Sam: Yeah, I did remember. Well, it was a year ago last week that we started filming. For a whole year nothing has changed, I’ve still been a completely unknown actor and still am. So no-one hired me at all during the last year.
Peter: Hahaha! Let’s hope it changes now.
Sam: Well, I mean they’re fickle, aren’t they? As soon as we came back from Cannes then all of a sudden, the same casting directors all start remembering your name and shit. So, they’re all a fickle bunch, but hopefully I’ll get a bit of work this year.
Peter: Yeah I know, well, it’s the same thing with anything really. The thing about Cannes though, was that you had all the bloody hoo-har and then you get back and you think, ‘Ooh… Fuck.’
Sam: Yeah, ha! It came and went didn’t it?
Peter: Well, it’s a bit up and down, it makes you feel really up and down. One minute it’s dead, bleedin’ hectic and you seem like you’re the most important thing in the world and then when you get home you realise you’re just another twat who’s got to put the cat out. Hahaha!
Sam: Exactly! It’s quite a relief in a way.
Peter: Yeah, fucking get the dog shit picked up, it’s the same thing isn’t it?
Sam: Exactly, yeah. It’s all the same thing.
SAM
Sally: Can you give us some background, Sam and tell us how you got to where you are now?
Sam: I kind of blagged my way here really, I can’t believe my luck. I had a go at being an actor when I was 18. I was in National Youth Theatre and got an agent, then for a year, I had a go at being an actor, but I hated it and I got like two line parts, here and there like, ‘Hello, Dad.’ ‘No, Dad.’ ‘Yeah, Dad.’ It was sort of the pinnacle of my acting. Then my band [10,000 Things] were offered a deal, so I told my agent I didn’t want to be an actor anymore, then the band went on for three or four years. Then we got dropped and all fell out with each other. So I was working in a warehouse in Leeds and I thought, ‘Well, even acting’s got to be better than this.’ So I rang my agent who I hadn’t spoken to for years. I said, ‘Have you cast James Bond yet?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, they have, love.’ She said, ‘but they are doing a Curtis film, again.’ So I went along, and here I am talking with Hooky on the phone.
JOY DIVISION & TAXI DRIVERS
Peter: So, you know the strange thing about it is, it does seem like it’s going to be a really big hit.
Sam: It’s incredible for a little independent movie about a band, you know that not everyone’s heard of. It’s taxi drivers I find are the biggest Joy Division fans.
Peter: Haha! What is that something to do with being miserable you think?
Sam: I don’t know what it’s about, but I’ve been given whole books of receipts by taxi drivers.
Peter: Maybe it’s guilt, mate.
Sam: It will be, mate. (Describes scenario:) ‘I’m an actor.’ ‘Oh what have you been in?’ ‘Oh, nothing you will have seen.’ ‘Have you ever heard of Joy Division?’ ‘Have I ever heard of Joy Division? I fucking love Joy Division!’ ‘I’m playing Ian Curtis in a movie.’ ‘You’re fucking joking? You look like him and all. Here, have these receipts.’
Peter: Haha! I tell you what, after you’ve been doing it for 30 years you get in a cab and say, ‘I’m a dentist’.
Sam: Hahaha! I’ll stop that one: ‘I’m an actor.’
Peter: We always used to find that every time you got in a cab, right, you know and you’d just come back from America, or Australia or something like that, right? And you say to the taxi driver. ‘I’m in a group,’ and he goes, ‘Fuckin’ ‘ell! My brother’s uncle’s sister’s boyfriend’s in a group, do you know them?’ You know it’s like that thing about Americans thinking that all the English know each other. It’s fantastic, so after about 10 years you start saying you’re a dentist and then he goes, ‘My brother’s sister’s boyfriend’s a dentist, do you know him?’ Hahaha! It doesn’t matter what you say.
Sam: Hahahaha! The taxi driver knows them.
DO THE DANCE
Sally: Sam, can you tell us about getting the part, reading for it and meeting the other guys who would play the other members of the band?
Sam: I didn’t meet them until we all turned up on set. Then we went straight into a rehearsal room and started trying to learn the songs together. But going back to the audition: I met the casting lady in Manchester just to say ‘Hello’, no script or anything. They rang my agent by the time I got back to Manchester train station going back to Leeds, which never happens. So they were obviously interested and then I went down to London and read some scripts on a video. Then Anton was curious about that so he called me back to Manchester and I read some scenes with him. While I was waiting, their was a guy auditioning for Ian before me and I was just hoping they wouldn’t make me do the dance, because I hadn’t really nailed it yet, then I saw the guy going past the window in the room in front of me, doing the fucking dance! And I thought, ‘Oh no!’ So I went downstairs to the toilets and started strutting around in front of the mirror, but I thought, ‘Oh God, this is disastrous, I’m terrible at this.’ So I went upstairs and just hoped he wouldn’t ask me, but obviously he did, (adopts Dutch accent) ‘Can I see you move?’ [asked Anton]. I said, ‘Yeah, have you got any music? I can sing Transmission.’ They said, ‘You don’t sing we’re going to use Ian’s voice.’ So I was like, ‘OK.’ So they strapped an ipod to my arm and I… ha!.. Sort of went crazy around the audition room, and then Anton started trying to show me how to use my feet properly, but he couldn’t do it either. It was pretty comical really. Then he said, ‘Don’t cut your hair.’ So I thought, ‘That’s a strange thing to say to somebody when you’ve done an audition. It sort of sounds like he’s almost offering it to me or something.’ But I didn’t believe it, because I went home and read on the internet that Jude Law was in it, so I thought, ‘Urgh. Well, that probably makes more sense, more people’ll go and watch it if he’s in it.’ But fortunately, they rang me on my birthday and told me I was in it.”
Sally: That’s brilliant.
Sam: So then there was three months of me crapping myself before.
Sally: Oh no. Haha! And learning the dance and the footwork.
Sam: Yeah, I got all the footage I could find and watched it, because there’s only about an hour’s worth in existence, but it was just a case of watching that again, over and over, driving the people crazy that were near me. All my mates can do the dance just as well as I can, because they had to watch it that many fucking times.
TREASURED MOMENTS & GAINS
Sally: Can you tell us about any treasured moments you’ve taken from the set that have really inspired you?
Sam: The whole sort of work ethic inspired me. That sounds pretty boring, but to be woken up at six in the morning, to go and do something until seven at night, that I knew was going to be my biggest opportunity, and I’d kind of given up on the idea of really making it in either of those two things, in music, or film. So I couldn’t believe I was playing a singer in a movie, that was just too much good luck really.
Sally: From my experience doing this – with music and film, the film people are always on the nose with time and the music people are mostly late. So how did you find it with it being so much more regimented?
Sam: I’m OK. I maybe drank a little bit too much some nights, but I needed to do something in the evenings to try and shake off the stuff from the day. Because some days were really hard and quite upsetting, but we had a great time. Me and the boys had a brilliant time, and I fell in love while making it aswell which kind of knocked me sideways, which was kind of crazy.
Sally: Did that cause you to move? Is that right?
Sam: Yeah. Then after I’d finished I came back home and sort of resolved my problems in England and then was in Berlin within a week. And it was a very good decision that I made.
CONTROL
Peter: So what are you onto now then, anything? It’s not left you too depressed has it?
Sam: No, it took a little time afterwards… but that wasn’t necessarily because of Ian, it was also because I’d not really been working all that regularly beforehand and then doing something so intense for those weeks… I had a big comedown after that.
Peter: Mmmm, oh right. ‘Cos it’s funny. I was looking at some pictures of you by a girl called Shari Denson, is it?
Sam: Oh right?
Peter: She’d done some of you and your band, ‘cos we’re getting her to do some pictures of us. She’s done a lot of people, she’d done some moody black and white stuff. I suppose it’s all us people in bands that the moody black and white stuff appeals to… So I was watching you and your band which was really weird….
Sam: Yeah, I bet it was! We’re a lot different!
Peter: …wondering, if he knew then what he knows now, you know what I mean? ‘Cos it was weird, because I saw Natalie Curtis on Sunday…
Sam: I haven’t spoken to her for a bit. I stayed in touch with her for a while after, because she used to come and watch the concerts, hang out at the gig scenes, and hang out with Harry and Joe, but I spoke to her after she’d seen it and she said it was tough.
Peter: She still seemed so unhappy about it. It was really weird, because when we were doing the film music, it was the three of us, yeah? It felt a bit weird, like we should have Ian with us… it should have an ‘I. Curtis’ with it. So we put Natalie in there for the co- writer, so it’s got a Curtis in it.
Sam: Oh, has it? I like that.
Peter: It’s got a credit. I told her on Sunday, because nobody had told her. I suppose it was a funny thing, you know as a musician you understand the importance of publishing, you know what I mean? Yet she looked really bemused by it, but I mean, I suppose the truth is that because it’s to do with the film, it just seemed so natural to have a Curtis…
Sam: No, that’s nice.
CAMPAIGNING FOR CURTIS
Peter: You couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must feel like. We had quite a funny one over here though because Pete Saville was doing an interview for The Guardian and he said Macclesfield would be nothing without Ian Curtis and they should have a statue to him in the main square! Haha! Then people picked up on it and started fucking campaigning for a statue of Ian Curtis. ‘Ey, what a great idea!’Sam: In his dancing [pose] that would be good wouldn’t it? With his arms up.
Peter: Yeah. Yeah, because what we’re doing is, we’re going to concentrate on the Les Dawson one first and get that out of the way. Get his statue erected, then we’ll move onto Ian. But it was weird, a few of my friends in Australia have been to see [the film] and they were over the moon with it. One guy even went twice. I said to him, ‘Are you a taxi driver?’ Hahaha!
Sam: Hahaha!
Peter: And he said, ‘No.’ Haha!
Sam: He should be.
Peter: I know, but nevermind. I mean it’s looking good. I’ve got a few DJ gigs on the back of it, I’m doing a couple of the premieres. I’ve been offered a trip to Greece. It does make me wonder though. I’ll have to wait for the fucking New Order film now to get my next splurge of work.
Sam: Well, I’m not going to be in that one am I?
Peter: You might be, there might be a crossover. You could appear as a ghost.
