Trivia for
Control (2007)

photos

board

trailer

details

• The actors playing Joy Division learned how to play the songs themselves. So the scenes where the band is playing live is not from tape, but actually the actors playing live.
  
  
• James Anthony Pearson, who plays Bernard Sumner, learned to play guitar in two months for his role in the film.
  
  
• Sam Riley previously played The Fall singer 'Mark E Smith' in 24 Hour Party People (2002) hence the in-joke after Curtis' onstage fit when Rob Gretton tells him things could be worse, he could be the singer in The Fall. Posters for gigs for 'The Fall' can also be seen at just about every venue 'Joy Division' plays.
  
  

• The black-and-white film was actually shot in color, then transferred to black and white because, according to the director, the black and white film "was so grainy it looked like Super-8 even in 35 millimeter."
  
  
• When Joy Division are about to make their first television appearance they are warned by Tony Wilson that he will cut them off if they swear at any point. He also tells them to trust him as he knows when you can and can't swear on TV. This is probably a nod to years later, when in real life Tony Wilson was suspended from his job at Granada for swearing into a microphone that he didn't realize was on.
  
  
• After the exhausting filming of Boot, Das (1981) German pop star Herbert Grönemeyer swore he'd never act in a movie again. He made an exception for his good friend Anton Corbijn and appeared in this movie, though.
  
  
• The scene showing Tony Wilson talking to Ian Curtis in the empty Derby Hall in Bury after the April 1980 riot features a large equipment case on which the number "501" prominently appears. When Tony Wilson was buried in August, 2007, his coffin was marked with the number 501, the last number in the Factory Records catalog.
  
  
• The introduction that Tony Wilson gives the band as they're about to perform on Granada television is almost word for word taken from the actual broadcast. The song they play in the film is ‘Transmission’, when in actuality they performed ‘Shadowplay’ on Granada. They did perform ‘Transmission’ live on TV but it was on the BBC without an introduction by Tony Wilson, but instead a toned down version of the poem used to introduce them at a gig in the film.
  
  
• According to Samantha Morton, the director mortgaged his house to raise finance for the film.
  
  
• The poem being recited before their first gig is "Evidently Chicken Town" by John Cooper Clarke.
  
  

Related Links