It is one of the prime minister’s all-time favourite films and has endured in the hearts of the British public since it was released in 1996. Ostensibly a story about a small town colliery band’s journey to the finals of Britain’s biggest brass band competition at the Royal Albert Hall, Brassed Off is unashamedly political. I think anybody who went got a sort of bonus they might not have expected.
Starring Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald and Ewan McGregor, it follows the Grimley Colliery Band as they await a judgment from British Coal as to whether their pit will be closed. A resounding success, Brassed Off went on to be number 85 in the BFI’s list of Top 100 British Films and spawned a popular stage play. To add to the plaudits, Andy Burnham recently named it as one of his four favourite films.
The film’s success at the time was “surprising and very rewarding” but the enduring appeal, Herman believes, is because, “It’s not about a brass band in Grimley, it’s about the universal subject of being downtrodden. They get the message everybody got 30 years ago, because it’s still relevant and still plays.” But these films are a dying breed and Herman admits he is “fairly pessimistic” about the current state of the British film industry. It was quite a risky film to make, Brassed Off, but now they seem to only want to put money behind dead certs.” His favourite films of the last year were I Swear, the biography of a man with severe Tourette syndrome, and The Ballad of Wallis Island, an offbeat comedy drama written by and starring the comedians Tim Key and Tom Basden.
His path – from childhood in the East Yorkshire seaside town of Bridlington, to studying graphic design at Leeds Polytechnic (now Leeds Beckett University) and the National Film and Television School – would still open doors for youngsters in the industry, he thinks. But it is not an easy industry to break into, and now, in his early 70s, he thinks the advice he got when he was young – advice he took for a short while – to move to London, probably still stands. Instead he wrote a powerful script, unashamed to spell out in no uncertain terms how the Conservative government destroyed communities and ruined lives, the effects of which continue.
Higher mortality rates from suicide, alcohol and drugs developed – and persist to this day – in former pit towns and the shadow of Margaret Thatcher still lingers like an oil stain in these communities. In a climactic scene in the Royal Albert Hall, Postlethwaite’s character, Danny, the band’s conductor, gives a memorable speech – later immortalised in the protest song Tubthumping by Chumbawamba – shouting: “I thought that music mattered. Not compared to how people matter.” During filming, Birmingham town hall was substituted for the London venue, which was too expensive and “didn’t look anything like the Albert Hall”, Herman jokes.
Brassed Off Live will be a “strange experience … when our fake Albert Hall is on screen and you’re sitting in the Albert Hall. Thirty years ago would we ever imagine being in the Albert Hall still watching it?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
