A Musical Revolution

My husband and I shared a bottle of cabernet and 1/3 of a cheese pizza and watched "24 Hour Party People" last night (well, early this morning). It's a pseudo-documentary about the rise of the Manchester music scene in the late 1970s, as seen through the eyes of an ambitious TV reporter-turned-record label founder (Tony Wilson, as played by Steve Coogan) who helped launch the careers of bands like Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays. Not a bad movie. Though I wish it'd been a little less about Wilson and more about the bands (as even he must remind himself, "Oh, but wait, this movie is not about me--it's about the music"). Wilson is an interesting character. He fancies himself a creative genius and is constantly quoting philosophers and writers. He's charming, but he's also a cad. In an early scene, his first wife catches him getting a blow job from a hooker in a car outside a club. She goes back to the club and seduces Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division (who goes on to hang himself not long after). When Ian returns to find her mid-f*ck in a bathroom stall with Curtis, he pauses for a moment then calmly asks for the car keys, and as he walks away mumbles (in defense of his earlier actions) something like,"There was no penetration with the hooker."
Tony's not much of a husband (by the film's end, we learn he also had a second wife and is now married to a third) nor much of a father (we learn he has a son he rarely sees), nor much of a businessman either, as we learn at the end. When London Records offers to buy "the entire Factory Records label" for 5 million pounds--explaining that they want everything from the office space to the bands to the rights to past releases--Tony admits that he has no contract with the bands. In other words, his label has no rights to their music. His club (and one would assume) his record label shuts down soon after.
It's a shame to think of the additional musical contributions the JD, NO, and HM could have made had their members done a few less drugs and had Tony been a better business manager and a bit more vigilant in monitoring his bands' progress. (In one instance, he gave the Happy Mondays upwards of 200,000 pounds to produce a record in Barabados--almost all of which was spent, instead, on blow).
But the music on the soundtrack is great. And it's an interesting flick.
Kept us up till at least 1:30.
Slept in till 10:30, and it was SO nice to wake up naturally, not to an alarm. Though it was still dark when we woke up, which threw me off initially. It's pouring rain outside. Grey and dreary and 30-something degrees. But I'm wearing shorts (the heater's on high in the apartment). It's nice and cozy in here.