United We Fall

An interview with Gary Sinyor, the creator of improvised comedy United We Fall - a film showing five former Manchester United players telling of how they missed out on the biggest prize in football in 2010.

Hi Gary. When did you first have the idea for the film?

Some of my friends made the film The Class of 92 - the story of David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, the Neville brothers and Nicky Butt and how they achieved the amazing pinnacle of winning the treble. I was working with the filmmakers in their offices when they were making the film, and one day it just struck me that someone should make a film called IQ of 92. There is always another side to everybody's story.

In the Premier League we've had racist incidents, we've never had a gay player come out, and there certainly seems to be a degree of greed. There's a lot of stuff to do with branding, image rights, Joe Hart on my shampoo... so in addition to being talented, I had a question about whether these players really are role models.

It also makes sense because I'm a Manchester City supporter, and MUFC fans have been traditionally, let's say, ever so slightly arrogant!

How did the casting of the five leads take place?

In October 2013 I'd had a read-through of a biblical comedy I'm making called Notmoses. Jonathan Broke was the narrator and also played a hilarious German in Pharoah's court. Jim Rastall has four lines I think, and got a laugh with all of them. So I kept in touch.

Jonathan immediately cottoned on to the idea of playing an obsessive German goalkeeper and Jim was very keen to play a psychotic practical joker from the north-east.

They came up with the suggestion of Jack Donnelly for the part of the good-looking image-obsessed and brand-obsessed striker. They also introduced me to Matthew Avery because he's hilarious, and I was very keen to have a black actor as one of the five leads. The four of us met at my house and started to refine their characters. It became clear that Matt would be brilliant playing a Ghanaian striker who was also keen on rap music. From this came the idea that he would write his own World Cup song called Jump for Ghana.

The search for an out and out Mancunian was proving more difficult and it was only two weeks before shooting was set to take place that I was introduced to Ryan Pope. Ryan lives in Manchester, breathes Manchester... it wasn't easy to pitch a film with no script to him over the phone! But I persuaded him to come to London. It was only a few days later that he too was sitting in my dining room and we had the full main cast, talking in character about losing the treble in 2010.

We developed quite intricate backstories for each of the characters - and the guys did a great job bringing all that to life in the shoot, but I'd have ended up with a 2 and half hour film! I've had to leave a lot of hilarious stuff out of the final edit.

How did the story come about?

From the start, I had planned certain elements of the story. Firstly that they would have the chance to win the treble and that they would lose spectacularly in all three cups. It was always clear to me that there would be a gay footballer who would come out during the course of the film. I'd also been very keen to have a player who converted to Islam before an important game. And obviously the reactions to these characterisations became part of the story too. And then there were details or moments that I knew I needed in the film, for example Olly Hunter showing off his baby, and certain players cheating on their wives or girlfriends.

Once we knew that Jonathan was going to be German it made sense for Bayern Munich to be the team that United played against in the Champions League Final.

What was it like filming the project in an improvised manner?

What was important before the shoot was that the stories of each of the characters, and what they went through during those three games in May 2010, was set in stone. Clearly everyone needed to know that they were involved in the same games and the same incidents. However when it came to the shoot and I basically interviewed each of the actors in character, they had free rein to improvise and come up with answers to my questions off the top of their heads, and equally I had free rein to keep questioning them.

I think it helped that most of the actors sat in on the interviews that took place with the others, as the stories became even more shaped in their minds as a result. Although, at other times, it didn't help because there was too much giggling going on. In fact, in all the interviews I was caught short and ended up ruining some perfectly brilliant improvisation by crying with laughter in the middle of a take.

The final day of the main shoot was the lunch that took place with the partners of our five main characters. Although I'd obviously had the chance to work with the partners briefly and establish their backstory, the improvised nature of the lunch was something I have never attempted before. We basically had two cameras running at the same time covering different sides of the table with some instruction from me as to which characters would likely be focused on in any 10 minutes section of filming. Each character was allowed to ask one question of any other character sitting around the table and none of the other characters were allowed to know in advance if they'd be asked a question, who would ask it, or what the question would be. So it wasn't just the actors who were improvising but the crew as well.

Obviously, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to happen by virtue of certain secrets that have been kept specifically for this lunch, and so laid out who was sitting where accordingly. I have to give full credit to all of the actors seated around the table who stayed in character throughout the whole improvised filming and managed to create not just humour but also genuinely powerful drama out of the situation.

I had always been keen to incorporate the other characters who appear in the film particularly Robert Portal as the Prime Minister and Dana Haqjoo as a corrupt FIFA ambassador living on a boat in the Mediterranean. I have had the good fortune to work with both of them before and knew exactly what they would bring to the film. I'd worked with Anouska Mond too and she was my first choice of the PR girl. Being Mancunian, she had her own stories about hanging around with the actual MUFC pros at nightclubs etc when she was younger. As Eric Idle would say, 'say no more!'

It had always been my intent to make a film that would be compared to the great improvised films such as This Is Spinal Tap and hopefully we have pulled that off.