Brassed Off turns 30 this week. Mark Herman’s 1996 comedy-drama about a colliery brass band facing pit closures has been generally very positively received, and its reputation has grown considerably since its initial release. Here are eight facts you didn’t know.
1. Grimley was a real village
The film is set in “Grimley” in the mid-1990s, but that name is a thin veil for Grimethorpe, a mining village in South Yorkshire. Grimethorpe had been named the poorest village in the UK in 1994 by the European Union, and the film was largely shot there.
2. The real band played itself
The soundtrack for the film was recorded by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band, conducted by John Anderson. The story roughly reflects that band’s own history, and the plot is based on Grimethorpe’s struggles against pit closures.
3. Filming surprises
The hospital scene, with Pete Postlethwaite in bed, was filmed at Doncaster College, not a hospital. The festival scene in Delph was filmed on Monday 23 October 1995.
4. Orange Juice is a concerto
Gloria Mullins plays the flugelhorn and is allowed to play with the local brass band after playing Concierto de Aranjuez. The characters affectionately know the piece as “Orange Juice.” She has to conceal her real purpose from the miners in the band.
5. The closure was decided years earlier
Andy Barrow argues that the decision to close the pit would have been made years earlier. A later confrontation reveals the decision was made two years prior and would have proceeded regardless of Gloria’s findings. The report was simply a PR exercise to placate the miners and sympathetic members of the public.
6. Coco the scab
Danny’s son Phil is badly in debt and becomes a clown for children’s parties. In debt, he votes for the redundancy money. A debt collector calls him “Coco the scab,” and Phil repeats the name during a mental breakdown while entertaining children at a harvest festival in a church.
7. The word that silenced the pub
When Jim says Andy is old enough to be a scab, the pub falls silent. In a mining community, the word was an extremely serious insult and implied treachery to the working class. Jim withdraws the insult and says Andy is just “stupid.”
8. A legacy that keeps building
It was one of Film Four Distributors’ first major releases and opened on 203 screens in the UK with a gross of £466,058 in its opening weekend, finishing third behind Dragonheart and The Nutty Professor. It went on to gross £2,128,437 in the UK. The BFI ranks it 85th on its list of Top 100 British Films. A 2018 reevaluation concluded, “Like Danny’s speech at the Royal Albert Hall, the film is honest, poignant and powerful. Twenty years on, its message is still all too relevant. And the music is bloody great, by the way.”
Which Brassed Off detail surprised you most? Tell us your favourite fact about the film.
Facts from Wikipedia: Brassed Off, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Film images from TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
