Speaker 1: Oh Years Bolts, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 4: They are cold sodas from hot popcorn in no Monsters
Speaker 4: in the Protection booth.
Speaker 3: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Don a.
Speaker 2: Manchester birthplace to the railways, the computer, the Bouncing Bomb.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy six, if you wanted to see the
Speaker 2: most exciting bands in the world, they were on a
Speaker 2: regional show coming out of Manchester. My show I'm Tony Wilson.
Speaker 2: During the fourth is Expostus playing Manchester for the very
Speaker 2: first time. There are only forty two people in the audience. Inspired,
Speaker 2: they will go out and perform wondrous deeds. For instance,
Speaker 2: behind me a stiff kittens, lads to become Joy Divisions,
Speaker 2: finally to become New Order. That's John the Postman. He's
Speaker 2: a postman. You Atrey Records, my label Joy Division, New Order.
Speaker 2: We are an experiment in human nature.
Speaker 5: Kind of muse it.
Speaker 6: You'll be bringing in sort of new way, kind of
Speaker 6: Indie Indian.
Speaker 2: He didn't sign the Smiths. I've just seen God look like.
Speaker 4: Who I mean?
Speaker 1: The United Artists presents Steve Coogan in the International smash comedy.
Speaker 2: It's like Scooby doing it because they like that must
Speaker 2: It is a little bit like Scooby does.
Speaker 1: It takes you back to the start of a movement.
Speaker 2: This is it the birth of rave culture. This is
Speaker 2: the moment when even the white man starts dancing, a.
Speaker 1: Time when legends were created.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that Sean Rider is on powert
Speaker 2: wbas as a poet. Give him example some of me
Speaker 2: lyrics good good good, good good good.
Speaker 1: And rules We're broken.
Speaker 2: Really ought to be careful with that, Sean. You can
Speaker 2: take someone's eye out.
Speaker 7: Can I offer anybody like the best?
Speaker 2: Don Judge, I'm being post before Natashable. When you have
Speaker 2: to choose between the truth and the legend, print the
Speaker 2: legend is he gonna hit me?
Speaker 1: Twenty four Hour Party People, Welcome to the Projection Booth.
Speaker 1: I'm your host.
Speaker 8: Mike White joined me once again. Is mister axel Cohagen
Speaker 8: always a pleasure? Also back in the booth, this father.
Speaker 5: Alone good good, good, good, double good.
Speaker 8: We are amid a bunch of Patreon picks with one
Speaker 8: from Andrew Hendrickson. Twenty four Hour Party People. It's the
Speaker 8: story of Tony Wilson and Factory Records or is it
Speaker 8: really just a story of the music. From director Michael
Speaker 8: Winterbottom and screenwriter Frank Catrell Boyce, the film stars Steve
Speaker 8: Coogan as Wilson and a cavalcade of familiar faces in
Speaker 8: supporting roles like Lenny James as Alan Erasmus and Patty
Speaker 8: Constantine as Rob Gretton. We will be spoiling this film
Speaker 8: as we go along. I mean, it was kind of
Speaker 8: based on real life, so we can spoil real life
Speaker 8: for you as well. If we don't want anything, we're
Speaker 8: entered off the podcast and go watch the movie, we
Speaker 8: will still be here. So, Axel, when was the first
Speaker 8: time you saw twenty four Hour Party People? And what
Speaker 8: did you think?
Speaker 3: My friend recommended it to me and said, you're gonna
Speaker 3: watch this and then you're going to get into joy division.
Speaker 3: And he was absolutely right. And I liked the movie
Speaker 3: when I first saw it. That was sort of the
Speaker 3: end of it. And then when I was preparing to
Speaker 3: watch it again for this podcast, part of me was thinking,
Speaker 3: I don't know that this is the kind of movie
Speaker 3: that's going to hold up as well for a second viewing,
Speaker 3: and I was a little cautious. But five minutes into
Speaker 3: the second viewing, I was absolutely hooked. I think this
Speaker 3: is actually a movie that I liked better the second
Speaker 3: time I watched it, and Father Malone, how about yourself.
Speaker 5: I saw this in the theater when it came out.
Speaker 5: I intended with a friend of mine who he and
Speaker 5: I had had a debate about who was better New
Speaker 5: Order or Joy Division our entire lives. He knew that
Speaker 5: I loved Joy Division, but he also knew that I
Speaker 5: hated the Happy Mondays. I did not. I could not
Speaker 5: embrace the acid house scene that was going on in
Speaker 5: Manchester in the late eighties. But he was convinced that
Speaker 5: this would change my mind about that, and yeah, it
Speaker 5: really did. I mean as soon as I saw this movie,
Speaker 5: when I got out of it, I went and bought Pills,
Speaker 5: Throws and belly eggs. This movie to me not to
Speaker 5: bury the lead. I think it's the perfect ideal of
Speaker 5: a bio pick music bio pick and could not wait
Speaker 5: for it to come out on DVD. Was was shattered
Speaker 5: shattered watching the movie when they mentioned DVDs. As a
Speaker 5: matter of fact, that was and all I could think
Speaker 5: about was getting one as soon as it came out,
Speaker 5: So which I've dug up and watched a number of
Speaker 5: times leading up to this, so I'm excited to talk
Speaker 5: about the movie.
Speaker 8: I think it's a It's just one of the best
Speaker 8: out there. This was a first time watch for me.
Speaker 8: I had never seen them before, and I kept trying
Speaker 8: to think of why why had I not watched this,
Speaker 8: and came up both a couple theories. One was, I
Speaker 8: think I told you this before, fatherm alone. I might
Speaker 8: have gotten mixed up with Party Monster.
Speaker 5: The Macaulay Culkin, Yes, and I guess that has.
Speaker 8: Something to do with rave culture, those kind of things. Also,
Speaker 8: I was not a big fan of the man Chester
Speaker 8: scene when it came to the stuff that was going
Speaker 8: on in the late eighties early nineties. For some reason,
Speaker 8: it just felt like too much like here's Charlaton's UK,
Speaker 8: Here's what was the uh this ros One, Stone Roses,
Speaker 8: Hot Dragons, Thank You House Flowers, And I just was like,
Speaker 8: oh man, this is a lot of stuff that I
Speaker 8: really am just not into. And now Stone Roses total
Speaker 8: exception loved Stone Roses. Don't know why exactly. I like
Speaker 8: them and didn't really like the rest of these bands.
Speaker 8: I had never heard of The Happy Mondays, until I
Speaker 8: started watching this movie, and I thought at first that
Speaker 8: it was made up. That's how much I didn't know.
Speaker 8: And even when they played their songs, I was like,
Speaker 8: I've never heard these in my life, because I mean
Speaker 8: even the title song twenty four Hour Party people, no
Speaker 8: no idea that that was a song before. So I
Speaker 8: just felt completely out of the loop with this. I
Speaker 8: was somewhat familiar with Factory Record, it's just from what
Speaker 8: they were putting out, but was not aware of Tony Wilson,
Speaker 8: was not aware of the Hacienda, so this was really
Speaker 8: brand new for me. And man, oh Man, Tony Wilson,
Speaker 8: What a fascinating character this guy is. After a while
Speaker 8: watching this movie, was Steve Coogan playing this role? I
Speaker 8: just wanted to yell will you shut up at the
Speaker 8: TV because he just won't stop talking. But I'm like,
Speaker 8: this is a great compelling protagonist for a film.
Speaker 5: Peter Hook from Joy Division and New Order described this
Speaker 5: film as about Manchester's biggest cunt portrayed by Manchester's second
Speaker 5: biggest cunt, and yes, I do think Tony Wilson is
Speaker 5: one hundred percent of fascinating character. He describes himself as
Speaker 5: a journalist first and foremost did until the day he died,
Speaker 5: not you know, not record a company owner, not record promoter,
Speaker 5: not nightclub owner. And this movie is kind of lightning
Speaker 5: in a bottle in that they have him as their
Speaker 5: central character, a character removed from the creative process while
Speaker 5: central to it, and my god, how lucky that not
Speaker 5: only do they was he just sort of a fascinating character,
Speaker 5: but he was on camera like so he's part of
Speaker 5: the media. Like in the opening sequence where where they're
Speaker 5: showing one of his little bits that he would do
Speaker 5: for Granada Television where he's hang gliding, we're actually seeing
Speaker 5: Tony Wilson in that sequence. Steve Coogan described it as
Speaker 5: I had Tony Wilson as my stunt double for my
Speaker 5: portrayal of Tony Wilson in the movie. He doesn't shut
Speaker 5: up ever, and you want him to shut up. And
Speaker 5: at the same time, I could continue listening to him
Speaker 5: talk as smug as he could get. He's always funny
Speaker 5: and always informative, like the best narrator I've ever seen
Speaker 5: for a biopic.
Speaker 3: There's a scene in the movie where Steve Coogan as
Speaker 3: Tony Wilson, turns toward the camera and says, this isn't
Speaker 3: about me, this is about the Manchester scene. And I
Speaker 3: couldn't disagree more. This is Steve Coogan's movie in my mind,
Speaker 3: and this is the story of Tony Wilson, a guy
Speaker 3: who was at the right place at the right time,
Speaker 3: with the right attitude and kind of captured lightning in
Speaker 3: a bottle. And yeah, it's a character study in Steve
Speaker 3: Coogan is amazing in this movie.
Speaker 8: Cougan is fantastic. I really like Steve Coogan. I can't
Speaker 8: say I'm familiar with all of the stuff that he's
Speaker 8: done over the years, because he's done a ton I'm
Speaker 8: not familiar with the Alan Partridge character. But I'm curious
Speaker 8: how close Alan Partridge and Tony Wilson are because I know,
Speaker 8: isn't Alan Partridge kind of unaware of himself and like
Speaker 8: so full of himself but yet also unaware at the
Speaker 8: same time.
Speaker 5: I likened when Alan Partridge to the Larry Sanders character
Speaker 5: when he first hit the air and we were seeing
Speaker 5: him on his talk show. He's evolved over time. He
Speaker 5: just had a movie recently, actually, and yes, he's kissing
Speaker 5: cousins with Tony Wilson in the sort of egotism, but
Speaker 5: completely unaware of it. Like the Tony Wilson as a
Speaker 5: character in this movie is knowing that he's in the movie.
Speaker 5: But you know, Steve Coogan said, like it only makes
Speaker 5: sense for him to talk about the movie while he's
Speaker 5: in the movie. A character of Tony Wilson would be
Speaker 5: aware that he was in the film. So that self
Speaker 5: awareness is lacking with Alan Partridge completely. He's more of
Speaker 5: a buffoon that way.
Speaker 8: Alan Partridge, from what I've seen of him, reminds me
Speaker 8: a lot of Jimmy Glick. I don't know if that's
Speaker 8: a fair assessment or not.
Speaker 5: In the fawningness and the sarcasm, definitely the bitterness that's
Speaker 5: lying just underneath all that happiness.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I do love that Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson
Speaker 8: is a character in his own movie that he does
Speaker 8: speak to the camera like you're saying that he's so aware.
Speaker 8: You know, from the very first scene you're talking about
Speaker 8: the hang gliding stuff and when he's like, this movie
Speaker 8: isn't about this, it's more about this, and it just
Speaker 8: like lays out and by breaking that fourth wall in
Speaker 8: the very first scene, you're like, oh, Okay, this is
Speaker 8: what I'm in for. And there are times where I'm like,
Speaker 8: are other people hearing him talk to the camera or
Speaker 8: is it just us? Are we the only ones hearing
Speaker 8: this dialogue?
Speaker 5: What's funny is it wouldn't be removed if people were listening.
Speaker 5: There might as well be somebody just standing off camera
Speaker 5: who he's just talking to. You get the notion that
Speaker 5: Tony never shut the fuck up ever, Yeah, and he's.
Speaker 8: So grandiose with his whole thing. I mean, the idea
Speaker 8: of the wheel that comes up constantly through this whole movie,
Speaker 8: and you're like, Okay, yeah, I can see him being
Speaker 8: very into you know, Greek philosophers, and i'd love to
Speaker 8: At one point he says like.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be saying a lot more of that sort
Speaker 2: of thing in the film, although that actually did happen.
Speaker 2: Symbolic it works on both levels. I don't want to
Speaker 2: tell you too much, don't want to spoil the film,
Speaker 2: but I'll just say, Icarus, okay if you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, right, if it doesn't matter, but you should
Speaker 2: probably read more.
Speaker 8: I am so intellectually superior to everyone around.
Speaker 5: Me, you know, And that's part of that opening scene.
Speaker 5: It's the I just want to say Icarus and then
Speaker 5: the credits role it's like a declaration like I'm going
Speaker 5: to be this smug to you for the rest of
Speaker 5: the film. I'm your lead character.
Speaker 8: It's very smart the way that they blend. You talked
Speaker 8: about how Tony Wilson is Steve Coogan's stunt double by
Speaker 8: them reusing the old footage from Granada. I don't know
Speaker 8: if it's Robbie Mueller, the DP, or who it was
Speaker 8: that was in charge of this, but to blend the
Speaker 8: footage of Cougan with Wilson, I could not tell the
Speaker 8: difference between the footage because it looked like it was
Speaker 8: shot on the same stock, shot on the same day,
Speaker 8: the same lighting. I mean, it just looked perfect. And
Speaker 8: then you also start to add in like the footage
Speaker 8: of the six pistols at the Hall in Manchester, now
Speaker 8: that is very different the you know, it looks like
Speaker 8: super eight of the sex pistols, and then it's much
Speaker 8: better film quality or digital quality of the people in
Speaker 8: the hall. But I love those like quick pans that
Speaker 8: they'll do to go from the pistols to the people
Speaker 8: in the hall, and you're really getting introduced to so
Speaker 8: many of the characters, just in this very first scene
Speaker 8: where it's like, oh, well, here's Andy Serkis, and here's Constantine,
Speaker 8: and here's all these other people that you're going to
Speaker 8: see through this whole film, and it's just like, wow,
Speaker 8: this is really a smart way to introduce this and
Speaker 8: to integrate that older footage.
Speaker 5: That opening scene, I know was filmed on a sixteen millimeter,
Speaker 5: so it matches perfectly there and you needed to do that.
Speaker 5: Going in the RST obviously was shot digitally, and of
Speaker 5: course this was made in like two thousand and two.
Speaker 5: When it came out in two thousand and three, so
Speaker 5: everyone was kind of reeling from twenty eight days later
Speaker 5: and the fact that Danny Boyle went and made a
Speaker 5: movie with video cameras. But it's my understanding what they
Speaker 5: did here was they then transferred this to film and
Speaker 5: then transferred it back to video so it would have
Speaker 5: this pass through film so it could match a little
Speaker 5: bit more. Because the scene you're talking about the Manchester
Speaker 5: Free Trade Hall, the Sex Pistols first show where they
Speaker 5: are blending it in some shots rather seamlessly, where we
Speaker 5: get to a close up of the band and it's
Speaker 5: clearly Johnny Rotten and then it switshpans so fast to
Speaker 5: somebody in character sitting there watching that you could believe
Speaker 5: that they had cameras there that night.
Speaker 3: The thing I loved about these transitions between the real
Speaker 3: footage and then the film footage is it never felt
Speaker 3: to me like a gimmick or it ever felt like
Speaker 3: the film was winking at me. It felt very natural,
Speaker 3: not like say a Forest Gump where where they're trying
Speaker 3: to show you how clever they are.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I didn't get that. I did like two when
Speaker 8: they go I think it's also in that same opening
Speaker 8: sequence with the sex Pistols where it's like all of
Speaker 8: these people are here watching this show. It's kind of
Speaker 8: like when people talk about the Velvet Underground. Like when
Speaker 8: people went to see the Velvet Underground, they went out
Speaker 8: and they formed bands, and it was very similar to
Speaker 8: this particular concert in Manchester Free Trade Hall where people
Speaker 8: are seeing the sex Pistols and then pretty much everybody
Speaker 8: that you see, what was it like all thirty eight
Speaker 8: people or whatever forty five they all go off and
Speaker 8: they do their things and we get to see John
Speaker 8: the Mailman again. You get to see, you know, all
Speaker 8: of these different people show up you know, the Andy
Speaker 8: Serkis character Martin, Like they're all there and it's just
Speaker 8: kind of this fire that gets lit under everybody. But
Speaker 8: even during that sequence, it's like, you know, oh, you know,
Speaker 8: this movie is about this, and it's about this, and
Speaker 8: we'll talk about New Order and then they cut to
Speaker 8: like a stadium scene of New Order playing and it's
Speaker 8: the actual New Order. They'll show like the real Happy Mine,
Speaker 8: I'm Nice playing.
Speaker 5: I love that they do that.
Speaker 8: And yeah, to your point, Axel doesn't feel like it's
Speaker 8: that we're gonna stop dead and try to trick you
Speaker 8: with this stuff. It's not cutesy or anything. It's just no,
Speaker 8: this is a matter of fact. Like here we are
Speaker 8: at this shitty little hall watching this band, and look
Speaker 8: at what it leads to. Here's the stadium concert that
Speaker 8: New Order put on. However, many years.
Speaker 5: Later, it flat out tells you those guys over there,
Speaker 5: they're way ahead of everybody. They're the Buzzcocks, and like
Speaker 5: there's forty two people in the thing. The Buzzcocks are
Speaker 5: one of them. Back there. Those guys they're wars Are
Speaker 5: they're going to become Joy Division, they're going to become
Speaker 5: New Order. These guys over here are going to be
Speaker 5: a huge band of that, and the amount of people
Speaker 5: who did become bands on that night is spectacular. I'm
Speaker 5: going to keep saying lightning in a bottle with this movie,
Speaker 5: But like you have this amazingly charismatic narrator, you can
Speaker 5: hang the whole thing on who was present at this
Speaker 5: event where all of these other bands proliferated all in Manchester.
Speaker 5: I don't know, I'm getting ahead of it, but it's
Speaker 5: just it's spectacular, like that all of these things came
Speaker 5: together in this one moment, and that it's not the
Speaker 5: end of the movie.
Speaker 8: Well, and people are familiar with like Liverpool and everything,
Speaker 8: but not necessarily familiar with the Manchester scene. And just
Speaker 8: how again another city that was made by industry. And
Speaker 8: I love that this is very much a love letter
Speaker 8: to Manchester because we hear about the history of Manchester.
Speaker 8: You know, you get that sequence with the canals and
Speaker 8: all those things and that old guy who was working
Speaker 8: on them back in nineteen hundred. But yeah, you get
Speaker 8: all of this stuff about Manchester and how it was
Speaker 8: once this thriving industrial city and now it's completely run down.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 8: I think there's a reason why House was so popular
Speaker 8: in places like Chicago and especially Detroit and Manchester, because
Speaker 8: we kind of have similar vibes as far as once
Speaker 8: a great city now really run down, kind of turning
Speaker 8: to the music as somewhat of a salvation. And just
Speaker 8: to have this whole idea of like the Pistols playing Manchester,
Speaker 8: having like so few people showing up just makes sense.
Speaker 8: But then to have this guy turn around and be
Speaker 8: able to show them on television, be able to book
Speaker 8: them on television, this little regional show. You know, I'm
Speaker 8: sure it wasn't that little, but you know, we forget
Speaker 8: about how like even though England is a pretty small place,
Speaker 8: it's like, Okay, you got Granada TV over here, You've
Speaker 8: got this television company over here, and just people in
Speaker 8: the area were able to see this. It wasn't like
Speaker 8: it was being broadcast across the entire country, much less
Speaker 8: the entire continent.
Speaker 3: It's like Tony Wilson had this little fiefdom. He was
Speaker 3: a big fish and had a lot of gravitas. It
Speaker 3: makes him a unique character. He's not Elvis Presley, He's
Speaker 3: not an international hero. He's the right guy at the
Speaker 3: right time.
Speaker 8: No, the right guy at the right time, and then
Speaker 8: bringing this music, this brand new music that really wasn't
Speaker 8: getting I want to say, punk was banned from a
Speaker 8: lot of the BBC, So him showing this stuff, showing
Speaker 8: bands on Granada Television was a huge deal and it
Speaker 8: was one of the few ways that people could actually
Speaker 8: hear this new music. It's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 8: we're talking a few months ago about college radio and
Speaker 8: just how tough it was to hear new music when
Speaker 8: you're younger and before you know, the advent of the
Speaker 8: Internet and everything, where it's just like, well, where can
Speaker 8: I even hear these records? Where can I see these bands?
Speaker 8: And here's this guy showcasing these bands every single week
Speaker 8: before he ends up, you know, getting fired from that.
Speaker 8: I think it was because of Iggy Poppy got fired
Speaker 8: from Granada or from that particular show, I should say.
Speaker 8: So it goes and then kind of goes into more
Speaker 8: of the music business itself, the music, the clubbing, those
Speaker 8: kind of things. Still working at Granada Television. I think,
Speaker 8: I don't know how many years after that. So when
Speaker 8: they show those little, you know, slice of life clips
Speaker 8: of him interviewing people and just like those you know,
Speaker 8: five minutes before the evening news is over type of segments,
Speaker 8: like the local color segments, and it's like that's how
Speaker 8: he made his living for a long time.
Speaker 3: And I love that.
Speaker 8: I was watching a documentary about Wilson and they would
Speaker 8: call those the let's kill Tony moments where they're trying
Speaker 8: to get him, you know, involved in very dangerous things
Speaker 8: like hang gliding, like you know, the elephant washing, those.
Speaker 5: Kind of things. They gave him his own segment called
Speaker 5: Kama Conzey. The hanglining segment was comic conzen. We're just
Speaker 5: going to keep circling around Tony Wilson because he's unavoidable here.
Speaker 5: But the love of the movie of Manchester is completely
Speaker 5: born out of Tony Wilson's love of it. Like, you know,
Speaker 5: he very easily could have shuffled off to London and
Speaker 5: made a career there. You could have come to America
Speaker 5: and been huge, I think as a presenter of something
Speaker 5: or other, and he always stumped to that town. He
Speaker 5: was always presenting bands from the town. And then when
Speaker 5: he becomes from when he becomes a promoter and starts
Speaker 5: hosting nights. When he becomes when it becomes factory, before
Speaker 5: the hot the end of even it's all local talent,
Speaker 5: and I mean to his dying day he stayed he
Speaker 5: you know, he tried to get a film festival going
Speaker 5: in Manchester. He was always, you know, just the biggest
Speaker 5: booster of that town. So that's really admirable. The other thing,
Speaker 5: I think we watched the same documentary What What sort
Speaker 5: of came home for me watching that was as much
Speaker 5: as we're talking about Steve Coogan and his performance here
Speaker 5: Patty Considine as Rob Bretton, who is the manager of
Speaker 5: Joy Division and eventually New Order, it is unchanny. I
Speaker 5: don't think anyone here is doing a caricature. No one's
Speaker 5: doing an impression here. I don't think even Patty Constandin
Speaker 5: is doing an impression here. But he just absolutely oozes
Speaker 5: that guy. That's my favorite character in the movie, Rob Bretton,
Speaker 5: and what a fucking performance from I sat up and
Speaker 5: took notice of Considign like right then and there, and
Speaker 5: I've been happily following so much so that, like I remember,
Speaker 5: two years after this movie came out him almost quitting
Speaker 5: acting because he was having a crisis of conscience and
Speaker 5: just thinking please, no, not you don't you fud.
Speaker 8: Wow I had no idea. I mean, I see him
Speaker 8: show up so often. He always just nails it. I mean,
Speaker 8: even in small, relatively thankless roles, like when he's one
Speaker 8: of the two is he are the book called Tony
Speaker 8: in Sean in Hot Fuzz where they're the two cops
Speaker 8: with the mustache and just some of the looks that
Speaker 8: they give to Nicholas Angel and just them being completely thick.
Speaker 8: I thought that he was wonderful in that because it
Speaker 8: takes so much to play a dumbass like that.
Speaker 5: He's got range. I mean, he was just recently on
Speaker 5: House to the Dragon that first season. He was the
Speaker 5: king on that series. I think most people are going
Speaker 5: to recognize him from that. He's fantastic in that, but
Speaker 5: he's mainly frail during that, so you don't get to
Speaker 5: see how vital the man can be. Rob Bretton was
Speaker 5: nothing if not vital. He's either completely bemused or ready
Speaker 5: to punch you in the fucking face with the vigor.
Speaker 5: It's a hell of a performance and a hell of
Speaker 5: a character.
Speaker 8: It's funny because that documentary that we're talking about, and
Speaker 8: I wish I could remember the name of it right offhand,
Speaker 8: but it's like this movie. It hits so many of
Speaker 8: the same beats where it's like, Okay, we're going along,
Speaker 8: and now here's the signing of Joy Division and they're
Speaker 8: about to go on tour in America and Ian kills
Speaker 8: himself and then there's New Order, and then there's Happy Mondays,
Speaker 8: and there's Factory Records, and just like gives you all
Speaker 8: those steps, here's the Hotcienda, but it focuses on Wilson,
Speaker 8: of course, but it doesn't spend as much time as
Speaker 8: this movie spends. But it's very funny to me that
Speaker 8: it's like, Okay, here's the straight documentary and then here's
Speaker 8: the biopic. I think that the biopick just adds so
Speaker 8: much more because you get to really feel like you
Speaker 8: know these characters and to have these stories and to
Speaker 8: have some of these things. And I know it's not
Speaker 8: one hundred percent true, and Tony Wilson will definitely tell
Speaker 8: you that if you listen to the audio commentary. How
Speaker 8: cool is it that they have an audio commentary with
Speaker 8: Tony Wilson just constantly. I never wore a quote like that.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I'm so excited when I saw it.
Speaker 5: I'm like, wow, he agreed to do it. What's great
Speaker 5: about the entire movie. It's hard for people to get
Speaker 5: a regular bio pick made because they have to like
Speaker 5: count out as so many masters. They you know, who
Speaker 5: owns the music rights, they got to they gotta clear
Speaker 5: it with them, and who owns like the person's biography rights,
Speaker 5: the family got to clear it with them. Like there
Speaker 5: are some there are made up stories in this movie
Speaker 5: regarding real people, and they're just like, go ahead, you know,
Speaker 5: do Howard Devoto never slept with Tony Wilson's wife in
Speaker 5: the bathroom of the of the club, And rather than
Speaker 5: say you can't use my image or my music, he
Speaker 5: shows up in the movie and says this didn't happen,
Speaker 5: and it only makes the movie any better. So it's
Speaker 5: another marvel of this film in that everyone signed off
Speaker 5: except the Stone Roses, and only because they signed on
Speaker 5: too late.
Speaker 8: Well and also them being what was it managed by
Speaker 8: his ex wife? Yeah, like all the people who he
Speaker 8: didn't associate with anymore were the ones behind the Stone Roses.
Speaker 8: I'm like, well, that's kind of a shame, because, like
Speaker 8: I was saying earlier, they're the ones I like the
Speaker 8: best out of that whole Manchester scene, not including New
Speaker 8: Order and Joy Division, of course, and having seen the
Speaker 8: anti Ironton Corbin film, I was like, okay, that's a
Speaker 8: really good companion piece with this where you really get
Speaker 8: some great you know, Ian Curtis and what was going
Speaker 8: on with him and his wife and all those things.
Speaker 8: But it compliments it. It's not like, well, you can
Speaker 8: like one er, you like the other, you can't like both.
Speaker 8: I think that both of them tell very good stories.
Speaker 3: The scene where Tony Wilson's wife is having sex with
Speaker 3: the guy in the bathroom, and then the actual man
Speaker 3: speaks up and says, this never really happened. It's a
Speaker 3: brilliant case of having your cake and eating it too.
Speaker 3: The quote that comes up after that is if you
Speaker 3: have to choose between the truth and the legend, print
Speaker 3: the legend, and I think that this movie plays it
Speaker 3: down the middle and it gets to tell us the
Speaker 3: legend and the truth at the same time, which I
Speaker 3: think is a more expansive view. And it's a way
Speaker 3: that film can sometimes tell the truth more than the facts.
Speaker 3: You know, some of these stories, they may not be
Speaker 3: factually correct, but they're the truth of what people believed.
Speaker 8: I imagine that people who were familiar with this scene
Speaker 8: probably knew a lot of these stories. I wasn't familiar
Speaker 8: with Factory, I wasn't familiar with So It Goes or
Speaker 8: any of these things. Tony Wilson. I wonder if people
Speaker 8: who were following this whole thing or other man Unions,
Speaker 8: if they're just like, well, this is one hundred percent bullshit,
Speaker 8: or if they were just like, yeah, pretty close, you know,
Speaker 8: this is the best to get and combining like different
Speaker 8: stories like oh, this guy fired at Tony with a gun,
Speaker 8: but no, it is actually this incident over here, But
Speaker 8: they combined the two because that's what we do. That
Speaker 8: works for me. And I'm just curious what the general
Speaker 8: man Cunion reaction to.
Speaker 5: This one was. I can only imagine that they have
Speaker 5: embraced this movie wholeheartedly, Like I can't think of a
Speaker 5: better love letter to them, with all the unsavoriness sort
Speaker 5: of laid bare. It doesn't flinch for it from anything,
Speaker 5: you know. During the height of the Manchester scene, they
Speaker 5: were also called Gunchester because there was such gun violence
Speaker 5: that erupted around the scene, and they absolutely portray it here.
Speaker 5: This film is a celebration of all of this joyousness
Speaker 5: and the music and the place and everything, but never
Speaker 5: once does it not give us the underbelly of the
Speaker 5: things driving it, Like you know, charting with like just
Speaker 5: Ian Curtis is like epilepsy, and you know, the sort
Speaker 5: of casual in the nature that his friends are treating
Speaker 5: him with, you know, and just the depressing nature of
Speaker 5: Manchester in general.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that whole scene is really tough when he has
Speaker 8: the first big fit and I think they again talking
Speaker 8: about mixing fact and fiction, that they had that whole
Speaker 8: thing with the riot that was going on at the
Speaker 8: same time, and I think Wilson was just like, well,
Speaker 8: actually the National Front didn't come in and do this,
Speaker 8: but you know, it makes for good drama. And I'm like, yeah, okay, exactly,
Speaker 8: do what makes sense dramatically. It feels like you're holding
Speaker 8: the spirit of it close to you and you just
Speaker 8: need to move the story along.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know what, the movie is sort of
Speaker 5: obsessed with semionics, signs and signifiers, so oh yeah, so
Speaker 5: why not combine the minor controversy of joyd Division's name
Speaker 5: with a controversy that was also going on at the
Speaker 5: time in England, which was the Nationalist Front and there
Speaker 5: was a that occurred at a joint of vision show,
Speaker 5: so put them all together there. It is like it
Speaker 5: only makes sense, Like who would be offended by it?
Speaker 5: I don't understand.
Speaker 8: Are you not familiar with situationalism? I love when he's
Speaker 8: like lecturing the journalists, who why am I blanking?
Speaker 5: And Rob Rob crydon crydon?
Speaker 8: Oh god. I always think them show up and man
Speaker 8: oh man, just him and Kuchan together. Always the movies
Speaker 8: that they've made together, the appearances I've seen them do together.
Speaker 8: It's always such a pleasure. He's barely in here, but
Speaker 8: whenever he shows up, I'm like, all right, this is.
Speaker 5: This is going to be good. You're just fucking wrong.
Speaker 5: That conversation between those two, By the way, the George
Speaker 5: Epstein Brian Martin Bucker conversation, is one of my favorite
Speaker 5: moments in the movie because it not only lanes bare
Speaker 5: the egotism of Tony Wilson. He's mad because the behind
Speaker 5: the scenes guy they can't remember his name, and he's
Speaker 5: worried that that's going to happen to himself. But on
Speaker 5: a basic music nerd level, journalists suck, and this is
Speaker 5: a fucking music journalist he's talking to who doesn't know
Speaker 5: the difference between Brian Epstein and George Martin and has
Speaker 5: their names confused. I love that exchange.
Speaker 8: You know, we were talking about the way that the
Speaker 8: film looks before and things like the way that they
Speaker 8: use black and white during the Joy Division scenes, the
Speaker 8: way that they have those real shaky titles that will
Speaker 8: come up over things like when they have their first
Speaker 8: night with Joy Division and it says fact one on there,
Speaker 8: and I like that they don't have to explain that,
Speaker 8: or they don't explain it where it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 8: they they labeled everything at factory and everything had like
Speaker 8: a FAC number before it, Like that's really smart. But
Speaker 8: they never take the time to say, Okay, the reason
Speaker 8: we're doing this. It's just like you know or you
Speaker 8: don't know, And it really doesn't matter if you don't know.
Speaker 8: It's not like they're hiding stuff from you.
Speaker 5: If you're intrigued by you're gonna go fucking read about
Speaker 5: it and find out about it anyway. Yeah, what's funny
Speaker 5: is it's the movie that is the most spoon and fed,
Speaker 5: or potentially could be, because we have a narrator breaking
Speaker 5: the fourth wall and addressing us. So this could be
Speaker 5: a hat on a hat, but it never is. It's
Speaker 5: always innovating and interesting.
Speaker 8: I'm curious about one scene how you guys felt about this,
Speaker 8: the scene where he goes and visits his ex wife
Speaker 8: and his kid. That seemed to kind of come out
Speaker 8: of nowhere for me, and I'm curious what you guys
Speaker 8: thought about that one.
Speaker 3: I loved it. I thought the truth of something and
Speaker 3: the facts of something are different. And you know, the
Speaker 3: story of Tony Wilson is this heroic, arrogant character, and
Speaker 3: then there's this part of who he is with his
Speaker 3: wife being ill and him looking like he doesn't have
Speaker 3: the best relationship with his son, and you realize that
Speaker 3: to get the narrative of him being this big fish
Speaker 3: in a little pond, you're leaving out some of the
Speaker 3: places where he missed and where the legend doesn't apply.
Speaker 3: And it's a really awkward moment because I think sadly
Speaker 3: it gives the impression that his family just didn't fit
Speaker 3: into what he was doing.
Speaker 5: I don't think we needed to show what a prick
Speaker 5: Tony Wilson could be, but I think it's perhaps a
Speaker 5: counterpoint to because they do that a couple of times,
Speaker 5: like after the Howard Devoto sequence in the bathroom with
Speaker 5: his wife Shirley Henderson, who we should mention the cast
Speaker 5: is just fucking incredible.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 5: He says, yeah, we had crazy moments like that, but
Speaker 5: often we were just a normal couple. So we get
Speaker 5: shots of them just being normal and hanging out and whatever. So,
Speaker 5: you know, and that's when things are coming up, and
Speaker 5: when things are bad, we get a view of his
Speaker 5: you know, how neglectual he was as a human. I
Speaker 5: think it's just part of the movie's philosophy of laying
Speaker 5: all the facts out for us so we can design
Speaker 5: for ourselves how much we like or don't like someone.
Speaker 8: I also find it fascinating because of the Julie Henderson character.
Speaker 8: Most people will know her as moaning Myrtle, which is
Speaker 8: very unfortunate because she's so much more than moaning Myrtle.
Speaker 8: He keeps talking to her about having kids, and you know,
Speaker 8: we want to start family, and oh, it'd be great
Speaker 8: if we had a couple kids running around, And when
Speaker 8: you find out that he did have kids, it's like, oh,
Speaker 8: how disingenuous that feels, or just like he wants to
Speaker 8: start kids, start families with all of these different women.
Speaker 8: I mean, because he's got her, he's got Lindsey, he's
Speaker 8: got the ex wife, and then eventually he's going to
Speaker 8: have and I can't remember the other lady's name that
Speaker 8: comes in later in the film when he does that
Speaker 8: very awkward let's say, flirting but he has to tell
Speaker 8: her that he's flirting with her, and just very post thing. Yeah,
Speaker 8: very postmoderny. I think he even says that, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sounds like he's setting up franchises around the United States,
Speaker 5: you know, or or I mean it's I like that
Speaker 5: we get that part of him where you can see
Speaker 5: that this is a man who was looking for a
Speaker 5: home life that he could use as stability for his
Speaker 5: you know, for his crazy work life, and eventually got
Speaker 5: that because they're still or we're still together until his death.
Speaker 5: Like so, but you know, obviously he had drunk the
Speaker 5: kool aid as far as it's you've got to have
Speaker 5: the kids in order to make it be happy.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that is pretty creepy when he's doing the commentary
Speaker 8: and says, you know, oh yes, because he says in
Speaker 8: the movie, yes, we're still together, and then the commentary
Speaker 8: on top of that I mean talk about like levels, right.
Speaker 8: The commentary is just like, oh yeah, and we are
Speaker 8: still together like the few months or years or whenever
Speaker 8: he recorded that commentary, Yes, we're still together. And then
Speaker 8: Tony Wilson is not with us anymore? So are we
Speaker 8: hearing this voice from beyond the grave? And I had
Speaker 8: to go look it up and I was like, yep,
Speaker 8: they were still together when he died.
Speaker 5: So yeah. But in the commentary he's saying like, I'm
Speaker 5: not sure if we will be He's saying like so contentious,
Speaker 5: like you know, she could leave me in any second now.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it must take a lot to.
Speaker 9: Be with him.
Speaker 3: I was a little taken in by his flirting in
Speaker 3: that scene because I think when I was single, that
Speaker 3: was kind of my approach. It's just I wasn't as successful,
Speaker 3: but using irony and self deprecation to try to sneak
Speaker 3: past defenses. I thought he was onto something there.
Speaker 5: It doesn't hurt that he can also say I look
Speaker 5: after a new order and the hacienda is my place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I never had that one.
Speaker 8: That's the thing though, when she says and you are,
Speaker 8: or like what do you do and he just goes,
Speaker 8: I'm Tony Wilson. Hello, you know Tony Wilson here.
Speaker 1: You know, that's my job.
Speaker 8: My job is to be Tony Wilson. That's all I
Speaker 8: do all the time. Yeah, just that whole thing too,
Speaker 8: where Tony Wilson wasn't in it for I mean, he's
Speaker 8: in it for himself. But at the same time, that
Speaker 8: whole contract that they draw up, you know, that really
Speaker 8: gets brought back. You know, he does that at minute
Speaker 8: thirty of the movie, so right as we're switching from
Speaker 8: the first act to the second act, and then it
Speaker 8: comes back as the third act where Keith is it.
Speaker 8: Keith Allen is the guy who I just every time
Speaker 8: he shows up in anything, I just absolutely love him.
Speaker 8: He was the guy who dies in Shallow Grave. He
Speaker 8: did a whole series of commercials for the World Cup
Speaker 8: when the World Cup came to America back in the
Speaker 8: I want to say, like ninety three, ninety four, maybe
Speaker 8: ninety five. They were fucking amazing commercials. And ever since then,
Speaker 8: I've just been like, Oh, this guy's somebody to watch,
Speaker 8: and just to have him show up at the very
Speaker 8: end as this complete prick music producer radio or sorry
Speaker 8: album label guy label exactly and just figure out that
Speaker 8: he doesn't need to deal with these assholes at factory whatsoever,
Speaker 8: that he can just go directly to the bands. It's
Speaker 8: so fascinating because you're basically watching Tony slid his own
Speaker 8: throat because they're not going to get any fucking money
Speaker 8: from this at all now because the bands own their
Speaker 8: own catalog, the bands own everything, so he's got nothing.
Speaker 8: He doesn't have a leg to stand on. And even
Speaker 8: when when Keith is like, oh, you know, I'm going
Speaker 8: to pay five million pounds for all of this, and
Speaker 8: Wilson's character is like, oh, you know that princely sum,
Speaker 8: and I'm like, really, that's a princely sum. Five million
Speaker 8: pounds for everything they've built feels like a drop in
Speaker 8: the bucket feels like an insult to me.
Speaker 5: I think it would have been an insult if he
Speaker 5: had the rights to any of those artists music and regrets.
Speaker 5: I knew he had to say he was going to
Speaker 5: have to down element in that next moment, and you know,
Speaker 5: obviously that really happened. And it what it does for
Speaker 5: me is it allows me to appreciate how smug and
Speaker 5: egotistical Tony Wilson is. Because if you're going to do
Speaker 5: that basically a gentleman's agreement that will work together until
Speaker 5: we don't want to work together on it anymore, and
Speaker 5: you go your way and I go my way, and
Speaker 5: then stuck to it and didn't fight it, didn't try
Speaker 5: and didn't try to take to court the validity of
Speaker 5: the blood napkin. You know, like it makes me love
Speaker 5: that guy honestly, and you know, and you know, I'm
Speaker 5: sure you listen to the commentary as well, where he
Speaker 5: said it didn't quite happen that way. He went to them,
Speaker 5: So he's in their office and it's like a ring
Speaker 5: of executives watching him, and then they had to explain
Speaker 5: to him that he didn't known the rights because he
Speaker 5: thought he had. It's even worse than what they gave
Speaker 5: us in the movie.
Speaker 8: Around that thirty thirty thousand pound table that they're at
Speaker 8: where I just love of how Paddy Consadine is like
Speaker 8: attacking him, and apparently people Cougan didn't know exactly when
Speaker 8: he was going to get attacked.
Speaker 5: Steve Coogan said, like, yeah, he always felt around Patty
Speaker 5: Conson and like I didn't know if he was going to,
Speaker 5: you know, attack me at any moment. But evidently that
Speaker 5: is in keeping with character with Robb Bretton, so he
Speaker 5: was just that explosive.
Speaker 3: With the way the scene plays out in the movie
Speaker 3: with the different narrative of them coming to Tony Wilson,
Speaker 3: that scene is is an amazing performance by Steve Coogan.
Speaker 3: You're watching this guy with a great amount of pride
Speaker 3: and also just the sinking feeling of having lost everything.
Speaker 3: So he's you can in the scene, you can tell
Speaker 3: that he's still proud that he made this decision, and
Speaker 3: he's impressed with himself. He's stroked his own ego, and
Speaker 3: he's also very aware that he lost a lot of money,
Speaker 3: and Coogan just plays it perfectly.
Speaker 2: I never literally nor metaphorically sold out. I protected myself
Speaker 2: from having to have the dilemma of having to sell
Speaker 2: out by having nothing to sell out.
Speaker 5: He eventually did get fired by Granada for that Iggy
Speaker 5: Pomp show, but the one he almost quit over was
Speaker 5: they made him put on the Stranglers, which is this
Speaker 5: British punk ber They're fucking terrible, and so he didn't
Speaker 5: want to put them on. They so they did. Here's
Speaker 5: another clever thing in the movie. So there's a montage
Speaker 5: of the artists that show that were shown on Granada
Speaker 5: where they showed Susie and the Banshees and The Fall
Speaker 5: and the Jam and the last one is The Stranglers,
Speaker 5: which they then cut to introducing us to Sean and
Speaker 5: Paul Ryder of the Happy Mondays long before they're the
Speaker 5: Happy Mondays sitting and watching television and Sean Rider going, oh,
Speaker 5: they're fucking terrible. Turn that off. So they even get
Speaker 5: to get like, Tony Wilson gets a little bit of
Speaker 5: revenge through the film because of that moral standing.
Speaker 3: So it was there.
Speaker 8: I've never heard a certain ratio. Are they any better
Speaker 8: in real life than they are in this movie? Because
Speaker 8: I thought they were absolute shite in this movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they are the butt of the joke in the film.
Speaker 5: They are before the Tropicalia kind of thing. They were
Speaker 5: kind of a pale imitation of joy Division. They're okay,
Speaker 5: but yeah, they're kind of They deserve the jokes that
Speaker 5: are being sort of levied against them. Not Nick Hucknall
Speaker 5: from simply read like that he deserves better and they
Speaker 5: really should have signed the Smiths.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I love that God talks to Tony at the end.
Speaker 8: I mean, that is so appropriate. That he has a
Speaker 8: conversation with God, and of course God looks exactly like him,
Speaker 8: and I never really thought about that whole God made
Speaker 8: man in his own image, So if you talk to God,
Speaker 8: he looked like you, but it was me, you know.
Speaker 8: And then there was a line that they cut out
Speaker 8: after Patty's last line at where Coogan as Wilson says, well,
Speaker 8: except for the beard and the long hair.
Speaker 3: He's so self assured when he says, well, he looks
Speaker 3: like me, just like, of course I'm this is my
Speaker 3: expectation for seeing God.
Speaker 8: Can I get that in writing?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And I loved our final scene is, you know, just
Speaker 5: sort of another hangout moment, like even after everything everyone's
Speaker 5: been so they can just still hang out on the
Speaker 5: roof and smoke out and you know, just be friends.
Speaker 8: Where do you go in? The record's over right, and
Speaker 8: hear they're closing the club and you get to see
Speaker 8: just it's funny because another movie would be very sad
Speaker 8: at that point, and it is kind of melancholy. But
Speaker 8: you don't feel like they've been defeated. You know, you
Speaker 8: feel like, okay, the system has defeated them, but at
Speaker 8: least they had a really good run and at least
Speaker 8: they did make all of this great music. And the
Speaker 8: whole thing that Wilson talked about with the Sex Pistols
Speaker 8: concert as well as all of the music that they
Speaker 8: were putting out from Factory, was Hey, somebody's going to
Speaker 8: listen to this and they're going to start a band,
Speaker 8: and then this other band's going to start, and then
Speaker 8: this other band's going to start. And he's just so
Speaker 8: much about the music. So it does make me question
Speaker 8: that line that we're talking about before, where he's like,
Speaker 8: it's not about me, it's about the music. And yeah,
Speaker 8: it does feel very disingenuous, but at the same time,
Speaker 8: there is a little bit of truth there. It is
Speaker 8: about the music. I mean, we do take the time
Speaker 8: to spend the time with Joy Division, We do take
Speaker 8: the time to spend the time with the Happy Mondays
Speaker 8: and with New Order, So there is that to it.
Speaker 8: You know, could you cut Tony Wilson out from this movie? No,
Speaker 8: absolutely not, because he is just such that driving force
Speaker 8: behind it. But you know, I thought about that other
Speaker 8: documentary and it's like, yeah, you can tell a documentary
Speaker 8: story about Factory Records and about the hacienda and all
Speaker 8: these things. And not have Tony Wilson front and center,
Speaker 8: but he's got to be there, and especially in this
Speaker 8: movie where he is just so charismatic and and just
Speaker 8: driving you crazy. I mean, he's he's almost like an
Speaker 8: anti hero in his own film.
Speaker 5: I know half a dozen nicknames from Manchester, England because
Speaker 5: of Tony Wilson, like the scene that he created out
Speaker 5: of a love for that city, did exactly what he
Speaker 5: wanted to do and continues to to this day. Because
Speaker 5: like you said, the albums are out there. People are
Speaker 5: still listening to Joy Division, They're still listening to New Order.
Speaker 5: I don't know if they're listening to the Happy Mondays,
Speaker 5: but at least those two. And they're watching this movie
Speaker 5: and they're, like you said that that movie control about
Speaker 5: Joy Division. Kids are discovering these bands in this town
Speaker 5: and it's in thanks to a large to a large
Speaker 5: part to Tony Wilson.
Speaker 8: I love the whole thing of them producing the album,
Speaker 8: and that whole the arc of the Andy Circus character,
Speaker 8: and especially as he starts to move from heroin to
Speaker 8: booze and he gains all that weight and they've got
Speaker 8: him in the that suit, which looks really good. It
Speaker 8: doesn't look like, Oh, we're gonna put Andy Serkis in
Speaker 8: a fat suit and it's gonna be funny. It works
Speaker 8: really well. I mean, Joy Division is such a strange
Speaker 8: band when you listen to them, I mean, it's so
Speaker 8: dark so often, but then there's little poppy moments to it.
Speaker 8: The way that Peter Hook plays the bass and is
Speaker 8: so different from anything else that you were hearing at
Speaker 8: the same time. And then yeah, the drum sound, and
Speaker 8: I love those little joking moments, like where they put
Speaker 8: the drummer up on the roof and Circus is like,
Speaker 8: don't worry, I'll come get you when we're done, and
Speaker 8: then they all pile into the car to listen to
Speaker 8: one of the songs. They leave, and then you get
Speaker 8: to see the drummer still on the roof. They had
Speaker 8: completely forgotten them. I'm just like, yeah, there's little moments.
Speaker 8: I mean, this movie is fucking hilarious. Even though it
Speaker 8: deals with things like Ian Curtis's suicide, you know, you
Speaker 8: still get the funny moments around it, and it feels
Speaker 8: very proper when they stop and have a serious moment
Speaker 8: versus when they have those comedy moments.
Speaker 5: I'd love to get a look at this screenplay, because
Speaker 5: it is kind of a wonder that it's able to
Speaker 5: compress as much time as it does and doesn't seem
Speaker 5: to skimp on any characterization here. I never felt like, oh,
Speaker 5: why didn't we spend more time with Joy Division, you know?
Speaker 5: Or Martin Hannett, like he's only given two or three scenes,
Speaker 5: but each one is so impactful that they last. But
Speaker 5: at the same time, it's come to my understanding that
Speaker 5: a lot of this is improvised, like a lot of
Speaker 5: the dialogue back and forth, and not just like the
Speaker 5: comedic guys who are known for it, Like everyone in
Speaker 5: every scene was encouraged to do it. So now what
Speaker 5: you've got is people improvising as lead characters, being true
Speaker 5: to those people that they're playing, while at the same
Speaker 5: time having to navigate their place in the scene. And
Speaker 5: then the greater movie and the fucking movie works, like
Speaker 5: how is that even possible?
Speaker 3: The way they introduce Joy Division is brilliant. It's very natural.
Speaker 3: You know, we're just we're in the club. There's these
Speaker 3: guys there. One of them starts getting in Tony Wilson's face. Oh,
Speaker 3: that's going to be and Curtis and then it keeps
Speaker 3: developing from there, so you feel like you've watched them
Speaker 3: come into their own in a very economical way. It
Speaker 3: doesn't take them very long to set that up.
Speaker 8: No, the editing in this movie is fantastic for what
Speaker 8: they show us and what they don't show us when
Speaker 8: they take those little breaks and we'll cut to like
Speaker 8: the duck herding sheep and you're like, oh, yeah, he's
Speaker 8: still doing these segments on TV, Like this is kind
Speaker 8: of what's paying the bills right now? Is him doing
Speaker 8: all this TV stuff? And then later on with the
Speaker 8: Wheel of Fortune sequence, and just like bringing us back
Speaker 8: to those things just to remind us that what is
Speaker 8: going on outside of the story of the music and
Speaker 8: what's going on with the story of Tony Wilson, because
Speaker 8: especially later on, there's like we're running out of money,
Speaker 8: we don't know where we're going to get any money from.
Speaker 8: And then boom cut to him on Wheel of Fortune
Speaker 8: and you're like, oh, okay, so he's still doing all
Speaker 8: of this posting stuff just to get the money to
Speaker 8: probably pour right into the club. And the way that
Speaker 8: they're talking about, like you know the famous story about
Speaker 8: the first New Order single where it's you know, every
Speaker 8: time they sell one, they lose five pence, and he's
Speaker 8: just like, Oh, don't worry, it's not going to sell
Speaker 8: that much. And then immediately his voice over this was
Speaker 8: the best selling single in UK history. You're like, and
Speaker 8: you're losing money on every fucking one of them.
Speaker 5: But that's another part of his character that I kind
Speaker 5: of ignore, where he's you know, he sees the prototype
Speaker 5: and it's told this is going to be expensive. It's
Speaker 5: a trifle and you know, three color printing, and he says,
Speaker 5: I don't care. It's beautiful. Beauty should have no cost.
Speaker 5: And yes, they did lose five cents per thing, which
Speaker 5: is crazy considering New Order never had a hit single
Speaker 5: bigger than Blue Monday. But at the same time, don't
Speaker 5: you love that it's out there? Don't you know that
Speaker 5: he put it out?
Speaker 8: I love when they bring in the posters late and
Speaker 8: he's just like, you know, hey, the gig is tonight,
Speaker 8: the gig is right now, and you're bringing me the posters.
Speaker 8: But then you get to see the Factory Records logo
Speaker 8: on there and just that yellow and black color scheme,
Speaker 8: and you're like, oh, okay, so he's going to take
Speaker 8: from this and be able to build on top of that.
Speaker 8: And that's just what the whole movie feels like. He's
Speaker 8: just taking little ideas and like building, building, building, Like, well,
Speaker 8: they've got these clubs in New York, why don't we
Speaker 8: have this club over here in Manchester. So that's why
Speaker 8: we're going to do the Hacienda. By the way, New
Speaker 8: Order wasn't getting any of their royalties because we were
Speaker 8: plunking them right back into this club. It's like, oh boy,
Speaker 8: I'm sure that wasn't very appreciated at the time, but
Speaker 8: at least you're being very honest about it.
Speaker 5: That scene where Peter Saville, who was that for Factory Records,
Speaker 5: he was their main designer, and he pops up every
Speaker 5: once in a while, always late, which is I love.
Speaker 5: And there are so many lines from this movie that
Speaker 5: now live in my hand, starting with that one, which
Speaker 5: is when he unfolds the posters, is it's beautiful, but
Speaker 5: it's useless, And as we know, nothing useless can truly
Speaker 5: be beautiful, nothing useless can truly beautiful lives in my head.
Speaker 5: The line from Boethius, the Roman philosopher, the mutability is
Speaker 5: our greatest tragedy, but it's also our hope that lives
Speaker 5: in my head. Like so much of what Tony Wilson
Speaker 5: like just sort of spews and maybe it's Steve Coogan improvising,
Speaker 5: but like just lodged right in here.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 8: To have the quote from Boethius both with the wheel
Speaker 8: of Fortune thing obviously the wheel, and then to have
Speaker 8: Eckelson show up as the drunk or the street person
Speaker 8: and he's shouting about Boethius and the whole thing where
Speaker 8: he's talking about, you know, the wheel turning around and
Speaker 8: you're at your greatest heights and then pretty soon you're
Speaker 8: going to be right off of that. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 8: that's this, you know, that's the whole thing with this
Speaker 8: movie where it's.
Speaker 5: Like that's Tony in this movie. Yeah, he's referring to
Speaker 5: the hacienda like that's the thing that kept us all grounded,
Speaker 5: and just like you're saying that that is to to
Speaker 5: and he's the center of the of the wheel.
Speaker 8: Exactly, and when he's at his greatest sight, he's going
Speaker 8: to come crashing down again and he's going to get
Speaker 8: back up there again. And that's this whole thing of
Speaker 8: like Okay, factory records all right the hacienda. Okay, you know,
Speaker 8: like as they're about to have their biggest victory with
Speaker 8: Joy Division going to the United States and having this
Speaker 8: big tour, that's when he and Curtis kills himself and
Speaker 8: it's just boomed. The wheel comes down again, and then
Speaker 8: you move back and it's okay, now time to rebuild.
Speaker 8: Now we're going to be a new order, and we're
Speaker 8: going to do this, and you know, we're going to
Speaker 8: open up the club. And it's just this constant repetition
Speaker 8: of him trying these different things, and I you know,
Speaker 8: I love it. I love when people are that creative
Speaker 8: or that determined, because you know, I talk about how
Speaker 8: he feels self deluded, but I think you need to
Speaker 8: be a little self deluded in order to push yourself
Speaker 8: to do some of these things. And not ever question
Speaker 8: is nobody going to like this, What if I'm doing
Speaker 8: the wrong thing? You just think it's the right thing,
Speaker 8: and you make it happen. And it feels like he
Speaker 8: had the right people talking about all of these other
Speaker 8: actors that are in here, these characters, these real people,
Speaker 8: had the right people around him in order to make
Speaker 8: these things really come true.
Speaker 3: I think a lesser movie that wasn't as well directed
Speaker 3: and as well edited would not have been as cohesive
Speaker 3: as twenty four hour Party People is, because it's really
Speaker 3: two stories. It's the story of the guy who discovered
Speaker 3: Joy Division and then it's the story of the guy
Speaker 3: who discovered the Happy one Days, And it could easily
Speaker 3: be two movies sort of jammed together, but they actually
Speaker 3: use that to make the movie better. And with those
Speaker 3: metaphors of the well, you know, it's the whole is
Speaker 3: more than the sum of its parts.
Speaker 5: When I had heard that they were making a movie
Speaker 5: about Joy Division and Happy Mondays and a New Order,
Speaker 5: I got really really scared, because it's very easy to
Speaker 5: fuck up a movie about any one of those subjects,
Speaker 5: never mind the total short shriftedness that could come with
Speaker 5: an anthology. Basically, but did you ever feel like anyone
Speaker 5: was less important or more important than anything else, including
Speaker 5: our lead? Like I means, he is our lead character,
Speaker 5: and he is the center of the film, but it
Speaker 5: could just as easily have him fade in the background.
Speaker 5: And this could have been about Rob bretton if they
Speaker 5: wanted to make it like That's the feeling I get,
Speaker 5: Like anyone who's been involved from a factory from beginning
Speaker 5: to end. Like Albert Erasmus, it could have been his
Speaker 5: story just as easily, and I think probably with the
Speaker 5: footage they were given, they probably could have cut it
Speaker 5: in that way. Speaking of the editing, Mike like, you know,
Speaker 5: there's some deleted scene on the DVD. So there's a
Speaker 5: sequence where Happy Mondays are performing or rehearsing for the
Speaker 5: first time, and then they get into a fight and
Speaker 5: then they end up doing ecstasy for the first time.
Speaker 5: So that's the scene that was cut together from who
Speaker 5: knows how many tanks, and then what ends up in
Speaker 5: the movie is basically what two shots it's just bez
Speaker 5: going anyone want to have the best experience of their life,
Speaker 5: and then shots of them taking the thing. And that
Speaker 5: was like a three or four minute scene. So bravo
Speaker 5: to the editor of this movie, who like who probably
Speaker 5: edited like how many versions before we got the version
Speaker 5: we got.
Speaker 8: Here's a sequence of the Happy Mondays and concert, cut
Speaker 8: to Tony Wilson doing the news segment about the canals,
Speaker 8: you know, and then like cut back to the Happy Mondays.
Speaker 8: I'm like, this is great, Like the way that you're
Speaker 8: pacing this thing out it doesn't feel like like you
Speaker 8: were saying, nobody seems to get short shrifted. It is
Speaker 8: very like, all right, now here we are on the
Speaker 8: tour bus for the Happy Mondays. Now we're going to
Speaker 8: cut to this other thing and just to keep all
Speaker 8: of those balls in the air at the same time
Speaker 8: integrating the real footage, integrating the footage that they shot
Speaker 8: for this. I mean, during that Happy Monday scene, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 8: here's one of their first club gigs. Now here's when
Speaker 8: they're fully formed, and that might be actual, real concert
Speaker 8: footage for all I know, because the way that they
Speaker 8: integrate it so flawlessly.
Speaker 5: Like I don't know one more thing about Bez than
Speaker 5: I did before seeing this movie. They basically hit on
Speaker 5: what you need to know about Bez. He can make ecstasy,
Speaker 5: he can give you ecstasy, and he can teach you
Speaker 5: how to dance to the music you're listening to. And
Speaker 5: that's all I needed to know. And I didn't feel
Speaker 5: coming away like why didn't we know more about Bez's
Speaker 5: home line?
Speaker 3: So you're not clamoring for the Bez themed sequel. I
Speaker 3: would not say no.
Speaker 5: To any Bez related entertainment. By the way, speaking of
Speaker 5: great introductions of a character. There was a UFO siding
Speaker 5: in Manchester at that time to integrate that into the movie,
Speaker 5: and as it pulls away, there's Bez. If you look
Speaker 5: at the spaceship itself, it's made to look like numbers
Speaker 5: and symbols, but it just as Bez.
Speaker 8: I'm hoping that Frank Control Boyce will be on this episode.
Speaker 8: We've been going back and forth via Twitter, but it's
Speaker 8: been a few weeks since I've heard from him, so
Speaker 8: as I've moved away from Twitter, I don't know if
Speaker 8: he's moved away as well. I sent him an email,
Speaker 8: So hopefully he'll actually be on the show, because I
Speaker 8: think that'd be a real cupe to hear those stories
Speaker 8: that Wilson is telling, and even the stuff that Cougan
Speaker 8: says on his commentary track, it sounds like Boyce was
Speaker 8: right there at the beginning, like with Cougan even saying Okay,
Speaker 8: we're going to do this, and so like getting ideas
Speaker 8: from Cougan even and Cougan's.
Speaker 5: What was it his brother was in He was in
Speaker 5: a band that was produced by Martin Hannett, so like
Speaker 5: they knew John the Postman. So he's like deep. I
Speaker 5: mean Steve Coogan himself is one of his first stand
Speaker 5: up gigs was at the Hacienda, so like he knew
Speaker 5: Tony Wilson like, yeah, you know, if that interview goes off, Mike,
Speaker 5: keep all the you can on Frank Control Boys for
Speaker 5: the screenplay and his line of children's books, which are
Speaker 5: very very good.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 8: Yeah, to know that he worked with winter Bottoms so
Speaker 8: many times, and the last time I talked with Kendrump
Speaker 8: voice it was four code forty six, and you couldn't
Speaker 8: think of a different movie than this one compared to
Speaker 8: that one. I mean, didn't they follow this with a Western?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 8: I mean the array of things that winter Bottom works
Speaker 8: on is just spectacular. And I do appreciate that he
Speaker 8: doesn't do these audio commentaries that he's just like, no,
Speaker 8: I'll stay behind the scenes, you know, just let the
Speaker 8: actors and the actual subjects speak for themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was reading some of the literature you sent
Speaker 3: along with the film, and the way they were describing
Speaker 3: winter Bottom's work, I thought, this, this does not sound
Speaker 3: like the director of twenty four Hour Party people. This
Speaker 3: sounds you know, I felt like it was Michael Hannikey
Speaker 3: or you know Werner Herdzog or someone like that. You know,
Speaker 3: Twenty four Hour Party People has such a playful tone
Speaker 3: to it, even as it deals with some very serious things.
Speaker 8: There's one line in the movie that really caught me
Speaker 8: when I was rewatching it yesterday, which was when he
Speaker 8: starts talking about the shift from you know, the bands
Speaker 8: to the DJ and the DJ culture and he's just like,
Speaker 8: people in this club are applauding the DJ. And I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 8: why is that so strange? But then I'm like, all right, yeah,
Speaker 8: I guess when you think about it, the DJ's not
Speaker 8: doing jack shit other than playing records. I mean, I
Speaker 8: know there's a lot more to it. You know, I've
Speaker 8: got friends who are DJs. Obviously being in Detroit, I
Speaker 8: know people that are DJs. But it's like, you're not
Speaker 8: making the music, you're not the band, you're playing the
Speaker 8: band's music. And so that foreign concept for Wilson when
Speaker 8: he's just like people are applauding the DJ, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 8: that's a real thing here. This is kind of wild
Speaker 8: for you to be experiencing this. And that whole shift
Speaker 8: of the band on stage to the DJ on stage,
Speaker 8: they were again able to roll with that, no problem.
Speaker 8: But it just becomes this whole different mindset. And that's
Speaker 8: the way that so many clubs are now where it's like, oh,
Speaker 8: DJ so and so is playing or doing the music
Speaker 8: this night, and it's like, okay, you know, like I
Speaker 8: other than like some of the old school Detroit you
Speaker 8: know DJs. I wouldn't be able to tell you anybody
Speaker 8: who's a DJ these days and what they bring to
Speaker 8: the party.
Speaker 5: I'm in Las Vegas. The city is lousy with DJs.
Speaker 5: Every single club is advertising specifically their DJ come to
Speaker 5: come here for that I mentioned movies the lines that
Speaker 5: live in my head. Another one is from that scene Mike,
Speaker 5: the beatification of the beat, the idea that now the
Speaker 5: music is the medium being worshiped as it always had been.
Speaker 5: So it sort of points to a misplaced sort of
Speaker 5: celebration or someone misplaced worship, you know, when it comes
Speaker 5: to these bands. But it is, as he said, like
Speaker 5: obviously Manchester, the whole acid house scene was pulled mainly
Speaker 5: from the house scene in Chicago. It was like a
Speaker 5: mashup of their sensibilities in those so it's not like
Speaker 5: they created that sound, but it is instructive that that's
Speaker 5: where we are. I mean, look, the Electric Daisy Carnival
Speaker 5: comes here every year and the entire city shuts down.
Speaker 5: So it is a way of music, and it is
Speaker 5: a massive fan base for that kind of music. And
Speaker 5: in many many ways, it began right there.
Speaker 8: I won't fight with you about Chicago versus Troit, but
Speaker 8: you know, I just wanted to say Detroit's right in
Speaker 8: the mix.
Speaker 5: I guarantee you they were pulling from Detroit as well,
Speaker 5: how about that?
Speaker 3: And I just agree with you.
Speaker 8: That's fine. We can agree to agree.
Speaker 3: Father Malone, you said that this movie brought you into
Speaker 3: the Happy Monday's camp. Yeah, how solidly did you join
Speaker 3: that camp?
Speaker 5: I will listen to a mix of their music that
Speaker 5: I have made a playlist. Not all of their stuff
Speaker 5: is fantastic, And obviously Tony Wilson is a man of
Speaker 5: much hyperbole because Sean Ryde, I'm of the camp that
Speaker 5: Sean Ryder is mainly a fucking idiot, but on occasion
Speaker 5: weaves a little bit of genius. That that song Kinky
Speaker 5: Afro I can put on anytime, any day, any night,
Speaker 5: and it's it is actually slightly genius. When you listen
Speaker 5: to those lyrics which which I only like really understood
Speaker 5: after hearing Tony Wilson sort of describe them to me,
Speaker 5: which is on that audio track like once you once
Speaker 5: you've deciphered the Shawn Ryder code, that the songs do
Speaker 5: get a little bit deeper.
Speaker 3: Weirdly, see, I don't know. I thought this time might
Speaker 3: be the time that that I would catch the bug,
Speaker 3: and I tried to listen to some Happy Mondays. I
Speaker 3: find them fascinating, you know, as characters. I just never
Speaker 3: never got the bug. I remember my friend Dave had
Speaker 3: I think it was the Live CD, and periodically when
Speaker 3: we were all hanging out in his basement, that would
Speaker 3: just kind of come on. And I think most of
Speaker 3: us did not side with Dave in that choice.
Speaker 5: Well, I wouldn't listen to Live anything other Happy Mondays.
Speaker 5: They're lucky they were standing up right.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And when it comes to the whole Joy Division New
Speaker 8: Order debate, I'm usually much more in the Joy Division camp.
Speaker 8: There are a few New Order songs that I really
Speaker 8: like a lot, but that's not nearly as much as
Speaker 8: even with what the two albums that Joy Division had,
Speaker 8: Those to me are much more solid than the entire
Speaker 8: catalog of New Order, but that could just be a
Speaker 8: personal problem that I have.
Speaker 5: No I'm with you see, I was part of the
Speaker 5: Joy Division is better than New Order camp. Then after
Speaker 5: this movie, to this day, I do love New Order
Speaker 5: and I love the story of New Order because I
Speaker 5: mean they say it in the in the film like
Speaker 5: no band ever survives the death of their lead singer.
Speaker 5: Well this one did, and they were just as vital.
Speaker 5: They're still performing today for fox sake.
Speaker 8: I remember there was a concert that I can't remember
Speaker 8: why I couldn't go to, but it was New Order,
Speaker 8: Sugar Cubes and Public Image Limited, and I really wanted
Speaker 8: to go to that.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Talk about a powerhouse, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's absurd, that's Sugarcubes. That's not even Buyerk
Speaker 5: just birthday.
Speaker 3: Man, this movie musically changed my life because I had
Speaker 3: not been familiar at all with Joy Division before this.
Speaker 3: You know why. When I saw it, my impression was
Speaker 3: that all punk was sex, pistols, ramones, snotty bands with
Speaker 3: guitar riffs, and so that's what I was expecting going
Speaker 3: into it. When I'm like, oh, they're you know, punk
Speaker 3: post punk, and then they got to the Joy Division
Speaker 3: songs and I realized this, I like this, this is
Speaker 3: speaking to me here and it it kind of got
Speaker 3: me more into post punk and then other musical bands
Speaker 3: that I was fond of, like industrial stuff, Got Stuff.
Speaker 3: I kind of started to see where the roots of
Speaker 3: that were and see how they were all connected. So
Speaker 3: very grateful for this movie for opening my eyes to
Speaker 3: a lot of great music.
Speaker 8: You know, one other thing I want to say real
Speaker 8: quick before we head over to a break is I
Speaker 8: also appreciate that they are putting in cameos by some
Speaker 8: of the real people that were engaged with this, and
Speaker 8: that they take the time at one point for Coogan's
Speaker 8: character to recognize that and then go back through and
Speaker 8: show you all of the cameos that they've had through
Speaker 8: this movie. Because like when Mark from The Fall showed up,
Speaker 8: I was just like, hey, that's Mark from the Fall.
Speaker 8: But they don't put a button on it, and they
Speaker 8: don't even like have it pause and like a close
Speaker 8: up of him or anything. It's just like, yeah, these people,
Speaker 8: like every once in a while it'd be like, well,
Speaker 8: that feels like that must be somebody. Because the other
Speaker 8: thing is, you know we've said this before, this movie
Speaker 8: is littered with people who are familiar faces. You know,
Speaker 8: so many of these actors that we've seen in other things,
Speaker 8: and they just they're everywhere. I mean, everybody in this
Speaker 8: movie is somebody, and if they're not, they end up
Speaker 8: being part of the actual original bands or scene, which
Speaker 8: was really cool to be able to see, like, oh,
Speaker 8: this dude that just walked by that was the you know,
Speaker 8: the guy who's playing the doorman who's taking all the
Speaker 8: money is the guy who was the doorman who was
Speaker 8: taking all the money back then. Or like they even
Speaker 8: have somebody who is a stand up comedian or an actress.
Speaker 8: She's working the door at another point and she actually
Speaker 8: worked the door at the huscienda originally. It's just like
Speaker 8: that's great to be able to mix again this fact
Speaker 8: in fiction altogether.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'll say again, and nobody ever had a
Speaker 5: problem with that. Nobody was bitching about the way that
Speaker 5: they were going to be portrayed or you know, you know,
Speaker 5: their legacy. Everyone just sort of like rolled with it here,
Speaker 5: which is just I don't know, like this movie just
Speaker 5: continues to just impress, Like.
Speaker 3: And it happens so late in the movie too. Things
Speaker 3: are winding down and that by the way, you've seen
Speaker 3: these people, here's this person, here's this person, and so
Speaker 3: it kind of felt to me like, I don't know
Speaker 3: what I'm supposed to do with that information because we're
Speaker 3: we're rapidly approaching the end. I think it works sort
Speaker 3: of to destabilize the narrative. So it's the movie's way
Speaker 3: of saying, you know, don't be so sure what's real.
Speaker 3: And I think that's a good message for any biopicked
Speaker 3: sneak in there at the end.
Speaker 5: They basically put a button on it in that scene
Speaker 5: with Coogan sort of going like, this was him, this
Speaker 5: was her, this was him, this was her, whereas they
Speaker 5: needn't have done that and just let the music nerds
Speaker 5: sort of geek out about it afterwards. Did you see
Speaker 5: so and so and such and such. But like, if
Speaker 5: like a regular biopick, if like Little Richard was going
Speaker 5: to be in a scene, it would be like, and
Speaker 5: here's the.
Speaker 8: Little Richard and so many of these folks we know
Speaker 8: their faces from the music videos, and I like that
Speaker 8: there's just a little bit of nods to some of
Speaker 8: the music videos that they have, like when he goes
Speaker 8: into the hacienda and it's all the little kids there,
Speaker 8: and it's just like, oh, okay, this is part of
Speaker 8: one of these videos and just to like get that.
Speaker 8: And then even when it comes to like you mentioned
Speaker 8: the spaceship or the scene with God at the end
Speaker 8: of it, it feels so natural when it's just these
Speaker 8: odd moments show up. And at first I thought, like,
Speaker 8: at least with the spaceship, I was just like, is
Speaker 8: this a music video? Are we like suddenly inside of
Speaker 8: a music video? No, But again it's like they're they're
Speaker 8: even playing with the forms in the movie. After Ian
Speaker 8: Curtis is dead, Wilson comes on and he gives us
Speaker 8: a flashback of here's a better time with Ian, like
Speaker 8: remember the good times with Ian, and they flash back
Speaker 8: to a scene inside in the movie, and I'm just like,
Speaker 8: oh okay, Like we haven't done flashbacks in this movie
Speaker 8: at all, and now suddenly we're going to do this
Speaker 8: and it works. It works really well.
Speaker 5: And while he's sitting like a video editing deck, like
Speaker 5: just another meta once removed, well.
Speaker 8: He changes his hair is different in that scene because
Speaker 8: he's right around the time he gets a new hairstyle
Speaker 8: in the movie, and so I was like, oh, how
Speaker 8: far in the future is this, But it's like, no,
Speaker 8: it's however long between when he last saw joy Division
Speaker 8: and when he's going to the funeral he gets this haircut,
Speaker 8: But yet there's that shot of him, yeah to your
Speaker 8: point in the editing bay, and then it's like, well,
Speaker 8: how long, how many months have passed? No, it's just
Speaker 8: a few days. But things have changed, and now he's
Speaker 8: going to show us this little flashback before we go
Speaker 8: into the funeral sequence.
Speaker 3: Doesn't it work out that we see Ian Curtis commit suicide.
Speaker 3: Doesn't it cut from that to Tony with the duck
Speaker 3: hurting the sheet.
Speaker 5: No, because it's one of my favorite moments in the movie. It's.
Speaker 5: First of all, Ian Curtis's suicide is handled so tastefully
Speaker 5: and packs such a punch that it made me laugh
Speaker 5: and actually cry simultaneously. The next scene is which is
Speaker 5: a scene invented for the film. Tony is interviewing a
Speaker 5: town crier and then has the town crier that's right
Speaker 5: call out his death, which that's it me crying over
Speaker 5: Eden Curtis's actual suicide is nothing compared to what a
Speaker 5: beautiful memorial that would be for anyone.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that was great and that was surprising. When they
Speaker 8: said that it was made up whole cloth. I was like,
Speaker 8: that just feels so real. And to have that moment
Speaker 8: with Tony and his girlfriend together and she's just like, oh,
Speaker 8: that was such a beautiful tribute. I was like, oh, yeah, wow,
Speaker 8: that's amazing. And then when I heard in the commentary
Speaker 8: that it wasn't real, I was like, wow, Okay, what
Speaker 8: an amazing thing for them.
Speaker 4: To come up with.
Speaker 5: Tell mister Boyce if you speak to him, that it's
Speaker 5: just a fucking incredible screenplay, because that was the one
Speaker 5: thing that I assumed was true. Like I knew the
Speaker 5: hang gliding thing because you knew that they were mixing footage,
Speaker 5: But like, did he interview the elephant elephant Kenny Baker
Speaker 5: watching elephants? Maybe maybe not? Did he do the guy
Speaker 5: with the canals? Maybe maybe not? This one totally sure
Speaker 5: that it had happened.
Speaker 8: Well, if we play our cards right, we're gonna hear
Speaker 8: from screenwriter Frank control Boyce right after these brief messages,
Speaker 8: come on back and hear the second part of her
Speaker 8: discussion after that.
Speaker 6: Hello, everyone, this is Malcolm McDowell. I just want to
Speaker 6: say that this is a request to listeners of the
Speaker 6: Projection Booth podcast to become patrons of the show via
Speaker 6: Patreon dot com, PA t eo n dot com slash
Speaker 6: Projection Booth. That's pretty simple.
Speaker 4: I think you can do that.
Speaker 6: It's a great show and Mike he provides hours of
Speaker 6: great entertainment. So now it's time to give back my
Speaker 6: little drovies. Settle down and take a listen and have
Speaker 6: a sip of the old molocco and then you'll be
Speaker 6: ready for a little of the old in Out, in
Speaker 6: out real horror show.
Speaker 4: Bye bye.
Speaker 8: All right, we're back in talking about twenty four hour
Speaker 8: Party people. I know we've really talked about this one
Speaker 8: quite a bit, but there's a few other things I
Speaker 8: want to talk about, especially the whole drug sequence with
Speaker 8: the cocaine where Tony's not a big cocaine guy, but
Speaker 8: he definitely is very high in this movie on cocaine
Speaker 8: when he is going to interview somebody from Thatcher's government,
Speaker 8: and the way that they shoot his story where he's
Speaker 8: telling you know, I talked about before the break about
Speaker 8: how he gave us a flashback to Ian Curtis after
Speaker 8: he had committed suicide. But this whole thing where you
Speaker 8: see these white lines of the freeway, but they're actually
Speaker 8: like white powder going down. I mean, talk about the
Speaker 8: old Grand Master Flash song. Right, You've got the white
Speaker 8: lines and just he's out of control the way that
Speaker 8: the car is being covered in snow, but then when
Speaker 8: you look at the larger scene, it's just around the car.
Speaker 8: I just love the way that they put together that
Speaker 8: whole segment and how out of control he is when
Speaker 8: he's trying to kid around, but also not kid around.
Speaker 8: It's like he's trying to do a one of those
Speaker 8: journalistic attack journalism type things where it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: I've got this government guy. I'm really going to give
Speaker 8: it to him, but he fucking blows it before the
Speaker 8: cameras are even on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the whole sequence is pretty incredible. It reminds me
Speaker 5: of the helicopter sequence and Goodfellows. It keeps doing the
Speaker 5: sa it keeps string the sauce and the editing picks
Speaker 5: up here just to sort of match this frenzy that
Speaker 5: comes on it with a good cocaine binge. But yeah,
Speaker 5: the mixed media kind of approach here, the jumping from
Speaker 5: this to that and the other and not only them,
Speaker 5: gets really impressionistic where you know, he's trying to get
Speaker 5: to London by trains, so the train becomes this metaphor
Speaker 5: for the drug use. And at one point they're using
Speaker 5: a tiny model and we pull out from the model
Speaker 5: to see like the real scene, and like the train
Speaker 5: tracks themselves become covered in snow, whereas the rest of
Speaker 5: the landskipe. It's yeah, it's it's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 8: Yeah, all the metaphors for cocaine all right in one sequence,
Speaker 8: doing rails, white lawn snow. Yeah, the whole thing of
Speaker 8: him being on the train and the conductor like, no, no,
Speaker 8: you're not allowed on here, but yet there's no way
Speaker 8: he could get onto the train. And I like that
Speaker 8: Cougan was saying that the train that they showed going
Speaker 8: fast wasn't even there. That's like probably one of the
Speaker 8: few digital effects at this well that probably had a
Speaker 8: lot more digital effects than I'm even aware of, but yeah,
Speaker 8: just to be like, no, no, that wasn't that thing.
Speaker 8: And yeah, the model train, and I love how we're
Speaker 8: following the model train and just go up to Steve
Speaker 8: Coogan and it's like, I don't know if that was
Speaker 8: two shots or one, if they just blended that perfectly,
Speaker 8: or if they actually were following a model train on
Speaker 8: a table and then brought the camera up to Coogan's face.
Speaker 5: Boicing it up. I mean, you know, a winter bottom. Really,
Speaker 5: you know he's the I haven't praised that guy. I
Speaker 5: keep praising the screenwriter just because that knocks me out.
Speaker 5: But yeah, the level of craft of filmmaking here is
Speaker 5: just out of hand. People keep praising Christopher Nolan for
Speaker 5: all of his bullshit, Like look at this movie, Like
Speaker 5: if he had only done this, I would retire proudly go, yeah,
Speaker 5: I made that twenty four hour Party People movie. Now
Speaker 5: just do nothing. What else do I need to do?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 8: But yeah, this is just one of dozens of films
Speaker 8: that he's made, and each one has its own unique
Speaker 8: stamp to it. I mean, the I want to say,
Speaker 8: I can't remember if it was right after this one
Speaker 8: you talked about how he did a Western, but pretty
Speaker 8: soon after this they did that whole Tristan and Shandy
Speaker 8: or Tristan Shandy film. That's right. It was twenty four
Speaker 8: hour Party People in this World code forty six nine songs,
Speaker 8: which I have heard a lot about that and I
Speaker 8: haven't watched it.
Speaker 9: Yet.
Speaker 8: And then Tristan Shandy, which I remember when that played
Speaker 8: at the Toronto Film Festival, and that's like another you know,
Speaker 8: we're making this film, but it's the behind the scenes
Speaker 8: of the film, and you've got Coogan and Brden both
Speaker 8: in there, and I'm just like, yeah, give me more
Speaker 8: of these two together. And they're both playing like, you know,
Speaker 8: one's playing Shandy, the other one's playing another Shandy and
Speaker 8: it's just like all right, and yeah, also playing themselves
Speaker 8: at the same time. I can't wait to check that
Speaker 8: one out again.
Speaker 5: That one has eluded me. Now I'm going to do
Speaker 5: that immediately when we stopped talking there.
Speaker 8: For some reason, I was getting that mixed up with
Speaker 8: the one where it was Simon Pegg who's in this
Speaker 8: movie for like a hot second, him and Andy Serkis
Speaker 8: where they are grave robbers.
Speaker 5: Oh, the Burken Hair movie, Burke and Hare, thank you,
Speaker 5: the John Landis film man.
Speaker 8: Okay, I wondered why I turned that off right away?
Speaker 5: It was not good.
Speaker 8: That makes sense, then that makes sense? Okay, So yes,
Speaker 8: Tristram Shandy good, Burkenhair bad?
Speaker 5: All right, we solved it.
Speaker 8: Yes, Yeah, So it's kind of like this I haven't
Speaker 8: seen Party Monster yet, but Party Monster very different movie,
Speaker 8: I imagine than twenty four hour Party People.
Speaker 5: I keep saying, what would I marvel this film? As
Speaker 5: as far as biopics go, often my go to when
Speaker 5: it comes to a musical biopick, as I say, as
Speaker 5: long as it doesn't do anything that they do and
Speaker 5: walk hard the Dewey Cox story, then you're on the
Speaker 5: right track, Like if you don't fall into any of
Speaker 5: those cliches. But what people really need to be doing
Speaker 5: is aiming for this level of biopick, the willingness to
Speaker 5: go in any direction to get the story told. It
Speaker 5: needs to be first and foremost with anyone trying to
Speaker 5: do this kind of a thing, I would think. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 5: this has is such a sprawling story that it lends
Speaker 5: itself to a fractured kind of narrative storytelling. But good god,
Speaker 5: I saw one of the last movies I saw in
Speaker 5: a theater was a test screening for that Whitney Houston biopick.
Speaker 5: It just so happened to get tickets to it and
Speaker 5: went to it, and my god, man, it was punishing.
Speaker 5: I was angry by the end of that movie. So
Speaker 5: I'm glad this movie exists as a balm at the
Speaker 5: very least.
Speaker 8: I just get so sick of regular biographies, like book biographies,
Speaker 8: where it's like, Okay, we're going to start with the person,
Speaker 8: and then we're going to hear all about their parents,
Speaker 8: their grandparents, their great grandparents. You know what, I don't
Speaker 8: give a shit unless it has something very pertinent to
Speaker 8: do with their life. But you know what, blend it
Speaker 8: in don't stop the whole thing cold by chapter two
Speaker 8: and bore me to fucking tears, and I'm just like
Speaker 8: fast forwarding, quote unquote flipping pages to get to the
Speaker 8: next chapter where it's just like, please just give me
Speaker 8: the person's life. I want to know more about them,
Speaker 8: not their parents and their grandparents.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the Larry Karazewski, Scott Alexander think. Don't tell
Speaker 5: the whole persons. The person's whole life get picked. Why
Speaker 5: are we talking about the person to begin with? Tell
Speaker 5: us about that.
Speaker 8: Give me that Joan Baiez biography where it's like, okay,
Speaker 8: you know it's here's the return of Joan Baiez, and
Speaker 8: now we're going to talk about her life up to
Speaker 8: this point, and then we're going to see the big
Speaker 8: triumphant concert and off we go. There you go, problem solved.
Speaker 8: Don't give me everything.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I kind of appreciate a kitchen sink approach,
Speaker 3: but I like it when it's framed like twenty four
Speaker 3: hour party. People in. You know, we're printing the legend
Speaker 3: and the truth at the same time. I don't mind.
Speaker 3: I don't mind getting all the bits and pieces, especially
Speaker 3: if they're contradictory, and that's I think that's fascinating when
Speaker 3: there are elements of a person's biography that we still
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 8: Oh, I'm absolutely fine with that, Like you don't have
Speaker 8: to tell me everything, Like that's why I don't need
Speaker 8: to see, like, oh, little Tony Wilson grew up here
Speaker 8: in the suburbs of Manchester, and when he was a kid,
Speaker 8: he was so precocious. It's like, no, just start me
Speaker 8: off with that hang gliding sequence and just kind of
Speaker 8: show the shit that he had to put up with
Speaker 8: and that he was stuck doing for this little TV station.
Speaker 8: And then it becomes the full movie and me that
Speaker 8: like Breaking of the Fourth Wall, where it's just like, Okay,
Speaker 8: this is what you're going to see in this film.
Speaker 8: I'm like that works for me. So of course, there
Speaker 8: are going to be biographies that are completely different, something
Speaker 8: like The Complete Beetles where they do go into the
Speaker 8: growing up of Paul and George and John and Ringo.
Speaker 8: But with that it seems to make a lot more sense,
Speaker 8: especially because they were kids when they got together, and
Speaker 8: to see Lennon and McCarthy didn't have that much time
Speaker 8: before they met, you know what, they were like fourteen fifteen,
Speaker 8: sixteen years old, and then they stayed with each other
Speaker 8: for you know, another fourteen fifteen sixteen years after that,
Speaker 8: It's like, yeah, this was half of their life is
Speaker 8: being together and forming this band, and there was just
Speaker 8: that little bit of time beforehand. So you can give
Speaker 8: me that little bit of time beforehand before they met.
Speaker 8: But it makes sense in a story like that. I
Speaker 8: don't need young Tony Wilson in a story like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, with that movie The Complete Beatles, it's essential to
Speaker 5: know what they were like as kids, and it's briefly
Speaker 5: done and lightly done. But in any other biopink, can
Speaker 5: you really think of something they show in that person's
Speaker 5: childhood that actually affects what they end up doing as
Speaker 5: adult or more often than not, we get a scene
Speaker 5: that will foreshadow, like we see them behaving like we
Speaker 5: know they're going to behave right, right, like.
Speaker 8: A young Elton John in that Elton John movie Rocketman
Speaker 8: or whatever that.
Speaker 5: Was, right, or Tina Turner at you know choir practice,
Speaker 5: like blowing the doors off the place, or Whitney Houston. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they had, they had a young woman Houston.
Speaker 3: They certainly did.
Speaker 5: It's just like it's I don't know, just silly. Oh yeah,
Speaker 5: you know what I was actually thinking. Speaking of Scott
Speaker 5: Alexander Larry Karazuski in The People Versus Larry Flint, they
Speaker 5: give us him as a young boy like selling moonshine
Speaker 5: and knocking out knocking out his father because they're drinking
Speaker 5: my profits. Like, oh, he's going to be a cutthrow
Speaker 5: business man, got it?
Speaker 8: That makes total sense. Yeah, But then when you get
Speaker 8: to would it's like, I don't need to see Ed
Speaker 8: in the Army. I don't need to see any of
Speaker 8: this stuff before he starts his whole Hollywood venture. That's
Speaker 8: the movie. And then we don't get to see everything
Speaker 8: after that either, which is absolutely fine. You know, it's
Speaker 8: a slice of just a few years of this guy's life.
Speaker 8: That's all I needed.
Speaker 5: You can go out on a triumph because everyone has
Speaker 5: them in their lives. You just stop the story there.
Speaker 3: That's all one way the film keeps Tony Wilson in
Speaker 3: check and keeps him from becoming too saintly is Frequently,
Speaker 3: even after he's done amazing things, he will be insulted
Speaker 3: by a coworker or a stranger for his day job
Speaker 3: as a journalist, like, hey, nice job. You know you're
Speaker 3: a wanker, and you know. It's peppered throughout the movie.
Speaker 3: So anytime you know Tony's getting to a point where
Speaker 3: you're starting to think very highly of him, the movie
Speaker 3: knocks him back a bit because it just shows that
Speaker 3: the people who see him, most of them or a
Speaker 3: lot of them, see him as a joke.
Speaker 5: They have little to no respect for mister Wilson, including
Speaker 5: Rob Bretton who I think delivers the best one where
Speaker 5: he's drunk and he says, you know your problem. I
Speaker 5: know your problem, and you don't. You're a cunt, Like
Speaker 5: that's basically his business partner.
Speaker 8: And then Wilson tries to get one up on him like, oh,
Speaker 8: I already knew that, so you're.
Speaker 5: Not telling me anything.
Speaker 3: You had written on the thing about the the hedonistic
Speaker 3: debauchery of the Happy Mondays as they're traveling about. That
Speaker 3: is a scene Father Malone that is directly from the
Speaker 3: Dewey Cox playbook. But I feel like to reference another
Speaker 3: music movie. I feel like that scene goes to eleven
Speaker 3: and it takes it further than a lot of debaucherous
Speaker 3: scenes go. And I appreciated that in dewey Cox. No
Speaker 3: let that the this is my debaucherous period moment is
Speaker 3: also in a dewey Cox type parody.
Speaker 8: Oh, like when the Happy Mondays are on the island
Speaker 8: and you get that title card that comes up that says,
Speaker 8: like the Adventures of Ryderson Crusoe.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was thinking of when they're in the buses
Speaker 3: and there's all the girls and all the drugs, and.
Speaker 8: Yeah, when they talk him into doing cocaine with.
Speaker 5: A little bit of Charleston's you're above that, Tony, And.
Speaker 8: I like how Tony and the commentary is just like, ah,
Speaker 8: you know, music wasn't good when it was fueled by cocaine.
Speaker 8: Grass and acid. Yes, great, you know, especially ecstasy, but
Speaker 8: cocaine was not good for the music industry. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 8: all before the whole heist of the lyrics, which I
Speaker 8: thought was just that whole thing when they are getting
Speaker 8: held up by their own band for stealing the tapes,
Speaker 8: the whole thing where he comes in like he's some
Speaker 8: sort of gangster, the guy from The Happy Mondays, and
Speaker 8: Tony's like, okay, listen, I'm gonna give you all the
Speaker 8: money in my wallet. I've got fifty pounds here. He
Speaker 8: just folds completely.
Speaker 5: It's like, all right, great, and you know, again another
Speaker 5: thing invented for the movie. Like, you know, Tony Wilson
Speaker 5: has said there was no ransom involved. It was just
Speaker 5: that they sent them the tapes with nothing on it.
Speaker 5: But there was a scene where there was an event
Speaker 5: where he fucking came in and shot up the place.
Speaker 5: So like put those two together, like just the inventiveness
Speaker 5: of the screenplay is fantastic.
Speaker 8: But got it gets shot up, shot at by the
Speaker 8: guy from the Happy Monday's. It gets shot at by
Speaker 8: Martin the producer. It's just like, and this is not
Speaker 8: even the Gunchester sequence of the movie, which is crazy.
Speaker 5: During the gun Chester sequence, guns became very very easy
Speaker 5: to get in England, but but you really had to
Speaker 5: want to go get a gun to kill Tony Center
Speaker 5: at least scare him.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I love when when Andy Serkis is like, oh, I've
Speaker 8: got something for you, Tony and he reaches into his
Speaker 8: pocket like he's pulling out a gun and instead he
Speaker 8: like flips in the bird. It's like, piss off.
Speaker 3: I was like, that's great.
Speaker 8: It's always great to see Andy Serkis in these little
Speaker 8: roles like before he got big with Gullum and everything,
Speaker 8: just because he always brought so much to these performances
Speaker 8: and he still does. I mean, I love the guy
Speaker 8: as an actor, and I just think that he just
Speaker 8: goes all out whenever he's in anything, especially when it's
Speaker 8: this tiny role like this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's so fucking versatile because we know he can
Speaker 5: go really hard with the performance. But Martin Hannett is
Speaker 5: pretty sedate and incredibly funny, Like he's the funny part
Speaker 5: of the movie. Nearly every remable or memorable funny line
Speaker 5: is that it is like playing faster but slower. And yeah,
Speaker 5: this is the first time I think I saw Andy
Speaker 5: Serkis because the Fellowship of the Ring had already come
Speaker 5: out by the time that this would this woman.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I forgot that it was that late.
Speaker 5: I saw his name in the credits and watching the movie,
Speaker 5: going like, where is he? Where is he? Where is he?
Speaker 5: Just trying to find where Gollum is.
Speaker 8: All right, guys, let's go ahead and take another break,
Speaker 8: and we're going to play a preview from next week's show,
Speaker 8: the story of the.
Speaker 4: Two young reporters who cracked the Watergate conspiracy. They stumbled
Speaker 4: into leads. Certainly it becomes into surprise to you that
Speaker 4: helps the CID. No, no surprise at all. They tripped
Speaker 4: over clues. We like to see all material request of
Speaker 4: the White House, all we hose transactions and confidention. This
Speaker 4: whole thing is a cover up, is run on our notes.
Speaker 4: They saw the greatest detective story in American history, all
Speaker 4: the presidents men.
Speaker 8: That's right. We are back next week with they look
Speaker 8: at something very different. All the President's meant just in
Speaker 8: time for the inauguration. Until then, I want, I think
Speaker 8: my co host Father Malone and Axel. So, Father Malone,
Speaker 8: what is the latest.
Speaker 5: With you, sir? You can find me over on my
Speaker 5: show Midnight Viewing over on the weirding Way Media Network.
Speaker 5: That's a twice a week program when we look at
Speaker 5: horror anthologies. Mike, you're one of our co hosts where
Speaker 5: we're looking at talents from the dark side. We do
Speaker 5: that with the Chris Stashu and Antonio Lapour filmmaker drops
Speaker 5: by once a week to talk about horror or anthology movies.
Speaker 5: And then I've got Father Malone's Weekly Roundup, which is
Speaker 5: a weekly show I do with my.
Speaker 8: Dog Very cool and Axel What's going on in your world, sir?
Speaker 3: Well as every time I'm on this show, I'm still
Speaker 3: debating pulling the trigger on my own podcast, and every
Speaker 3: time I get on the show, I think this is
Speaker 3: the time, hopefully this is the time. I'm currently rewatching,
Speaker 3: not rewatching. I'm watching Miami wece the show for the
Speaker 3: first time and posting episode updates on my social media,
Speaker 3: which is delighting me because I grew up. I was
Speaker 3: born in nineteen seventy seven, so seeing things from the
Speaker 3: eighties presented unronically it's balm It's very nice.
Speaker 8: I love your screen grabs and your descriptions of these things,
Speaker 8: especially seeing some of these actors that I just had
Speaker 8: no idea they were in Miami Vice. So thank you
Speaker 8: so much for doing that, sir.
Speaker 3: Hey it's the Lord's work. In the episode that I'm
Speaker 3: watching right now, the guest star is Miles Davis.
Speaker 5: Wow, I remember that episode.
Speaker 8: I've heard of him.
Speaker 3: I was listening to his music after I started watching
Speaker 3: it and thinking, this is an amazing American innovator. This
Speaker 3: is someone whose name will be remembered forever. And he
Speaker 3: played a sex trafficker on my I am vice.
Speaker 8: As Father Malone said, if you want to hear more
Speaker 8: of my voice, please go on over to Waterwaymedia dot com,
Speaker 8: where you can check out all of the shows that
Speaker 8: I work on. You can also make a donation to
Speaker 8: the Projection Booth over at patreon dot com slash Projection Booth.
Speaker 8: Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over
Speaker 8: the world.
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