Julien Temple (born November 26, 1953 in London) is an English film, documentary and music video director.
Temple grew up with little interest in film until he discovered the works of 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, and he began 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.
Controversy aside, Temple was praised for his mix of animated scenes, documentary footage, and specially shot footage which he used to tell McLaren's story. This helped launch Temple into a career making music videos, something he would be best known for much of his career. Temple's next theatrical release was the short film Jazzin' for Blue Jean featuring David Bowie which was released as a support feature to The Company of Wolves. By 1985 Temple was now well known for being a director of successful music videos but had not yet directed a major film.
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 actually 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 parradoxical choice in settings as The Comic Strip's aim was to demolish the comedy before them-Monty Python, Benny Hill etc. Julien temple creates a twisted tale of London- with horror, grotesques, surrealism and obviously humour and of course labelling it with his signature style.
In 1986 he had the offer to direct the film version of Colin MacInnes' book Absolute Beginners by Steven Woolley of Goldcrest Productions. Absolute Beginners was one of the most expensive films in British history and the fate of the studios involved (as well as several careers) were riding on the success of the film. The film was a musical and not a straight adaptation of the book and this led to the film being heavily criticised for a lack of narrative, as well as being called a series of badly linked music videos.
The film was critically panned in the UK and a massive commercial flop, which resulted in Goldcrest going bankrupt and the British film industry entering a period of decline. Temple found himself being blamed personally for the failure but the film proved to have a small following in the United States. This led to Temple being offered the film Earth Girls Are Easy as well as a series of music videos for such artists as Janet Jackson.
Temple made America his home after this for much of the next few years but returned to the UK in the late 1990s to make a series of films as well as continuing to make music videos. These films included Pandæmonium, a critically acclaimed 2001 film about the friendship between Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, and The Filth and the Fury, another documentary about The Sex Pistols. This time the film was made with the full cooperation of the surviving members of the band and told the story of the band from their viewpoint. This film also mixed newly shot footage and interviews as well as footage culled from The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, as well as previously unseen interviews. The film was a critical success and was seen as setting the record straight in regard to the history of The Sex Pistols.
Since 2002 Temple had been working on a feature length documentary about the Glastonbury Festival. This has 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.
