MOVIE NIGHT: ‘24 Hour Party People’ and ‘Creation Stories’ with Sean Fennessey

Yasi is joined by Big Picture host Sean Fennessey to talk abou music biopics, specifically diving into two films that deal with key figures in the British music landscape, Tony Wilson of Factory Records in 24 Hour Party People (2002), and Alan McGee of Creation Records in Creation Stories (2021). CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guest: Sean Fennessey IG: @seanfennessey, X: @SeanFennessey Producer: Liz Sánchez Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 2:19Yasi Salek?

  Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is usually a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist, but today, it is more like, a little bit like, we have the big picture at home. You know what I mean? Today, we're talking about the film 24 Hour Party People, the main focus, I think, of this episode, plus some other films that are tangentially related.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  Loosely related.

• 2:45Yasi Salek?

  Loosely related. My guest today, you guys, is the Tony Wilson to my Sean writer, the esteemed Sean Fantasy. Sean, welcome to, back to the program.

• 2:54Speaker 05

  So nice to be podding with you in person on Bandplain.

• 2:56Yasi Salek?

  Can you believe it?

• 2:57Speaker 05

  It's amazing.

• 2:58Yasi Salek?

  Look how far we've come.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, we've got all this signage behind us.

• 3:01Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 3:01Speaker 05

  You know, I carved this myself.

• 3:03Yasi Salek?

  This, yeah.

• 3:04Speaker 05

  This is my woodwork.

• 3:05Yasi Salek?

  You are an art, you have so much free time, and then you use it to do your woodwork. Much like Tony Wilson, I do feel that you have empowered me to make an insane show.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  That's honestly one of my missions, like, one of my career aspirations.

• 3:22Yasi Salek?

  I'm telling you, you're a Tony Wilson.

• 3:23Speaker 05

  Thanks, yeah.

• 3:24Yasi Salek?

  And you have your own broadcasting career, much like Tony Wilson.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  I do. I don't know that I ever related to him in all the previous times I had watched this film, but then these most recent viewings, I'm kind of like, am I a little bit like this guy? A little, a little, hopefully not too much like him?

• 3:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 3:41Speaker 05

  He got into some, some messy business, or did he? The question is asked.

• 3:46Yasi Salek?

  I think he lived kind of a perfect life, to be honest.

• 3:48Speaker 05

  Can't wait to break it down with you.

• 3:49Yasi Salek?

  And then our CR is obviously Alan Orasmus.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  He's more of a petty consedine in this movie to me.

• 3:55Yasi Salek?

  I guess, yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 05

  A little angrier, you know, just a little more aggro.

• 3:59Yasi Salek?

  Sure, but not a penny pincher.

• 4:00Speaker 05

  No, he's not.

• 4:02Yasi Salek?

  I feel like just wryly amused on the side, like Alan Orasmus.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 4:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you know.

• 4:07Speaker 05

  He does have really the Lenny James aura, too.

• 4:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, totally.

• 4:10Speaker 05

  Just more chill.

• 4:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 05

  Tony Wilson, not chill.

• 4:12Yasi Salek?

  Not chill, no, much like both of us.

• 4:16Yasi Salek?

  We've talked about this on other pods, but just for the sake of posterity, where do you land in general on music biopics?

• 4:24Speaker 05

  I land pretty firmly against them.

• 4:27Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 4:27Speaker 05

  I don't think that they often make for good cinema.

• 4:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 05

  I think that they are often very schematic. I think they tend to soften the edges of someone's life. I think they tend to make things a little bit, as most movies are, structural and not messy, the way that life often is.

• 4:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  And so even the ones that I think take chances, A Complete Unknown is, you know, the most recent and relevant example.

• 4:53Yasi Salek?

  We love A Complete Unknown.

• 4:54Speaker 05

  Is a pretty cool movie as music biopics go, because it doesn't break all those rules. But there are still a lot of the tropes in that movie of the biopic. And so there's always exceptions that prove the rule. This movie that we're talking about today is obviously a huge exception because it, you know, this movie predates Walk Hard.

• 5:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Speaker 05

  It's, it really knows what these movies try to do and then subverts that so magnificently.

• 5:17Yasi Salek?

  Okay, but follow up question. Is this even a music biopic? Which I found myself correcting myself in my own Letterboxd review. You can follow me on Letterboxd, it's Yasi Salek. Because I was like, is it a music biopic? Because the definition of biopic is it's the story of a person, a musician, if it's a music biopic. And you could make the argument that this is centrally focused a little bit on Tony Wilson. He's the vehicle.

• 5:48Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 5:49Yasi Salek?

  But even he says it in the film, right? I have the quote somewhere, but that it's not about him, right? It's about the music.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  But I think that's meant to be tongue firmly planted and cheap. Because if the movie is not about him, who is it about?

• 6:00Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 05

  It's not about Sean Ryder, it's not about Ian Curtis, it's not about New Order. It's not about any of these people, really, right? So.

• 6:09Yasi Salek?

  I think it's about the scene with him as the figurehead that made this label and the scene around it possible. So it's mostly, he's the most obvious. Protagonist.

• 6:24Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 6:25Yasi Salek?

  But I do think like he's kind of right in that tongue in jing thing where it is kind of about the music in the sense that it's just about this incredible thing that existed that could never exist again.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  It's true, and there are a handful of other examples of movies like this, and they're called music biopics, not musician biopics.

• 6:41Yasi Salek?

  Right, okay.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  You know, this is about the world of music.

• 6:44Yasi Salek?

  It's about the music, yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 05

  But you know, the movie Cadillac Records, do you remember that movie?

• 6:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I never saw it.

• 6:47Speaker 05

  Adrian Brody and Beyonce, like, that's a version of a movie that has musicians in it.

• 6:50Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  But is really about an executive, like, there's not been a movie about, say, Barry Gordy, for example.

• 6:55Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  But he would be, he lived, he's lived a crazy life.

• 6:58Yasi Salek?

  Quincy Jones.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  Quincy Jones, you know, there's been docs about him, but no biopics, like, these people who are sort of in the room for things or making decisions.

• 7:06Yasi Salek?

  Rick Rubin, that would be a good one.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  Rick, where are you on Rick these days?

• 7:09Yasi Salek?

  I've come full circle back around.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  He's great.

• 7:11Yasi Salek?

  I'm pro Rick Rubin, yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 05

  Do you read that book, his memoir Guide to Art?

• 7:16Yasi Salek?

  No, I didn't. Should I? It's good.

• 7:18Speaker 05

  It's always in the either edit, like, staff picks or bestsellers at my local bookstore, always, like, since it's been released, and I have.

• 7:26Yasi Salek?

  He paid for that.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  I don't know, I'm not sure.

• 7:29Yasi Salek?

  Is there a pay to play element of your local?

• 7:31Speaker 05

  You think you frequent Brumans in Pasadena? Possibly.

• 7:33Yasi Salek?

  It's a very influential book.

• 7:34Speaker 05

  But that book has just been facing me, and you know Rick Rubin, pet interest of both of ours.

• 7:38Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  But I haven't read it.

• 7:40Yasi Salek?

  Perhaps you should assign it to the Ringer staff.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  To do what?

• 7:43Yasi Salek?

  So we all have to read it.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  It'd be an interesting pod for you, I think.

• 7:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  Would you do a producer pod?

• 7:48Yasi Salek?

  Hmm, maybe.

• 7:49Speaker 05

  Too boring?

• 7:50Yasi Salek?

  No, I don't think it's boring. I think it's not boring if it's Rick Rubin.

• 7:53Speaker 05

  I agree.

• 7:53Yasi Salek?

  Or even, honestly, I've come around on Jack Antonoff.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  Uh.

• 7:57Yasi Salek?

  Is that crazy?

• 7:58Speaker 05

  Um, I don't know. I mean, 50% of stuff that he makes, I really can't emotionally connect to at all.

• 8:05Yasi Salek?

  Me neither, but I think more of the thing is, what I'm getting back to with these people is that they really are the, like, the old school archetype of what a producer was, where, like, you can't quantify what they do.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 8:17Yasi Salek?

  They come in that room and they pull the creativity right out of a person through psychology and vibes, and there's something to that.

• 8:26Speaker 05

  Do you think that the movie is telling us that that's what Tony Wilson did? Because obviously, Rick Rubin, producer, but doesn't touch the boards.

• 8:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  Like, that's his thing.

• 8:33Yasi Salek?

  I don't think so. I was gonna ask you this, because for me, it's very difficult, because I can barely remember the first time I saw this, but I've now seen it, like, 25 times in the last three years, and I know every single detail of this story.

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 8:46Yasi Salek?

  Back in front because of my research, so I can't really separate what the movie is telling me and what I already know. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't credit him in that way, except for the fact that he was like, sure, what could that cost? $7,000 million? Go do it. Like.

• 9:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the movie's tone.

• 9:06Yasi Salek?

  He's like a patron.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Right, but the movie's tone, which does a great job of undermining our expectations of him being a great man movie about a guy who came up with this incredible idea and look at his amazing legacy. By undermining it and then going through the movie and spending all this time with Steve Coogan, working in like the Steve Coogan register, right? Where he's kind of like, I'm smarter than everybody in the room, but actually we know he's dumber. But then at the end of the movie, you're like, he is smarter.

• 9:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 05

  And he did make Factory Records and he did found the hacienda and he was, if not for him, this would not have happened.

• 9:40Yasi Salek?

  One million percent.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  So even though the movie is constantly telling you like, don't give these people too much credit. They're all kind of fools.

• 9:46Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Speaker 05

  I still walk away from it feeling like, and listening to, you know, the eight hours long Factory Records playlist that I have, just being like, this is an amazing thing that happened and he, he deserves all the credit.

• 9:56Yasi Salek?

  Tony Wilson is one of my like most beloved figures in music. I have like endless respect for him. I think he's one of the coolest people that ever existed. And we'll get into it because we're going to talk about creation stories as well in this podcast. Alan McGee, a similar figure, not quite as universally beloved, a little bit more polarizing as a person. But they don't make people like that anymore, who are just like, well, we don't even live in a world like that anymore. So even if there were people like that, but that are just willing to like, all they care about is the creative output. And they're, they don't really care that much about the economics and the bottom line, and they're willing to take these massive risks, knowing

• 10:35Yasi Salek?

  that the House of Cards is going to fall down, but they knew that they, they made, you know, they put out Joy Division. They made New Order happen. Like, it's incredible.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  One of the things though, that both of those figures and the movies about them have me wondering, I'm very curious what you think about this too, is they both kind of frame them as, it's not a philosophical presentation of their idea about art. You know, like there are things that Coogan says, Coogan's character says in the movie. It's a little hard to tell if he's just being. Being a blowhard to cover the fact that he didn't do a good job at the very beginning of the company? Or if he has this sort of ethical point of view.

• 11:10Yasi Salek?

  I think that was his philosophy. I think he didn't believe that they should be beholden to contracts. I think he really believed that he was a communist, but kind of like within art.

• 11:20Speaker 05

  A free artist, yeah.

• 11:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and Al Mingi to a lesser extent, but still took these like amazing risks on bands. He knew we're not good. Croatian Records had so many bands that made zero money.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  Mm hmm. But a handful of bands that sold millions of copies.

• 11:37Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Oasis alone is.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So, yeah, I think, I think regardless, whoever decided to do this, Michael Winterbottom and Frank Cottrell Boyce is the writer.

• 11:49Speaker 05

  I'd like to speak about him, yeah.

• 11:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. You know, he is uncredited for writing the Paddington Has Tea with the Queen that we spoke about on the British.

• 11:57Speaker 05

  Oh, my goodness.

• 11:58Yasi Salek?

  Uh, big picture episode.

• 11:59Speaker 05

  Interesting. Well, he also didn't.

• 12:00Yasi Salek?

  Why would he want to be uncredited? Who knows? Didn't want those anti-monarchists coming after him like they did Paddington.

• 12:06Speaker 05

  Relationship with the crown, I'm sure. I think, yeah, the two of them together have made some cool stuff.

• 12:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  And he's a very interesting writer who's very ahead of the curve on how we perceive kind of movie archetypes. So I think he's, he gets a lot of credit for this movie being as cool as it is.

• 12:22Yasi Salek?

  He wrote a ton of Coronation Street too, right? Did I read that?

• 12:25Speaker 05

  Yes, I believe so. Tons of television, maybe 10 or 12 film screenplays.

• 12:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and you've seen them all.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  No, just some, but I mean, he, you know, pretty persistently works with Michael Winterbottom and Danny Boyle, who are two of the most significant British filmmakers the last 35 years.

• 12:41Yasi Salek?

  So this is a 2002 film.

• 12:43Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 12:44Yasi Salek?

  I always think about what it would be like if they had made it like seven years later because Tony Wilson died in, what, 2007?

• 12:51Speaker 05

  I think that's right. Yep.

• 12:52Yasi Salek?

  And what, how, what a different film it would have been if that was included as part of the story.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  Do you think it would have been sweeter?

• 12:59Yasi Salek?

  I think it might have been a little more poignant. For his storyline.

• 13:05Speaker 05

  It's a little unsparing at times in the way that it frames him.

• 13:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Speaker 05

  As a man doing coke and having sex with 20 somethings.

• 13:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I don't think he ever disputed any of that. He wrote an entire book that is this story, but with his corrections, which I did not read. I'm so sorry.

• 13:22Speaker 05

  Wow. Is that the first time you have not read the book for a podcast?

• 13:26Yasi Salek?

  I know. It's one of my failings. I'm gonna, I'll remember it forever.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  Oh, the shame spiral.

• 13:31Yasi Salek?

  Well, some people had me go off to watch nine songs and we'll talk about that.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  It took 71 minutes and you did it two hours ago.

• 13:38Yasi Salek?

  I had to keep pausing. I was so bored.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  Were you going to read Tony Wilson's entire memoir in the period it took you to watch nine songs?

• 13:45Yasi Salek?

  I am a speed reader. Do you know much about how this movie even came about?

• 13:49Speaker 05

  No clue. I have been an admirer basically from afar, but without the usual kind of dig in that I do on movies.

• 13:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  So I'm actually really excited to hear everything that you've compiled.

• 13:59Yasi Salek?

  I don't know a ton, but it sounds like it was Michael Winterbottom's idea, who he seemed like a big music guy. And Steve Coogan said, I read in a newspaper that Michael Winterbottom was going to make a film about the Manchester music scene. Steve Coogan is from Manchester and he basically read that he was gonna play Tony Wilson. And he said, that was the first I'd heard about it. So I rang him up and he said, sorry, I haven't gotten around to asking you, will you do it? Which is an amazing methodology to get someone to do your movie. Just put it out that they are already doing it.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  Sort of how you book your podcast.

• 14:29Yasi Salek?

  Correct. Yeah. I said yes, because I didn't want anyone else to do it, which so he was all right. And he knew, he knew Tony. And then this was crazy. Tony Wilson had come to Steve Coogan's home when he was 10 years old, because his aunt was a makeup artist at Granada TV, which is the station that Tony Wilson had his show on. And he, he was like, I knew I could impersonate him. Like I knew, although I was, I sent you that video of Tony Wilson, the real Tony Wilson. And actually, it's a very slight distinction, but you kind of realize that Tony Wilson lost a lot of his northern accent.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Over time.

• 15:06Yasi Salek?

  I think maybe on purpose. He studied, you know.

• 15:09Speaker 05

  Elocution for broadcasting.

• 15:11Yasi Salek?

  I think he famously went to, I want to say Oxford, one of the, I think it was Oxford. So he kind of left Manchester and kind of like elevated himself and got this degree and and trained to be a.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  This is before he was on Grenada and all that, okay.

• 15:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and then he came back to be there because he was like, that's my hometown.

• 15:30Speaker 05

  Again, I relate to this, obviously. I'm from Long Island.

• 15:33Yasi Salek?

  You don't sound it at all.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  I do not have a Long Island accent.

• 15:35Yasi Salek?

  Did you used to?

• 15:36Speaker 05

  I don't think so. Then I think, you know, the New York will pop out occasionally for me, but I've told this story many times on pods before, but when I was in sixth grade, everybody in my class had to make a presentation and my presentation was how to be a game show host. And I always had a kind of over enunciated style. It was just something, and I.

• 15:55Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure your parents were very proud.

• 15:57Speaker 05

  I think they're very confused by me, to be honest, but I relate to this sort of like transformation, but return home that he sort of has in his identity.

• 16:06Yasi Salek?

  I do remember, I went to high school in Singapore, as we've talked about, and I had a writing teacher when I was 15, who said I talk like a newscaster.

• 16:15Speaker 05

  Okay. Why did they say that?

• 16:17Yasi Salek?

  I mean, he was southern, he was from Georgia, so maybe it's just the California accent is kind of the pan newscaster accent. Perhaps my vocal fry hadn't deepened yet, I don't know.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  Okay. Have you pursued deepening the vocal fry, or is it just kind of naturally occurring?

• 16:32Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think it's just like a wine, how it, you know, gets better over time.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 16:38Yasi Salek?

  Much like my vocal fry. Yeah, some people are, some people aren't. We don't have to litigate that right now. Let's talk a little bit about the casting in this movie.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 16:48Yasi Salek?

  I mean, obviously, Steve Coogan was pretty perfect, I thought.

• 16:50Speaker 05

  I can't imagine the movie without it.

• 16:51Yasi Salek?

  I can't.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  Genuinely, I can't. There are very few actors for whom I will allow fourth wall breaking.

• 16:57Yasi Salek?

  Okay, so funny. You know, I love fourth wall breaking.

• 17:00Speaker 05

  Really gotta be done right.

• 17:02Yasi Salek?

  When done right, though, it's one of my favorite things ever.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  I.

• 17:05Yasi Salek?

  Sex and the City pilot. I don't know why they lost it.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 17:08Yasi Salek?

  One of the best parts was that they had breaking the fourth wall. I just love it.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  I think it's a very powerful tool that can go awry pretty quickly. You know, Wayne's World was just featured on the rewatchables. It wasn't on the episode, but very, the sort of like framework of that movie is they go upstairs and Wayne turns to the camera at the beginning of the movie and you're like, whoa.

• 17:26Yasi Salek?

  And.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  We've not seen this.

• 17:28Yasi Salek?

  Did we not talk about why that happened?

• 17:30Speaker 05

  No.

• 17:30Yasi Salek?

  Penelope Spheeris.

• 17:31Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, of course, who.

• 17:32Yasi Salek?

  Who had come from documentaries where people would talk to the camera.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 17:37Yasi Salek?

  She kind of, she kind of cemented that style.

• 17:39Speaker 05

  And if, I mean, Wayne's World and 24 Hour Party People are not far afield, you know, it's about like making something small and then it getting a little too big and you can't control it anymore and they're, they're in tandem.

• 17:51Yasi Salek?

  I was just talking about Wayne's World this morning with my mother because of my middle school crush, Jonathan Negroni, whose claim to fame was that his cousin was Tia Carrera, is still, they're still related.

• 18:00Speaker 05

  Oh, that's nice. Tia Carrera, speaking of crushes in middle school.

• 18:05Yasi Salek?

  Big one for you. Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 05

  For me, you can imagine.

• 18:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 05

  Very special woman.

• 18:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Patti Concindeen, or Concindeen, is that?

• 18:11Speaker 05

  Concindeen, yes.

• 18:12Yasi Salek?

  What a gem. Truly stole, steals the show, I think, in this film.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  Uh, he's got a lot of competition, I think.

• 18:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:19Speaker 05

  Um, wonderful actor. I think this might have been the first time I saw a lot of these people.

• 18:23Yasi Salek?

  Same. And first, I haven't seen them, I mean, I've seen Shirley Henderson, obviously.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:29Yasi Salek?

  Um, Simon Pegg, obviously, but he's in it for two seconds.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  That was very early, but you know, Patti Concindeen is in a lot of the Edgar Wright movies, which, you know, you'd see Simon Pegg in, yeah, I mean, I'm looking at his filmography. This is really the first film with his that I have, have ever seen that came out and he's gone on to, he did a lot of Hollywood movies over the years and he's kind of a British staple at this point.

• 18:46Yasi Salek?

  He plays Rob Greton, which I famously called Rob Gretton on my, which I still like that pronunciation.

• 18:53Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:53Yasi Salek?

  And I did get some feedback from people that knew Rob Greton, who, cause a lot of the people in this story did die kind of young.

• 19:00Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:00Yasi Salek?

  Um, Rob Greton is one of them, but they said that it's, it was like uncanny, like his wife watched this and was like. Shook because he looks so much like him and and captured his mannerisms so perfectly.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  The grouchy-ness?

• 19:15Yasi Salek?

  Just, yeah, everything and the big smile and they were like, that's exactly what he was like. And that's what he looked like.

• 19:19Speaker 05

  Interesting, okay.

• 19:20Yasi Salek?

  Which, you know, for us, it doesn't land because we don't know what he looks like, but or we, you know, didn't know him. And then Andy Serkis, who played Gollum.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  He certainly did.

• 19:28Yasi Salek?

  Plays Martin Hannett.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  It's interesting because Patty Patty Considine now is probably most famous for being in House of the Dragon.

• 19:35Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 19:35Speaker 05

  Um, at least in this country. I think it's fair to say.

• 19:37Yasi Salek?

  It's a big.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  He played.

• 19:39Yasi Salek?

  Big place for British actors.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  By Seraf Targaryen and Andy Serkis, who is probably the most famous motion capture performer in movie history.

• 19:48Yasi Salek?

  I did not know that because of Gollum.

• 19:49Speaker 05

  And also Caesar from the Planet of the Apes films.

• 19:52Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  Um, and other stuff too. And he's also a filmmaker in his own right. He directed a Venom movie recently. I think he directed, he directed an adaptation of The Jungle Book.

• 20:00Yasi Salek?

  But he did not do The Monkey and Better Man, The Chimpanzee.

• 20:02Speaker 05

  He did not do The Monkey and Better Man. He also, he also is in Black Panther, but just as a performer, you know? But in this movie, I guess this was at a stage of his career where he was just acting or maybe not pursuing the motion capture stuff as much. Obviously, The Lord of the Rings is happening around this time. Kind of great casting. Martin Hannett, one of the few names I knew.

• 20:22Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  Before I saw this movie.

• 20:23Yasi Salek?

  From your music fandom.

• 20:24Speaker 05

  Being a dork.

• 20:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 05

  Looking at liner notes.

• 20:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Great portrayal of Martin Hannett. The scene when Tony Wilson goes to hunt him down in the field and he's trying to record silence. And he's like, what are you doing? You're recording sounds. He's like, well, now I'm recording Tony fucking Wilson. Just incredible writing.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  A lot of good, good, kind of angry British men energy in this movie. It's not very, the only person who's not really very angry is Tony Wilson, you know?

• 20:51Yasi Salek?

  Well, you kind of, and Alan Oramas, who's just sort of stoned.

• 20:54Speaker 05

  He's vibey.

• 20:55Yasi Salek?

  He's like, who cares? But you need it because Tony Wilson is such a ridiculous figure. You need like eight straight men to like.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 21:01Yasi Salek?

  To counter his like, just foppish.

• 21:04Speaker 05

  Sunny, rube, yeah.

• 21:06Yasi Salek?

  Before we get more into the movie, I just want to talk about the cameos because I also live for this.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 21:11Yasi Salek?

  Tony Wilson is obviously in it himself. He plays the Wheel of Fortune director. Howard Devoto of the Buzzcocks plays the janitor.

• 21:18Speaker 05

  Yes, he identifies himself in the middle of a scene. Great moment.

• 21:22Yasi Salek?

  Because he's like, I didn't do that.

• 21:23Speaker 05

  Did not fuck.

• 21:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, fuck Tony Wilson's wife.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  Tony Wilson's wife.

• 21:27Yasi Salek?

  Right. Paul Ryder, who is Sean Ryder's brother from Happy Mondays, is the hacienda doorman slash drug dealer. Clint Boone, who is from Inspiral Carpets, which is the band that Noel Gallagher roadied for before Oasis, he is the train conductor when Tony Wilson's on the train and trying to get to the politician to interview him. Marky Smith plays himself. And Rowetta plays herself.

• 21:50Speaker 05

  Pretty cool. It actually makes me wonder why there were not more people in the movie from the scene.

• 21:57Yasi Salek?

  I guess they tried. Okay, so this is interesting. Morrissey was apparently featured in a scene, but then they couldn't hunt him down to like clear it or something. So they had to cut it.

• 22:07Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 22:07Yasi Salek?

  Sean Ryder missed every flight.

• 22:09Speaker 05

  Least surprising thing I've ever heard.

• 22:11Yasi Salek?

  Cannot show up. New Order were in the studio and they like couldn't get away. And Rob Greton was, he died in 99, so. I would have thought there would be more cameos, but I think this was kind of a low-budget film, right?

• 22:26Speaker 05

  Feels like it.

• 22:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm not sure. They probably didn't have like 1,000 shooting days, so they did what they could.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  But I think it's good that it's not overloaded so as to be distracting so that when you're with.

• 22:38Yasi Salek?

  Cause gimmicky a little bit if you put too many.

• 22:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, like when you're with Sean Harris, you don't want to see him next to Peter Hook, right? Like you don't want to be, I don't know, crossing the beams of reality and the story that they're trying to tell, but it's cool. It's cute.

• 22:51Yasi Salek?

  Me, for me, so many Easter eggs.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  It's perfect fan-splained content.

• 22:57Yasi Salek?

  Because they were very faithful to things.

• 23:00Speaker 05

  Like, that's so funny because I don't know enough about it. So like in my head in the movie, I'm like 40% of this is not true, based on the way that they're telling us this story.

• 23:07Yasi Salek?

  Maybe plot-wise, 40% of it is not true, but a lot of it really was. I mean, the Chinese food scene famously, that's completely true. Them diving to grab Bernard Sumner's. Thrown away Chinese food, 100% happened. Sean Ryder's father having to soundcheck for him and being like, 100% happened. That was always, that was a thing. The Louis Louis thing always happened.

• 23:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:29Yasi Salek?

  Like, a lot of it was very, I mean, I don't know if Peter Saville actually turned everything in like exactly six hours too late, which is a great running bit.

• 23:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:40Yasi Salek?

  Just showing up in a suit and be like, here are the tickets for tonight, like, tonight is over. He was like, could be a souvenir.

• 23:46Speaker 05

  And always a little bit too expensive, kind of always costing them money.

• 23:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, well, that part was true.

• 23:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:51Yasi Salek?

  The losing whatever 40 cents per new order album, totally true.

• 23:55Speaker 05

  The floppy disk.

• 23:56Yasi Salek?

  Really fucked them because they were like, we're not gonna sell any, and they sold so many. I don't know, I thought it was, apparently this is another one thing that I learned that kind of, I guess makes sense now that I think about it, but it didn't occur to me. A lot of it was improv.

• 24:09Speaker 05

  The mo, it has that feel.

• 24:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 05

  It definitely has that feel, and obviously Winterbottom, a lot of his movies, especially his movies with Steve Coogan.

• 24:16Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 24:17Speaker 05

  Are like 70% improvised, you know, you, you can see that they arrive on the day and you know where they're going with the story, but it's very Curb Your Enthusiasm. The idea of doing it in this very chaotic story that has to closely follow the arc of a man, a label, a series of bands, a 12, 15 year time span, I mean, how long does this movie, it's kind of into the early 90s, right?

• 24:42Yasi Salek?

  It's a while because when's Joy Division, like 78?

• 24:46Speaker 05

  78, yeah.

• 24:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they start right after the Sex Pistols show, which is I think 76 or 77. And then the whole thing collapses in like 92, 93, is that right? Whenever, you know, Happy Mondays go to Barbados.

• 24:58Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 24:59Yasi Salek?

  And that, that stuff actually also did happen.

• 25:02Speaker 05

  Does it strike you as interesting that it was only 10 years later that this movie was made?

• 25:07Yasi Salek?

  Oh, yeah, I guess I hadn't really thought about that.

• 25:09Speaker 05

  Further from this movie than the movie was from the real events portrayed in the movie by, by twice as long.

• 25:16Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that is really interesting.

• 25:17Speaker 05

  It doesn't, it doesn't feel like a kind of story.

• 25:20Yasi Salek?

  Wildly successful.

• 25:21Speaker 05

  It might have been too soon.

• 25:22Yasi Salek?

  Might have been too soon.

• 25:23Speaker 05

  Whether or not they could, could or should have done it after Tony Wilson died. I like that they did it like while everyone was basically.

• 25:28Yasi Salek?

  No, I do too. I do too.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  A handful of prominent names notwithstanding.

• 25:32Yasi Salek?

  I tried to look up and I couldn't find anything. So if anyone knows about this, please get in touch. If you're in a certain ratio, please get in touch. They were quite mean to a certain ratio throughout this film.

• 25:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, a lot of jazz jokes at their expense.

• 25:44Yasi Salek?

  And I was like, how did they feel? Cause they look, I mean, they, they're not a bad band and they.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  Would you say they're the fourth most prominent act from Factory? Fifth?

• 25:55Yasi Salek?

  I mean, Joy Division, Happy Mondays, New Order, Derudy Column is probably more prominent than A Certain Ratio.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  But yeah.

• 26:01Yasi Salek?

  More respected at least.

• 26:02Speaker 05

  Who's got the, who's got more Spotify streams, you know? Derudy Column or A Certain Ratio?

• 26:08Yasi Salek?

  Can you name a Certain Ratio song?

• 26:10Speaker 05

  No, but no, I mean, Derudy Column, we'll get to it, you know, they rock, he rocks.

• 26:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, really inspirational. Also famously, Vinnie Riley was tasked to produce the first, I think, Morrissey album and they, I think hated each other and it crumbled and fell apart.

• 26:25Speaker 05

  Interesting. He doesn't seem like a guy who hates people, just based on the general ambiance of his music.

• 26:30Yasi Salek?

  But Morrissey can really flip a switch, babe.

• 26:32Speaker 05

  He is a hater for sure.

• 26:33Yasi Salek?

  And he can probably push, push anyone over, over the edge.

• 26:36Speaker 05

  Good point, good point.

• 26:37Yasi Salek?

  Did you know they literally recreated the hacienda?

• 26:39Speaker 05

  I did not know that.

• 26:40Yasi Salek?

  Some, some budget. Yeah, there was a lot of interviews that people were like, this is crazy. They came back to like be in it and they were like, this is.

• 26:47Speaker 05

  So the hacienda is now in real life apartment buildings that are known as the hacienda? This is what I read.

• 26:55Yasi Salek?

  That I'm not sure about.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  The actual space, I think, is just like condo building.

• 26:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 05

  But they call it the hacienda, which.

• 27:01Yasi Salek?

  Nothing gold can stay.

• 27:02Speaker 05

  You know, right. But the, the idea that they would rebuild it while the building is actually still there, but operating, serving a very capitalist purpose.

• 27:09Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if in 2002, it was a condo building.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  Might not have been, might not have been.

• 27:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, they made a replica, like a full size replica in a Manchester warehouse.

• 27:17Speaker 05

  Was it all real drugs in there too?

• 27:18Yasi Salek?

  You know, we'll never know about that. That was also a great part where, oh, here's one thing that I love to bring up that isn't, that did happen, but not with the Happy Mondays. You know, the part where it's Martin Hannett, who's, who makes the drummer go upstairs?

• 27:33Speaker 05

  Yes. Love that.

• 27:35Yasi Salek?

  That was the Stone Roses. It was not.

• 27:38Speaker 05

  A little fudging.

• 27:38Yasi Salek?

  The Happy Mondays, yeah. I, when I read this stuff and see it, I do get a pang of damn, wish I could. Just go back there.

• 27:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 27:48Yasi Salek?

  Actually, really-

• 27:49Speaker 05

  The Hacienda in 1987 must have been fucking amazing.

• 27:51Yasi Salek?

  With that music, like, just Mike Pickering on the ones and twos.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  I'm sure it was incredible. And one of my favorite things about this movie is that these Manchester lads were responsible for teaching, like, helping white people learn how to dance, um, which, you know, I think there's a lot of truth to that. When you see Coogan cutting a rug at the Hacienda, I'm like, I kind of buy this.

• 28:12Yasi Salek?

  Well, of course, as of everything, by way of Detroit.

• 28:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 28:16Yasi Salek?

  By way of black men's music.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  Hundred percent.

• 28:19Yasi Salek?

  By way of taking black men's music, playing it in-

• 28:22Speaker 05

  I set aside the actual music that's being played. The majority, I think, of attendees of the Hacienda were white people-

• 28:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:29Speaker 05

  -in Manchester.

• 28:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 06

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• 29:34Yasi Salek?

  Every mechanism they used in this film worked for me. The exposition, the breaking the fourth wall. What does he say when it's the part where the second act? He quotes, like, some famous poet or something, and then he's like, and, oh, something about America was the site, does it have a second act? He's like, but this is Manchester and we do it differently. This is the second act.

• 29:56Speaker 05

  Yes. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

• 29:57Yasi Salek?

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 05

  American Lives, yeah.

• 30:00Yasi Salek?

  No, you knew it the whole time and you wanted me to just...

• 30:01Speaker 05

  I didn't remember until you got to the end. I didn't mean to hang you out to dry, but it's funny you say that. I just took my daughter to go see The Great Muppet Caper over the weekend. And The Great Muppet Caper does the same thing, you know. Throughout the film, there's a lot of fourth wall breaking, but in particular, there's one sequence where Diane Riggs is talking to Miss Piggy. And she shares all of this information about her life and about her brother and about her diamonds, which are eventually going to be stolen in the film. And Miss Piggy, in the telling of the movie, is like, "Why did you just tell me all of that?" And she says, "Well, darling, it's exposition and I have to share it with someone." And like, that's a convention that if done cleverly, as this movie does, can work.

• 30:42Yasi Salek?

  Steve Coogan also kind of Muppet-y.

• 30:44Speaker 05

  He is. He totally is. I mean, he's just such a perfect fit for this kind of a character, because he's always doing characters that are sort of turning towards you and being like, "Can you fucking believe this?"

• 30:53Yasi Salek?

  Well, we also didn't talk about it, but I think the Alan Partridge character is...

• 30:59Speaker 05

  Kind of a little Tony Wilson.

• 31:01Yasi Salek?

  It's very, yeah, it's close to Tony Wilson and I'm not, I think, he might have actually, let me just, before I say it...

• 31:07Speaker 05

  Did he say he was an inspiration for it?

• 31:08Yasi Salek?

  Might have been. He did say, because you know Steve Coogan, you know this because you love The Trip, which we will also probably mention in this episode. He started out as an impersonator. And he used to do Tony Wilson impersonations. So I didn't find anything of him saying it specifically about Alan Partridge, but like, it's not a leap to think that like, doing Tony Wilson impersonations led to an Alan Partridge character.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  Definitely not. And there's obviously a certain kind of British television presenter style. That Tony Wilson has in some ways, but not in others, but there is a kind of casualness that they present with that is very different, I find, from the American style. You might be deceived by the fact that they have British accents, so like, when American viewers view it. But the kind of like, I mean, we see it now with Graham Norton. Graham Norton, who's just sort of like, "I heard a story once about you with a dog." You know, and it just, it all feels kind of loose. It doesn't feel as like, um, newscaster.

• 31:59Yasi Salek?

  That's why they're better than us.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Well, they're good at TV. They've always been very good at TV. And yeah, sometimes in film, yeah, for sure.

• 32:06Yasi Salek?

  Music.

• 32:07Speaker 05

  Uh, yes, yes. What about monarchies? Are they better than us at monarchies?

• 32:11Yasi Salek?

  We don't have that. Well, I-

• 32:13Speaker 05

  Do we not?

• 32:13Yasi Salek?

  One could make the argument. Let me ask you, I kind of said this earlier about my repeated rewatchings and my understanding of the minutia of all of these stories. As a person who probably maybe doesn't have such like a deep well of knowledge about all of those bands and all these stories.

• 32:32Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:34Yasi Salek?

  It's still just as enjoyable for you to watch, right? There aren't, or there aren't parts where you're like, what?

• 32:39Speaker 05

  Not really. I definitely was not a big Happy Mondays fan, but I was a very big post-punk fan. So, you know, there's that whole 77 through 82 era. It's just very sonically exciting to me. So that part of it is fun and not that confusing because I know most of the bands or most of the songs.

• 32:56Yasi Salek?

  And you probably knew the famous story of the Sex Pistols playing in Manchester at the Free Trade.

• 33:00Speaker 05

  I watched all those documentaries that were made at the 20th anniversary of punk.

• 33:03Yasi Salek?

  30 people there or whatever. I thought they captured that really well.

• 33:06Speaker 05

  Very, well, it's very forced gum. You know, it's very like we're placing our actors in front of real events and hoping that you believe that they were in this space, but we know that you know that this didn't really happen this way. But I like that stuff.

• 33:19Yasi Salek?

  Worked for me.

• 33:20Speaker 05

  The mid 80s through the 90s, you know, as I said, not a rave kid really in any meaningful way. It was more like just I was just learning about it. You know, I was learning about the trip to Barbados. I was learning about moments in music history that I wasn't familiar with.

• 33:34Yasi Salek?

  But I thought they did a good job of explaining it. Like, this is what happened. We made no money because people did ecstasy and didn't drink. There was crime. We had to shut down. We lost so much money. I feel like because they were able to use sort of like VO and exposition, they could explain what happened in like a cool and succinct way.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  But try to go back to the first time you saw it. Before you were band playing, yeah, see when you were in 2002, you were in college?

• 33:58Yasi Salek?

  That's right.

• 33:59Speaker 05

  And did you see it that year?

• 34:01Yasi Salek?

  I don't remember when I saw it.

• 34:02Speaker 05

  I don't remember either.

• 34:02Yasi Salek?

  I don't think I was that cool.

• 34:04Speaker 05

  Let's just say it was-

• 34:04Yasi Salek?

  It must have been later.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  Let's say it was within a-

• 34:06Yasi Salek?

  I was living in New York.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  Five-year range-

• 34:07Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  Of its release.

• 34:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 05

  Were you like, I get all this, I know what all this is, I know what the dirty column is?

• 34:12Yasi Salek?

  No, I don't think I know what the dirty column was.

• 34:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, see, I think it is a little better if you know some of those things.

• 34:18Yasi Salek?

  I think it's, it is engineered to delight you the more you know about it.

• 34:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I think you can roll with it in a fun way. I think sometimes movies like this can be alienating if you don't have a lot of the raw material. In fact, movies that over-enunciate the obvious stuff, like Amanda and I always talk about this, she loves the moment in the Aretha Franklin biopic starring Jennifer Hudson where like she writes "Respect" and you're like in the room and she's writing "Respect" and she's at the piano. And I'm like, this is garbage.

• 34:45Yasi Salek?

  You hate it.

• 34:46Speaker 05

  This is not how this happened. This is, it takes days to write songs sometimes. It's, there's often a lot of interplay.

• 34:51Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 34:52Speaker 05

  It's not interesting to watch people be quiet and writing things down, like-

• 34:55Yasi Salek?

  You said that's about a complete unknown as well.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  I feel similarly about that. So, that particular quality of music biopics I don't like. This movie isn't really doing that. And anytime we're seeing Martin Hammett like do his thing, it feels weirdly more authentic.

• 35:11Yasi Salek?

  I think it was.

• 35:12Speaker 05

  People kind of yelling at each other.

• 35:13Yasi Salek?

  Right. I mean, I can't speak for how Aretha Franklin made her music, but like I think pretty much all of these idiots made their music this way. Like, they were just drunk and high at the studio and there was some like genius insane person who's also drunk and high, like giving them like bizarre directions that just yields some like work of art that's gonna stand the test of time, which is what happened over and over again.

• 35:34Speaker 05

  It's like staff meetings here at The Ringer.

• 35:36Yasi Salek?

  Exactly, totally. I don't go to those, but I'm sure that that's what happens there. So, back to the music biopic thing, right? We both dislike them, but I have different reasons than you. I think I told you with, when we talked about Better Man, Better Man is a good movie, that I don't care if it's rote. I don't care if you use the- Plane structure. What I care about is tone. Because I find music biopics to be tonally unfucking bearable. Because they are overwrought, they are hamfisted.

• 36:06Speaker 05

  The brutal sincerity.

• 36:08Yasi Salek?

  They're saccharine, exactly. And it doesn't ring true. And all, actually, I think it completely negates what they're trying to do, which is to elicit some poignancy and an emotional response. Whereas when they're like this, or Better Man for me, where they're tonally kind of silly and lighthearted and tongue in cheek, when there is poignancy, it hits 10 times harder.

• 36:29Speaker 05

  I mean, can you think of another one that has this energy, though?

• 36:32Yasi Salek?

  Better Man. Um, yeah. No, but like, I was, I was thinking specifically of the-

• 36:37Speaker 05

  That's a ver- that's a hyper sincere movie, though. It's ton- huge moments of that movie are all about these like plaintive explanations of why Robbie Williams wants to be a star.

• 36:47Yasi Salek?

  But they play them for laughs. They, they keep the tone pretty-

• 36:52Speaker 05

  We don't need to debate that movie.

• 36:53Yasi Salek?

  I don't think it's a one for one comparison.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  But this like, half satire, half biopic feeling is awfully rare in these kinds of movies.

• 37:02Yasi Salek?

  But which is so sad because it works so, and I guess it doesn't work for everyone. Like, maybe it won't work for a really Franklin. But, for example, you know how much I dislike Control.

• 37:11Speaker 05

  Because it's so straight.

• 37:12Yasi Salek?

  It's, and it's just, it's wrong. Like, when Ian Curtis dies in this film, A, Tony Wilson makes a point, which I love this, to be like, you would listen to his music and think that he's the saddest man, or the most depressing man, and he wasn't. Like, that's what I hated about Control. It flattened a person into one dimension, and nobody is one dimensional. And Ian Curtis was really funny, and I like that. And also, because of the tone of the film and all the lightheartedness, I don't know about you, but when they show the funeral, there's funny moments, obviously. They're standing over the, the body, the grandma's there, love you on the telly. And then they cut to the, they cut to the music video for, is it Atmosphere?

• 37:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And they're in the black robes and the white robes, and they're carrying the picture. Like, that's a gut punch, for me.

• 38:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's interesting. Like, you're much more of a historian than I am, and so that's, like, you're reflecting on your feeling about what you understand about the person, and how there is something- Modulated about them and control. To me, Control works because it's

• 38:15Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 38:16Speaker 05

  Really beautifully made. You know, like Anton Corbin is a big time filmmaker in my mind. And so even if it's a kind of narrow view of a more complicated person, I believe the relationship in the movie and I believe that Ian Curtis was a tortured person.

• 38:33Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 38:33Speaker 05

  Even if he had different modes, different rays of expression.

• 38:37Yasi Salek?

  Don't you think you would be more emotionally moved by his story if you knew that he wasn't just a tortured person? Would you not mourn the loss of more a multi dimensional person?

• 38:48Speaker 05

  It's an interesting, this is a really interesting movie to talk about through because we only get 18 minutes of Ian Curtis. You know, we don't get a lot of time with him.

• 38:56Yasi Salek?

  And did you not feel that that, that's what I was going to ask you. Do you, were you not emotionally affected by that usage of the music video, which is so sad and beautiful because it did come out after his death? And they're carrying this photo of him and it's like, and they let it play for a little while and I just like, I have, I have the chills thinking about it.

• 39:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:14Yasi Salek?

  It works. To me, that's a thousand percent more emotionally affecting than all of Control was. I could watch Control 10 times and not feel anything like I felt for that.

• 39:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, I haven't seen Control since it came out, but I will say it's something that many artists do, like Biggie's second album is called Life After Death and he was alive when he recorded it. You know, like the, the sort of like these representations of moving on when you're an artist that knows that like life is short and it may be shorter than most regular people.

• 39:42Yasi Salek?

  He was already dead.

• 39:44Speaker 05

  Oh, when they made the video, you're saying, oh, I didn't realize.

• 39:46Yasi Salek?

  Because he died before the second album came out.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  I see.

• 39:49Yasi Salek?

  They had made the music, but they hadn't.

• 39:51Speaker 05

  I don't know. I mean, to me, the thing, the thing I like about that part of the story and the way that they show Curtis's death is Tony's reaction, which is how a lot of people tend to react when people die by suicide, where it's not like, oh, of course that happened.

• 40:06Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  It's like, Jesus fucking Christ, really, man? I like, not that you didn't know it was coming, but you didn't know it was coming. And Control obviously doesn't do that. Control is like, it immediately becomes funereal.

• 40:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a foregone conclusion in Control. Also, I loved that the characterization of Tony Wilson in that moment is also so perfect because what is the first thing he does at the funeral? Grabs the Simon Pegg character, who is playing a real journalist, whose name I can't remember, who I think did write a lot about Joy Division. And it's like, you have to write a book about this. You have to, because he was a storyteller. He wanted, he, he wanted the legacy of this. Art that he believed in so much, this artist, to carry on. And that was really on his mind, to me, which is really touching, you know?

• 40:47Speaker 05

  It is, but he's also a mythmaker and a salesman. So like, you can kind of balance the two, right? Where he's like, what we need to do is valorize Ian Curtis's art and his short life. That also helps this whole thing.

• 41:00Yasi Salek?

  But I think he's not a salesman in the classic sense, right? Because he's not trying to make money.

• 41:04Speaker 05

  Not for money, but he's a presenter.

• 41:06Yasi Salek?

  He wants greatness, like Timmy Chalamet. He's in the pursuit of greatness.

• 41:10Speaker 05

  What did you make of that speech?

• 41:11Yasi Salek?

  I loved it.

• 41:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was pretty great.

• 41:12Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  Very, very amusing that someone would actually say what they're thinking for once onstage when accepting an award.

• 41:18Yasi Salek?

  I doubt like that. I mean, I don't know Timothy Chalamet personally.

• 41:21Speaker 05

  You don't?

• 41:22Yasi Salek?

  Not yet. We'll get it.

• 41:25Speaker 05

  Holding space for Timmy?

• 41:26Yasi Salek?

  We have, listen, we're on the way. I mean,

• 41:28Speaker 05

  Did you see him with Nardwar?

• 41:30Yasi Salek?

  From Bill Simmons down to here, down to here, he'll get to us eventually.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  You, you want, you need to do Bill first, then?

• 41:35Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 41:35Speaker 05

  Timmy on the show?

• 41:36Yasi Salek?

  No, Timmy loves Bill, is what I'm saying.

• 41:37Speaker 05

  Oh, I see.

• 41:38Yasi Salek?

  So maybe through the trickle down effect, he'll get to us.

• 41:39Speaker 05

  Did you watch him with Nardwar?

• 41:41Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 41:42Speaker 05

  I mean,

• 41:42Yasi Salek?

  So charming.

• 41:42Speaker 05

  He knows his shit. I mean, he's built for a Bob Bandplain.

• 41:47Yasi Salek?

  He's a theater kid.

• 41:48Speaker 05

  What does that, that's, he'll be great on camera.

• 41:50Yasi Salek?

  No, he'd be great. He'd be great. No, I'm just saying that he's theater. He's doing theater. I would love,

• 41:53Speaker 05

  Oh, I see.

• 41:54Yasi Salek?

  Timothy Chalamet, I'm sure that you have,

• 41:55Speaker 05

  But he like knows B-sides and stuff.

• 41:56Yasi Salek?

  I'm sure you have 12 to 17 free hours to come do Bob Dylan, which is how long, that would probably take 100 hours.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  Chalamet would be better than me on that pod, for sure.

• 42:04Yasi Salek?

  You think?

• 42:05Speaker 05

  I do, yeah. He's spent five years of his life, he said, five and a half years of his life, training to become Bob. I'm just a guy who listens to music.

• 42:11Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 42:11Speaker 05

  Reads the occasional book.

• 42:12Yasi Salek?

  Okay. I'll be in touch.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 42:15Yasi Salek?

  How did we get here?

• 42:16Speaker 05

  Who can tell?

• 42:17Yasi Salek?

  Who can say? It's the Bandplain episode. Oh, pursuit of greatness. That is what Tony Wilson was in pursuit of.

• 42:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, we were talking about the salesman thing, which is interesting. Like, I do think that, you know, like even when you see the stories that he's interested in as a presenter, and I love how they keep kind of interstitialing him doing his real job while he's trying to keep this label together and going.

• 42:37Speaker 05

  He seems to have an interest in the epic, you know?

• 42:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:41Speaker 05

  Power, the way that things are remembered.

• 42:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Speaker 05

  So I think it speaks to what you're describing in the Ian Curtis funeral.

• 42:48Yasi Salek?

  What's very interesting, and this is just outside of the scope of the film, but I find it interesting, is that Tony Wilson and Alan McGee are both in the lineage of Malcolm McLaren, who was sort of the original version of this, right?

• 43:02Speaker 05

  But he was an outright capitalist, though, in many ways. He was, he was a salesperson. He owned a store that sold goods.

• 43:09Yasi Salek?

  Sure. Yeah, I don't know if they were like printing money over there at the sex shop of, with Vivienne Westwood's sweaters and stuff. But what's interesting about him and also Bernie Rhodes, who's actually really more interesting than Malcolm McLaren, he was the Clash's manager, is that they were philosophical about what they were doing. Less so capitalist, honestly. They were interested in situationism is what they were going off of. They just, they were doing art through, through management and through impresario-ness. That was an art form for them, which I think is so interesting. It's kind of bringing it back to what I was saying is like, I don't think that's happening anymore. Like, respect to CAA.

• 43:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:53Yasi Salek?

  But I don't think a lot of those managers think of what they do as an art form.

• 43:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm trying to think of some relevant, modern examples. There's not a lot. I'm sure there are some that we're not thinking of.

• 44:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  I am a little bit skeptical.

• 44:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  Of the entire thing, the entire idea. I think of the benevolent impresario.

• 44:12Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I didn't say they're benevolent.

• 44:13Speaker 05

  Then, I guess, the non-greedy impresario. I think that that's part of what's underpinning some of this. And maybe it's a British thing, but there are also a lot of American examples of this, too. I think you're right that there's a philosophy at play. And I think a lot of the best, kind of like, talentless organizers, like, that's what these people really are, right? They're sort of like, they can identify who's got it.

• 44:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  And attach themselves.

• 44:34Yasi Salek?

  That's a talent.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  It is, I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of was my talent. Like, that's kind of how I made it into the world.

• 44:40Yasi Salek?

  The Tony Wilson of the Ringer.

• 44:42Speaker 05

  I relate. I think maybe, maybe it's self-recrimination, maybe it's self-loathing, that I'm kind of like, expressing some skepticism about this position.

• 44:49Yasi Salek?

  When you tell me I can't do these, these.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  What do I tell you you can't do?

• 44:52Yasi Salek?

  Smaller bands because of the bottom line.

• 44:54Speaker 05

  Why don't? The narrativizing of me as the enemy of this show, the corporate power.

• 45:05Yasi Salek?

  No, that's Justin Sales, as far as the audience is concerned, even though he's also not. Nobody is the enemy of the show. I'm the enemy of this show. Everything bad that's happening is me. Oh, in the meetings, I don't intend.

• 45:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think there's a cool tension between what someone like Malcolm McLaren is doing, which is that they're building up something that almost wants to resist entering the structural world and putting them into the structural world, putting them on record labels, putting them in live concert experiences. The Pistols, obviously, like, they couldn't survive with inside of it. Like, there's just too much volatility. But The Clash did. The Clash were ultimately more about the philosophy and the ethical proceeding and consistently communicated that. Factory, like, what is Factory's philosophy? What is it that they believe in? What is it that Tony Wilson represents as an impresario? It's kind of an interesting question that the movie's kind of scratches at, but never

• 46:01Speaker 05

  really gets to the bottom of, I'd say.

• 46:03Yasi Salek?

  I think that's why he makes such a fascinating topic for a movie, is because you can't quite get a handle on what his motivations are, but I think it's presenting it at the very least that they weren't money. And so, once someone's motivation isn't money, or really fame, I mean, he had fame because he had his own.

• 46:25Speaker 05

  He'd be recognized on any street in Manchester.

• 46:28Yasi Salek?

  Sure, but like, he's, you know, he's not Ian Curtis, he's not The Happy Mondays. I mean, Sean Ryder was on every magazine cover. New Order went on to be, you know, he wasn't really, he didn't try to insert himself into their careers or art or attach himself. I think he was just happy to, like, create a world. He was a world creator, like you said, like a mythmaker, a world creator, and that's an interesting motivation for me.

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Do you think that, I think he's pretty open about this, and it might have been even in the clip that you shared with me this morning, he's just sort of like a getting close to middle-aged man who wanted to be cool and wants to be close to cool culture?

• 47:04Yasi Salek?

  Who can relate, babe?

• 47:06Speaker 05

  I get it.

• 47:07Yasi Salek?

  Who amongst us?

• 47:09Speaker 05

  How old was he when he was at that Sex Pistols show? Was he the oldest man in the room? Even if he was in his 30s?

• 47:16Yasi Salek?

  He was 26.

• 47:17Speaker 05

  Okay, so he was pretty young.

• 47:19Yasi Salek?

  For our time, but maybe not for that time.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, how lo- how old was John Lydon when they did that performance? Was he 21?

• 47:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'm not sure.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  So.

• 47:26Yasi Salek?

  He was born in 1950.

• 47:29Speaker 05

  19.

• 47:29Yasi Salek?

  I think the movie makes us feel he was older.

• 47:32Speaker 05

  It does.

• 47:32Yasi Salek?

  Because we're older and we think we're young, but you have to remember that back then, if you were like 35, you had already been married and had five kids.

• 47:39Speaker 05

  Right, you were ancient.

• 47:40Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. So he was older, as it were.

• 47:43Speaker 05

  I think the mo- maybe it's because of the age that Coogan is when the movie comes out.

• 47:48Yasi Salek?

  Because the Happy Mondays were like teens, you know?

• 47:50Speaker 05

  Right. But he did express that he was like, "I'm surrounded by this culture that I really liked and was interested in, but had no ability to create myself and didn't play an instrument."

• 48:02Yasi Salek?

  Which is great, because I think what ultimately is the purpose of someone like that is that you need, a bunch of teens and 20-year-olds need a person who's responsible and has access. Like, what he did of putting the Sex Pistols on his show, that was a huge deal, you know?

• 48:22Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 48:22Yasi Salek?

  He was a patron in a way, and he was a bunch of other things, and he was a complicated person. Not as complicated as Alan McGee, which is, I'm gonna use one of your Sean Fantasy trademarked segues here.

• 48:33Speaker 05

  Do it up. Magnificently done.

• 48:34Yasi Salek?

  Unless you have any closing thoughts or parting words on 24 Hour Party People, one of the best films of all time, and arguably the best music by a pick, in my opinion.

• 48:43Speaker 05

  I think it's a fabulously funny movie. I think Michael Winterbottom's whole mission, his whole, every movie he made with Steve Coogan is fascinating.

• 48:51Yasi Salek?

  The Coogs.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  Coogs is great in this. Shirley Henderson's great in this, like, a lot of great-

• 48:55Yasi Salek?

  Everyone's pretty great.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 48:57Yasi Salek?

  The guy who plays Ian Curtis, I thought, was really good.

• 49:00Speaker 05

  He is really good, Sean Harris, who I think is probably best known in America as one of the chief villains from the Mission Impossible franchise.

• 49:08Yasi Salek?

  I have not seen those.

• 49:10Speaker 05

  The one thing I want to note is that this is either the last or the second-to-last film that the Dutch cinematographer Robbie Mueller shot. Robbie Mueller, who shot an incredible number- Movies with Vim vendors over the years, including pretty much all of his classics. He also shot Repo Man, Alex Cox's LA classic.

• 49:30Yasi Salek?

  One of the best.

• 49:32Speaker 05

  He shot To Live and Die in LA, he shot Barfly.

• 49:34Yasi Salek?

  It's a very well shot movie. Like, you feel like you're there and they do, they do such a great job of like creating these spaces. Again, I love the, the fourth wall breaking. We should just, before we close out, talk about the ending, cause it's one of the greater endings.

• 49:50Speaker 05

  The visitation from God.

• 49:51Yasi Salek?

  The visitation from God that looks just like him. Who says, basically, you were right. Sean is the greatest poet since Yeats.

• 50:00Speaker 05

  No.

• 50:01Yasi Salek?

  It's a pity you didn't sign the Smiths, but you were right about Mick Hucknall. Mick Hucknall takes a couple of strays at the end. The music is rubbish and he's a ginger. Simply red, if you don't know who Mick Hucknall is. Here's something that might make you cry. Tony Wilson really did say that he thought Sean Ryder was the greatest poet since Yeats and.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  Do you agree with that?

• 50:20Yasi Salek?

  I think he was a pretty profound lyricist outside of his own control because he was just channeling some stuff. At his funeral, at Tony Wilson's funeral, they played his favorite Happy Monday song that he thought was the most poetic, Bob's Your Uncle.

• 50:37Yasi Salek?

  And he, he wanted that.

• 50:38Speaker 05

  It's beautiful. It's really nice.

• 50:39Yasi Salek?

  It made me cry.

• 50:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you know, that one is, um, I only went with your mother cause she's dirty. Son, I'm 30, I only went with your mother cause she's dirty.

• 50:53Speaker 05

  It's pretty good. We're, um, we're doing a project on the big picture this year called 25 for 25, the 25 best movies of the 21st century. If you look at the, a lot of the lists that have been compiled out there, this movie crops up quite a bit. There are a lot of people who point to this as one of the great British films of the century, as one of the great biopics, not just musical epics, but biopics.

• 51:14Yasi Salek?

  Do you think it's slept on?

• 51:16Speaker 05

  I think it's not as accessible here. For example, there's no US Blu-ray of this movie. That's just one of those things that like, I have a, a British import.

• 51:24Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 51:25Speaker 05

  So.

• 51:25Yasi Salek?

  I did try to hunt down a DVD, cause I think there's a, um, track with Tony Wilson giving his.

• 51:31Speaker 05

  That's on the British Blu-ray.

• 51:32Yasi Salek?

  That's on the British Blu-ray.

• 51:33Speaker 05

  It is Coogan and Tony Wilson together.

• 51:35Yasi Salek?

  Did you listen to that?

• 51:36Speaker 05

  Audio commentary. I might've watched it some time ago when I wa, when I first saw it. But yeah, I mean, I think also just Frank Cottrell Bryce. I think if I was gonna recommend, if you like this movie and you like what these guys do.

• 51:48Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, do some recommend, you're good at this.

• 51:49Speaker 05

  Watch Tristram Shandy, A Cock and Bull Story, which comes a few years later, which is ostensibly an adaptation of Tristram Shandy, but is really more of like a meta text about what it's like to adapt a novel. Really funny screenplay by Katrelle Bryce, great Coogan performance, and another Winterbottom production. As I've recommended on previous shows before, it's really, really good.

• 52:11Yasi Salek?

  Winterbottom made it. I was trying something.

• 52:14Speaker 05

  Like a Mike Will made it situation. Winterbottom made it?

• 52:17Yasi Salek?

  I tried it out.

• 52:18Speaker 05

  Can we get that drop, Liz?

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• 53:25Yasi Salek?

  I do want to talk about creation stories because I think it is a version of this that is not successful. But before we get off of 24 hour price pool, we should just talk about a little bit of Michael Winterbottom.

• 53:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:38Yasi Salek?

  I rewatched The Trip. Which I deeply love.

• 53:42Speaker 05

  We do first see Coogan and Bryden together in 24 Hour Party People.

• 53:45Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 53:46Speaker 05

  Bryden also plays a journalist like Simon Pegg does.

• 53:48Yasi Salek?

  He's very funny. He's the one that insists that it's George Epstein.

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Lenny James is really funny in that scene where in the background he's telling it's Brian Epstein.

• 53:58Yasi Salek?

  He's great in it.

• 54:00Speaker 05

  You know, that series was originally aired as a television series in the UK. We got it, I think via IFC in the US. And is magic. Every one of those movies to me is magic.

• 54:11Yasi Salek?

  They're so good. They're so funny. I don't think it's as good as 24 Hour Party People.

• 54:16Speaker 05

  No, it's got a different kind of goal, right?

• 54:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 54:18Speaker 05

  It's just more of a hang.

• 54:19Yasi Salek?

  It's more of a hang. Exactly. If you are interested in plot, there is a plot. There is some character development.

• 54:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's an undercurrent of the Coogan character being an unhappy guy in his midlife who can't stay faithful.

• 54:31Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and who is kind of obsessed maybe with his own stature and fame in life and is sort of using his law, his old friend, who clearly doesn't care about that as like a way to both make himself feel better and then ultimately makes him feel worse because he's just happy and settled in his life.

• 54:49Speaker 05

  Exactly right. That's exactly how I understand it. And you know, it's like, is it a bit self-abnegating on Coogan's part? Or is it just like pure documentary? Like that question is so interesting. Yeah.

• 55:00Yasi Salek?

  I love.

• 55:01Speaker 05

  He's a great force. I mean, him and With Your Bottom together are great, but Coogan's like.

• 55:05Yasi Salek?

  And Rob Brydon is honestly a national, international treasure. I wish we had more of him over here.

• 55:08Speaker 05

  The other thing too is just like, it's just great food porn, you know, they're constantly going to restaurants.

• 55:12Yasi Salek?

  I want to go on this trip. Is there, it probably is some sort of like, go on the trip, trip. And I would a hundred percent do it.

• 55:19Speaker 05

  It's got it. I mean, it's gotta be right. Cause these, this was also a pretty big series in, in the UK and across Europe. And they went to Spain, they went to Greece.

• 55:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, Italy.

• 55:27Speaker 05

  Italy, yeah.

• 55:27Yasi Salek?

  Do you think the Joy Division moment in the movie was a wink at 24 Hour Party People?

• 55:32Speaker 05

  I don't remember it. Remind me what happens.

• 55:34Yasi Salek?

  Near the very beginning, they're driving and he puts on Joy Division, also atmosphere. And Rob is like, why are you playing this? And he's like, I wanted, I'm putting on music that goes with the landscape, the scenery. It's like a really funny moment. I was like, I wonder if that was like a little.

• 55:49Speaker 05

  It must be, right?

• 55:50Yasi Salek?

  They already had the connections to clear it.

• 55:52Speaker 05

  Also very possible, yeah.

• 55:54Yasi Salek?

  And then you made me watch.

• 55:57Speaker 05

  What did I do?

• 55:57Yasi Salek?

  You made me watch Nine Songs, which is another Michael Winterbottom film.

• 56:01Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 56:02Yasi Salek?

  From 2004.

• 56:03Speaker 05

  I didn't make you watch it. I made you aware of it and noted that it was available on Canopy.

• 56:08Yasi Salek?

  When your boss makes a light suggestion, is it not perhaps?

• 56:13Speaker 05

  I'd like to hear more about your history of being an employee.

• 56:17Yasi Salek?

  You should honestly. Everyone should hear more about my history of being.

• 56:21Speaker 05

  Just getting a communication does not mean command.

• 56:24Yasi Salek?

  A human communiqué comes through. Actually, famously, yes, I, even a communiqué often doesn't mean a command to me. A command doesn't mean a command to me.

• 56:32Speaker 05

  Maybe I'm more powerful than I realize is what we're learning here.

• 56:35Yasi Salek?

  I'll say it again. Like Timothy Chalamet, I too want to be one of the greats. So I was like, let me come to the table with my holster full of bullets. And one of them being this horrible film, Nine Songs.

• 56:48Speaker 05

  Okay, so.

• 56:49Yasi Salek?

  With respect to Winterbottom made it, this is a bad movie. This is a bad movie.

• 56:54Speaker 05

  I think it's a fascinating experiment. There's pretty much nothing like it.

• 56:58Yasi Salek?

  What is the experiment? What if we had no plot or character development? Or really dialogue that meant anything or resonated with anyone? And we had eight bands play in between and a lot of gratuitous sex and nudity.

• 57:13Speaker 05

  I think there's nothing gratuitous about it. I think there's a lot of sex, but just because sex is in it doesn't mean it's gratuitous. I think it's a movie that's meant to be this like echo of the live expression and what it's like to experience live music. And the idea of being in like a kind of a torrid affair and how those two things are kind of mirroring each other at times. Is it that deep? Is it that that good? We can we can debate. I'm not saying it's very good.

• 57:35Yasi Salek?

  Pick up on any of that.

• 57:36Speaker 05

  You don't see it that way?

• 57:37Yasi Salek?

  I just maybe I'm not disputing it. None of that. I didn't think any of that while I was watching.

• 57:42Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm not even saying like I'm one of these guys, but I think that there's a whole world, subculture of people who are just like, what I do is I go see live music and I fuck strangers. You know what I mean?

• 57:52Yasi Salek?

  You know what I was thinking is that you did marry your high school sweetheart and I was like, potentially this movie is more interesting to you than it would be to me.

• 58:00Speaker 05

  Well, why?

• 58:01Yasi Salek?

  Just maybe a foreign world to you.

• 58:03Speaker 05

  Oh, uh, no, I'm honestly not even that kind of viewer, like a rubbernecker around subcultures. The movie's very silly, but what it does is it's a snapshot of a time in music that's basically right after the time of 24 Hour Party People. You know, it's roughly 10 years forward, so it's Franz Ferdinand.

• 58:20Yasi Salek?

  But it's 2000, oh, yeah, yeah.

• 58:21Speaker 05

  It's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

• 58:23Yasi Salek?

  The Von Bondys, never forget, come on, come on.

• 58:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, the sort of like leather slicked back hair, post-post punk revival garage. Yeah, there's like, you know.

• 58:37Yasi Salek?

  Franz Ferdinand.

• 58:37Speaker 05

  Some of these bands are good, some are not so good, you know, Dandy Warhol, Super Furry Animals.

• 58:41Yasi Salek?

  Primal Scream is in it, which is great.

• 58:43Speaker 05

  Primal Scream, Elbow.

• 58:45Yasi Salek?

  Elbow, much like Rob Brydon, just more famous in England, great, a great in Britain.

• 58:51Speaker 05

  These were bands that I was like mostly ignoring when I was setting out to become a music journalist, but that I was aware of, Primal Scream and Franz Ferdinand notwithstanding. I once spent a day with Franz Ferdinand, great guys.

• 59:00Yasi Salek?

  Wonderful Scottish gems.

• 59:02Speaker 05

  I love those guys. I don't know if you ever encountered them in your days.

• 59:03Yasi Salek?

  They're so wonderful.

• 59:04Speaker 05

  They were super cool. I love them.

• 59:05Yasi Salek?

  Super cool, really nice, very funny.

• 59:07Speaker 05

  Very fun. They were like one of the few bands that I met where I was like, you guys deserve this, what's happening to you.

• 59:11Yasi Salek?

  They just put out an album, I believe.

• 59:12Speaker 05

  I listened to it, actually. I root for them. I don't root for a lot of people that I met back in those days. But anyway, the movie is not good. I'm not saying it's good. It has a 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. That isn't good. But there's real sex in this film.

• 59:26Yasi Salek?

  There's real sex in porn, too. It doesn't make it cinema.

• 59:29Speaker 05

  Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's not in porn.

• 59:31Yasi Salek?

  Could be.

• 59:33Speaker 05

  They'd be hard to license, I think, given the budgets.

• 59:35Yasi Salek?

  I guess, you know, I did, I read up on it a little because I was like truly trying to understand, like, what are we trying to do here?

• 59:41Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:42Yasi Salek?

  Because I think it could have been a great movie.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:44Yasi Salek?

  But there was no stakes. The sex doesn't bother me, obviously. I'm not a prude. Like, some of it was pretty fun to watch, but like, I love when it's banal or like mundane relationship talking. I love Before Sunrise, you know, like, the dialogue was horrible.

• 1:00:00Speaker 05

  It's bad.

• 1:00:01Yasi Salek?

  It's horrible. Like, where was Frank Cottrell Bryce, honey? Get him on the fucking horn.

• 1:00:05Speaker 05

  It's written by Michael Winterbottom.

• 1:00:07Yasi Salek?

  That's what I'm saying. It's giving the director wrote it and often. With love and respect and tenderness in my heart, it's okay for you to have someone else write it. You're a wonderful director.

• 1:00:18Speaker 05

  I mean, it's barely a movie in that very specific way.

• 1:00:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:21Speaker 05

  You know, it's edited by Matt Whitecross, who went on to direct Supersonic, the Oasis documentary, which I like.

• 1:00:28Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, great documentary. Can we be a little honest? Oasis is so fun and interesting to watch. I can't imagine there being a bad documentary that had any footage of them actually.

• 1:00:38Speaker 05

  I won't dispute that.

• 1:00:39Yasi Salek?

  It's a good use of them.

• 1:00:41Speaker 05

  I saw Supersonic in theaters and I was like, fuck yeah.

• 1:00:43Yasi Salek?

  I laughed so hard.

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  It's hilarious.

• 1:00:45Yasi Salek?

  Did I understand everything they said? No.

• 1:00:47Speaker 05

  It would be a good rewatch with subtitles.

• 1:00:49Yasi Salek?

  I did it, yeah, for the Oasis episode, yeah. There's also a book where they have all of the interviews in it uncut, so you can.

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  I also just have a personal obsession with the Noel Liam unplugged thing.

• 1:01:01Yasi Salek?

  Oh, God, it's so fun.

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  And then going to San Francisco and writing Talk Tonight. That era, which the movie captures perfectly, is like one of my favorite little periods in music history.

• 1:01:10Yasi Salek?

  You couldn't, you can't make that stuff up.

• 1:01:12Speaker 05

  Great.

• 1:01:12Yasi Salek?

  Couldn't write that story.

• 1:01:13Speaker 05

  Brothers, man.

• 1:01:13Yasi Salek?

  You know who couldn't write that story? Michael Winterbottom.

• 1:01:16Speaker 05

  He's not rendering it in this film, which features all manner of sexual activity and super furry animals.

• 1:01:21Yasi Salek?

  Which he apparently fully mapped out.

• 1:01:24Speaker 05

  The porn?

• 1:01:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes, it was all very specifically.

• 1:01:28Speaker 05

  I mean, we're in dicey territory here, but like, this is a part of life. And you never see this in a movie that's released by a movie studio.

• 1:01:35Yasi Salek?

  No.

• 1:01:35Speaker 05

  You literally never see it.

• 1:01:36Yasi Salek?

  I don't know if anyone else saw it either, if it was.

• 1:01:38Speaker 05

  It's not a well seen movie. It was released by Optimum Releasing.

• 1:01:42Yasi Salek?

  If you guys want to watch for yourself, it's on Canopy. It does feature the girlfriend from The Trip, Misha.

• 1:01:48Speaker 05

  It does.

• 1:01:49Yasi Salek?

  And the male actor, Kieran O'Brien, was also in 24 Hour Party Bill.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  Yes, Margot Stilly.

• 1:01:55Yasi Salek?

  He plays Nathan McGuff.

• 1:01:58Speaker 05

  Is the actress in Kieran O'Brien.

• 1:02:00Yasi Salek?

  Kieran O'Brien, yeah. I also just think the performances were shot poorly. It's just like, if I'm gonna have like, the beautiful feeling of being at a show, maybe it's because I watched on my laptop.

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  I'd just like to reiterate, I did not force you to watch this.

• 1:02:12Yasi Salek?

  But you said it was good.

• 1:02:13Speaker 05

  I didn't.

• 1:02:14Yasi Salek?

  You said it was better than Creation Stories.

• 1:02:17Speaker 05

  I do, I think that's true.

• 1:02:19Yasi Salek?

  All right, well, we can talk about that. Creation Stories.

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  Creation Stories.

• 1:02:22Yasi Salek?

  We won't dwell on it.

• 1:02:23Speaker 05

  Looks like it was shot with a potato. Like, it's not, it's not.

• 1:02:27Yasi Salek?

  That's more Irish than Scottish, so I think they wouldn't.

• 1:02:29Speaker 05

  It looks like it was shot with a haggis.

• 1:02:33Yasi Salek?

  It was directed by Nick Moran, who, from what I can tell, has not really directed many things before that or since then. He's an actor.

• 1:02:40Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:02:40Yasi Salek?

  He's in the film as well.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:02:42Yasi Salek?

  He was Eddie in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

• 1:02:44Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:02:45Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:02:45Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:02:46Yasi Salek?

  He plays Malcolm McLaren in the film.

• 1:02:48Speaker 05

  I see.

• 1:02:49Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so both you and I are not in the business of shitting on things, which you might not realize from what I, how I just talked about nine songs.

• 1:02:57Speaker 05

  Creation Stories is not atrocious, it's just sort of not anything. It's a Wikipedia page with some Ewan Bremner in it.

• 1:03:04Yasi Salek?

  It's pretty much the failed version of 24 Hour Party People. That's how, like, I'm like, this is how you can do it right? Like, if you want to kind of be a cinema studies person, you can watch these two next to each other, because it's a very similar mechanism, right? It's the guy, Alan McGee, the guy, Tony Wilson, and this scene and bands around that he sort of enabled and helped to come to fruition through his record label. It's just way less effective.

• 1:03:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a, there's a narrative structural device that features McGee in his, you know, 50s, 60s, giving an interview to a reporter played by Suki Waterhouse.

• 1:03:44Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry, who is named Gemma.

• 1:03:46Speaker 05

  Gemma.

• 1:03:47Yasi Salek?

  But is American. Have you ever in your, Gemma, famously an American name? That is the most British girl name in the world.

• 1:03:53Speaker 05

  You know, I like that name.

• 1:03:54Yasi Salek?

  Me too, but like, an American girl, that girl is gonna be Michelle. Gemma is not an American girl name.

• 1:03:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:00Yasi Salek?

  Sorry, I just, not to-

• 1:04:01Speaker 05

  No, you're, that's a great point.

• 1:04:02Yasi Salek?

  It really stuck in my craw.

• 1:04:03Speaker 05

  It's a, this is a, really a British production, mostly very British actors. Some people you may, you know, you may recognize, Saskia Reeves, for example. Jason Isaacs shows up as a, he's sort of like a potential business partner, huckster type, who's trying to raise money all the time and doing a lot of drugs, hanging out with gangsters. Remember, you remember that sequence near the end of the film?

• 1:04:27Yasi Salek?

  Oh my god, yes, yes, yes. So that really happened.

• 1:04:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, and Jason Isaacs is a famous actor, he's actually on The White Lotus right now.

• 1:04:32Yasi Salek?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He was great, actually.

• 1:04:34Speaker 05

  He's funny, that part is funny.

• 1:04:35Yasi Salek?

  And they go, they go smoke crack with the, yeah.

• 1:04:37Speaker 05

  But there's not a lot of, you won't be like, oh, my favorite actor's in this, you know?

• 1:04:40Yasi Salek?

  No, Sam is kind of a bit 24 question, or 24 Hour Party People.

• 1:04:43Speaker 05

  I, but to me, it's aged very well, because you're like, there's Simon Pegg, there's Rob Brydon, there's Patty Considine, there's, you know, all these people who have gone on to all this great stuff. This movie only came out in 2021, maybe in the future.

• 1:04:54Yasi Salek?

  It made $59,000 at the box office. In fairness, it was COVID.

• 1:04:58Speaker 05

  It was COVID.

• 1:04:59Yasi Salek?

  It was co-written by Irvine Welsh.

• 1:05:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, that's tough. Obviously, he's a legend and tree and spotting is very, very, very important in a variety of ways.

• 1:05:08Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, they tried. They tried to have like magical realism. They had Aleister Crowley pop up and visit the Alan McGee character. Again, not as effective as the magical realism that is in 24 Hour Party People. It was brought to my attention because on the Better Man episode.

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:05:28Yasi Salek?

  That episode was about other movies, but my part was about Better Man. And I talked about the actor playing Liam Gallagher and how they never, you know, it's never. It's the same guy in Better Man that's in Creation Stories.

• 1:05:40Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:05:40Yasi Salek?

  Same person that plays.

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  Typecast.

• 1:05:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 1:05:44Yasi Salek?

  There's not much to say about it. I just felt.

• 1:05:47Speaker 05

  There's a semi-interesting documentary about Creation Records.

• 1:05:51Yasi Salek?

  I think that's much better if you want to watch something about Creation Records. Because you could see the real artist Bobby Gillespie is pretty heavily featured in it. I think that's the shortcoming of this ultimately. I mean, there's a lot of shortcomings, but like. They focused too much on Alan McGee and they didn't bring in enough of the, you know, you want to see more Oasis, you want to see more Primal Scream. You want to see the Jesus and Mary chain more and they're very, very tertiary in the story.

• 1:06:17Speaker 05

  Is that a rights issue?

• 1:06:18Yasi Salek?

  They don't have to use their music.

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a strange choice because obviously there's this brilliant Trojan horse thing going on with Tony Wilson and 24 Hour Party People where you're like, you're with him the whole time. It's this phantom biopic of him, but there's Ian Curtis, there's Sean Ryder. We get extended periods of time with those guys and you feel their energy.

• 1:06:37Yasi Salek?

  And you do get the music.

• 1:06:38Speaker 05

  And you hear their songs nonstop.

• 1:06:40Yasi Salek?

  I can't totally remember, but I think you hear some of the, I mean, Alan McGee probably still has an access to the, I mean, a lot of this.

• 1:06:45Speaker 05

  I don't remember here. I'm sure there were Primal Scream songs in the movie, but do you remember?

• 1:06:48Yasi Salek?

  There was an Oasis song when he goes to sign them. They're playing Rock and Roll Star, I'm pretty sure.

• 1:06:53Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:06:53Yasi Salek?

  When he first sees them. Jesus and Mary chain were never on Creation, so I don't think he would have had access to them and they famously had a pretty big falling out. Anyways, that doesn't matter. What, what matters is. It didn't. It should have had more of them in it than them. It could have been a good movie. I think what I'm upset about is that there's a lot of gorgeous raw material here to make a great film, and I wanted it to be great.

• 1:07:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think it would have been nice.

• 1:07:18Yasi Salek?

  Just music. Like we said, my music biopics, I'm gunning for this category of film because of my interests, and it just keeps letting me down.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  Well, what are some other, let's like brainstorm some other music scene biodocs that there should be?

• 1:07:33Yasi Salek?

  Documentary, oh, like to me, well, my dream, and if anyone is interested in funding a first time filmmaker with an extensive background in music history, and also who has directed before, I think the Slits would make an incredible biopic, number one, because I think part of what's hard about music biopics is when someone is extremely famous, you have uncanny valley seeing the fake version of them. The Slits are not extremely famous. You could have actresses play them and kind of get on board. They're very fucking cool. I would be able, me, the director, and writer I can write it to, would be able to do the thing that I love the most, which is have a Marvel cinematic universe,

• 1:08:15Yasi Salek?

  much kind of like this 24 Hour Party Bill, because the clashes are part of their story. The sexes are part of their story. There's a lot that you could, there's a world that you could build, and they were a band for a short time. So it's like, it really has, and the costumes, the sets, the coolness. Chloe 70, are you listening? You could produce, I know you're a big Slits fan. That's my pitch.

• 1:08:38Speaker 05

  I didn't realize that you were like ready to go if you want to get a call from someone about how you can go forward with something. I thought we could just riff about, you know, possible other scenes that you'd want to see captured in movies. That's a good, the Slits is great.

• 1:08:49Yasi Salek?

  Timothy Chalamet up again, but I'm gunning for greatness. And also, I saw an opportunity and I took it.

• 1:08:54Speaker 05

  Is there a role for Chalamet in your Slits film?

• 1:08:56Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 05

  Who will he play? Certainly not one of the band members.

• 1:09:00Yasi Salek?

  I think with a bleached hair, he could play Paul Simbada.

• 1:09:05Speaker 05

  Sure. Is he tall enough for that?

• 1:09:07Yasi Salek?

  Is Paul Simon tall? I can't remember.

• 1:09:08Speaker 05

  I feel like he is.

• 1:09:10Yasi Salek?

  He could play Joe Strummer. Famously short.

• 1:09:13Speaker 05

  He could play Joe Strummer.

• 1:09:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and he's-

• 1:09:16Speaker 05

  He could play Joe Strummer.

• 1:09:16Yasi Salek?

  If he can do Bob Dylan, babe, he can do Joe Strummer. But I don't think he would do a small role like that.

• 1:09:22Speaker 05

  I was thinking more about like, um-

• 1:09:24Yasi Salek?

  You're thinking about scenes?

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  Scenes, yeah. Like Death Row Records circa 1992.

• 1:09:29Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:09:30Speaker 05

  You know, that's a- a lot of times the impulse would be, you gotta make the Tupac movie or the Suge Knight movie.

• 1:09:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:36Speaker 05

  But what about the movie where Eazy-E is intersecting with Dr. Dre, is intersecting with Suge, is intersecting with Snoop?

• 1:09:42Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:09:43Speaker 05

  And you're seeing this world, you know, Daz is in the movie, Warren G is in the movie, like- I don't think- I mean, that's a hard movie to make because there's a lot of legal entanglements there.

• 1:09:52Yasi Salek?

  Yes.

• 1:09:53Speaker 05

  But it's such a vivid period in music history. It's so well chronicled. It has the opposite problem than the one that you're describing, right? You're saying like, I- we really still know what Dr. Dre looks like. So you gotta do a good job. But they did it once before in Straight Outta Compton.

• 1:10:06Yasi Salek?

  That's true. And that was a very popular, yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 05

  Pretty, you know-

• 1:10:09Yasi Salek?

  Well, they have Ice Cube's literal son play him.

• 1:10:11Speaker 05

  They, they did?

• 1:10:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Did they not make a CBGB's movie or show?

• 1:10:15Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:10:15Yasi Salek?

  I think they did. I'm almost positive they did.

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  I don't remember. I- that would be an amazing, almost like weekly procedural about who was playing every week.

• 1:10:25Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Alan Rickman, Rupert Grint, Malin Akerman, Taylor Hawkins. This is a film that actually came out in 2013.

• 1:10:34Speaker 05

  Who did Alan Rickman play?

• 1:10:35Yasi Salek?

  He plays Hilly Kristall, who owned CBGB's.

• 1:10:38Speaker 05

  Oh, duh.

• 1:10:39Yasi Salek?

  Famously not British. Was it a British production? Why is Rupert Grint in it? Taylor Hawkins played Iggy Pop.

• 1:10:46Speaker 05

  I can kinda see that.

• 1:10:47Yasi Salek?

  Joel David Moore played Joey Ramone.

• 1:10:50Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, that tracks.

• 1:10:52Yasi Salek?

  I don't remember this film at all.

• 1:10:53Speaker 05

  What's it called?

• 1:10:53Yasi Salek?

  CBGB.

• 1:10:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't, I don't think I saw it.

• 1:10:57Yasi Salek?

  Can you do it again if someone already did it? How do you feel about when that happens?

• 1:11:02Speaker 05

  I don't think that there is as much emotional affection slash heavyweight nostalgia for that period of New York punk as there was 10 years ago.

• 1:11:11Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:11:11Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? Or maybe that's just me not living in New York for 10 years, talking, but-

• 1:11:15Yasi Salek?

  Was it not last year that people were like crying, screaming, throwing up, dancing at the Stop Making Sense screenings?

• 1:11:20Speaker 05

  Sure, but that's way in the aftermath of that period of Talking Heads, right? That's six, seven, eight years later.

• 1:11:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:26Speaker 05

  That's when they're pop stars. That's not when they're a weird punk band out of RISD, right?

• 1:11:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Speaker 05

  I-

• 1:11:31Yasi Salek?

  I have a lot of affection for that time, but-

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  The mid eighties time?

• 1:11:35Yasi Salek?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:36Speaker 05

  It's incre- I mean, it's some of the, you know, my take on them. Best American band, best, best pop band since Beatles.

• 1:11:41Yasi Salek?

  Also just like, again, the cinematic humorous, I mean, you have television, you have Tom Berlany, you have Patti Smith.

• 1:11:46Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:46Yasi Salek?

  You have Richard Hell.

• 1:11:47Speaker 05

  Debbie Harry, yeah.

• 1:11:48Yasi Salek?

  Debbie Harry. This isn't the Ramones. They're all there together.

• 1:11:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, it would be sick. It's a good one. What about, uh, what about going to the Blue Note in nineteen sixty-one, you know? You can learn about some jazz.

• 1:12:00Yasi Salek?

  I know how you feel about jazz.

• 1:12:02Speaker 05

  Have you considered listening to some jazz?

• 1:12:03Yasi Salek?

  Listening.

• 1:12:04Speaker 05

  Have you thought, have you thought about it?

• 1:12:05Yasi Salek?

  As Tony Wilson says.

• 1:12:07Speaker 05

  Miles and Coltrane in the same band at the same time?

• 1:12:09Yasi Salek?

  What did Tony Wilson say in the movie? Jazz is the last refuge for the untalented.

• 1:12:14Speaker 05

  I knew you would clock that.

• 1:12:15Yasi Salek?

  Unfortunately.

• 1:12:16Speaker 05

  What does he say? The only people who enjoyed it are those who are making it. Yeah.

• 1:12:20Yasi Salek?

  Unfortunately, I'm kind of still in that camp and I know that I'm uncultured swine for that, but like, I did, I did feel seen by that. I was like.

• 1:12:26Speaker 05

  I mean, there's a, there's a real dramatic element to that story, though, obviously. You've got all these people, many of them strung out on smack.

• 1:12:34Yasi Salek?

  And, and we don't.

• 1:12:35Speaker 05

  Creating at the highest order.

• 1:12:36Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we don't personally love drugs, but we love it on, on screen often.

• 1:12:40Speaker 05

  I wouldn't say I love it, but it is an essential narrative tool in representing someone's life.

• 1:12:44Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's dramatic.

• 1:12:45Speaker 05

  I don't want Ray Charles to be strung out, but he was, so it happens.

• 1:12:48Yasi Salek?

  Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that. Much, much like in The Trip where they talk at length about Coleridge being the Dicktopia.

• 1:12:54Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:12:55Yasi Salek?

  Which I didn't know. I learned that from that movie.

• 1:12:56Speaker 05

  Many of the great artists, authors, poets are fucked up a lot of the time.

• 1:13:01Yasi Salek?

  Ain't that the truth?

• 1:13:02Speaker 05

  You know what? I think one of the reasons why there's no good art anymore is that everyone's.

• 1:13:07Yasi Salek?

  Not that there's no good art anymore. Tune into The Big Picture twice a week.

• 1:13:11Speaker 05

  One of the reasons why there's no good art anymore is that we have antidepressants now.

• 1:13:15Yasi Salek?

  Couldn't agree more. Okay, RFK.

• 1:13:17Speaker 05

  I'm not saying you shouldn't take antidepressants. I think for a lot of people, they're tremendously powerful and important, but they, they dull a sense that tends to lead to a kind of creativity that can be destructive or dangerous. I'm not advocating against anything.

• 1:13:30Yasi Salek?

  We litigate this a lot on Bandsway and like, is that true? Like, is, is the myth of the tortured artist producing better art, true or false? I don't know where I've landed. You can make arguments in both directions.

• 1:13:43Speaker 05

  Who's the happiest great artist? John Denver?

• 1:13:47Yasi Salek?

  Pete Seeger, same topic. Can you do your Pete Seeger?

• 1:13:50Speaker 05

  No, he was just, uh, sure. So happy to be here on Band's Plane with Yasi. We were talking today about 24 hour party people. It's a little tune that I wrote about working with all the people for 24 hours a day.

• 1:14:04Yasi Salek?

  Not the union, babe. Eight hours for sleep, eight hours for your own things and eight hours.

• 1:14:09Speaker 05

  No 24 hours for all the people. Uh, Pete Seeger, I don't know, he was really tortured by the dogmatic pursuit of something that was impossible.

• 1:14:18Yasi Salek?

  I don't think you can be great if you're not tortured on some level. I think to become great, much like myself and my 175 page Google Docs, you have to sacrifice. You have to make great sacrifices and you have to be sort of wild eyed and obsessed. And that doesn't lead to a happy and balanced life.

• 1:14:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I, I, let me, let me only speak for myself. I'm not on antidepressants in any way. I'm not saying I shouldn't be.

• 1:14:45Yasi Salek?

  But you don't have a great personal life to speak of.

• 1:14:47Speaker 05

  A great personal life?

• 1:14:48Yasi Salek?

  Just like a large and, you know.

• 1:14:50Speaker 05

  Oh, I have a very, yeah, very small personal life at this phase of my time.

• 1:14:53Yasi Salek?

  Because you've devoted yourself to the greatness of podcasting.

• 1:14:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it has shrunk down pretty considerably in part because of podcasting. Having a family is a part of that. I think just be getting older is a part of it. But I cannot deny that at least personally, I'm not diagnosing myself, but I have a weird desire to go do the thing that I think I'm good at.

• 1:15:14Yasi Salek?

  Sure.

• 1:15:14Speaker 05

  Especially at odd hours of the day or night, that I think is, is a primal aspect of many artists.

• 1:15:20Yasi Salek?

  You think it's a mental illness?

• 1:15:22Speaker 05

  I didn't say that.

• 1:15:22Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:15:23Speaker 05

  But I think there is like an urge, a desire, a kind of like, an unmitigated push to be like, you have to go do, get it out of you.

• 1:15:32Yasi Salek?

  And do you know what that is?

• 1:15:33Speaker 05

  What is it?

• 1:15:34Yasi Salek?

  It's God.

• 1:15:35Speaker 05

  It could be.

• 1:15:36Yasi Salek?

  I think it is.

• 1:15:37Speaker 05

  It could, it could be.

• 1:15:38Yasi Salek?

  That's my, that's my central thesis of Band's Plan pretty much throughout. That's God.

• 1:15:41Speaker 05

  That there's God inside of people and they, God coming out is the great work?

• 1:15:45Yasi Salek?

  Yes, 100%.

• 1:15:46Speaker 05

  You might be right.

• 1:15:47Yasi Salek?

  I, I mean, there's no, no way we'll ever know, but that's.

• 1:15:50Speaker 05

  Let's ask God. Is this right?

• 1:15:53Yasi Salek?

  God as Tony Wilson, come on through.

• 1:15:55Speaker 05

  It's so funny that you literally think it's God and I'm saying it's a mental illness.

• 1:15:58Yasi Salek?

  Poor, why can't it, if, if God is everything, is he not also a mental illness?

• 1:16:06Speaker 05

  I think Tony Wilson would appreciate this.

• 1:16:07Yasi Salek?

  God works in mysterious ways.

• 1:16:09Speaker 05

  He does, he does, he does.

• 1:16:12Yasi Salek?

  Well, Sean, this is...

• 1:16:13Speaker 05

  It always gets deep.

• 1:16:15Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, when you come on Bandsway.

• 1:16:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, it always gets deep.

• 1:16:17Yasi Salek?

  We don't talk about skincare like you guys do on...

• 1:16:19Speaker 05

  I may never talk about it again. I've got a lot of messages about, well, I'm not doing a good job.

• 1:16:23Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to...

• 1:16:24Speaker 05

  My wife actually was like, I'm hearing all this, these, she doesn't listen to the show, and she's like, I'm hearing you were talking about skincare.

• 1:16:29Yasi Salek?

  But you are ruining your skin barrier, and I think you should stop.

• 1:16:32Speaker 05

  Why does that matter?

• 1:16:33Yasi Salek?

  Because your skin, eventually, it might not show up now, but eventually, it will thin your skin and you will prematurely age. That's number one. And you are more susceptible to environmental toxins, free radicals, because your skin barrier is what protects your skin.

• 1:16:49Speaker 05

  I see.

• 1:16:50Yasi Salek?

  And if you're exfoliating every day, you're decimating your skin barrier, and you need that. Happy to do my service. Can you tell that I listened to the big picture on my dog walk today?

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  You know, I got my methods. You know, you got your methods.

• 1:17:01Yasi Salek?

  It's interesting that you, this is the hill you want to die on. You just are like, I have, much like I'm driven by God to make good work. I'm driven by God to exfoliate my skin in the shower every day.

• 1:17:13Speaker 05

  You know, I wash my face not in the shower. I wash it in front of a mirror. I wouldn't say I'm giving it a deep, rough exfoliation.

• 1:17:21Yasi Salek?

  You don't have, is it a physical exfoliant?

• 1:17:23Speaker 05

  As opposed to a non-physical exfoliant?

• 1:17:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes, there are chemical exfoliants.

• 1:17:26Speaker 05

  What is, what is that?

• 1:17:29Yasi Salek?

  There are toners that have a aspect that exfoliates the skin cells, so you don't have to rub or anything. It's the actual...

• 1:17:35Speaker 05

  Oh, I haven't even heard of that.

• 1:17:36Yasi Salek?

  Whenever you want a skin-splain podcast, this is the last thing I'll say, which, two things. One is that you did recommend I watch nine songs. And knowing full well that I'm currently living with my family and my parents, and I had to put on my headphones and like, literally like slammed the laptop shut every time my father walked into the room.

• 1:17:54Speaker 05

  Do they live in a studio apartment?

• 1:17:56Yasi Salek?

  No, but sometimes I, I sit in the kitchen, and sometimes he'd walk in, and I'd be like, no!

• 1:18:00Speaker 05

  Just go to another room.

• 1:18:02Yasi Salek?

  I like, and this is also my mother's thing. She's like, why do you have to work in the kitchen? And just like to work in the kitchen. And

• 1:18:08Speaker 05

  I will not be blamed for that.

• 1:18:09Yasi Salek?

  Well, fine. And then my mother, I'm learning so much. My mother is like, why do you shower every day? You should not shower every day. And I'm like, is this a rule? Am I not allowed here at this house to shower every day? She was like, you don't need to shower every day.

• 1:18:23Speaker 05

  Um, I do shower every day.

• 1:18:24Yasi Salek?

  I try to, but it feels like I'm breaking some rules at my parents' house involving showering every day.

• 1:18:31Speaker 05

  I don't agree with my mom.

• 1:18:31Yasi Salek?

  My parents grew up very poor, and I think they've carried some frugality with them into their

• 1:18:36Speaker 05

  But what relationship does that have to taking a shower?

• 1:18:39Yasi Salek?

  Water costs money, honey.

• 1:18:40Speaker 05

  But no, I mean, I guess maybe a shower is longer for a woman. I shower in like six minutes.

• 1:18:45Yasi Salek?

  That's really fast.

• 1:18:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Well, that's why they're rich.

• 1:18:49Speaker 05

  Because I'm not exfoliating in there, you know? I'm just trying to wash up, get out of there.

• 1:18:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Well, this has been a really

• 1:18:56Speaker 05

  Incredible pod.

• 1:18:57Yasi Salek?

  I think we did a great job.

• 1:18:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I feel very proud of you, for sure.

• 1:19:00Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. How, how did I do in the movie sense? Like, did I hit the right beats of, of talking about the film?

• 1:19:05Speaker 05

  I think you didn't introduce, uh, who directed the film or who stars in it at the top of the conversation.

• 1:19:09Yasi Salek?

  I did. Well, no.

• 1:19:10Speaker 05

  I probably would have done that.

• 1:19:11Yasi Salek?

  We do things differently around here.

• 1:19:13Speaker 05

  I think you evinced a real love for 24 Hour Party people and a real general distaste for nine songs and less so creation stories. Movie podcasting is not as easy as it looks, you know?

• 1:19:25Yasi Salek?

  It's so true.

• 1:19:26Speaker 05

  It's not as easy as it looks.

• 1:19:27Yasi Salek?

  Podcasting in general, right? When people are like, I'll just podcast.

• 1:19:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like, you guys, trust me, you'd suck at it. It takes like years to figure it out.

• 1:19:33Yasi Salek?

  It's a skill.

• 1:19:34Speaker 05

  It is. Are we justifying our station in life? Absolutely.

• 1:19:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. It's been a pleasure.

• 1:19:39Speaker 05

  Likewise.

• 1:19:40Yasi Salek?

  Tune in next week for a new episode of Bandsplain.

• 1:19:50Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was Sean Fennessey. This episode was produced by Liz Sanchez and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Delvec and me, Yossi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavain and graciously recorded by Carlos De La Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, Producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rubert, and also Michael Hardman, Casey Simonson, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Myerson, Jessica Hopper, and BritBox. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  What if I just did platinum today, like tomorrow?

• 1:20:38Yasi Salek?

  I think it would give you like an uncanny Children of the Corn thing going on because you're so, you're so.

• 1:20:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. So what?

• 1:20:45Yasi Salek?

  Hail.