Brian Clough and The Damned United
(This is a test transmission...) March 27's opening of The Damned United comes with ringing endorsement by the broadsheets and the men's mags. All seem onboard with its bittersweet take on David Peace's book which had, prior to its first press preview, been giving screenwriter Peter Morgan a kitten or two (see my Sunday Times Culture feature below). Journalists are in tune with its nostalgic yearning for a simpler - pre-dogging, pre-roasting - altogether less cynical age of soccer. How true it is to the real Clough is summed up in the venerable sportswriter David Lacey's Guardian piece (also below).
Critics' reviews will follow in due course.
Peace, meanwhile, is being rediscovered, thanks to both The Damned United flick and the Channel 4 adaptation of his Red Riding quartet (or trilogy in this case, C4 having mystifyingly chosen to ignore an instalment). Having left Yorkshire 15 years ago to take up residence in Japan, his new surroundings of Tokyo are at last forming the backdrop for his writing. His follow-up to Tokyo Year Zero, Tokyo Occupied City, comes out in July. He told me very recently that he is mid-way through penning the third book, as yet untitled.
What with the Culture story and a feature for this month's Empire magazine, crafted from a set visit to Elland Road last summer, I had an abundance of material to play with. Editing things down to their commissioned length means, as ever, that a lot of stuff gets left out. Both Peter Morgan and David Peace gave me a few choice morsels off the record (Morgan made some sharp comments about David Frost), but the covenant of confidence prohibits me from repeating them here. Duncan McKenzie, that great maverick footballer, whose speciality was jumping over a Mini Cooper, had a few private thoughts about Don Revie.
In terms of the film, Morgan mused that it would have been "like Eraserhead" if they'd shot it in the dark tone of Peace's book. Regarding the football, there seems consensus that Leeds were actually underachievers who maybe won things in spite of Revie rather than because of him. That first season without him, 1974-75, once Jimmy Armfield took over, Leeds reached the European Cup Final for the first time. They lost to the Bayern Munich of Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller, completely unjustly, after one of the most shocking refereeing displays imaginable. The team, by then, were playing some flamboyant football, the antithesis of their fabled dour image.
Worth noting also, and it was far too complicated to go into in an arts feature, was that Revie had already done what Clough would later achieve with Derby and Forest, i.e. transform a backwater club into a European force. Leeds were going nowhere when Revie took over in 1961. They were swiftly promoted from the Second Division, reached the FA Cup Final in 1965 and won their first League Championship in 1969. That said, they seemed destined to be bridesmaids, the perennial runners-up in many a major tournament, scooping less silverware than they should have throughout the early 70s.
John McGovern was an interesting chat and perhaps, more than any other player, indicative of the genius of Clough. McGovern had never kicked a football till the age of 15, coming from a rugby tradition, yet within a year was the youngest player ever to run out for Hartlepool, Clough's first managerial gig. Clough had seen something of note in McGovern in a park match. McGovern, amazingly, never won a full international cap for Scotland, being regarded as something of an unflashy "water carrier", though he was Clough's on-field general, the linchpin of all his successes, an adopted son of sorts.
The Clough story can be explored in numerous books, most notably Duncan Hamilton's posthmous Clough biog, Provided You Don't Kiss Me, and in Tony Francis' Clough: A Biography (last revised 1993, on Clough's retirement). While we're on football nostalgia, allow me to throw in my own Back Home: England And The 1970 World Cup. Clough pops up there, too.
But anyway, more importantly, it's your reviews and opinions that count. Oh, and go easy on the word "iconic" (something I haven't done). It's been targeted by Jonathan Meades, on Radio Four's Start The Week, as his pet-hate overused, misused adjective — lazy journalism and all that. Although in the ensuing studio discussion with Andrew Marr I lost count of the "amazings", "fantastics" and "wonderfuls".
Signed: The Millionaire
Signed: The Millionaire
Student Grant writes. Hi, I'm doing English at Leeds Uni. They gave us a preview of the film a couple of weeks ago in our Arts Centre. Everyone loved it. It was much lighter than the book, but then Peace's Clough was so dark and tortured I htik it would have been a difficult watch. On a local note, the 70s Leeds team is all well before our time so I don't think anyone was really offended by their portrayal, even the diehard United fans. My one criticism, and this won't spoil it, is the ending, where they show clips of teh real clough and taylor. Having jut invested time and emotion in Sheen and Spall being those characters it kind of takes you out of the moment. Like when they wheel out the real Tina Turner in What's Love Got To Do With It? It's like your belief is un-suspended, or whatever you call it. But a minor quibble. Loved it. Four Stars. My fave biopic? The People Versus Larry Flynt.
ReplyDeleteMovie buff adds: They did it to show a happy ending, but yes I felt the same way too. It's like when they do a new movie version of Tv show, Starsky & Hutch whatever, they always have to have a cameo by the original actors. In the new JJ Abrams Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy shows up apparently. But not Shatner. No one likes him.
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