WikipediaThis one is a little more easy to believe. At the height of punk in the late seventies 20th Century Fox saw dollar signs amongst the tatty leather jackets and paperclip piercings, resolving to make a punk rock version of classic Beatles comedy A Hard Days Night starring - of course - the premier enfant terribles of the nascent music genre, the Sex Pistols. Frontman John Lydon and bassist Sid Vicious agreed, but on the proviso that the film was produced by the team who made their favourite movie, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls: director Russ Meyer and screenwriter Roger Ebert. Yes, before he became the patron saint of movie criticism Ebert was another struggling screenwriter, his biggest hit to that point that first collaboration with gonzo pervert filmmaker Meyer (that's not hyperbole, by the way; the vast majority of Meyer's films are about women with bountiful chests and, er, not a lot else). So the pair jumped at the chance to make Who Killed Bambi?, whose low budget and anarchic roots presumably meant they could get away with anything they wanted. That's certainly the direction Ebert and Pistols manager and svengali Malcolm McLaren went when they penned the script, which you can read in full on Ebert's blog. Filming eventually took place, although there's conflicting reports about just how much of the script was committed to celluloid before Fox got their hands on it and shut the production down. Enough was shot, at least, for the studio to realise that it couldn't possibly be salvaged into something less offensive through editing, instead giving up on the project entirely. There's even a legend that Fox board member Grace Kelly personally blocked the film's release; really, though, what did they expect from the Sex Pistols?
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
WikipediaThis one is a little more easy to believe. At the height of punk in the late seventies 20th Century Fox saw dollar signs amongst the tatty leather jackets and paperclip piercings, resolving to make a punk rock version of classic Beatles comedy A Hard Days Night starring - of course - the premier enfant terribles of the nascent music genre, the Sex Pistols. Frontman John Lydon and bassist Sid Vicious agreed, but on the proviso that the film was produced by the team who made their favourite movie, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls: director Russ Meyer and screenwriter Roger Ebert. Yes, before he became the patron saint of movie criticism Ebert was another struggling screenwriter, his biggest hit to that point that first collaboration with gonzo pervert filmmaker Meyer (that's not hyperbole, by the way; the vast majority of Meyer's films are about women with bountiful chests and, er, not a lot else). So the pair jumped at the chance to make Who Killed Bambi?, whose low budget and anarchic roots presumably meant they could get away with anything they wanted. That's certainly the direction Ebert and Pistols manager and svengali Malcolm McLaren went when they penned the script, which you can read in full on Ebert's blog. Filming eventually took place, although there's conflicting reports about just how much of the script was committed to celluloid before Fox got their hands on it and shut the production down. Enough was shot, at least, for the studio to realise that it couldn't possibly be salvaged into something less offensive through editing, instead giving up on the project entirely. There's even a legend that Fox board member Grace Kelly personally blocked the film's release; really, though, what did they expect from the Sex Pistols?