Tony Wilson tours with the Happy Mondays in "24 Hour Party People."

(Michael Winterbottom, 2002)

July 13, 2009

by Joel Crary

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

- W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

A scene of any popular sort always seems to appear suddenly out of the blue. A few people sit up and take notice. A few more join them, and then a tidal wave pours over an entire city. In “24 Hour Party People,” the city is Manchester and the scenes are punk rock and rave culture. The film looks at the progression by examining the stories of Joy Division and the Happy Mondays, both bands led by self-destructive lead singers and both facilitated by the incomparable Tony Wilson.

Tony, played with a controlled ambition by Steve Coogan, doesn’t simply break the fourth wall. He removes it from the structure of the film, attaches it to a crane and raises it high above the earth to dwell in the realm of history’s most prominent figures. Despite the chaos in his life, we can trust Tony with great ease. He knows exactly what to say at every opportunity, even when it’s not fully understood. “This is a film about the music and the people who made the music,” he tells the camera with one eye on the road. Maybe so, but Tony is our Virgil.

On June 4, 1976, the Sex Pistols played one of their first gigs at Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester. About 40 people were in the crowd. Tony leads us on a score of introductions and leaves the sense of greatness in the wake of each. The film has an appreciation for “The Moment When Everything Changed” and Tony hunts such moments throughout, undeterred by lack of attention and turnout, reasoning that there were only 12 people at the Last Supper.

Tony’s day job is an on-air personality for Granada Television. Intercut with his efforts as band manager, record-label runner and nightclub owner is footage of his assignments as a journalist, covering decidedly non-punk rock aspects of everyday life in Manchester, including elephant grooming and sheepherding. Most importantly, Tony hosts the “So it Goes” music show, where he claims punk rock first reached its audience in the city.

The right man sees the right gig and plays the band on television. An audience grows and a counterculture takes shape around Iggy Pop, The Jam and Siouxsie & the Banshees. Tony makes Joy Division his flagship act and calls Ian Curtis “the musical equivalent of Che Guevara” over his open casket. His grandiose thinking gains him a nightclub and label but loses him a wife, yet he maintains an air of cool throughout.

The film covers about 16 years in the life of the Manchester scene. Civil unrest in the punk rock era makes way for drug-induced splendor and gang violence in the era of rave culture. Tony walks a thin line with confidence and a strangely applied business savvy. He turns over the security of his club, the Haçienda, to drug-runners, who seem to be the only ones profiting from the club’s massive turnouts.

The style and editing of the film take it to a level removed from the standard biopic. Its graphics and pacing are often frenetic, mirroring the energy of a rising populous in a working-class city. People from the real-life events are peppered throughout the film and referenced. The method of direct address is never worn out because it’s consistently delivered by Coogan with the aplomb of a sober showman, a character who not only survived, but also controlled the scenes and recognized their impact and influence.

The portrayal of the life of Tony Wilson is exciting, dangerous, thrilling and catastrophic at once and it invites the desire to have been there and seen it all go down. Screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce’s references to higher culture throughout the film are both funny in their irony and completely apt. Perhaps Tony is an Icarus figure, but he certainly doesn’t seem to mind the plummet.