MUSIC FILM/TV OF THE YEAR
Never Mind The Bollocking
Colourful if controversial, Danny Boyle’s Pistol bio-series won over the sceptics… except one. “John probably felt it should have been his story,” the director tells Pat Gilbert.
Shooting stars: Pistol’s Anson Boon as Johnny Rotten,
Jacob Slater as Paul Cook; Boon: “It was my best attempt to be as Johnny Rotten as possible”
director Danny Boyle;
Pistol was based on Steve Jones’s memoir.
Miya Mizuno/FX, Getty (2)
FOR DIRECTOR DANNY Boyle, the moment he knew the casting for Pistol was exactly right occurred at the former LWT studios on London’s South Bank, where the actors playing the Sex Pistols were learning to perform together as a group. “I walked in and they were playing Anarchy In The UK,” he recalls. “I felt relief, followed a millisecond later by pleasure. Rick Smith from Underworld was mentoring them, and he knew that he couldn’t teach them to be a band – it had to arrive. And it had.”