Screened as part of NZIFF 2002

24 Hour Party People 2001

Directed by Michael Winterbottom

UK In English
117 minutes 35mm

Director, Editor

Screenplay

Frank Cottrell Boyce

Photography

Robby Muller

Music supervisor

Liz Gallacher

Music

Joy Division
,
Happy Mondays
,
The Durutti Column
,
New Order
,
Siouxsie and The Banshees
,
The Buzzcocks
,
The Jam
,
The Sex Pistols
,
Iggy Pop
,
The Stranglers
,
The Clash

With

Steve Coogan (Tony Wilson)
,
Lennie James (Alan Erasmus)
,
Shirley Henderson (Lindsay Wilson)
,
Paddy Considine (Rob Gretton)
,
Andy Serkis (Martin Hannett)
,
Sean Harris (Ian Curtis)
,
John Simm (Bernard Summer)
,
Ralf Little (Peter Hook)
,
Danny Cunningham (Shaun Ryder)
,
Chris Coghill (Bez)
,
Paul Popplewell (Paul Ryder)
,
Keith Allen (Roger Ames)

Festivals

Cannes (Competition) 2002

Elsewhere

"Shot on digital video, 24 Hour Party People chronicles the rock scene in Manchester, England, from the emergence of the Sex Pistols in 1976 until the endgame of Tony Wilson’s recording and club-owning career in the early 90s. Wilson, rambunctiously played by Steve Coogan, is the ubiquitous guide of this post-Beatles magical mystery tour. He participates in every notable incident and frequently turns to the camera with spunky comments, annotations, and asides. He also provides the film’s most clever storytelling device, since his offhand remarks allow screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce to cram enormous amounts of information into a two-hour running time. At first, the direct-address technique threatens to make the picture too arty and self-conscious for the aggressively grungy story it has to tell, but Coogan’s magnetic acting pulls it off… It also suits the personality of Wilson himself, wheeling and dealing in the rock world’s lower depths while wearing spiffy suits, boasting about his Cambridge degree, and insisting that Manchester’s madness is postmodern to its bones. 

The story kicks into gear at an early Sex Pistols’ concert, which Wilson – then a self-promoting local TV host – applauds as a history-changing spectacle even though the audience is in the low two figures. Wilson sees the future and its name is punk, post-punk, new wave, rave, and whatever else his new recording company might be able to peddle. The film’s trajectory roughly follows that of Wilson’s main enterprise, Factory Records, and the bands it presents: the seminal Joy Division and its second-generation, New Order, the Happy Mondays, and others. Also important is the Hacienda, a dream nightclub Wilson sets up with all the trimmings: cool decor, hot acoustics, cutting-edge music. What’s missing is customers – until a jaunty new drug enters the picture, luring Manchester’s youth to spend whole nights in Hacienda ecstasy. At this point, Wilson’s outlook seems rosy, but other complications lie in wait… Wilson takes it all in stride, buoyed by his brash self-confidence and a conviction that playing outside the rules has somehow insulated him from ordinary laws of cause and effect… On this level, 24 Hour Party People may be a personal statement by Winterbottom, suggesting that mercurial creativity is its own reward – and has to be, since audiences and critics habitually lag behind artists, even in pop culture." — David Sterritt and Mikita Brottman, indieWIRE