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Roger Ebert Reveals Lost Sex Pistols Screenplay

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Prompted by the recent death of Sex Pistols manager and punk honcho Malcolm McLaren, film critic/writer Roger Ebert recently posted an unfinished film script he wrote for the pioneering English punk band in the summer of 1977. Read Who Killed Bambi? here, on Ebert’s Chicago Sun-Times blog.

Melding the style of the Beatles’ humorous mock documentary A Hard Day’s Night with the filth and ideologies of the punk explosion, the film — originally titled Anarchy in the U.K. — was to be produced by McLaren and directed by Faster, Pussycat! mastermind Russ Meyer. Ebert claims to have posted the screenplay “for the benefit of future rock historians,” but the writer is less than certain about what he wrote in the first place:

“I can’t discuss what I wrote, why I wrote it, or what I should or shouldn’t have written,” he writes. “Frankly, I have no idea.”

Among the more memorable scenes is this charming interaction between Sid Vicious and his would-be onscreen mother:

SID VICIOUSCome on, mum. Give us a kiss.

She does. And then she puts her free arm around him, and they begin the preliminaries of love making. It should be clear by now that this is not the first time such a scene has taken place between them.

They continue: Their passion grows. She tousles his hair. He unbuttons her blouse and caresses the breast, free and bra-less, he finds beneath it. The urgency builds. From time to time, they speak:

SID VICIOUS
That’s it, mum. That’s it…

Some filming did occur for Who Killed Bambi? before the project was ultimately scrapped. The existing footage landed in a controversial film the Pistols and McLaren actually did finish, called The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, as well as in the punk band’s seminal documentary, The Filth and the Fury.

Tell us what you think of Ebert’s screenplay for Who Killed Bambi? in the comment section below.