Of course in some cases, printing the legend makes a better story than aiming straight and true. That was very much the opinion of Tony Wilson, the founder of legendary Manchester record label Factory. Wilson insisted that filmmaker Michael Winterbottom make an exciting film based off of his life, rather than an accurate one. The result is a very heavily fictionalised biopic. In fact, the film breaks the fourth wall frequently to point out which parts never actually happened, with real-life Buzzcocks guitarist Howard Devoto popping up in a cameo to dispute the part where he has sex with Wilson's wife in a club toilet. It got to the point that, at the real-life Wilson's funeral years later, people's eulogies quoted lines from the film he never actually said. Screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce admitted to big changes like turning Wilson's penchant for quoting abstruse Marxist theory to reciting Yeats, something which Wilson took to doing in real life so as not to disappoint people. 24 Hour Party People is the very definition of capturing the spirit of a person and story, whilst ignoring almost all the facts.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
