I think I have already set my stall out on what I think about William Morris in a previous post, but I thought I would reproduce the following 'cos if you are going to try and win special kudos by quoting one of the old beards I think the following exchange of dialogue between Tony Wilson and Peter Saville from Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People is the right way to go about it:
[Peter Saville eventually turns up towards the end of the launch of the Factory music night, and approaches Tony Wilson to hand him the finished posters that were supposed to advertise this self-same Factory music's night launch.]
Peter Saville (Enzo Cilenti): "The posters."
Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan): "You've got the posters? It's the fucking gig!"
Peter Saville: "Yeah, I know - it just took ages to get the right yellow."
Tony Wilson: "The gig's over."
Peter Saville: "I know."
Tony Wilson: "It looks fucking great actually - yeah, really nice. It's beautiful - but useless. And as William Morris once said: "Nothing useless can be truly beautiful."'
A nice wee slice of dialogue courtesy of Frank Cottrell-Boyce (who I can just about excuse for writing episodes of Brookside - however, the jury is still out on whether or not he can be forgiven for writing a column for the Revolutionary Communist Party magazine, Living Marxism. ) but you imagine Tony Wilson saying something as Pseud Cornerish as that in real life.
From what I saw of the film it looks like another gem from Michael Winterbottom, who with In This World and Wonderland has made two of my favourite films of recent years.
Admittedly, I could only ever seem to download the first half of 24 Hour Party People from the internet, but the first half does includes scene of the Sex Pistols playing a gig at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976, organised by the blokes who later became the original line up of the Buzzcocks.It is also the half of the film that includes the formation of Joy Division; the death by suicide of Joy Division lead singer, Ian Curtis, and the launch of the Hacienda club amongst other things, and there are nice wee cameos from Peter Kay, Howard Devoto and Mark E. Smith.
Funnily enough, it appears to be nigh on impossible to download the second half of the film.
I guess the story of how New Order got John Barnes to do the World In Motion rap; the Happy Mondays banrupting Factory Records financially when recording the follow up to 'Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches' whilst Northside were bankrupting Factory Records critically isn't that alluring a second half.
Erm, this post has mutated from being about the use and abuse of William Morris's legacy to being about Michael Winterbottom's brilliance of moving from one genre of film to another time after time, Tony Wilson's ego, and the exasperation at tight wad Joy Division fans who won't put the second half of 24 Hour Party People on Winmx for the rest of the unwashed to download. Further confirmation that Morris is never exactly uppermost in my mind even when I'm supposed to be writing a post about the poor sod.
