“The Damn United”
Now playing in theaters throughout America is a story about a British “soccer” coach, but while the backdrop of the mid-seventies football scene in England may be largely unfamiliar to the American audience, this is really a universal look at ego, ambition, power and personality.
Michael Sheen (“The Queen”, “Frost/Nixon”) stars as Brian Clough and his meteoric rise (and fall) up the British soccer ranks as a club manager rising from lowly Derby County in the late sixties to a brief and humiliating failure at the top at Leeds United in 1974.
While the film, at its best, scores in presenting Clough’s relationships with his trusty lieutenant Peter Taylor (Timothy Spall) and the previous Leeds manager Don Revie (Colin Meaney), the filmmakers attempt it with an atypical act structure.
I personally feel the picture would’ve been better served by completing the story after his fall from Leeds, after which he found more success with another team, but which the filmmakers chose to present with actual clips over closing credits, as the third act. “The Damn United” is an engaging story about personality distortion when heeding the siren song of fame and success and that makes this a more traditional rise-fall-rise picture.
In any event, “The Damn United” is a penetrating character study using fictionalized events adapted from a popular novel about ambition, betrayal and moral blindness.
The SandC Interview: Michael Sheen, actor starring as Brian Clough in “The Damn United”
Michael Sheen as the Flamboyant Football Manager Brian Clough
How did the project come about for you and what was it about the story and the character that drew you in?
I was actually doing “Frost/Nixon” on stage in London and Steven Frears who directed the film, “The Queen” visited me afterward and said’ ‘I’m reading a book at the moment and I found your next character. It is called “The Damn United” and it is Brian Clough.’
I knew instantly I would that would be my next project. I knew Brian from growing up as this hugely popular figure in Britain. He transcended the world of sport and became a superstar.
Always a riveting personality when he appeared on tv, he was an outrageous and scandalous persona. I knew he was a great character.
So I read the book. An amazing read and a fantastic story because while I knew about his great achievements taking his team from bottom to the top then winning the Euro Cup two successive years, but I didn’t know about the 44 days at Leeds.
So for a man of achievement I didn’t know about the time when he was an abject failure. That is what drew me in. It was a great story. A great character and a terrific writer in Peter Morgan adapting it who I had worked with in “The Queen” as well as “Frost/Nixon”.
You read the book, what else went into your preparation for this role?
The process was absorbing all the books and materials written about him…and there was a lot. There was also thankfully, a ton of video footage to study from. People always loved filming him because he gave great value for their time. So I watched and read a mass quantity of material as well as talking to people close to him. Brian was such an entertaining guy that the 3-4 month research process was simply a pleasure to do.
The film’s tagline is pretty poignant- “They Love Me for What I’m Not, They Hate Me for What I Am” – it is a story of personality and power isn’t it?
It is. In Britain we have a very complicated relationship to fame and ambition. In America ambition doesn’t seem to be a dirty word, but in England we have a very ambivalent relationship to it. On the one hand, Brits loved Clough for his outspokenness and the fact he came from nothing and succeeded in a sort of uncompromising way. And Brian was saying and doing things in a way we would have loved to be saying and doing. But on the other hand, because we’re British we sort of want him punished as well for it. This story is sort of a Greek thing – it is about hubris about a man who sort of defies the Gods then has to be brought to his knees again. There is something peculiarly satisfying for a British audience about it.
What do you hope audiences come away with in assessing Brian Clough through your performance?
I hope they see him for the kind of complex man that he was. That he was full of contradictory things. On the one hand he could be full of joy and passion, but also very angry and frightening. That he was unpredictable and spontaneous. He was also a breath of fresh air in sports. When you hear so many in the media not trying to step on any toes and say the “politically” correct thing, Brian just came in like a bull in a china shop.
Clough was a riveting combination of intelligence, humor and outrageousness. But he was a man of achievement who records will be unsurpassable. He had a purity of vision at a time when one could take a team from the bottom to the top. Brian had a romantic notion of the sport, that is was a beautiful game and that one had to have discipline and respect for it playing with a certain flair and skill that would achieve results.
Brian was a kind of visionary I suppose and I hope audiences will come away with a feeling of affection for him.
