Post by QPR Report on Mar 2, 2009 7:28:37 GMT
The Guardian/Martin Kelner
Loach and Boorman prove that footballers were once real people
Classic docu-dramas remind of us a time when footballers' lives were poorer but wiser
Golden vision
It has been a good week for Premier League footballers, who suddenly find themselves able to have a quiet drink — and even a couple of noisy ones — unmolested, anywhere they fancy. The envy and loathing these boys normally attract seems to be going the way of some bank manager chappie, who has managed to trouser 16 million big ones, despite being unable to execute the simplest of step-overs, let alone a Cruyff turn.
What is more, I am no expert in high finance – actually, strike the word "high" – but has this chap not taken the organisation that has been stuffing his weekly envelope down into the banking equivalent of the Blue Square Premier? Maybe that is an issue for one of those sections of the newspaper I cannot consult at present, as it has been pressed into alternative use in these difficult times. As I said to my wife the other day: "Don't take the curtains down, I haven't finished reading them."
Thank you Ken Loach, unparalleled chronicler of working-class banter, for that gag, which cropped up in his marvellous 1968 TV film, The Golden Vision, shown on BBC4 last week. The eponymous GV, as Everton fans will know, was the centre-forward Alex Young, a central figure in Loach's docu-drama focusing on the historic bond between football club and fans.
The film switches between interviews with Everton players and dramatised scenes from the lives of fans, played by fine Scouse actors like Bill Dean and Ken Jones, whom I seem to remember were no strangers to Z Cars around that time.
"I have been to your house, it's like a vampire's haversack," says Dean to one of his fellow fans, who suggests Dean's son is in the outside loo "to pull the mushrooms off the wall for your tea", and further that "the mice in here walk round in overalls".
So far, so Ken Loach, but it is the documentary element of the film that makes it such compulsive viewing. We have become so used to anodyne player interviews, that the sequence where Alex Young confesses his misgivings to the camera is quite startling. He describes the life of a professional footballer as "a hard grind". "After a few years," he says, "when you weigh it up, you think, well, maybe there's something better you can do."
Young, described on the Everton fan site Toffee Web as "like a bank clerk made out of Dresden china, a Greek god with wispy waves of short blond hair," and by a character in the film as "the greatest centre-forward we've had since the war", seems constantly weighed down by weltschmerz, angst, and all that other existentialist stuff the Germans specialise in.
The cheerfully chaotic world of the fans is in direct contrast. A gang of them pile into the back of a furniture van for an away match at Highbury – 2-2, and a brass band at half-time – and trundle into a Soho strip club post-match. "I've seen more meat on a butcher's apron," says Dean of one of the artistes. The Golden Vision, meanwhile, returns to his neat semi, with its comfortable family saloon in the garage, bored with afternoons "drinking endless cups of tea".
The leisure time pursuits of 1960s footballers featured in another fine documentary on BBC4 last week, Six Days To Saturday, covering one week in the life of Swindon Town's 1963 team, right at the end of the era when I believe it was illegal to enter a football ground without a flat cap and a rattle.
The film followed the young stars of a hugely talented Swindon team, like Ernie Hunt and Don Rogers, and offered a unique opportunity to see a young Mike Summerbee — then called Mick — in a newsagent shop buying a bag of sweets for sevenpence.
John Boorman made the film for — get this — regional television in the West Country. And yes, that is the same John Boorman, who went on to direct Point Blank and Deliverance. The fact the local BBC was taking a punt on ambitious, impressionistic work like his made you nostalgic not just for football's lost era, but television's.
As in Loach's film, the bond between the largely working-class support and the players was central. The team was described as "the focus of pride in a town of 92,000; at Pressed Steel, Plessey, and in the locomotive yards" (a reference to manufacturing industry, kiddies, ask your dad).
Besides buying sweeties, the players filled their time playing snooker, going to the cinema, or to "the new bowling alley". The players, said the narrator, were conscious of their status in the town. "They must conform to public notions of virtue," he announced. "They may drive a car, provided it is modest in size, they may accept a drink, but only one, and they must return every greeting." Plus ça change, plus c'est definitely not la même chose.
This unique record of a bygone era is available on the BBC iPlayer for another day or two — the Golden Vision sadly not — and I would urge anyone interested in football, life, or anything, to drop everything and hurry there now.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/mar/02/screen-break-kelner-football-golden-vision
Loach and Boorman prove that footballers were once real people
Classic docu-dramas remind of us a time when footballers' lives were poorer but wiser
Golden vision
It has been a good week for Premier League footballers, who suddenly find themselves able to have a quiet drink — and even a couple of noisy ones — unmolested, anywhere they fancy. The envy and loathing these boys normally attract seems to be going the way of some bank manager chappie, who has managed to trouser 16 million big ones, despite being unable to execute the simplest of step-overs, let alone a Cruyff turn.
What is more, I am no expert in high finance – actually, strike the word "high" – but has this chap not taken the organisation that has been stuffing his weekly envelope down into the banking equivalent of the Blue Square Premier? Maybe that is an issue for one of those sections of the newspaper I cannot consult at present, as it has been pressed into alternative use in these difficult times. As I said to my wife the other day: "Don't take the curtains down, I haven't finished reading them."
Thank you Ken Loach, unparalleled chronicler of working-class banter, for that gag, which cropped up in his marvellous 1968 TV film, The Golden Vision, shown on BBC4 last week. The eponymous GV, as Everton fans will know, was the centre-forward Alex Young, a central figure in Loach's docu-drama focusing on the historic bond between football club and fans.
The film switches between interviews with Everton players and dramatised scenes from the lives of fans, played by fine Scouse actors like Bill Dean and Ken Jones, whom I seem to remember were no strangers to Z Cars around that time.
"I have been to your house, it's like a vampire's haversack," says Dean to one of his fellow fans, who suggests Dean's son is in the outside loo "to pull the mushrooms off the wall for your tea", and further that "the mice in here walk round in overalls".
So far, so Ken Loach, but it is the documentary element of the film that makes it such compulsive viewing. We have become so used to anodyne player interviews, that the sequence where Alex Young confesses his misgivings to the camera is quite startling. He describes the life of a professional footballer as "a hard grind". "After a few years," he says, "when you weigh it up, you think, well, maybe there's something better you can do."
Young, described on the Everton fan site Toffee Web as "like a bank clerk made out of Dresden china, a Greek god with wispy waves of short blond hair," and by a character in the film as "the greatest centre-forward we've had since the war", seems constantly weighed down by weltschmerz, angst, and all that other existentialist stuff the Germans specialise in.
The cheerfully chaotic world of the fans is in direct contrast. A gang of them pile into the back of a furniture van for an away match at Highbury – 2-2, and a brass band at half-time – and trundle into a Soho strip club post-match. "I've seen more meat on a butcher's apron," says Dean of one of the artistes. The Golden Vision, meanwhile, returns to his neat semi, with its comfortable family saloon in the garage, bored with afternoons "drinking endless cups of tea".
The leisure time pursuits of 1960s footballers featured in another fine documentary on BBC4 last week, Six Days To Saturday, covering one week in the life of Swindon Town's 1963 team, right at the end of the era when I believe it was illegal to enter a football ground without a flat cap and a rattle.
The film followed the young stars of a hugely talented Swindon team, like Ernie Hunt and Don Rogers, and offered a unique opportunity to see a young Mike Summerbee — then called Mick — in a newsagent shop buying a bag of sweets for sevenpence.
John Boorman made the film for — get this — regional television in the West Country. And yes, that is the same John Boorman, who went on to direct Point Blank and Deliverance. The fact the local BBC was taking a punt on ambitious, impressionistic work like his made you nostalgic not just for football's lost era, but television's.
As in Loach's film, the bond between the largely working-class support and the players was central. The team was described as "the focus of pride in a town of 92,000; at Pressed Steel, Plessey, and in the locomotive yards" (a reference to manufacturing industry, kiddies, ask your dad).
Besides buying sweeties, the players filled their time playing snooker, going to the cinema, or to "the new bowling alley". The players, said the narrator, were conscious of their status in the town. "They must conform to public notions of virtue," he announced. "They may drive a car, provided it is modest in size, they may accept a drink, but only one, and they must return every greeting." Plus ça change, plus c'est definitely not la même chose.
This unique record of a bygone era is available on the BBC iPlayer for another day or two — the Golden Vision sadly not — and I would urge anyone interested in football, life, or anything, to drop everything and hurry there now.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/mar/02/screen-break-kelner-football-golden-vision