Mojo - The Music Magazine

Andrew Male talks to Matt Greenhalgh

How did you end up writing the script for Control?
Well, my background and relationship to this whole project was New
Order and the Hacienda. I’m 35 and I had an education from 1988 onwards
in that nightclub. Joy Division were already in my God estimation so
when the opportunity came to write a story I just said to my agent, ‘If
anyone’s going to write this story about these people from my town I
want it to be me’. They’d already had a draft done by someone in
America and he was a proper fan and the script wasn’t really to
Debbie’s taste. It was all very deep and fan-ny so it came around to
me. I’d written a series called Burn It, a Manchester series for BBC 3
and everything I’ve written, Cold Feet and Clocking Off, it was one of
the directors of Burn It who was at a party in Hollywood and she got
into talking to the producer who said they’d just bought the rights to
Debbie Curtis’ book and she said ‘Well I’ve got the perfect writer’ and
they went ‘Who?’ cos I’ve never written a film before. It’s my first.
They met me with Debbie and we all liked each other and I read Touching
From A Distance and there’s so much drama in that book so yeah, you
start with that book…

One of the reasons the film succeeds is because it doesn’t take sides
whereas the book has to take sides, because it’s by Debbie. So where
did you go next?
I like Debbie’s story because it was an interesting way to look at a
rock biog, but at the end of the day you want to see Ian’s story so it
was a process of mixing what I liked from Debbie’s book into how I
thought Ian’s life played out at the time. It gets a bit weird when you
start talking about him as a character because obviously he’s a real
guy, and a very dark tragedy. On the research I got to the point where
I thought I had to speak to this person and that person and I was
finding that a lot of people were so possessive of their bit of Ian,
almost accusatory to me before I’d even written it, about what that
story should be. It was getting in the way of my vision of it. It was
Tony Wilson who said, ‘Matt, fuck ‘em off. Don’t listen to ‘em. Go out
and write the best story. Write the myth if that’s what’s in your
head’. It was such a simple thing to say but I suppose it needed him to
say it, to free me up to go and write Matt Greenhalgh’s version of Ian
Curtis’ life cos you’re never going to please all these people who have
such a passioned memory of him.

How did you hook up with Annik?
I think an old mate of Ian’s was a mate of Barney’s who was still in
contact with Annik. The Americans arranged a meeting and I went over to
Belgium to see her. No-one’s seen her for years.  She showed me around
some of the places she walked with Ian. It wasn’t full of laughs. She
was very cautious but it’s strange for people in that situation because
I think they realise that it’s going to go ahead anyway so they’ve got
to be in it to have a say. And it has happened.

And did she show you the letters Ian wrote to her? 
Yes, she gave us copies of those letters. It was a very strange moment
because it was in his handwriting and it was… those letters gave an
insight into his mind that, as a writer, brought you to a different
level as far as following his character…

Absolutely. When he writes about watching Apocalypse Now and listening
to Brando reading T.S Eliot’s The Hollow Men. It’s incredibly powerful…
I know! I wanted to write that! I wanted to put him in the cinema
watching Apocalypse Now cos I just thought, God, you could put Brando
in there saying “The horror! The horror!” at the end then I though
‘Hold on, hold on, Matt!’  When you’re holding these letters you’re
feeling ‘God, at one point he had a pen and was putting this ink on
that paper’. It gets creepy but you’re kind of infused with the
character you’re writing about because it becomes *so real. It was
quite a dark period, to be honest, going into Ian and… Debbie also
showed me the suicide note and then you research suicide and work out
that May is the biggest month for people topping themselves. It just
becomes… especially when you attribute it to a guy that you, as you
were getting deeper into the research, you’re getting more and more
fond of. It then becomes…Oh my God! You know what happens to him.
There’s almost a sense of foreboding, but I think it all helped when I
was writing it that all this was coming together inside of me. I’m not
one of those big arty-farty flash-of-inspiration types. You either sit
down, you write or you can’t. But with this, it just felt that the
research I was doing and where he came from, I found a really good
voice for him.

Was there a temptation to get more poetic? You know, ponder where Ian got his ideas from…
You’d be a brave man to start telling people - especially when they’re
not around anymore - how their ideas came into their head. It’s a bit
cocky and patronising. You don’t want to make too many conclusions
yourself cos you’ll crop a fall for that because people will just see
you for making things up. To be honest, it’s made up anyway. It’s a
film. None of those words - except for the Annik scene where she
interviews them - were said ever. Once you start getting into the
mental and creative side you end up with a darker film and a much more
boring film.

You’ve kept it within the real…
Yeah, and we’ve done a really good job of keeping the story of the band
as well. And the music’s brilliant. The whole lot collides and gives
you a really good film. Sam was ace as Ian. I sent an e-mail to Anton
and said, Listen, I just want to thank you, there wasn’t a bum line
said. As a writer you think, there’ll be the odd bit part that fails
but I couldn’t remember one line that made me cringe. And that’s never
happened to me before.

Have you heard what Annik thought of it?
I heard she loved it. And I had dinner with Debbie and she loved it…
Everyone who knew him that well will always have bits they thought
should be in but in general everyone’s happy with the success. If it
wasn’t a success I think everyone would be killing each other! I’d be
first dead!
[end]

Andrew Male talks to Sam Riley
What’s it like watching yourself on screen as Ian Curtis?
I saw the film for the first time in Cannes. It was a pretty surreal
environment. We finished in August, I’d seen ten minutes of it at the
cast and crew meeting and then waited almost a year to see it at the
same time as an audience and get used to seeing yourself the size of a
bus, as Ian. All of us were pretty emotional at the end of it. I was
thinking about Debbie and Natalie at the end of it, a bit shell-shocked
by everything and then we leave the theatre and all of a sudden
everyone wanting to think what you think of the movie. I didn’t know
what to think…

How tough was it becoming Ian, singing like him without doing a Stars In Their Eyes impersonation?
Well I knew right from the word go that there was no footage of Ian
ever interviewed which left me some space. There’s some poor quality
audio of him talking so the voice I took from there and Stephen Morris’
voice, which is very similar, and softened up my own. Also, there’s
just over an hour’s worth of footage of them in existence and it was a
case of just watching that over and over again. To begin with, we were
always going to be miming. I offered to sing in my audition but they
never thought they’d be able to get an actor who could sing like Ian
and four actors who look like the band and can play their instruments…
I put in a lot of hours dancing round my living room and in front of
the mirror but as soon as I got there, got the haircut and started
wearing the clothes all the time then it started to fall into place and
became more natural and less mimicky. I liked the clothes but I didn’t
like the haircut. I felt quite self-conscious. I thought it looked like
Dumb And Dumber. But it was incredible the way everyone eventually took
on the personality traits of the band.

How was it being surrounded by people who knew the man you were portraying…
[Director] Anton [Corbijn] said that although he was there he mainly
remembers them from the photos rather than his own memory. Also,
because his English was pretty poor so he doesn’t remember too much of
the conversations that were going on. But he thought I had something of
a similar essence, that I could hold myself like Ian but it all seemed
to come pretty naturally and it was an advantage that I wasn’t playing
someone like Elvis where everyone knows his mannerisms and what he
talks like. Although a lot of people adore Ian very few have met him or
seen him speak so as long as we played it realistically we’d be OK.

You occupy so much of his character, the physical extremes… Was it an uncomfortable experience?
Well this was my big opportunity. I was doing nothing before this and
I’d given up on a lot of my dreams ever happening. I thought, I have to
give this absolutely everything I’ve got. It’s my only chance. But it
was difficult because, as an untrained actor I don’t really know the
skills to stop things affecting you. Some days were really hard and I
felt really unhappy and when it all finished I was pretty distraught.
The guys in the band – we were a band – when they could see things were
starting to get on top of me they were supportive.

That’s so weird, given the story of the film…
Well, we were all a little bit older than Joy Division which was an
advantage. Plus, we knew the subject we were dealing with so we were
more sensitive to each others problems. But I don’t know any twenty
year olds who are particularly sensitive to each other’s feelings. I
don’t look at Joy Division’s story and think ‘You should have done
more.’ I don’t think that’s fair. You’re gobshites at that age. But
look at what he was able to write, his understanding of relationships,
his poetry, for any age it’s an incredible talent.

You ended up on the cutting room floor after playing Mark E Smith in 24 Hour Party People. Was that upsetting?
I was only there for an hour and a half for the whole film. I had three
lines. I was there to tell Tony Wilson he was “Maggie Thatcher’s
bastard baby. Fuck off you tie-wearing vampire cunt”. And I did it
three times and they sent me home. That was it. I auditioned to play
Stephen Morris but I’d been battered in a fight in Leeds, so I turned
up for the audition with a black eye and big plaster on me chin and it
was ‘Mark E Smith!’ and I said, Who’s he?

What’s the response been so far?
Hardly anyone’s seen it yet. I’m in a safety zone at the moment. I try
to not look at the internet. Then I have sleepless nights. One of my
relationships disintegrated during the filming and I was still
unemployable afterwards. Casting directors are interested now, which is
nice because I need some work. A couple of things are in the pipeline
but I can’t say because I’ll jinx it.