Strummer Week: The Movies

Today’s Strummer week post covers Joe Strummer’s sideline career in films. While Joe composed film scores and wrote songs for films, he also appeared in a few of them. The first was 1980’s Rude Boy, a film conceived by the Clash’s manager Bernie Rhodes, likely in a chess move response to frenemy Malcolm McLaren’s film project for the Sex Pistols, The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. While the main attraction of the film is live footage of the Clash, a story involving “roadie” Ray is woven in. The success of the film is debatable, and while it is a must-see for hardcore fans, the band ended up hating it in the end.
Rude Boy excerpt
Watch this video on YouTube
Joe’s next foray into film would be his own creation Hell W10. Written and directed by Joe in the summer of 1983, the black and white gangster film featured members of the Clash as well as their friends and business associates. The film was thought lost until, as the story goes, a rough copy was purchased out of the back of a car by a pair of fans. The … Continue reading