Pink Floyd – The Wall

Pink Floyd – The Wall is a 1982 live-action/adult animated musical surrealist drama film directed by Alan Parker, based on Pink Floyd's 1979 studio album The Wall. The screenplay was written by Pink Floyd vocalist and bassist Roger Waters, with animation sequences directed by Gerald Scarfe. The Boomtown Rats' lead vocalist Bob Geldof made his film debut as rock star Pink, who, driven to neurosis by the pressures of stardom and traumatic events in his life, constructs an emotional and mental wall to protect himself. However, this coping mechanism eventually backfires, and Pink demands to be set free.

Like its associated album, the film is highly metaphorical, and frequently uses both visual and auditory symbolism throughout. It features little dialogue, instead being driven by the music from the album throughout. The songs used in the film have several differences from their album versions, and two of the songs included, "When the Tigers Broke Free" and "What Shall We Do Now?", do not appear on the album. Despite its turbulent production, the film received generally positive reviews, with praise for its music and animation, and it has an established cult following among Pink Floyd fans.

Plot Pink is a depressed rock star touring the United States. As he is discovered motionless and near-catatonic in his hotel room, the traumatic experiences that have brought him to this state surface, each represented as a "brick" in a psychological wall he has constructed around himself, ultimately isolating him from the world.

In Pink's infancy during World War II, his father is killed defending the Anzio beachhead, leaving him to be raised by his overbearing mother. As a boy he discovers relics of his father's military service and death, including some cartridges. Pink places one on railway tracks inside a tunnel. As a passing train fires the bullet, Pink visualizes the train towing cattle trucks filled with masked figures whose features are blurred and crude. A vision of a hostile schoolteacher then confronts him. As a student, Pink is caught writing poems and publicly humiliated by a teacher who reads one aloud before disciplining him; the teacher's own unhappiness stems from his strained marriage. Pink imagines the oppressive educational system as a nightmarish factory in which masked children are fed into a meat grinder. He fantasizes the children rebelling, burning the school, and throwing the teacher onto a bonfire.

As Pink matures, he recalls his mother's overprotectiveness as well as his troubled marriage set against the rise of his music career. While on tour, he phones home and learns of his wife's infidelity when a man answers. His alienation and rage intensifying, Pink fortifies his wall with materialistic possessions. The bitter and detached Pink brings a groupie to his hotel room, but she is driven away when Pink flies into a violent outburst and destroys the room over his inability to connect with her. Alone and despondent, he reviews the bricks of his wall and finally completes it.

Trapped behind the wall, Pink remains in his room and begins losing his mind to metaphorical "worms". He shaves off all his body hair and watches the war film The Dam Busters (1955), which reminds him of his lost father. In his mind, Pink, as a boy, searches through battle trenches, is frightened away by his traumatised adult self, and flees to a railway station where soldiers unite with their loved ones, but cannot find his father. In reality, Pink's manager finds him unresponsive and has a paramedic inject him with drugs so he can perform. Dragged to a limousine, he hallucinates a fleshy carapace forming over him, which he tears away to reveal a severe militaristic figure.

Pink envisions himself as a fascist orator and his concert as a neo-Nazi rally in London, and his followers attack minority groups in the streets. Eventually reaching a breaking point, Pink rejects the wall that has imprisoned him, and he cowers in a bathroom stall inside the venue as he mentally puts himself on trial. The surreal courtroom is an arena populated by writhing worms and grotesque figures acting as a prosecutor and judge; Pink himself is a passive rag doll charged with "showing feelings of an almost human nature". Distorted versions of his teacher and wife testify against him, and a version of his mother tries to take him home. The judge, represented as a giant walking pair of buttocks, sentences him to "be exposed before [his] peers" and orders the wall torn down. The battered wall explodes into rubble.

While Pink's ultimate fate remains unknown, children in reality clear debris and collect bricks, one of them emptying a Molotov cocktail. Over the credits, the final song shifts perspective to those outside of walls such as Pink's, who exhaust themselves battering their hearts against it.

Cast

Bob Geldof as Pink Kevin McKeon as Young Pink David Bingham as Little Pink Christine Hargreaves as Pink's mother Eleanor David as Pink's wife Alex McAvoy as Teacher Bob Hoskins as Rock manager Michael Ensign as Hotel manager James Laurenson as Pink's father Jenny Wright as American groupie Margery Mason as Teacher's wife Ellis Dale as English doctor James Hazeldine as Lover Ray Mort as Playground father Robert Bridges as American doctor Joanne Whalley, Nell Campbell, Emma Longfellow, and Lorna Barton as Groupies Philip Davis and Gary Olsen as Roadies

Production

Concept In the mid-1970s, as Pink Floyd gained mainstream fame, songwriter Roger Waters began feeling increasingly alienated from his audiences:

Audiences at those vast concerts are there for an excitement which, I think, has to do with the love of success. When a band or a person becomes an idol, it can have to do with the success that that person manifests, not the quality of work he produces. You don't become a fanatic because somebody's work is good, you become a fanatic to be touched vicariously by their glamour and fame. Stars—film stars, rock 'n' roll stars—represent, in myth anyway, the life as we'd all like to live it. They seem at the very centre of life. And that's why audiences still spend large sums of money at concerts where they are a long, long way from the stage, where they are often very uncomfortable, and where the sound is often very bad.

Waters was also dismayed by the "executive approach", which was only about success, not even attempting to get acquainted with the actual persons of whom the band was composed (addressed in an earlier song from Wish You Were Here, "Have a Cigar"). The concept of the wall, along with the decision to name the lead character "Pink", partly grew out of that approach, combined with the issue of the growing alienation between the band and their fans. This symbolised a new era for rock bands, as Pink Floyd explored "the hard realities of 'being where we are'", echoing ideas of alienation described by existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre.

Development

Even before the original Pink Floyd album was recorded, the intention was to make a film from it. The original plan was for the film to be live footage from the album's tour, together with animations directed by Gerald Scarfe and extra scenes, and for Waters himself to star. EMI did not intend to make the film, as they did not understand the concept.

Director Alan Parker, a Pink Floyd fan, asked EMI whether The Wall could be adapted to film. EMI suggested that Parker talk to Waters, who had asked Parker to direct the film. Parker instead suggested that he produce it and give the directing task to Gerald Scarfe and Michael Seresin, a cinematographer. Waters began work on the film's screenplay after studying scriptwriting books. He and Scarfe produced a special-edition book containing the screenplay and art to pitch the project to investors. While the book depicted Waters in the role of Pink, after screen tests, he was removed from the starring role and replaced with new wave musician and frontman of the Boomtown Rats, Bob Geldof. In Behind the Wall, both Waters and Geldof later admitted to a story during casting where Geldof and his manager took a taxi to an airport, and Geldof's manager pitched the role to the singer, who continued to reject the offer and express his contempt for the project throughout the journey, unaware that the taxi driver was Waters' brother, who told Waters about Geldof's opinion.

Since Waters was no longer in the starring role, it no longer made sense for the feature to include Pink Floyd footage, so the live film aspect was dropped. The footage culled from the five Wall concerts at Earl's Court from 13–17 June 1981 that were held specifically for filming was deemed unusable also for technical reasons as the fast lenses needed for the low light levels turned out to have insufficient resolution for the movie screen. Complex parts such as "Hey You" still had not been properly shot by the end of the live shows.Pink Floyd's The Wall, page 83 Parker convinced Waters and Scarfe that the concert footage was too theatrical and that it would jar with the animation and stage live action. After the concert footage was dropped, Seresin left the project and Parker became sole director.Pink Floyd's The Wall, page 105

Finance came in part from a British bank.

Filming

Parker, Waters and Scarfe frequently clashed during production, and Parker described the filming as "one of the most miserable experiences of my creative life."Pink Floyd's The Wall, page 118 Scarfe declared that he would drive to Pinewood Studios carrying a bottle of Jack Daniel's, because "I had to have a slug before I went in the morning, because I knew what was coming up, and I knew I had to fortify myself in some way." Waters said that filming was "a very unnerving and unpleasant experience".

During production, while filming the destruction of a hotel room, Geldof suffered a cut to his hand as he pulled away the Venetian blinds. The footage remains in the film. It was discovered while filming the pool scenes that Geldof did not know how to swim. Interiors were shot at Pinewood Studios, and it was suggested that they suspend Geldof in Christopher Reeve's clear cast used for the Superman flying sequences, but his frame was too small by comparison; it was then decided to make a smaller rig that was a more acceptable fit, and he lay on his back. In Nicholas Schaffner's book Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey (1991) it is claimed that the body cast from the film Supergirl (1984) was actually used instead.

The war scenes were shot on Saunton Sands in North Devon, which was also featured on the cover of Pink Floyd's A Momentary Lapse of Reason six years later.Storm Thorgerson and Peter Curzon. Mind Over Matter: The Images of Pink Floyd. page 102. .

Release The film was shown out of competition during the 1982 Cannes Film Festival.

The film's official premiere was at the Empire, Leicester Square in London, on 14 July 1982. It was attended by Waters and fellow Pink Floyd members David Gilmour and Nick Mason, but not Richard Wright, who was no longer a member of the band. It was also attended by various celebrities including Geldof, Scarfe, Paula Yates, Pete Townshend, Sting, Roger Taylor, James Hunt, Lulu, and Andy Summers.

Box office The Wall opened with a limited release in the United Kingdom on 6 August 1982, followed by the United States on 13 August. It entered at No. 28 of the US box office charts, despite only playing in one theatre on its first weekend, grossing over $68,000, a rare feat even by modern standards. The film then spent just over a month below the top 20 while still in the top 30. The film later expanded to over 600 theatres on 10 September, achieving No. 3 at the box office charts, below E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and An Officer and a Gentleman. The film eventually earned $22 million before closing in early 1983.

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