24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE

A HISTORY OF FACTORY RECORDS

Manchester was the first industrial city in England.  There had been factories in the northern city since the eighteenth century, but there was one Factory that mattered more than any other.

Factory Records was the proud purveyor of a distinct sound and a distinct look.  Factory Records was also a marvelous knot of contradictions as high-minded artistic and political ideologies were distilled and recycled into mass entertainment – an enabling force that ushered youth culture through years of change.  From punk to post-punk to acid house, one label in one city embodied the zeitgeist and made time for fun along the way.  For all the chaos scribbled in the margins of Factory Records’ history, with hindsight one can see that there was a roadmap, that there was order all along.

Tony Wilson, who founded the label with Alan Erasmus, has written that Factory was built on “anarchic sentimentalism about the role of popular art.”  They took inspiration from various movements, but most conspicuously from the Situationist International, a band of libertarians who argued for play at the expense of work.  The appeal of such an ideology to citizens of an economically depressed city – especially those enamored of punk’s do-it-yourself ethos – should be obvious.  Luckily, Factory’s embrace of such rhetoric was backed up with an enthusiasm and determinism that bordered on the insane.

“Sooner or later – and later was late ’77 – someone was going to have to want a way

to express more complex emotions, but to build to that place

from the simplicity and anger of punk instrumentation.”

—Tony Wilson, 1996

Punk took politics and made it resonate with personal fury.  Factory Records used political rhetoric to market personal expression.  Punk had cheaply-recorded buzzsaw guitars that sliced through pomposity.  Factory Records had impeccably recorded guitars that sliced through the dirge of funereal howls and industrial rhythms.  Staff producer (and eventual partner) Martin Hannett was something of a mad genius (fittingly, he’d previously worked in a chemistry laboratory), giving musicians such direction as “play faster, but slower.”  Through a revolutionary alchemy of reverb and digital delay, the rich arrangements of Joy Division were transformed into something simultaneously rich and wide-open.  Despite meticulous recording that kept each instrument discreet and identifiable, vocals and bass and guitar and drums moved together like a juggernaut.  On top of all that, he added the sounds of breaking glass, of slamming doors, of moving elevators, of ambulance sirens.  These records were full of emotion, but there was something intellectual that came through as well.

Joy Division wasn’t alone in its innovation.  A Certain Ratio, the Durutti Column, Section 25, James, Orchestral Maneouvres in the Dark, and The Wake were only a few of the shining lights of the Factory roster.  And the music was only the beginning. Graphic designer Peter Saville stole from decades of art movements (especially Constructivism and Futurism) to create a distanced, even frigid, corporate identity.  There were no pictures of band members.  Stark images, plain fonts, and (for a while) joyless color schemes were a far cry from the unhinged collage art associated with punk.  Instead everything looked like it had come straight from the conveyer belt.  The DIY sensibility had never been so professional – or so it would seem.  Always more interested in slogans and styles than business plans, Factory lost money on such schemes as the sandpaper-encrusted sleeves meant to destroy adjacent records.

Enhancing both Factory’s playfulness and its connection to industry, everything was assigned a catalogue number.  Three of the first Factory releases were posters; later unveilings included stationery, badges, leaflets, matchbooks, brooches, model kits, Christmas cards, doggy bags...and an egg timer.  Even the nightclub that would become ground zero for rave culture, the Hacienda, had a number – a conceit that made every undertaking seem as consequential as the next.

The Hacienda, unsurprisingly, took its text from a Situationist text by Ivan Chtcheglov, who railed against the drudgery of modern urban life and imagined a city “set apart for free play.”  Manchester would be that city.  As the success of New Order conspired with the popularity of Hacienda DJ’s to achieve a synergy of post-punk dance fever, Factory continued to define the era.  The Hacienda, in turn, soon became ground zero for acid-house/rave culture.  Once you get past the seemingly absurd trajectory from punk to disco, it’s clear that acid house – and the accompanying rush of ecstasy – represented just one more way for people to revolutionize through celebration.  Of course, this time there were more drugs (and, by turn, guns), so naturally the celebration wasn’t as pure as the slogans had promised.  Manchester became “Madchester,” and the selfish hedonism symbolized by the Happy Mondays made them a perfect band for the times.  At such a dangerous pace, the party had to conclude.  But Tony Wilson was the host until the end.

Welcome to FAC401, the culmination of 400 previous endeavors.

“I will never interfere with the freedom of my artists.  Artists make their own rules.  Do you think Pope Julius wanted homoerotica all over the walls of the Vatican?”

- Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson

PLANNING THE PARTY

24 Hour Party People was first discussed by Eaton and Winterbottom whilst the pair were in Canada shooting The Claim.  Both wanted to make a film with great music that wasn’t specifically a musical.  “We thought it would be fun to have a lot of music but to avoid people bursting into song,” says Eaton.  In thinking about it, they were drawn to the influential Manchester music scene, with which both had previous personal allegiances.  

“Andrew and I were in British Columbia about five hundred miles north of Vancouver in a logging town in a Country-and-Western bar, and we decided it would be a good idea to make a movie about that music,” says Winterbottom.  “After about 30 seconds, we decided Factory was the obvious story and Tony Wilson should be the main character, because he had this strange double life of local TV news reporter and Factory Records and the Haçienda.  It just started from that.”

“The music element was a big attraction,” he continues.  “As I come from that area, I liked the idea of making a movie about Manchester, and I also liked the period because a lot of the characters in the story are roughly my generation.”

Eaton adds, “We both grew up listening to the music.  The first job I had in London was at the Riverside Studios, where we did FAC121 – the week of Factory at Riverside.”

The pair approached writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, with whom they had previously worked.  He was immediately excited about being involved.  “Michael just rung me up saying ‘Wouldn’t it be good tell a story about Factory Records?’” says Cottrell Boyce.  “I said ‘If you do it with anyone else, I’ll have you shot!’  Anyone growing up in the north west feels a connection with Tony (Wilson) because he was this kind of mad magic uncle, the besuited newsreader telling you about car boot sales in Bolton but at the same time the manager of the hippest pop group in the world.”

The first major difficulty in bringing the script to life was deciding on exactly what tale to tell.  “There are several very obvious stories,” says Cottrell Boyce.  “The Ian Curtis rock ‘n’ roll suicide story, the Happy Monday sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll story.  But the idea of doing it all, having everything from ’76 - ’92, that was an act of courage – but for me, dealing with the huge time scale was the attraction.”

Anthony Wilson was also impressed by the proposed time frame for the film.  “When he told me they were going to do this two and a half years ago, Andrew specifically said 1976 to 1992, which is what endeared me to the project, because it meant they understood the dawn of punk to the death of acid.” 

Compressing two decades of musical and cultural history into 120 minutes was not the only challenge faced by the writer.  “The other major difficulty,” says Cottrell Boyce, “is that these are all living people, and they have to be respected, they have to be courted, and they have to be made to feel good.  They also have to be listened to, so writing it was nothing compared to going around and reassuring people, listening to them, collecting information, tracking people down.  Even during the shoot, keeping the real people happy – the people on whom the film is based – that was difficult.”

He continues, “I think most of them had not realized just how emotional it would be for them.  I know Tony has found it very difficult meeting the actors playing Martin and Rob, because both of them are now dead.  He has three great adjectives for how he feels.  He says ‘I’m flattered, exhilarated and embarrassed.’”

Cottrell Boyce re-read the Anthony Powell novel A Dance To The Music Of Time whilst working on the script.  “The way the characters are picked up and dropped and then re-appear is hopefully the kind of rhythm you will see with this film,” he says.  “The obvious one is Martin Hannett (Andy Serkis), who is this fantastically exciting character in the first act, disappears for the second act, then re-appears in the third act as this huge, bloated, alcoholic.  The make-up for Martin Hannett is just extraordinary – even better than the make-up he is wearing to play Gollum in Lord of the Rings!”

DOCUMENTING THE EVENT

The filmmakers’ next step was to bring award-winning director of photography Robby Müller on board.  “I’d talked to Robby about a couple of films before, but it hadn’t worked out,” says Winterbottom.  “I think he’s a fantastic cinematographer, from his early work with Wenders to his recent work with Lars Von Trier.  He has a great eye and I think his work often seems very simple, very direct, yet somehow he manages to capture exactly the things you want to see on film.  So with this one I was lucky.  He was free and he was interested in the story, so he came over to talk about it.  From that point on it was just a question of working in a way that Robby felt comfortable with.”

In his approach to the filming, Winterbottom was keen to replicate the ethos that had made Factory so unique. “Part of the original idea was that the script would be quite loose.  In a way, part of the attraction of making a film about Factory is that when you read about it, it sounds fairly shambolic.  Almost the idea of Factory was not to plan things, not to organize, not to work like a company, but to work as a group of people who let other people do what they wanted to do.  So the idea was that the film would have the same spirit.  That anyone who was working on it would be as free as possible to do what they wanted to do.  The whole thing is a bit of a shambles, but hopefully in the kind of way that…” – and here Tony Wilson chips in, “we were!”

“That you were, thank you,” says Winterbottom.  “Loads of great things came out of Factory.  I’m sure the film will be the same – a patchwork of different bits and pieces.”

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE is shot entirely on digital video.  “I’ve shot films like this before,” says Winterbottom.  “Though Wonderland was on film, the filming style was the same.  I don’t think it matters so much about the technology as much as the relationship between the cameras and the actors.”

“When we started talking about the idea with Robby,” Winterbottom continues, “the idea was to mix between 35mm and DV.  We looked at Wonderland (which I’d shot on 16mm), Breaking the Waves (which Robby shot on 35mm), and then some stuff he shot on DV.  In the end, the practical advantages of DV and the actual aesthetic of the film – it was surprising how close the DV was to the film.”

Müller adds, “The quality of DV is so forgiving that you can be a bit more lose on lighting, which helped us, because we didn’t have time for lighting and Michael wanted to see 360 degrees around.”

Commenting on the overall style of the film, Winterbottom says, “The reason we shot the way we did was to allow the performances as much space as possible and to have a sense of recording things as they happen, as opposed to composing and organizing them.  It’s not to achieve a certain look or style, but to achieve the best content.”

PARTY GUESTS

“We do things differently in Manchester.  We let people make up their own mind.”

- Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson

Making a film based on the lives of real people was always going to draw attention, both good and bad, from those depicted, from idle tales of Shaun Ryder’s demands for a Hollywood star to play him to cameo appearances by some of Manchester’s finest.  Winterbottom admits, “We were really nervous at first.  It’s really difficult when you’re making a movie about real people, with their names attached and events from their lives.  All we’ve tried to do is to talk to as many people as possible and tell them we’re trying to celebrate what went on.  It’s not an attack on anyone and it’s not trying to slag off these bands.”

Over the course of the production, any initial doubts of the city were overcome and the sheer level of contributions illustrated people’s dedication to the film.  In addition to Anthony Wilson assisting as a consultant on the film, the production enlisted the help of many other people who were around at the time:  from original guitarist with A Certain Ratio, Martin Moscrop (who was bought in as Music Technical Advisor) and DJ Dave Haslam (who returned for the Hacienda club scenes) to New Order’s Barney Sumner and Peter Hook, who provided original musical instruments and other personal belongings to authenticate the film.

Winterbottom is pleased with the support.  “I think what we hoped for in the best case is that we made a movie about Factory in the spirit of Factory,” he says.  “We’ve been lucky in that most of the people we’ve met and talked to that were involved at the time have felt relaxed enough about it.”

“It’s great when Paul Ryder is acting in the film,” he continues, “and lots of other people have come down and been on set and done little bits and pieces.”  In addition to Ryder, other cameos include the Buzzcocks’ Howard Devoto, Clint Boon of Inspiral Carpets fame, the real Vini Reilly, and frontman with The Fall, Mark E Smith.  In addition, Christopher Eccleston makes an appearance, as do Margi Clarke and comedians Fiona Allen and Simon Pegg.

Despite casting actors into the roles of real individuals, Winterbottom says the casting for 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE was no different from any other.  “You just want to cast the people you think are best for the part,” he says.  “It’s incredibly subjective and it’s no more complicated than that really.  You look around for people, and when you find someone you like, you cast them.” 

Even during their earliest discussions about the film, Winterbottom felt Steve Coogan was the obvious choice for the role of Wilson.  “I met up with Steve and tried to persuade him,” says Winterbottom, “but that was about two years ago, before we even started on the script.  He always seemed to me to be the perfect person to play Tony.  I just really like his work, so I really wanted to work with him.”

Winterbottom continues, “We felt a lot of aspects of Tony’s character within the film, he would be able to do brilliantly.  It had to be someone who was used to creating a whole character, and Steve, besides being a great performer, is a brilliant observer of people, which is why his writing is so sharp and funny.  Because the whole film was going to be built around that one character, we had to have someone create a real person out of the string of incidents in the script.”

For his part, Coogan says, “If ‘Dave Wannabe Director’ had come up to me and said he wanted to do a f