Fantasy football
Jeremy Clarke
To the Apollo Cinema in the West End for the press screening of Green Street, a mainstream US-financed film, directed by former German kick-boxing champion Lexi Alexander, about West Ham’s hooligan gang, the Inter City Firm.
Green Street is the name of the road that runs down the hill from Upton Park underground station to West Ham’s Boleyn Ground. Unsurprisingly, West Ham football club likes to distance itself from the infamous ICF. So before allowing crowd scenes to be shot inside the stadium, assurances were given that ‘Inter City Firm’ would be changed to the rather pathetic ‘Green Street Elite’ or GSE, and, more disingenuously, that the film was going to be called ‘Yank’.
I was half-an-hour late. Not a spare seat to be had in the darkened auditorium, so I perched on an aisle step near the back. One reads books about football hooligans and sees films without expecting much in the way of truth or verisimilitude. But this one made a good honest stab at it. Most of the characters looked like hooligans, for a start. In particular, Geoff Bell, playing the leader of the Millwall, is the most convincing psychopathic English thug I’ve ever seen. The music (including, for example, ‘Stand Your Ground’ by hooligan rappers Acarine) mainlines straight to the mortido drive. And the fight scenes had me bobbing and weaving in my seat. So exacting was Lexi Alexander in the filming of the fight scenes, apparently, that the extras cried off and proper hooligans from the real ICF, the Aberdeen Soccer Casuals and the Portsmouth 657 Crew were brought in.
All right, the film got a bit silly now and again. At one point someone in the back row opined in a loud despairing cockney voice that it had ‘all gone Dick Van f—ing Dyke’. A cultural reference, this, to the famously cod cockney accent and character of the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins. And the owner of this voice ostentatiously walked out, shouting abuse at the screen, when the Millwall firm appeared to come out on top in the climactic fight scene near the end. (It would never happen in real life, apparently.) But in fairness Green Street does capture something of what a fantastic drug going to football was 20 years ago, for which the filmmakers should be congratulated.
Far and away the best thing about the film, however, was the fact that there were no restrictions about drinking in the auditorium. It was miraculous. And the beer was free. Determining to attend more press screenings in future, I fetched beers back from the bar by the trayful. A contingent of old ICF guys in the back rows, as naively incredulous as I was at this extension of personal liberty accorded to film critics, were also taking full advantage.
By the end of the film something like a party atmosphere, including singing, pre vailed at the back. Afterwards, we gathered at the bar to wring out what was left of the bar tab. At the bar were Lexi Alexander, small and foxy; Cass Pennant, the big black man, ex-ICF, now a hooligan chronicler, who made a brief appearance in Green Street, to ironic cheers, as a policeman; myself; and half a dozen ICF boys. West Ham were off to a flying start in the Premiership and everyone except Alexander had that fervent, idiotic look in the eye that Pentecostals have when the spirit moves.
Talk was of Saturday’s win and the approach made to the club by an Iranian businessman serious about investing £200 million in the club. Oh, yes, we said, this was going to be the Hammers’ year which is the same foolish prediction I’ve heard expressed every summer since I was a babe in arms. The chap who walked out was still incensed about Millwall appearing to win the final and deciding battle. He kept putting his face in the director’s face and ranting about it until pulled away and given some urgent counselling. Then his anger would get the better of him and he’d march across and put his face in hers again. It was a disgrace, he told her. She’d let them all down. He’d saved her arse by recruiting ICF people when the extras had cried off and this was how she’d repaid him. By making Millwall win. What she wanted was a good slap — and if she kept looking at him like that she was going to get one. F—ing Krauts.
When the bar tab ran out we went round the corner to a pub in Jermyn Street. Fortunately, one of the ICF persuaded a young lady to submit to a friendly serial gang-bang in a cubicle in the ladies, and this took the heat out of what was turning into a very awkward situation.
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