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LONDON EVENING
STANDARD
2nd June 2003
NOW
MOVIES ARE FIGHTING
OVER
THE FOOTBALL HOOLIGANS
|
The ugly scenes
that marred England’s Euro 2004 qualifier win over Turkey in April
have put the issue of football hooliganism back in the public eye. David Beckham is
due to make a television appeal to the nation before tomorrow’s
match against Serbia and Montenegro, appealing for calm. But while the
Football Association is being threatened with expulsion from the tournament,
some are more encouraged by the scourge of our marauding fans. Even US Defence
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld got in on the act last week when he compared
England’s most feared export with the looters in Baghdad. What is in little
doubt is that the resurgence of the phenomenon has helped revitalise
a burgeoning hooligan industry. Burberry and Stone Island may not be
over the moon that the hoolies have adopted their labels as standard
issue uniform, but publishers and film producers are hoping to cash
in on a resurgence of the English disease. Three major films,
one already in production, are racing to make it to the big screen before
the hooliganism begins to fade away again, as it supposedly did in the
late 1980s under a welter or ecstasy pills, smiley faces and raves. Sportspages, London’s
leading sports book shop, stocks 45 hooligan-related books. These can
be separated into two categories, the ‘we steamed into the Chelsea
and gave them a good kicking’-type fan memoirs, and sociologists
pontificating from ivory towers. What the film companies all seem to be searching for, however, is a footballing version of Trainspotting. |
As the author who
penned the original about Edinburgh heroin addicts, Irvine Welsh, who
is writing and directing a film about Cardiff City’s Soul Crew,
would appear to have the best chance. But he faces competition
from The Football Factory, John King’s book about life with
the Chelsea Headhunters, and Congratulations, You Have Just Met The
ICF, Cass Pennant’s travels with the West Ham firm, who had
a penchant for leaving calling cards on their victims after which the
film is named. So why this sudden
spurt of hoolie flicks? Students of the
hooligan genre will recall ID, a moderately successful movie
with an excellent cameo from Warren Clarke as a psychotic neo-nazi pub
landlord/ hooligan in the 1990s and, in the late 1980s The Firm
a TV drama starring Gary Oldman and based in Hornchurch. Vertigo Films’
James Richardson, producer of The Football Factory said: ‘These
films are always made at similar times and there’s no particular
reason for it. Ours will be out first so we’re not worried –
Soul Crew hasn’t even been written yet. ‘We want to
create a seminal film. What Trainspotting did for drug culture,
we want to do for hooligans. The film is about a bunch of friends, their
relationships and the world they live in. Everyone thinks hooliganism
has gone underground but that’s not the case. There have been some
major set-piece fights in the last few months. It’s never gone
away and we’re raising the debate. ‘It’s going to be authentic, with a couple of big set-pieces, Chelsea fans attacking Spurs and Millwall. It’s very real and we show what happens. It’s very ugly, |
messy and not much
fun. It provides a big adrenaline rush for some but there is a price
to pay and we want to show both sides. We’re not taking a moral
stance but are putting the issue out there.’ There are some familiar
faces involved with The Football Factory. It stars Frank Harper,
of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fame, is directed by Nick
Love, who made Goodbye Charlie Bright and the joint producer
is Human Traffic’s Allan Niblo. Six weeks of shooting finished
yesterday and the film will be released next spring. The explosion of
hooligan memoirs over the last decade has been a publishing revolution. Pennant, one of
a number of shaven-headed, reformed bad-boys who now spend their time
nibbling canapés at book launches around the capital, produced
his first manuscript while inside Wormwood Scrubs in 1979, but won little
interest. The breakthrough
came 10 years later with Colin Ward’s Steaming In, an account
of Arsenal fans in the 1960s and 1970s that was runner-up in the William
Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. The floodgates opened. Pennant said: ‘After
years of banging on the door I got an offer from Kate Kray to feature
in a chapter of her book, Hard Bastards, about true crime. I
turned her down but my Mrs changed my mind. I went back to her and said
I’d be her hooligan if she’d set up a meeting with her publisher. ‘I met John Blake and he wanted to publish my autobiography, Cass, which went straight into the best-sellers list. He wanted to know if there was any more so we did ICF, which sold 100 copies less than Margaret Thatcher’s Statecraft. We’re still a thorn in her side!’ |
The appeal of Pennant’s
books appears to a combination of voyeurism and nostalgia. Middle-class
fans are happy to gorge themselves on violence from the safety of the
Home Counties, while retired hooligans want to relive deeds of derring-do. Pennant said: ‘The
books are popular with people in all walks of life. I though they’d
be big in places like Bermondsey, but I met with the head of WH Smith
and was told I sold best in Cheltenham. People like to look into another
world. ‘We’re
also providing a social history as the hooligan phenomenon was an important
part of British culture. It was more than just violence and an important
sub-culture. It was about fashion and music and we led the world in
both fields. We made or own fashion and it’s important for youngsters
today to recognise that. They have no music, no fashion and are slaves
to the Playstation.’ The hooliganism
at the Stadium of Light in April – which culminated in 105 arrests
– could have been lifted from the pages of any number of books,
so are the new lumbering literati encouraging violence? Pennant said: ‘The
books don’t glorify violence, that’s a nonsense. Arrest figures
at Upton Park aren’t on the up but my book sales are increasing.
There’s no link. Everyone said that punk would turn the world into
a version of Max Max, but it didn’t happen.’ He’s probably right. The mindless morons who could yet get England thrown out of Euro 2004 have never read a book in their lives. |
