PREMIERE: How did those home movies and pictures of Joe Strummer as a kid turn up?

JULIEN TEMPLE: We had a great researcher who wouldn't leave anything unturned. She stuck in there and just dug everything up. We didn't have a beginning. You know it was like really, what do we do? And then we found his second cousin in Canada and another relative.

Read Premiere.com's review of Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.

Let's talk about Joe's drawings, which you animated.

We didn't have a lot of money. I've got a gardener and he's an animator as well. So when it rains, he can animate. When it's sunny, he gardens. So I just kept feeding him these bits of scraps of stuff Joe had done. There was a lovely poster that he designed for The Vultures, his first band. It was a beautiful drawing. You get the feeling he could have been a kind of Crumb-like cartoonist of some kind.

There's the woman in the film who says he didn't care about money but did care about fame.

[There is a] kind of wrestling match between Joe and fame and how you deal with it as a way of being able to communicate and impact people's lives in a good way. But also the way it prisons you personally and makes you hide behind sunglasses and gates and all the shit that rock stars do. He was very, very against that and tried to live his life, be free to be able to connect with anyone he wanted on the street, and sit down and listen.

There's a whole biography of The Clash's Topper Headon in there, too.

He's a fascinating guy, you know, and that was the first interview he's been really clean and sharp. It was great to see him actually really connecting. [He was] agile and aware and remember[ed] everything. His jazz drumming ability was crucial. And Joe always really felt that Topper was the core of The Clash musically.

Director Julien Temple

This movie is a labor of love clearly.

For the last 20 years, [Joe and I] became very close. He bought a place next door to mine and we used to have campfires all the time. We lived together for the last 10 years, so I was very close to him.

Bono articulates at the drop of a hat. Joe is clearly huge influence on U2.

But I think you got the sense that Bono's a different animal from Joe. Yeah, I think Bono owes a lot to Joe, but he's gone places where Joe would never have wanted to go. I admire him you know, but I'm not inspired by him in the way that Joe inspired me.

Not much is generally known about the death of Joe's brother.

No. Joe did tend to keep that out of the limelight: his upbringing and his family. A lot of people will still be surprised when they see [the part of] the film about that.

What's been the high point of the festival for you so far?

The applause at the end of the film was pretty good.

Which films have you heard buzz about that you'd like to see?

Chicago 10, I want to see that. [An] American Crime sounded interesting. I haven't really started the book 'cause I've had to do a lot of talking. I hope on Tuesday I will catch some stuff.

What's your favorite thing that happened at your first Sundance screening of your film?

Well, I had a drink half way through. Red wine. Really bad red wine. It was sort of having a premiere in fucking Albertson's [grocery store].

What's the most important thing you want readers to know as they sit down to watch your film?

That it's from the heart.