Billboard reported yesterday that The Future Is Unwritten, a documentary about the life of Joe Strummer, will debut in January at the Sundance Film Festival. Anecdotes from director Julien Temple reveal a different side of the singer—one that inexplicably wins the sympathy of cops:
Says Temple, "We had to have a bonfire on Mulholland Drive in L.A., where you can't put out a cigarette without getting dragged off by the fire brigade, and it didn't look very good until the fire officer said, 'What's the project?' We said, 'It's Joe Strummer,' and he said, 'In that case, you can have the license.'"
"And that was the effect all around: We had a runner on the shoot in New York, who got stopped by a cop for not having a safety belt and talking on a mobile phone," Temple continues. "The cop was just about to give him a ticket, when he saw the production thing on the dashboard, looked at it, and said, 'No fine. No ticket. This is for Joe.'"
So if you can score a few of those dashboard things, it might be the time to finally have that drag race down by the nursing home.