I was reminded of the film yesterday after learning that legendary Texas musician Joe Ely had passed away. Ely, who toured and collaborated with The Clash, is one of the talking heads who speak about Strummer in the film.
Temple shot a great deal of interview footage for The Future Is Unwritten. Many people only get to say a few words. Others, like Battleground Editor-in-Chief Joel Schalit and myself, are not heard from at all, though we do appear in a few shots.
Because Joel and I had flown to Los Angeles to be interviewed, at considerable expense, it was a downer to discover that our contribution had ended up on the virtual cutting-room floor. This would have bothered us regardless of the topic. But to have it happen in a film about Joe Strummer, one of our biggest cultural heroes, was particularly dispiriting.
When I saw the news about Joe Ely, however, it wasn’t our frustration with The Future Is Unwritten that came to mind, but the positive aspects of the experience: spending the night in the Hollywood Hills, with a stunning view of the city stretching out below us; hearing great stories about Strummer from those who knew him well; witnessing firsthand how much technical labour goes into filming even a low-budget documentary; and, most of all, getting to see folks like Joe Ely play great music around a campfire.
That’s why I decided to give the film another chance, to see whether the passage of time had taken enough of the sting out of our erasure for me to watch it objectively.
To be fair, my negative reaction on first seeing The Future Is Unwritten was shared by critics and fans who had no personal connection to the film.
Many were confused. Instead of a conventional biography of a beloved figure, Temple delivered a disorienting experience.
There are no titles to help audiences identify people and places.
Audio recordings of Strummer reflecting on his career replace the voice-over narration typical of documentaries. But because his words were spoken long before the film was made, they are an awkward guide to the story Temple is telling.
Although using short segments from many interviews is a common technique in documentaries, the fact that Temple shot outdoors rather than in a studio, using firelight, can make them hard to hear and see.
Archival footage situates the narrative in a broader historical context, especially in the first third of the film, but also diverts attention from its subject.
Home movies and other artefacts impart a material density to the film. However, because the vast majority appear without being identified, it can be hard—especially for a first-time viewer— to grasp their significance.
The Future Is Unwritten makes compelling use of drawings, particularly when they are turned into short animated sequences. But it’s not clear how much they have been manipulated or even whether the originals were all Strummer’s work.
Further complicating matters, clips from 1950s adaptations of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 periodically interrupt the story, casting a shadow over the surrounding content without communicating a clear message.
But the biggest impediment to understanding The Future Is Unwritten is not the heterogeneity of its content, but the rapid back-and-forth between different kinds. Watching at home, when you can pause, rewind, or fast-forward to the credits, makes things easier. But theatrical audiences surely struggled.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that Julien Temple tried to do too much. The question is why.
He could have made a conventional music documentary, conducting longer interviews with fewer people, prioritising extended footage of Strummer’s bands, and deploying a traditional voice-over narration to provide context.
The most straightforward explanation for why Temple chose a different path is that he had a reputation to uphold.
Temple made his name as a director of feature-length documentaries with two films about The Sex Pistols, The Great Rock and Roll Swindle in 1980—told from Malcolm McLaren’s perspective and The Filth and the Fury—told from the surviving band members’ perspective—two decades later. Both make inventive use of archival footage and montage techniques in a way that many viewers regarded as properly punk.
The problem with applying this method in The Future Is Unwritten is that it resonates differently in the context of biography.
Neither The Sex Pistols nor The Clash were bands that grew up together, toiling their way up from obscurity to stardom. This gave them a pre-fab quality. And their high-profile managers liked to emphasise that they were hastily cobbled together.
The Future Is Unwritten draws attention to a series of makeovers in Joe Strummer’s life, including the one that transformed him into “Joe Strummer.” This suggests a parallel with the shallow-rootedness of The Clash.
But the film also wants to tell a very different story, of someone who, whatever his name or hairstyle, had a coherent vision for himself from a young age and worked very hard to achieve it, only to learn the hard way that he needed to take a different approach to maintain his sanity.
In other words, part of the reason that The Future Is Unwritten is more confusing than either The Great Rock and Roll Swindle or The Filth and the Fury is that Temple seems torn between two diametrically opposed conceptions of its subject.
Because Joe Strummer was a good friend of the director, Temple wanted to honour him properly. That’s why he decided to stage outdoor shoots at various locations, all featuring a campfire, where the musician’s friends and admirers could gather and celebrate his legacy.
As we learn towards the end of the film, Strummer was reenergised by the rave scene of the 1990s and began going to festivals regularly, where he would build a campfire and invite all manner of people to sit around it. This way of experiencing community reminded him of his pre-Clash years, when he lived in a squat and worked as a busker to make money.
Conducting one-on-one interviews near campfires may not have been a great idea for capturing high-resolution images or clean sound. But the flaws in the finished product reinforce the message that Joe Strummer was a man of the people who had a special talent for breaking down barriers to facilitate meaningful communication and foster solidarity.
On the other hand, Temple’s instincts as a filmmaker pushed him in the opposite direction, using the violent juxtaposition of heterogeneous material to tell a different story. Like Temple himself, Strummer was the product of the “public” boarding-school system that has traditionally produced Britain’s political and cultural elite. And even though he rejected the conventional life of privilege that education is meant to offer, he exhibited the self-confidence and iron will of someone who takes it for granted that he is destined to do great things.
The Future Is Unwritten’s failure to identify people and places parallels Strummer’s refusal to let his fame get in the way of interacting with ordinary people. They both derive from the conviction that we should be less fixated on status.
One of the final sequences in the film features an impromptu reunion between Strummer and his bandmate, Mick Jones of The Clash, at a benefit concert for firefighters. Seeing them sing the end of “White Riot” together is especially poignant because we know that Strummer’s days are numbered. The fact that it was this event that finally brought them back together, rather than the band’s induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or a highly profitable concert tour, is justifiably praised.
The problem with fame, though, is that you can never fully escape its impact. Even though none of the talking heads in The Future Is Unwritten are named on screen, there is still a clear hierarchy.
Strummer’s fellow Clash members and stars like Bono, Johnny Depp, and Courtney Love were interviewed separately, by themselves. Figures like Joe Ely, although still filmed at one of the group campfires, receive more screen time. And lesser-known individuals might just get a few sentences.
And then there are the people who, although visible at the campfires, are not heard from at all. Since the shoots were invitation-only, every one of them was told—as Joel and I were—that they would be interviewed for the film. Yet the final cut reduces them to mere extras.
This is understandable from a marketing standpoint. If a director has to choose between Martin Scorsese and me, they’re going to pick Scorsese every time.
What struck me watching The Future Is Unwritten this time is the film’s inadvertent self-reflexivity.
Julien Temple must have known, deep down, that he would never be able to include interviews with everyone he invited to the different campfire locations. Yet he made no effort to remove footage showing people like me and Joel, who don’t get a chance to speak on screen.
In other words, had he gone the conventional route of interviewing people he was sure would get screen time in a studio, nobody would have had to deal with feeling included only to experience the disappointment of being excluded later.
To be honest, though, if he had asked whether I wanted to travel to Los Angeles just to hang out on the outdoor set and listen to other people talk about Joe Strummer and play music, I would have jumped at the opportunity.
How often does someone who isn’t involved with the film industry get to see how professionals operate? It’s not like I go to rock concerts with the expectation that I will get to go backstage and hang out with the band.
Maybe the real lesson of The Future Is Unwritten is not that differences in status can be overcome through sheer force of will, but that it’s better to try and fail than not try at all.
That’s what made Joe Strummer different from his peers. And why he has been so sorely missed.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
