (selection)

Rolling Stone magazine lists the film in The 25 Best and Worst Biopics in the best category . The British magazine Shortlist chose the film as ninth of the 10 best musician biographies.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sid & Nancy. In: Allmusic . Retrieved October 15, 2014. (English)
  2. ↑ "The 'Sid and Nancy' film is not factual ... it's sadly sickeningly depressing." Official website of John Lydon . Retrieved October 15, 2014. (English)
  3. ↑ Sid and Nancy . Lexicon of International Films . Retrieved May 4, 2007.
  4. ↑ Sid and Nancy . ZDFkultur . October 12, 2013. Retrieved October 15, 2014.
  5. ↑ Sex Pistols . Neue Zürcher Zeitung . November 2, 2011. Retrieved October 15, 2014.
  6. ^ Roger Ebert : Sid and Nancy. ( English ) Ebert Digital LLC. October 25, 1986. Retrieved October 15, 2014.
  7. ↑ David Fear: "BEST: 'Sid and Nancy' (1986)." In: Rolling Stone . Retrieved October 15, 2014. (English)
  8. ↑ 10 Best Music Biopics. In: Shortlist . Retrieved October 15, 2014.