@Icheckmymaileveryday
A few points, applying to your comments and your judgements on the film.
Yes, we are an Island, we're also on direct trading routes from Afghanistan and Pakistan and only an hour or so from Amsterdam. Eastern Europe is also producing a large percentage of stimulants arriving into the uk (amphetamines, MDMA etc)
Lets compare this to the USA which is also, for all intents and purposes, an island, since it has to ship almost all of its heroin, cocaine and hashish from overseas (pakistan, afghanistan, columbia, peru etc), and a little thing that happened on 9/11 which made getting anything into that country about 100% harder, with security up the ass.
I've visited a couple of times, and everything except the weed *beep* sucked. New York has bad coke, everyone in LA just seems to have prescription drugs, even the heroin sucks unless you're buying large amounts, which you have to just to get something that hasn't been stepped on a few hundred times.
Anyway, this film is an extremely accurate description of modern day life in Britain, especially during the time it was set (people forget it came out in 99', so it would have been around the time of Ibiza getting big, the whole Madchester scene, *beep* Happy Mondays etc), and MDMA in particular was *beep* huge back then, it still is now, but nowhere near to the same extent
AND it's not a comment about the British people, or drugs, or chavs, it's simply showing the fatalistic conclusion that we, as a people, have met after having considered where our true place in the system is.
Anyhow, as you mention the "dialog(ue) could be hard for British to understand or relate to.."
Enjoy:
"American version
The version of the film released in the United States was heavily edited to remove certain British cultural references and terminology that it was presumably felt Stateside audiences would be unable to identify with or understand. These are mostly in the form of re-dubbed dialogue, such as Jip saying that he and Lulu "recently became dropping partners" being changed to "clubbing partners"; Nina's speech to the journalists in which she says she is looking forward to getting into some "hardcore Richard & Judy" becoming "hardcore Jerry Springer"; and Jip's allusion to Only Fools and Horses with "he who dares, Rodders," being rendered as "he who dares wins".
Other material was simply cut, including Lulu dumping her boyfriend; most of Koop's conversation with his father in the psychiatric hospital; and the 1991 "Summer of Love" flashback sequence - complete with glow sticks, dummies, whistles, dust masks, etc - possibly because America's "old school rave" period happened at a later date. As a result of various cuts, the US version runs to 84m 14s, compared to the original 99m 21s, losing just over 15 minutes of footage, in addition to the numerous re-dubs."
Oh and, last thing, Trainspotting was not so far from the mark? Because it shows drugs as being basically, mindless and self-destructive?.. Well let me tell you.
People do drugs for a reason, and it's not because they're all stupid, or have nothing better to do, or they're depressed. It's because the mind can be opened in a thousand different ways, and people are naturally curious creatures.
..and it's harder to get drugs in Scotland than it is down south, and if you knew any basic georgraphy (which you obviously don't), Bristol is a seaside town, and drugs are typically easier to come by in seaside towns than further inland due to the proximity of our Island to so many drug-producing European countries.
reply
share