Cuppy's Music Curios S2 E7: Who Killed Bambi?

"Who Killed Bambi" was going to be the Sex Pistols first feature film. The movie was going to be made in order to promote the band on a global scale and try to break into the North American market. After tossing around several ideas on potential filmmakers (Johnny Rotten wanted Graham Chapman according to his autobiography) the band's manager Malcolm McLaren settled upon American B-movie director Russ Meyer. The script was written by his long time collaborator and film critic Roger Ebert and it was going to be an Americanized male version of "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." McLaren's lawyers negotiated with 20th Century Fox who were going to finance and distribute the low budget production.

The film production began in mid-October of 1977 after several weeks of delays. But after three days of filming the production was brought to a halt by the studio. The official reason was that McLaren spent too much money in pre-production and the studio didn't want to invest anymore funds in a potential box office bomb so they just paid out the rest of the 150,000 pounds of the budget and sent McLaren on his merry way. The unofficial reason was that Princess Grace, who was a member of the studio's board heard about the rumors of the Sex Pistols film and the salacious details of the script personally cancelled the film's production. So "Who Killed Bambi?" Russ Meyer blamed McLaren for spending too much of the budget while Malcolm blamed the rumors of Princess Grace's involvement.

This video would not have been possible without the book "The Wicked Ways of Malcolm McLaren" written by Craig Bromberg who spent years researching the life of Malcolm Mclaren and his exploits in music, fashion and art. I highly recommend this book and so does Cuppy who narrated this video.