Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8702 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2008-07-08
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, Explicit Lyrics, HiFi Sound, Surround Sound, THX, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Album Description
As the frontman of The Clash from 1977 onwards, Joe Strummer changed people's lives forever. Four years after his death, his influence reaches out around the world, more strongly now than ever before. In acclaimed filmmaker Julien Temple's 'The Future Is Unwritten', Joe Strummer is revealed not just as a legend or a musician, but as a true communicator of our times. Drawing on both a shared punk history and the close personal friendship that developed during the last years of Joe Strummer's life, Julien Temple's film is a celebration of Joe Strummer--before, during, and after The Clash.

Amazon.com
Julien Temple, one of the early documentarians of the London punk scene and director of the 2000 Sex Pistols film The Filth and the Fury, turns his attention now to that other seminal British band: The Clash--or more accurately, to the band's co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist and lead singer, Joe Strummer. The Future is Unwritten is more than just a biography of Strummer; it is a tribute and exploration of a musician, artist and devoted humanist. Though Temple respects and admires Strummer (his influence is exalted by close friends, peers and fans like Bono and John Cusack), he doesn't romanticize this larger-than-life personality and presents Strummer honestly and not always in flattering light, though the director's fondness for his subject is constant. Most movingly, Strummer himself provides the narration via reassembled excerpts from a variety of interviews and the BBC radio show he hosted during the nineties. In the wrong hands, this could be contrived, but in this masterful documentary it serves as a testament to not just Joe Strummer the myth, but Joe Strummer the man, telling us his story in vivid detail. The Future is Unwritten is a moving and personal portrait of a musician who helped shaped not just punk, but modern music as a whole. --Kira Canny

Customer Reviews

Amazing movie about a rock legend
There have been several movies made about Joe Strummer but Julien Temple's is unique in its personal touch. Temple was a friend of Strummer's for many years and so had insight into the man behind the music that many people did not have. The movie consists of Joe's life story as told by many friends, acquaintances, fellow artists and others who knew him or were influenced by him over the years. Amazing music, very well put-together, and just a great story about a man who was a huge influence on rock & roll and politics during his time on this earth. Joe was taken from the world too early when he died unexpectedly in December 2002 and after watching this movie one can only wonder what more he would have accomplished. The opening scene of Joe singing "White Riot" a capella in the studio is complemented by the closing scene of Joe and Mick Jones reuniting on stage 20+ years later to perform the same song...even though they were old (and Mick a little bald!) they still ROCKED. If you like the Clash, you must see this movie!!

the Joe documentary we've been waiting for
Amazing that it's been almost 6 years since his death. We all have our memories of Joe, and that collective, communal spirit is a major point in Julien Temple's documentary. You'll see dozens of folks interspersed throughout the piece, each giving remembrances around campfires. Interestingly, no one is identified via subtitle on screen, so you'll see everyone from Zander Schloss to Johnny Depp if you pay attention (doubtlessly part of the 1-world, human feeling the movie goes to great lengths to portray, from the best of us to the least of us we are all in this together.) The haunting quality of Joe's voice doing the primary voice-over narration for the entirety of the film is palpable. And fortunately Temple has unearthed scads of rare, quality footage including home movies, TV interviews, and even reel-to-reel from Joe's squatting days, which means we're not dealing with the same warmed-over Westway footage for the umpteenth time. The whole film is tremendously rich, crackling with energy & vitality, but also comfortable. This is the remembrance we've wanted (needed?) since the night he left, and for me it erases the bad taste of a dozen soulless cash-in "documentaries" that have been forced upon us over the intervening years. It's a fitting coda to Joe's life: not maudlin, not excessively mournful, not ridiculously celebratory. Just a bunch of folks sitting around relating what he meant to them, replete with ample historical context, with the man himself emceeing the procession. Joe meant a lot to a lot of people, he deserves this fitting (and very human) tribute.

The Two Joe Strummers
My favorite part of this documentary is finding out about Joe Strummer's youth and how living in a number of foreign countries fostered in him a love of all kinds of music. However this is not an homage to Strummer or The Clash but rather a kind of behind-the-scenes expose of both Strummer and his band. Clash fans might be turned off by much of this, they will certainly be dismayed to find that The Clash was the brainchild not of Strummer but of a Malcolm McLaren-like manager named Bernie who introduced Strummer to Jones and Simenon. In the unwritten history of English music there is Before the Sex Pistols (BSP) and After the Sex Pistols (ASP) and Strummer lived on both sides of this cultural divide. On the one hand Strummer was an art school hippie with folksie roots (early on he called himself "Woody") and on the other he was a conniving opportunist and commercial strategist who valued fame more than friendship (when punk and Bernie's offer to be a part of it came along he abandoned his hippie community). So Strummer is a man divided from the beginning and the difficulties that he had both within The Clash and afterwards stem from an inability to resolve this identity clash. No one doubts that Strummer was an important musical voice (maybe The Voice of 1977) but those early Clash songs like "White Riot" are the product of both the folksy freedom fighter and the ambitious commercial strategist and the balance between these two Joes was always precarious at best. Once the ambitious strategist lost touch with the freedom fighter The Clash was doomed. Even though the Joe Strummer-Mick Jones battle was played out in public it seems that the real battle being fought on Combat Rock was a battle between the two Joes: the one who wanted to speak to the world and the one who found that once the world started listening he had very little left to say or reason for saying it.

After The Clash disbanded it took Strummer many years to rediscover his folksy roots and self. But the last chapter of the Joe Strummer story is a relatively satisfying one as rock bios go as he did finally find a way to reconnect those two warring halves when he formed The Mescaleros. In that band he could be both Joe the folksy hippie world musician and Joe the punk rock star.

Julien Temple's exquisite selection and arrangment of period footage and data makes this a visually, psychologically, and culturally rich experience and the inclusion of tapes from Joe Strummer's radio show in which Joe offers commentary on the artists and songs that he plays is rich and informative. But the inclusion of Johnny Depp (with ridiculous eyeliner and braided beard and head wrap) was a bad idea. Johnny the actor is fine but Johhny the actor as wannabe rocker is the opposite of folk and punk and all things authentic.