Rent Carol Morley: The Alcohol Years (2000)

Annoying, Self-Indulgent, Pretentious Egotistical and VERY BORING Lottery/Arts-Council-Funded Film - Carol Morley: The Alcohol Years review by PV

OK so first thing, this is a short 'film, 50 minutes, and I assume only got made with public money courtesy of Lottery and Arts Council Funding and I think Channel 4 is because it is all about the 80s in on-trend Manchester AKA Madchester in the Hacienda club etc. TV often has a Manchester bias as so much based there - Granada TV and now Salford BBC Media City. I was oop north late 80s to early 90s in a city NOT called Manchester and we were sick of the constant focus on Madchester then and we are sick of it now (Sheffield, Nottingham, Liverpool people may well agree).

Well no doubt if you were there in 1980s Manchester Hacienda club and band scene it's interesting, a bit like people looking at their own holiday snaps or videos, of family photos, For the rest of us, this is BORING. It's a bit like when people relate their dreams (boring to you) or smell their own f-arts - no doubt pleasant for them but not for anyone else. Yes, this is an egofart of a film. And so BORING. It takes no talent to get drunk a lot, go to clubs and sleep around and very many people did it. The difference is, they do not claim it makes them special and talented as this alleged film director does. It takes NO talent to do. None.

This is really a BORING documentary, much better suited to TV and local TV at that. I suspect the director being female aided production funds too.

Watch the 2 short films on the DVD - one is narrated by John Peel with what sound like unusual stories from his own Radio 4 show tbh. A bit misandrist really some of them but good to hear John Peel again (died age 65 in 2004).

Lots of people featured here died relatively young - Pete Shelley (born MacNeish, named himself after the poet) died aged 63 in Estonia in 2018; Alan Wise, the Jewish promoter of the Hacienca and Nico in late 80s died age 63 in 2016 3 months after his 22 daughter killed herself jumping off a bridge. Nico who he promoted as heard on ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES and FEMME FATAL and SUINDAY MORNING by Velvet Underground died aged 49 in 1988 of a stroke while cycling in Ibiza, and her son died age 60 of a heroin overdose in Paris in 2023.

Nico gets a mention here as Alan Wise was Nico's promoter and she stayed in the shabby box room bedroom at his house whose next occupant was the egomaniac attention-seeker Carol Morley who directed this. i took an instant dislike to the manipulative seemingly parasitical director, who seems so egotistical that she thinks her life of getting drunk and sleeping around is interesting. It isn't. It is boring, BORING! A shame the likes of this get public funding when talents writers/directors struggle to get a bean in public money or private funds to make films (esp non-BAME men...)

2 stars only, one for the interviews with some interesting people, Pete Shelley etc who she manipulated into having a fling with, and Alan Wise AND one star for the short film narrated by John Peel. The stuff about the director is so tiresome and boring.