Friday, April 3, 2015

the Who Killed Bambi? screenplay

When I was a boy, I dreamed.... dreamed.... of reading the original script for Who Killed Bambi?

Would have wept for joy if somehow it had fallen into my hands

Well, some five years ago,  Roger Ebert, its writer, made the screenplay available to all eyes on the Internet.

And of course I cut-and-pasted it, greedily, and saved it with a frisson of bygone excitement, a phantom-flicker of how teenage Simon would have felt

But  you know what, I've never once opened that document or started reading it.

Too much else to read, and not-read but keep piling up, harvesting and hoarding for a time that'll never come

A little parable there for you, regarding the cultural politics / personal psychology of  abundance versus scarcity!

Here, should you wish to read it, or not-read it, as the case may be,  is the late Roger Ebert's screenplay for the abortive Sex Pistols movie Who Killed Bambi? - which was to be directed by Russ Meyer, "the Bresson of the breast", as Barney Hoskyns put it.  Ebert had written Beyond the Valley of the Dolls for Meyer, which is one of my favorite movies.

If I recall right, there was a couple of days shooting for Bambi and a few scenes captured, and I believe a fragment or two made it into The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle.  The Pistols, particularly Johnny Rotten, were really not into the whole idea of a movie at all, the film was McLaren's obsession,  and a mutual distaste quickly developed between the director and the singer. The project collapsed almost immediately.

Here also is Ebert telling the tale of his and Meyer's involvement with McLaren and the Pistols.



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