film about Manchester
's popular music
community from 1976 to 1992, and specifically about Factory Records
. It was written by Frank Cottrell Boyce
and directed by Michael Winterbottom
. The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival
.
It begins with the punk rock
era, and moves through the 1980s into the "Madchester
" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The main character is Tony Wilson
, a news reporter for Granada Television
and the head of Factory Records
(played by Steve Coogan
), and the narrative largely follows his career, while also covering the major Factory artists, especially Joy Division
and New Order
(played by John Simm
and Ralf Little
), A Certain Ratio
, The Durutti Column
, and the Happy Mondays
(played by Paul Popplewell
, Danny Cunningham and Chris Coghill
).
The film is a dramatisation based on a combination of real events, rumours, urban legend
s, and the imaginations of the scriptwriter - as the film makes clear.
[First address to camera; after his hang-gliding news report] You're going to see a lot more of that sort of thing in the picture. I don't want to say too much, don't want to spoil it. I'll just say one word: 'Icarus'. If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more.
I'm being postmodern, before it was fashionable.
[At a gig at the Hacienda] And tonight something equally epoch-making is taking place. See? They're applauding the DJ. Not the music, not the musician, not the creator, but the medium. This is it. The birth of rave culture. The beatification of the beat. The dance age. This is the moment when even the white man starts dancing. Welcome to Manchester.
I'm a minor character in my own story.
This scene didn't actually make it to the final cut. I'm sure it'll be on the DVD.
[About the music scene surrounding the Hacienda] It was like being on a fantastic fairground ride, centrifugal forces throwing us wider and wider. But it's all right, because there's this brilliant machine at the center that's going to bring us back down to earth. That was Manchester. That is the Hacienda. Now imagine the machine breaks. For a while, it's even better, because you're really flying. but then, you fall, because nobody beats gravity.
Most of all, I love Manchester. The crumbling warehouses, the railway arches, the cheap abundant drugs. That's what did it in the end. Not the money, not the music, not even the guns. That is my heroic flaw: my excess of civic pride.
Factory Records are not actually a company. We are an experiment in human nature. You're labouring under the misapprehension that we actually have a deal with, er, with our, our bands. That we have any kind of a contract, er, at all, and I'm afraid we, er, we don't because that's, er, that's the sum total of the paperwork to do with Factory Records, deal with, er, their various bands.
I have protected myself from ever having to sell out by having nothing to sell out.
[To Martin Hannett] You can't threaten me, Martin. You're a big man, but you're out of shape. Although you could sit on me.