24 Hour Party People is a 2002 British biographical comedy drama film about Manchester's popular music community from 1976 to 1992, and specifically about Factory Records. It was written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and directed by Michael Winterbottom. The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival[3] to positive reviews.
It begins with the punk rock era of the late 1970s and moves through the 1980s into the rave and DJ culture and the "Madchester" scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The main character is Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan), a news reporter for Granada Television and the head of Factory Records. The narrative largely follows his career, while also covering the careers of the major Factory artists, especially Joy Division and New Order, A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column and Happy Mondays.[4]
A while back I was watching a surrealist western cowboy film and I thought it was fun, but I was like: it'd be cool if there was something like halway between the fully far-out surrealist western cowboy film and a regular western cowboy film.
This is that movie. Things don't make sense if you try to piece it all together as a story with narrative coherence, but they do make sense at a mythic level. Like there are bad guys and more bad guys, and it's a little hard to keep track of them, and you can never be sure who's gonna die right now and who's gonna make it, and there's violence and more violence. And there's this truly wacky flashback, and a couple other flashbacks that can be hard to situate. And I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure there are no good guys. There are quests and searches and fights and characters who show up just to die and do things turn out OK in the end? Kinda, I guess... I mean, all of this, that's what life is really like, yes? Really, violence and revenge and death don't make a whole lot of sense. Really it's all kinda hazy, like a summer day spent out in the desert heat without water.
I don't think they did it on purpose, but I like the way this movie turned out. Don't think about it too much, just watch it and take it as it is, and you might find it's a pretty good film.