Oil City Confidential

Julien Temple (born 26 November 1953 in London) is an English film, documentary and music video director. He began his career with films featuring the Sex Pistols, and has continued with various off-beat projects.

Temple grew up with little interest in film until he discovered the works of French anarchist 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, leading him 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.

In 1981 Julien Temple directed a documentary containing the foundational members of punk, alternative actor/comedians of The Comic Strip most famously a 22 year old Jennifer Saunders, Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson and Peter Richardson. Being from the original punk scene of 1976 and being close friends with The Sex Pistols, it seemed natural for him to direct a group of talented young actors from more or less, the same era he is best known for. The setting was in London’s Soho in the Raymond Review Bar, later to be a key location for the film Sid and Nancy directed by British, punk director Alex Cox-who in the film paid a homage to Julien Temple in the scene where Sid Vicious sings his angst ridden take of “My Way” about 50 minutes into the movie. It was an hour long documentary with fairly shocking material in it-giving it a R18 certificate due to its strong drug references, frequent violence, very strong language and a strong sexual nature-including Bestiality. Typical of The Comic Strip Presents alternative, dark and often obscure and surreal humour, this documentary is considered a true masterpiece into the insight of Soho’s sordid scene of 1981. The Comic Strip was based around the seedy world of strip clubs and lap dancing bars, and hardcore pornography. The Comic Strip actually was formed alongside a sex club in Soho-quite a paradoxical choice in settings as The Comic Strip’s aim was to demolish the comedy before them-Monty Python, Benny Hill and others. Julien temple creates a twisted tale of London- with horror, grotesques, surrealism and obviously humour and of course labelling it with his signature style.

Since 2002 Temple has made a feature length documentary about the Glastonbury Festival. This involved him shooting footage at the festival from 2002 to 2005, as well as drawing on the vast amount of archive footage as well as footage sent in by fans of the festival. It was released in the UK in April 2006.

1n 2006 Temple made a film of the life of his great friend, Joe Strummer – The Future is Unwritten. In November 2007, Temple filmed several of the Sex Pistols’ comeback shows at the Brixton Academy in London. This was followed by several filming sessions with each member of the band as they re-visited their old London haunts. The footage was assembled into a new documentary film released on DVD in 2008 as The Sex Pistols: There’ll Always Be An England, bringing Temple’s association with the Sex Pistols up to date.

In 2009 Temple directed the third film in his punk trilogy – Oil City Confidential – celebrating the Canvey Island legends Dr. Feelgood and a hymn to the Motor City entitled Requiem For Detroit? (2010). —wikipedia