FX's Pistol, which arrives on Hulu May 31, will lay bare the legend of the Sex Pistols and recontextualize the punk movement for a new generation. The 6-episode miniseries was directed by Danny Boyle (Moulin Rouge). Based on the memoir of Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, it follows his and his band ' meteoric rise and expands on the various elements at play in the '70s punk scene.
As a director, Boyle is known for not shying away from the darker side of situations, and letting the gritty parts of a drama further emphasize the glamorous parts. Some of his most famous works include 28 Days Later - and, of course, Trainspotting. With Pistol, the filmmaker focuses not only on the fashion and fame, but also the struggles that came for the Sex Pistols as they embarked on their musical and political journey.
Boyle spoke to Screen Rant about his preference for heroes with "spots," his usage of real footage from the '70s, and his thoughts on another cultural revolution in this generation.
Screen Rant: I feel like there's a lot of thematic throwbacks to earlier stuff like Trainspotting. What draws you to people on the margins of society, that have fallen through the cracks?
Danny Boyle: Just the way you saw in the series, in the way Malcolm recruits Steve, he finds this vagabond whose sexuality is a bit fluid anyway. And he's in and out of crime, but he's got the charm. Malcolm goes, "There is energy there; there's creativity there. There's something there."
You raise up an underdog, or you let an underdog overcome some challenge, and you've already got drama straightaway. And also, you're rooting [for them] in a way that I like to make audiences root for the character. It's classic American, actually. You root for your hero, except he is not that attractive a hero. There's some quite ragged edges about him or her, so that's what I love doing. Yeah, for sure.
You say he's not that attractive as a hero, but he's real. They're all very real.
Danny Boyle: Yeah. They've got spots, and they've really got not very good complexions, and all that stuff. I love all that, yeah.
As I watched this as well, I started thinking a lot about how Gen Z feels almost like the second wave of punk, in the sense that they too wanna tear down institutions and structures and burn it all to the ground - but in a very different way. Do you see parallels with the Sex Pistols and the rise of punk in that era and what's happening today?
Danny Boyle: Given the matrix that we are all woven into at the moment, I don't know how you're gonna disrupt that. I think it should be disrupted, because it's clearly so exponentially powerful and gaining and growing. It's holding our dependency on it, that you imagine something will arise to disrupt it.
I hope it will, because certainly that's what punk did. As Britain stultified in this class rigidity, and in its deference to stupid people - people who were stupid, they may be more qualified than you, but they were stupid - it blew them apart. And not in a particularly charming way; it was quite ugly. And I think that may have to happen. I don't know.
I mean, you can't predict it, but it will happen. And it won't be me that starts it. It'll happen, and I'll be one of the ones worrying about, "Oh, my God, how far is this gonna go?" But it will happen, hopefully.
You spliced in so much footage from the real time. Was that something you always had in your head to create the real gritty feel of the ‘70s? Or was that something that organically happened as you were shooting?
Danny Boyle: I think that's gonna be a huge part of future filmmaking, and also of future storytelling. There is a treasure trove of archive, which is growing. If you think about how much is shot now, compared to what was shot in the '70s, that treasure trove is growing daily enormously, and artists are gonna raid it constantly. It's just the obvious thing to do.
And when you're doing the '70s London? You can't do London in the '70s. London is unrecognizable now. You've got to use other tools. You've got to go to other cities, which aren't as developed as London. You've got to use your archive; you've got to use your actors; you've got to use your costumes - which of course, in this case, you've got this wonderful array and gallery of costumes. I love the fact that they swap costumes. You never see that. One actor wears it in one scene, and then another actor's got on this same T-shirt, and they're just swapping it, right? I love that about that.
You use every tool at your disposal to try and create that feeling of the '70s, and I lived through it. So, it was a job that was both a labor of love. And it’s also difficult to how bad it was, and to try and explain that to the kids, because some of them weren't just born this century and trying to explain to them how different the lack of stimulation was just terrifying back then. Suddenly there was this Roman candle of everything - sex, violence, music, chaos just exploded in the middle of it. It's wonderful.
Pistol Synopsis
FX’s Pistol is a six-episode limited series about a rock and roll revolution, available exclusively on Hulu. The furious, raging storm at the center of this revolution are the Sex Pistols - and at the center of this series is Sex Pistols’ founding member and guitarist, Steve Jones. Jones’ hilarious, emotional and at times heart-breaking journey guides us through a kaleidoscopic telling of three of the most epic, chaotic and mucus-spattered years in the history of music.
Based on Jones’ memoir Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, this is the story of a band of spotty, noisy, working-class kids with “no future,” who shook the boring, corrupt Establishment to its core, threatened to bring down the government and changed music and culture forever.
Check out our interviews with Pistol stars writer Craig Pearce and actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster.
FX’s Pistol premieres Tuesday, May 31, 2022, exclusively on Hulu.