Sid and Nancy

Sid and Nancy is a British biopic directed by Alex Cox in 1986. The plot line is portraying the life of Sid Vicious, the bassist from the Sex Pistols, with a focus on Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen's relationship.

The film begins with several police officers dragging Sid Vicious, played by Gary Oldman, out of the Hotel Chelsea following the death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, played by Chloe Webb. Vicious is soon driven to a police station and upon arrival is asked to describe what happened.

A few years earlier, Vicious and Johnny Rotten, played by Andrew Schofield meet Spungen, a groupie who has come to London to bed The Sex Pistols. Vicious dismisses her at first, but starts dating her after she sells him heroin; it is implied that she introduces him to the drug. From here, the two fall deeply in love, but their self-destructive, drug-fuelled relationship frays Vicious' relationship with the rest of the band, which eventually breaks up in the midst of a disastrous

American tour. From the break up,Vicious attempts to start a solo career with Spungen as his manager, only to be dismissed as a has-been and no longer wanted.

By now, both he and Spungen are heavily addicted to heroin, and Spungen has spiralled into a deep

depression. It all ends tragically one night when, during an argument in which Sid announced his plans to get off the heroin addiction and return to England, a suicidal Spungen begs Vicious to kill her; he stabs her in a blind rage, and she dies form the stab wounds the next morning.

Back in the mise en scene, Vicious is released on bail. During his way home, he sees a vision of

Spungen waiting for him in a taxi; he gets in and they are reunited. The postscript then says that Vicious died of a heroin overdose: "Nancy and Sid R.I.P."

There have been controversial views on this film with many disagreeing to how it was produced and the information that it portrays. The most important opinion came from John Lydon, Sid's band member, who wrote in his 1994 autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs:

I cannot understand why anyone would want to put out a movie like Sid and Nancy and not bother to speak to me; Alex Cox, the director, didn’t. He used as his point of reference – of all the people on this earth - Joe Strummer! That guttural singer from The Clash? What the fuck did he know about Sid and Nancy? That’s probably all he could find, which was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. The only time Alex Cox made any approach toward me was when he sent the chap who was playing me over to New York where I was. This actor told me he wanted to talk about the script. During the two days he was there, he told me that the film had already been completed. The whole thing was a sham. It was a ploy to get my name used in connection with the film, in order to support it. To me this movie is the lowest form of life. I honestly believe that it celebrates heroin addiction. It definitely glorifies it at the end when that stupid taxi drives off into the sky. That's such nonsense. The squalid New York hotel scenes were fine, except they needed to be even more squalid. All of the scenes in London with the Pistols were nonsense. None bore any sense of reality. The chap who played Sid, Gary Oldman, I thought was quite good. But even he only played the stage persona as opposed to the real person. I don’t consider that Gary Oldman's fault because he’s a bloody good actor. If only he had the opportunity to speak to someone who knew the man. I don’t think they ever had the intent to research properly in order to make a seriously accurate movie. It was all just for money, wasn't it? To humiliate somebody’s life like that - and very successfully - was very annoying to me. The final irony is that I still get asked questions about it. I have to explain that it's all wrong. It was all someone else’s fucking fantasy, some Oxford graduate who missed the punk rock era. The bastard. When I got back to London, they invited me to a screening. So I went to see it and was utterly appalled. I told Alex Cox, which was the first time I met him, that he should be shot, and he was quite lucky I didn't shoot him. I still hold him in the lowest light. Will the real Sid please stand up? As for how I was portrayed, well, there's no offense in that. It was so off and ridiculous. It was absurd. Champagne and baked beans for breakfast? Sorry. I don't drink champagne. He didn't even speak like me. He had a Scouse accent. Worse, there's a slur implied in the movie that I was jealous of Nancy, which I find particularly loathsome. There is that implication that I feel was definitely put there. I guess that’s Alex Cox showing his middle class twittery. It’s all too glib, it’s all too easy.