The Full Monty
is a 1997 British comedy film. It tells the story of six unemployed men, four of them steel workers, who decide to form a male striptease act (à la Chippendale dancers) in order to gather enough money to get somewhere else and for main character Gaz to be able to see his son. Despite being a comedy, the film also touches on serious subjects such as unemployment, fathers' rights, depression, impotence, working class culture and suicide. The film was rated a 15 in Britain for frequent strong language.
The Full Monty
is set in Sheffield, England, and stars Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber, and Hugo Speer. The story was conceived by co-producer, Paul Bucknor, and the screenplay was written by Simon Beaufoy. The film was directed by Peter Cattaneo.
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Plot
The year is 1972, and the place is "Sheffield... the beating heart of Britain's industrial north", as described by the narrator in a short film visualising the city's economic prosperity, borne out of Sheffield's highly successful steel industry. The film shows busy steel mills, producing everything from kitchen
cutlery to tensile girders, along with the run-off from the mills... successful retail establishments, nightclubs, and attractive housing. The film concludes with "thanks to steel, Sheffield really is a city on the move!"
Fast forward to a quarter century later in the same city but in far different light than that of the early-1970s. The once-successful steel mills of then have grown brown with rust, rolling equipment has been removed, and the lines are silent. Gary "Gaz" Schofield (
Robert Carlyle) and Dave Horsefall (
Mark Addy), desperate to make some money, are inside their former workplace trying to get a steel beam out of the mill with the intent of selling it. They attempt to get the beam out of the mill by crossing the canal on the roof of a half sunken car, which promptly topples back and forth. Undaunted, they try to salvage the beam, but their attempts prove futile.
Gaz is later informed by his ex-wife that she intends to take court action against him for the
child support payments that he's failed to make since losing his job. Compromising the situation further is Gaz's son, Nathan (
William Snape), who reluctantly spends time with Gaz. He grows tired of his father's seeming lack of motivation to do something with his life and get his act together.
While Gaz, Dave, and Nathan are walking down a street, they see a line of women gathered for a Chippendales show outside a Working Man's Club they frequent. Intrigued by the women's willingness to stand in line for a striptease act, Gaz is convinced that his ship has finally come in: he decides to organize a similar act of his own, with the intent to earn enough money to pay for his child support obligations.
The first to join the act is gauche and lonely Lomper (
Steve Huison), a security guard at Harrison's, the steel mill where Dave and Gaz once worked. After Lomper finally loses his job long after the mill shuts down, he tries to commit suicide by
asphyxiating himself in his car via carbon monoxide poisoning. Dave pulls him out, strongly resisted at first by Lomper's stubborn-minded protests. He ultimately has no rebuttal to Dave's more relentless logic and with the reassurance of his new-found friends behind him, Lomper joins the fledgling lineup. His rescue and inclusion in the group gives him a newly-optimistic and confident outlook on life.
Next on Dave and Gaz's list is their former foreman, the middle-class aspirant Gerald Arthur Cooper (
Tom Wilkinson), whom they witness performing at a
sequence dancing class with his immaculately-groomed wife. They later approach him about giving them lessons, but Gerald rebuffs them with insults, telling them he's on his way to a job
interview and has no time for their coarseness and irreverence. Gaz and Dave tail Gerald to the interview, where they distract him from outside the office window to the point where he blows the interview. He confronts them both at the local Job Club, loses his temper and physically assaults Gaz as he reveals that had he been successful, he could have continued to conceal his unemployment from his wife (who is still spending whilst not knowing her husband has been out of work for months).
A despondent Gerald leaves Job Club and sits on a park bench, all but emotionally defeated. Gary and Gaz patch things up with Gerald and tell him of their scheme. With literally no options left, Gerald agrees to be the act's choreographer.
In a sequence of
darkly comic scenes, various former co-workers of Gaz and Dave perform a strip-tease for them as their audition. One of the auditioners is invited to sit down after he flunks; he declines, saying that his children are outside waiting 'in the car' and that 'this is no place for kids' before glancing pointedly at Nathan (recruited by his father Gaz to work their stereo) before leaving. Other auditioners are hired: whether for their comprehensive dance knowledge (whilst overlooking evidence of advanced
arthritis) in the case of Barrington 'Horse' Mitchell (
Paul Barber), and jaw-dropping, euphemism-inducing penis size in the case of Guy (
Hugo Speer), who exposes it with pride to the five men.
As the men practice, doubts continue to creep in about whether this is the best way to make some money, due to their individual insecurities over their appearances (Dave is overweight, for example). When the men are approached on the street by local women acquaintances who have heard of their show, Gaz declares that their show will be better than the Chippendales dancers because they'll go "the Full Monty" -
strip all the way - hence the film's title. Dave quits less than a week before the show, deprecating himself as a 'fat bastard' whom no one would want to see in the
nude - including his wife, Jean.
During a dress rehearsal in front of Horse's family, the rest of the men get literally caught with their pants down in the abandoned factory they use for their practice, causing an unconventional
chase scene involving most of the main characters running from their pursuers wearing orange leather thongs. Two of the strippers, Guy and Lomper, successfully escape, and fall into the window of the sitting of a nearby home. They look at each other for a while, and embrace (the two are later seen holding hands at the funeral of Lomper's mother). Those the police caught, including Gaz, Gerald and Horse, are initially charged with indecent exposure; until the police review the surveillance tapes from the factory and their secret is revealed. When they are released, however, Gaz's ex-wife arrives at the station to take Nathan home, and afterward, she and her new boyfriend take out a court order against Gaz, which prevents him from seeing Nathan.
All seems lost, with the entire city of Sheffield knowing who the members of Hot Metal are and the cast ready to quit, until the owner of the pub informs Gaz that he has already sold 200 tickets for their show. Despite the good news (delivered by Gaz to his group-mates at a local job club), Dave still insists he can't perform.
Upon returning home, Dave's wife Jean confronts him after finding his G-string from the act, as she had assumed that his late nights out (and the thong) meant he was having an affair with another woman. Dave explains what he really has been doing and breaks down emotionally in front of her, revealing his insecurity about stripping in public due to his weight. Jean comforts him in a very touching scene where she tells him that she wants to see him dance.
With not much left to lose, and a sold-out show, the men decide to go for it for one night (including Gerald, who has got the job from the interview he thought he'd failed). Dave, having re-gained his confidence with help from his wife, joins the rest of the group literally minutes before they go on stage. The film ends with the group on stage in front of a packed house, stripping to
Tom Jones' version of
You Can Leave Your Hat On
(their hats being the final item removed).
Cast
- Robert Carlyle - Gaz
- Mark Addy - David aka Dave
- William Snape - Nathan
- Steve Huison - Lomper
- Tom Wilkinson - Gerald
- Paul Barber - Horse
- Hugo Speer - Guy
- Lesley Sharp - Jean
- Emily Woof - Mandy
- Deirdre Costello - Linda
- Paul Butterworth - Barry
- Dave Hill - Alan
- Bruce Jones - Reg
- Andrew Livingston - Terry
- Vinny Dhillon - Sharon
The
Stocksbridge Brass Band feature in the film.
Production
The famous "
Hot Stuff" scene, in which the characters dance in the queue at the job centre, was originally going to be cut from the final production as it was "too unrealistic".
The cast allegedly agreed that all six of them would really do the "full monty" strip at the end in front of 400 extras, provided they had to do only one take. Therefore, the choreographer was hiding in front of the stage, just beyond the camera view, screaming directions at the cast during the closing scene.
Language
The film features frequent use of British
slang, and in particular the slang of
Sheffield.
The film's title is a phrase generally used in the UK to mean 'the whole lot', or 'the whole hog'; in the film, the characters use it to refer to full nudity - as Horse says, "No one said anything to me about the full monty!"
Other slang terms are used in the film. Some such as
nesh
(meaning a person unusually susceptible to cold) are used in
Northern England as a whole.
Jennel
(an
alley) is local to Sheffield:
[1] it is a variation on the word "ginnel", which is in full versions of the
Oxford Dictionary and is used in many parts of England.
Controversy
New Zealand playwrights
Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclair filed a £180,000,000 lawsuit against the producers of
The Full Monty
in 1998. They claim that the movie blatantly infringed on their play
Ladies Night
, which toured both Britain and New Zealand.
[2] [3] Anthony McCarten and Stephen Sinclair created a website containing their play in response to statements from the producers of
The Full Monty
that claimed the two productions were not alike. The underlying rights were attributed to co-producer,
Paul Bucknor, and the lawsuit was settled out of court; as part of the agreement, the website containing
Ladies Night was shut down.
[4]
Awards and recognition
The Full Monty
won the
BAFTA Award for Best Film in 1997. It was nominated for a total of four
Academy Awards:
Best Picture,
Best Director,
Best Original Music Score, and
Best Original Screenplay. In 1997 the
Academy Award for Best Original Score was split up into two categories: Dramatic and Musical or Comedy. In light of 1997's big winner,
Titanic
, the movie won only the Oscar for Best Original Music Score (Musical or Comedy) by
Anne Dudley, with the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars going to
Titanic
and the Best Original Screenplay Oscar going to
Ben Affleck and
Matt Damon for
Good Will Hunting.
In 2000, readers of
Total Film
magazine voted
The Full Monty
the 49th greatest comedy film of all time.
The Reel Monty
The opening sequence of the Sheffield promotion film from 1971 is taken from
City on the Move
, a film commissioned by Peter Wigley, Sheffield's first ever publicity officer, to convince people that Sheffield was a centre for tourism and commerce.
City on the Move
was produced and directed by Jim and Marie-Luise Coulthard and showed a modern thriving city that was rapidly developing thanks to the successful steel industry in Sheffield. However, the film went virtually unnoticed until the Coulthards were approached about some of the footage being included in
The Full Monty
for a payment of £400, which they accepted. In 2008,
City on the Move
was released on DVD under the new name
The Reel Monty.
[5]
Popular culture references
An episode of
The Drew Carey Show
titled "
The Dog and Pony Show" featured Drew and the gang imitating The Full Monty by performing a
striptease to replace Mrs. Louder's purebred show dog Lucky, who was neutered after Drew, Lewis, and Oswald found him in Drew's house, mistook him for a stray, and took him to the vet to have his fur clipped and be
neutered. Several members of the films cast have a brief cameo near the end of the episode.The clip was also repeated in
Drew's Dance Party
Stage adaptation
The film was adapted into a 2000
Broadway musical of the same name; the characters and setting were
Americanised.
References
- :'Putting SY on the wordmap', BBC, 22 August 2005
- :'Writers sue over The Full Monty', BBC News, 4 March 1998
- 'Ladies' fight.', Campbell, Gordon. Listener p.25-26; 26 Sept 1998.
- 'Hollywood Plagiarism', Weird Realm Film Reviews, Accessed 1 October 2007
- 'See Sheffield reel time in 1969', The Star, 8 October 2008, Accessed 11 October 2008