Clothes on off full#

Then, in the last few years, it became increasingly clear that we were in the same place again. Photograph: Tom Hilton/APĪfter the success of the film there was a lot of chatter about a follow-up, but I could never find a story that would better the original, my only criteria to write a sequel.

Clothes on off full#

I thought: what if we put it in the context of what was happening in Sheffield? What if we made taking your clothes off a metaphor for desperation, a loss of identity that working-class men from the steelworks had had stripped away from them by a government that appeared indifferent to the effects of their policies? Suddenly, we had comedy, politics and pathos all coalescing.īare necessities … (From left) Tom Wilkinson, Robert Carlyle, Steve Huison, Hugo Speer, Paul Barber and Mark Addy in the 1997 film The Full Monty. The whole idea of male strippers wasn’t terribly interesting to me initially – the Chippendales were old news by then – until our astute producer, Uberto Pasolini, asked: “What’s happened to the British man that he’d take his clothes off for money? In Italy this would never happen!” Suddenly, everything clicked. Men who had done the same job as their father and grandfather were now in a sort of shock, at a loss as to what to do with their lives, unsure of their place in the world. Fifteen years of the Conservatives’ determination to allow heavy industry to collapse had left the north of England devastated. It was a city literally being demolished in front of my eyes there was a sort of grim theatricality to watching the wrecking ball take down another steel mill. My girlfriend was in hospital and there wasn’t much to do in between visiting hours other than wander. Simon Beaufoy Back in the mid-90s, I was unexpectedly kicking my heels in Sheffield.