How 24 Hour Par­ty Peo­ple put an anar­chic spin on the music biopic

Music biopics are often uncom­pli­cat­ed affairs. Per­haps due to the trade-off required in order to secure the rights to an artist’s back cat­a­logue, a great many func­tion like brand exten­sions rather than dra­mat­i­cal­ly engag­ing exam­i­na­tions of the peo­ple behind the music.

Lip-ser­vice may be paid to their ​‘flaws’, but the nar­ra­tive will ulti­mate­ly bend over back­wards to cre­ate a redemp­tion arc because of the music they cre­at­ed. More than the results being anti­thet­i­cal to con­vinc­ing dra­ma, they’re often just plain bor­ing. Myth­mak­ing in a man­ner that sands off a subject’s spe­cif­ic aura to make them more like every­one else who’s been the sub­ject of one of these. A Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. biopic and a Tupac Shakur biopic should not be func­tion­al­ly inter­change­able from one anoth­er, and yet…

This is why I remain drawn to 24 Hour Par­ty Peo­ple, direc­tor Michael Win­ter­bot­tom and screen­writer Frank Cot­trell Boyce’s 2002 biopic about Fac­to­ry Records and its mas­ter­mind, Tony Wil­son (Steve Coogan). In keep­ing with Wil­son and Factory’s post-mod­ernist iron­ic approach to their own image, the film fre­quent­ly calls atten­tion to the short­cuts, genre con­ven­tions, and out­right fab­ri­ca­tions it utilis­es in the telling of its sto­ry. ​“When giv­en the choice between the leg­end and the truth, print the leg­end,” as Wil­son nar­rates upon one such instance.

But rather than the showy meta fourth-wall breaks, the sub­ver­sive angle that real­ly sticks out to me is a lot more mun­dane. Instead of paint­ing Wil­son, the Fac­to­ry crew, and artists like Joy Divi­sion and Hap­py Mon­days as vision­ary genius­es with few char­ac­ter flaws, the film’s irrev­er­ent com­e­dy-dra­ma tone instead allows a more abra­sive, human pic­ture of its sub­jects to form. To freely act like, as they often lob at each oth­er, ​“cunts.”

With regards to the depic­tion of Tony Wil­son, that’s not entire­ly a sur­prise. Alan Par­tridge, Coogan’s most famous cre­ation, was part­ly inspired by Wil­son so there’s expec­ta­tion for some Par­tridge-esque behav­iour. Win­ter­bot­tom and Boyce both clear­ly admire the idea of Tony Wil­son, but they’re also fre­quent­ly just as will­ing to punc­ture his vision­ary aura by demon­strat­ing his occa­sion­al­ly myopic world­view or near-com­plete lack of busi­ness savvy.

An ear­ly scene between Wil­son and first wife Lind­say has him nar­rate in voiceover that they both want­ed ​“a cou­ple of kids” only to imme­di­ate­ly have Lind­say insist that she doesn’t want kids. Wil­son keeps press­ing the idea, demon­strat­ing the self-serv­ing cen­tral-pro­tag­o­nist ego­tism which makes up one of his fatal flaws. He thinks of him­self as a rev­o­lu­tion­ary capa­ble of fright­en­ing the sys­tem, but his jour­nal­is­tic career remains stuck inter­view­ing dwarfs who clean ele­phants. He con­stant­ly talks him­self and his artists up in ways that are sup­posed to make him sound cul­tured, but reuses the same few ref­er­ence pools: the Last Sup­per for sub-par atten­dance, com­par­ing Shaun Ryder’s lyri­cism to W.B. Yates, Boethius’ phi­los­o­phy about wheels.

His Fac­to­ry inner cir­cle fre­quent­ly call him out in ways that presage the company’s even­tu­al down­fall. Alan Eras­mus laugh­ing about the ​“Blue Mon­day” sin­gle art­work cost­ing the label mon­ey with every copy sold; Mar­tin Han­nett quit­ting as soon as he takes one look at the Haçien­da; Rob Gret­ton attempt­ing to fist­fight Tony when told about the £30,000 table in the Fac­to­ry office. But they too argue with each oth­er, hopped up on a near-end­less stream of drugs, and engage in poor deci­sions (like Rob indulging New Order’s desire to record Tech­nique in Ibiza dur­ing mon­soon sea­son) so they don’t real­ly have a high ground. Almost all of Hannett’s screen time con­sists of him shout­ing obscen­i­ties at the bands under his charge rather than demon­strat­ing his artis­tic process.

Then there are the bands. The Hap­py Mon­days Shaun Ryder has a crip­pling drug depen­den­cy which cli­max­es in the ruinous record­ing of Yes, Please! Joy Divi­sion don’t exact­ly come out smelling of ros­es, either. Ian Cur­tis is intro­duced yelling ​“WIL­SON, YOU CUNT!” from the oth­er side of a bar and aggres­sive­ly get­ting in Tony’s face. Peter Hook non­cha­lant­ly dis­plays lit­tle con­cern when Ian has a seizure at the end of one gig, even try­ing to loot the man for his cig­a­rettes. At anoth­er, they stand by watch­ing the open­ing act A Cer­tain Ratio and spend the entire time shit-talk­ing their labelmates.

One could argue that the comedic angle of the film acts as its own defence mech­a­nism, play­ing up the cast’s less-desir­able qual­i­ties for laughs but still excus­ing it all under the guise of com­e­dy. Not so dif­fer­ent from the ​“but the music, man!” jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of more straight­laced biopics and ulti­mate­ly not that sub­ver­sive. Undoubt­ed­ly, its treat­ment of Ian Cur­tis’ men­tal health strug­gles and everyone’s drug addic­tions tends towards the glib; a reflec­tion of dat­ed ear­ly-00s attitudes.

But Win­ter­bot­tom and Boyce’s approach cre­ates some­thing some­what truth­ful; that most of the peo­ple involved in Fac­to­ry were a bunch of idiots, screw-ups, and ass­holes who hap­pened to get lucky by being in the right place at the right time with the right music. Winterbottom’s film­ing style com­mu­ni­cates that chaos, util­is­ing a cin­e­ma ver­ité approach which darts around mud­di­ly-mixed scenes. It might still be a form of myth­mak­ing, but a rich­er por­trait of these char­ac­ters emerges when they’re treat­ed as the mul­ti­fac­eted peo­ple they were. Anton Corbijn’s 2007 biopic Con­trol has a more respect­ful depic­tion of Ian Cur­tis, but the ver­sion from 24 Hour Par­ty Peo­ple is more mem­o­rable and interesting.

This kind of anti-rev­er­en­tial char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion is per­haps best epit­o­mised by the film’s final sequence. The morn­ing after the Haçienda’s final night, Tony Wil­son goes up to the roof and smokes some strong weed. He has a vision of God, phys­i­cal­ly and aural­ly resem­bling Wil­son, who tells him that ​“basi­cal­ly, you were right.” Turn­ing back to some of his Fac­to­ry crew to brag about the expe­ri­ence, they express mock­ing dis­be­lief about the affair. ​“Well, it was writ­ten in the Bible, ​‘God made Man in his own image,’” Tony tries to ratio­nalise. ​“Yeah, but not a spe­cif­ic man,” Rob fires back, before the con­ver­sa­tion turns to the qual­i­ty of the gear they’re smok­ing. Attempt­ed pro­fun­di­ty brought crash­ing back down to reality.