THE BRITISH THREAD

No, dear, no fog.

(said he after first parting the curtains)

We're a little bit higher up here.

Peas souper here as well. Autumn has definitely arrived, methinks.

I really want to see this film:

Manchester's History Boy
Alan Bennett's new film The History Boys is the latest movie to choose Manchester for its first showing outside London - and premieres tonight. But why? Film director Nic Hytner, a former Manchester Grammar School (MGS) pupil, explains why:


Why did you choose Manchester for the regional premiere?
The History Boys (15)

Director: Nicholas Hytner
Writer: Alan Bennett
Stars: Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Stephen Campbell Moore, Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Length: 109 mins
UK release: 13 October 2006


"Well I think because it's the most important regional city. It's also my home city. I was born here and lived here until I was 18."

You went to MGS. Was it much like the experience of the History Boys?
"When I first read this it very much chimed in with my own experiences at Manchester Grammar doing something which has disappeared now which is a 7th term after A-levels preparing for the entrance exams for Oxford and Cambridge. The film, which is based on the play - same cast, and to a large extent, much the same script - focuses on eight really bright, really funny, really articulate lads from Sheffield going through that term studying History and aiming to take the entrance exam.

"I think the big difference between them and me and the lads I knew is that we thought ourselves to be that articulate and witty.. but we weren't! I don't think there ever have been lads who were as witty and articulate and insightful as these.. but that's the point."

How much is the film about education?

Director: Nic Hytner
"To a degree, yes it is about education, it's about the purpose of education. It's about a debate which still rages: whether education is utilitarian in purpose, whether it's there to provide you with qualifications and prepare you for a professional life. Or whether it's romantic in purpose, whether it's soul-expanding and mind-broadening. A lot of people feel that over the past 20 years, it's become more and more target-driven and that something has been lost. But I think the reason why audiences have been so attracted to the play is because, in the end, it's very human, it's a character study, there are 12 people who you get to know and care about."

Did you find your schooldays here rewarding?
"Yes I do remember that they were. But I was lucky that I had some very inspired teachers. And I think that what's stuck in my mind about my schooldays at MGS is the extra-curricular stuff - the music, the drama and the interests many of the teachers took in expanding our interests and encouraging us to find lives for ourselves outside the curriculum. I remember the curriculum as being very well taught and quite demandingly taught but somehow that's evaporated and what I'm left with is the plays that I acted in, the orchestras that I played in, the choirs I sung in."

Did you always know that this would be a film you would want to direct?
"I think the big difference between them and me and the lads I knew is that we thought ourselves to be that articulate and witty.. but we weren't! "
Nic Hytner, film director
"I don't think we realised there was film in it until we saw how it was working on stage. It's not a spectacular film nor have we ever wanted it to be anything other than a character study. It's quite talky, and it's intimate. Its objective was to get closer to the people that we knew were exciting audiences on the stage, to get behind their eyes and under their skins.

Was it an easy transition from stage to screen?
"It was certainly easier for this cast to be completely alive to all the nuances of their past and to bring to the screen the rapport and electricity they had on stage. The balance you have to strike always is between the desire to completely remake it for a film and to be true to what's great about the material. The line that we took is that they used to make really quite faithful and dramatic stage-screen adaptations - the greatest them of all eg. Streetcar named Desire, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf didn't muck around that much so we decided not to. In some ways it's an unfashionable film - it's very talky, and it's about people. There are no explosions."

You achieved that transition quite quickly - in film terms..

Scene from The History Boys
"Well it's 2½ years ago that we started and yes.. it's because we made it cheap. We made it very very reasonably because we knew that only by making it for a couple of millions pounds - it's cheap in film terms and for that money we were able to make it the way we wanted to make it and with the cast who had been acting in it for a year when we made it."

What's it like working with Alan Bennett?
"Well after two films, four plays, we have by now a kind of shorthand. He is, as everyone knows, an exceptional writer, who is enormously easy and open to collaboration. And much of what he's written in this play was in response to the actors who he eventually cast in it."

Would any of the History Boys have made good film-makers?
"Well none of them do. I think one of the many implied melancholic conclusions is that they were at their brightest and most attractive when they were just about to leave school. They, most of them, go onto have relatively humdrum and averagely happy lives. They were exceptional at the school. They were exceptional at the time that Alan imagines them and captures them. But they don't have dramatic futures because most people don't."

So what's in store for the audience...
"It's very funny. I think it's a great deal more intellectually stimulating than your average movie but it's played with such success as a play up and down the country and so far as a film. It's been getting all the laughs that the play gets which we're very pleased about."

The forecast man on the radio said mist and fog was affecting most of the British Isles this morning.

That film sound like a good 'un, Smorgie. Have you got your outfit for the premiere?

Clear blue sky here. Bright sunshine. Can see the hills miles away.

Movie sounds a bit solipsistic. Guardianish so to say.



Money mate- why else?

What a soft answer this is-

Glad it's a lovely day for you spends...

If that's not too solipsistic.

I dare you to say anything negative back!

Coming to the flicks with me? If only to critique?

You get the popcorn and I'll get the chips on the way home.

x

Can I be yr date? Purely in the platonic sense...

Sounds like an interesting film, smorgs. I'll have to go see....

I hope they do more justice to Manchester, than some of the recent "mockney" films did for London.

Yes, do come Prince!

Then we'll go into the Village and dance the night away!


Ellpus,

Found this gem - it's my party piece (complete with moves). i shall be singing this at my party - gives you a sore throat though!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKNCf1SCOIc

x

Join in spends!

Can't help but smile to that clip...

Well I feel aaaaaaaaaaaaalright!

Sarah, my sister (who's eleven years older than me) looked EXACTLY like a dark haired version of Lulu (a bit prettier, actually), as she appears in this vid. Same hairstyle and everything.

I remember her, and my other sister, wearing those same clothes, and shuffle dancing around a small record player to these songs....they had to remove their stiletto heels whilst indoors (dad's orders) as they made holes in the lino.

I'll dig out a pic soon, and post it here ....

fogs gone 'ere mate.

sloppytisstic - what sort of word is that Spendy?

Sounds like a good film. I wasnt clever enough to get into MGS. Ended up at Kings Macclesfield

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_School,_Macclesfield

I recently sent her this link.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imEqamrlqtc

and she told her it made her cry. She said it reflected her early years so accurately, it sent a shiver down her spine.

duff link sorry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_School,_Macclesfield

I'm off now boys...

Back Sunday.

Y'all have a great weekend now, ya hear?

Sarah
x

I dunno whats going on, it wont link to my old school...if you are interested as I'm sure you all are...you can google it yourselves.

So when you going to the movies smorgie?

There's a lot of sentimentality going on here today! Must be the weather.


There's a bloody squirrel on the garage roof trying to eat a golf ball it must have picked up along the way. A crow is squawking from the TV antenna down at it, my dog is growling at both of them, and the feral cat is tucking into the dogs dinner whilst the enemy is pre-occupied.

I've just watched Lulu on that daft video, miming shout dressed like a bloody quaker! Don't mention the good old days please, they just didn't happen.

Steves blagging away about his old borstal and Spendi can't get his dick to work so he's claiming to have entered into a vow of celibacy, Who with?

Lord bloody Ellpus must be getting some stick from his piles and he's rabbiting on about digging up more fossils to enlighten us with. Leave it out matey, and get with it.

I've just seen a yankee bird on an FHM recording singing an old Nancy Sinatra number of These Boots Were Made for Walking. It makes Nancy's portrayal look like a romp round the convent.

Incidentally, three nuns have been sacked and defrocked from the local convent for doing press-ups in the rhubarb patch.


My secretary's going to St.Moritz for five days with her boyfriend and is showing me all sorts of dresses, skimpy's and shoes which she can't make up her mind about wearing or taking with her.

My wife phoned me up and asked me if her car needs any fuel putting in it


Inland revenue are breathing down my neck for more than their fair share of my earnings, and last months invoices from the garage, the utilities, the builders merchants, and the credit card companies have all been pushed into the mail box and landed on my desk.

Anybody fancy coming to Iraq with me for a few quiet days?

Piss off, mathos!

Miserable old git!

I had a feral cat once - called Thyroid.

x

Oi!!! Smorgsi..

Do you only work a three day bloody week?


Thyroid, you can guarantee a scouser would pick a daft handle like that for a feral cat.


If you get another, call it Spendi, and kick the **** out of it every day.

Had a rabbit called Ken Dodd

...and a tame, rescue pidgeon called Walter (one of the first things I told 'our' Walter on A2K.



I'M BLOODY ENTITLED - I WORK IN A BLOODY JOBCENTRE!

If I had a pussy called spendy, I would stroke it everyday, to get it used to human contact, and then it would mend it's feral ways, and be a lovely contented pussy...

x