Screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh took the book as a starting point, explaining that it allowed him to keep the story authentic but also to find the conflict that every film narrative needs to work: “I had a great place to start with the book, because there was so much to work with.” She writes about their life together as well as the formation of the band, her husband’s infidelity and his death. The film is based on Touching From A Distance, the book Curtis’s wife, Deborah, published in 1995. In Control’s case, you start with decent source material. How do you do them justice? And how do you tell their story without upsetting friends and family who are still around? That so many people remember and revere a film’s subject is both a help and a hindrance when you’re making a biopic. Keeping fans happy when making a film about Curtis was always going to be tricky but, aside from pleasing fans, it was important for Control to do justice to Ian’s family and bandmates’ memories. His memory is – and was when Control was released in 2007 – alive and well.
Ideo clips of Curtis’s inimitable performance style abound on YouTube and his life’s work has been pored over and analysed in countless books. Countless artists crowding today’s festival line-ups claim the band’s timeless, brooding post-punk sound as an influence. It’s hard to overstate the band’s influence on the indie scene over the past 35 years. Since then, Joy Division has reached near-legendary status. With a cult following in their native Manchester and their first North American tour scheduled to kick off the day after his death, what his fanbase may have lacked in quantity they made up for in passion. Joy Division may never have reached stadium status while Curtis was alive, but the band was on the cusp of making it big when he died. You go with him from the age of 17 to 23 – he just happens to become the singer of Joy Division.” “It’s not a music film,” director Anton Corbijn explained on its release in 2007. We meet Ian as a schoolboy, an eyeliner-wearing, Wordsworth-quoting Bowie fan who joins the band after a Sex Pistols gig. But do you know how it begins? It begins with a boy. You go with him from the age of 17 to 23 – he just happens to become the singer of Joy Division Anton Corbijn
0 kommentar(er)
