24 Hour Party People (2002)

Steve Coogan: Tony Wilson

Photos 

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Quotes 

• God : It's a pity you didn't sign the Smiths, but you were right about Mick Hucknell. His music's rubbish, and he's a ginger.

• Tony Wilson : The smaller the attendance the bigger the history. There were 12 people at the last supper. Half a dozen at Kitty Hawk. Archimedes was on his own in the bath.

• Ian Curtis : [listening to their recording of "She's Lost Control"]  I sound like Bowie.

  Tony Wilson : That's good. You like Bowie.

  Ian Curtis : [annoyed]  I hate fuckin' Bowie! In "All The Young Dudes" he sings about how you should die when you're twenty-five. Do you know how old he is? He's thirty, twenty-nine, something. He's a liar.

  Tony Wilson : Look, it doesn't matter. A lot of great artists produce their best work when they're... older. You know, W.B. Yeats...

  Ian Curtis : I've never heard of him, mate.

  Tony Wilson : Yeats is the greatest poet since Dante. If he'd have died when he was twenty-five...

  Ian Curtis : I would have heard of him, Tony!

• Tony Wilson : And tonight something equally epoch-making is taking place. See? They're applauding the DJ. Not the music, not the musician, not the creator, but the medium. This is it. The birth of rave culture. The beatification of the beat. The dance age. This is the moment when even the white man starts dancing. Welcome to Manchester.

• [last lines] 

  [Tony Wilson has just had a vision of God - who looked exactly like Tony Wilson] 

  Tony Wilson : Well, it's written in the Bible, isn't it? 'God made man in His own image'.

  Rob Gretton : Yeah, but not a specific man.

  Tony Wilson : No, but if you'd have spoken to Him, He would have looked like you. But you didn't, I did. And he looked like me.

  Rob Gretton : [smoking a joint]  Fucking top gear, man.

• Ian Curtis : [shouting across the bar]  Wilson, ya fucking cunt!

  Tony Wilson : That's original.

  [to Rob] 

  Tony Wilson : Your drink's coming. Is he a friend of yours?

  Rob Gretton : Yeah, he's our singer.

  Ian Curtis : [crossing the bar to approach Tony]  Out of the way, Steve.

  Tony Wilson : Hi, Tony Wilson, pleased to meet you.

  [Ian just glowers at him wordlessly] 

  Tony Wilson : ... Is he gonna hit me? You're quite close to me there.

  Ian Curtis : Yeah, I know, I wanna be.

  Tony Wilson : Why?

  Ian Curtis : 'Cos you're a cunt, mate.

  Tony Wilson : I know, I heard you the first time.

• Yvette : And what do you do?

  Tony Wilson : How do you mean?

  Yvette : You know, your job?

  Tony Wilson : Well, I'm Tony Wilson.

• Tony Wilson : Every band needs it's own special chemistry. And Bez was a very good chemist.

• Tony Wilson : Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

• Tony Wilson : I'm a minor player in my own life story.

• Tony Wilson : You know, I think that Shaun Ryder is on a par with W.B. Yeats as a poet.

  Yvette : Really?

  Tony Wilson : Absolutely. Totally.

  Yvette : Well, that is amazing, considering everyone else thinks he's a fucking idiot.

• [watching Vini Reilly of Durutti Column performing "You've Heard It Before"] 

  Ryan Letts : Got to stop him singing, Tony.

  Tony Wilson : It's avant-garde, you wouldn't understand it.

  Ryan Letts : It's very poor. Very poor.

  Tony Wilson : It's provocative.

  Ryan Letts : Provocatively poor. Appallingly poor. They're not calling you the new George Epstein, you know.

  Tony Wilson : [getting annoyed]  ... It's Brian Epstein.

  Ryan Letts : George Epstein, Beatles manager.

  Tony Wilson : That's Brian Epstein, you dickhead. It's fucking Brian Epstein.

  Ryan Letts : [overlapping]  George Epstein. It's Brian Martin.

  Tony Wilson : It's *George* Martin, you knob.

  Ryan Letts : Brian Martin the producer, George Epstein the, er... manager.

  Alan Erasmus : Tony, tell him to fuck off.

  Lindsay : Come on, let's sit down...

  Tony Wilson : [to Letts]  You're just fucking *wrong.*

• Tony Wilson : Most of all, I love Manchester. The crumbling warehouses, the railway arches, the cheap abundant drugs. That's what did it in the end. Not the money, not the music, not even the guns. That is my heroic flaw: my excess of civic pride.

• Tony Wilson : I'm being postmodern, before it's fashionable.

• Tony Wilson : [First address to camera; after his hang-gliding news report]  You're going to see a lot more of that sort of thing in the picture. I don't want to say too much, don't want to spoil it. I'll just say one word: 'Icarus'. If you get it, great. If you don't, that's fine too. But you should probably read more.

• Martin Hannett : [swigging from a whisky bottle in the studio]  I'm trying to get these shower of cunts that masquerade as a band to play some fucking music, which seems to be the greatest and most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my fucking life!

  Tony Wilson : He's calmed down a lot since I last worked with him.

• Tony Wilson : There was one problem with the Hacienda: it never made any money. There were huge crowds and a great atmosphere, but it was all fueled by Ecstasy, not alcohol, and we didn't sell E at the bar. Although we did talk about it. So we were spending money on the building, the staff, the DJs, the sound system, but most of the money went to the drug dealers, and guess what? They didn't give the money to us. They spent it on clothes, or cars, or restaurants, or houses, or girls, or guns. Especially guns.

• Tony Wilson : It was like being on a fantastic fairground ride, centrifugal forces throwing us wider and wider. But it's all right, because there's this brilliant machine at the center that's going to bring us back down to earth. That was Manchester. That is the Hacienda. Now imagine the machine breaks. For a while, it's even better, because you're really flying. But then, you fall, because nobody beats gravity.

• Tony Wilson : Energy, energy? Energy is, is, it's nothing more than a lot of new age hokum masquerading as spirituality.

• Tony Wilson : My epitaph will be that I never, literally nor metaphorically, sold out. I protected myself from ever having to have the dilemma of having to sell out, by having nothing to sell out.

• Tony Wilson : You can't threaten me, Martin. You're a big man, but you're out of shape. Although you could sit on me.

• Tony Wilson : This morning I was doing a story about an elephant being washed by a midget.

  Charles : He's a dwarf.

  Tony Wilson : It doesn't matter!

  Charles : Well, it matters to him.

• Tony Wilson : This scene didn't actually make it to the final cut. I'm sure it'll be on the DVD.

• [after Shaun Ryder fires a gun in his general direction] 

  Tony Wilson : You want to be careful with that, Shaun. You could take somebody's eye out.

• Tony Wilson : What're you doing?

  Martin Hannett : Recording silence!

  Tony Wilson : Recording silence?

  Martin Hannett : No, I'm recording Tony fucking Wilson!

• Tony Wilson : When you have to choose between the truth and the legend, choose the legend.

• Tony Wilson : What's wrong with London Records?

  Rob Gretton : The name, for a start.

• [first lines] 

  Tony Wilson : Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the latest craze sweeping the Pennines, and I've got to be honest, I'd rather be sweeping the Pennines right now.

• Tony Wilson : We're still together, so whatever you're thinking you're wrong.

• Tony Wilson : Timing is everything. When we built the Hacienda, it was too soon. When we built the Factory office, it was too late. It did, however, have a zinc roof, which was very very cool. Even though you could only see it if you were in a helicopter.

• Cleaner : I definitely don't remember this happening.

  Tony Wilson : This is the real Howard Devoto. He and Lindsay insisted we make clear that this never happened. But I agree with John Ford. When you have to choose between the truth and the legend, print the legend.

• Tony Wilson : You know broccoli?

  Alan Erasmus : Broccoli, the vegetable?

  Tony Wilson : Yeah. That was, uh, that was, uh, invented by Cubby Broccoli, the producer of the James Bond films. Little-known fact. Little-known fact. It's true. It's a crossbred vegetable. It's half cauliflower, half...

  Alan Erasmus : What?

  Tony Wilson : Half, uh, something, a green, half a green, a green thing, half a green thing, I don't know. Half a cauliflower. And the Broccoli, Cubby Broccoli's family...

  Alan Erasmus : Was inventing vegetables before they started making movies?

  Tony Wilson : That's, that was, that bankrolled the Bond films.

  Tony Wilson : I don't believe you, Tony.

  Tony Wilson : It's a, that's a fact.

  Alan Erasmus : I don't believe you.

  Tony Wilson : It's fact. Look it up in Encyclopedia Britannica.

• Tony Wilson : There's a problem. You never told me he was called Tony.

  Alan Erasmus : Who?

  Lindsay : What's up?

  Tony Wilson : Tony. There's two Tonys.

  Lindsay : Yeah.

  Tony Wilson : Well, that, that, that, straightaway, that's a, that's... Can you not see how that's a potential problem? You have two people. He's in charge of the club. I'm supposed to be in charge of whatever it is we're doing. There's two Tonys on equal pegging. There's a confrontation. You know, who's Tony number one? Who's Tony number two? There's gonna have to be some sort of differentiation.

  Alan Erasmus : Yeah, but he's not called Tony, is he? He's called Tonay. You know, Don Tonay. It's his fucking surname, Tone.

  Tony Wilson : Is it?

  Alan Erasmus : Yeah.

  Lindsay : It's a bit grubby.

  Alan Erasmus : Yeah, I know it's grubby, but we can get it cleaned up for the nights we're in.

  Tony Wilson : That's worse.

  Alan Erasmus : What is worse, Tony?

  Tony Wilson : Well, sorry to harp on about this, but that makes him Mr. Tonay, and I'm just plain Tony.

  Lindsay : Yeah, what's wrong with that, Tony?

  Tony Wilson : Well, look, there's a hierarchy there, straightaway. "Mister," you know, "Mister" Tonay, is more important than Tony. "Hello, Mr. Tonay. Yes, mister, no, mister." And just plain old Tony. "Tony, me mate, Tony." You know, I'm gonna have some sort of credibility.

  Alan Erasmus : Why don't you just call him Don? How about that? See if he goes for that. Call him Don.

  Tony Wilson : Don.

• Tony Wilson : Factory Records are not actually a company. We are an experiment in human nature. You're labouring under the misapprehension that we actually have a deal with, er, with our, our bands. That we have any kind of a contract, er, at all, and I'm afraid we, er, we don't because that's, er, that's the sum total of the paperwork to do with Factory Records, deal with, er, their various bands.

• Tony Wilson : Can I get you half a lager?

  Rob Gretton : You can get me a pint.

• Tony Wilson : I am not a lump of hash. I'm in charge of Factory Records. I think.

• Tony Wilson : It looks fucking great actually - yeah, really nice. It's beautiful - but useless. And as William Morris once said: "Nothing useless can be truly beautiful."

• God : Tony, you did a good job. Basically you are right: Shaun is the greatest poet since Yeats.

• Tony Wilson : [points to a scrawled note with his name signed in blood, framed on the wall]  That is the closest thing we have to a contract, here.

• Bez : [the Big Table]  How much did it cost?

  Tony Wilson : Ten grand.

  Bez : You've dropped a bollock, haven't you?

  [starts a fight] 

• Lindsay : There's dog shite everywhere. It's disgusting.

  Tony Wilson : It's urban. It's exciting. It's exactly the place we should be.

• Roger Ames : Tony, you're fucking mad.

  Tony Wilson : That's a point of view.

• Rob Gretton : You know your trouble, Tony? You don't know what you are. I fucking know what you are, but you don't know what you are.

  Tony Wilson : Well, my curiosity's got the better of me, Rob, tell me, what am I?

  Rob Gretton : You're a cunt.

  Tony Wilson : Well, you see I knew that, you see, that was something I did know.

• Ryan Letts : [Vini Reilly is onstage in front of an audience of nonplussed punks]  You'd better stop him singing, Tony.

  Tony Wilson : It's avant-garde, you wouldn't understand it.

  Ryan Letts : It's very poor, very poor.

  Tony Wilson : It's provocative.

  Ryan Letts : Provocatively poor.

• Charles : It's what the public want.

  Tony Wilson : I know, but the public, let me tell you, like public executions.

• Tony Wilson : Mal, when you come down to me, can you just make sure you get a glimpse of my boot? If it's on-screen I get a clothing allowance.

• Tony Wilson : I think it was Scott Fitzgerald who said: "American lives don't have second acts." Well, this is Manchester. We do things differently here. This is the second act.

• Tony Wilson : Never judge a book by its cover, that's what I say. And you've got a very nice cover, by the way. A first edition. Very collectible.

• Tony Wilson : I took advice from Plutarch's Life of Caesar, where it says, "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." The problem is often the solution, in a different set of clothes.

• Tony Wilson : According to William Blake: "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." I was on my way there, in a Jag.

• Tony Wilson : Ladies and gentlemen, the hour is upon us. I'd like now to ask you to leave, in a disorderly fashion. Before you do, before you do, I, I want you to invade the offices, which are over there in the corner, through that door over there, and as far as you can, loot them. Office equipment, computers, musical equipment, take it all, use it wisely. Let a thousand Mancunians bloom. Good night, God bless.