North Sider helped shape 'Control'

Look-alike and sound-alike Riley plays Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division who committed suicide just as the British band was preparing for its first U.S. tour in 1980.

Suffering from increasingly severe epileptic seizures, drained by the toll of performing and torn between two women, he killed himself in what may have been a tragic act of impetuosity at age 23.

"Control" had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May and arrives today in Pittsburgh as its release widens. It picked up various awards at festivals in Cannes, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Melbourne and Chicago.

"It was astonishing," Eckert, a Mexican War Streets resident, said of Cannes. "The audience was crying at the end and there was just this sort of explosion of applause. And Sam really was the toast of Cannes, which was fantastic."

Eckert credits casting director Shaheen Baig with bringing Riley to the filmmakers' attention. Riley, front man and songwriter for a band called 10,000 Things, had returned for a second audition when he caught and held Eckert's eye.

"Sam was standing in this overcoat, smoking a cigarette and, immediately, he looked shockingly like the part. During the audition, it was just quite clear that he was perfect for it," and even Ian Curtis' sister thought a photograph of Riley could have been her brother.

Although the moviemakers had negotiated for the rights to use Joy Division masters, Riley and his fellow actors performed most of the songs.

"The guys in the band got together and they really wanted to take a crack at it, and they did and I think that benefited the film. It gives it a certain urgency and realism, it's almost otherworldly," as when they played for the extras.

Asked about Curtis' legacy and influence, Eckert says, "I think that what he displayed through his obviously limited body of work was an intensity and an honesty that most people are never able to achieve in anything they do."

While fueled from the ashes of punk, Joy Division's music had more truth and depth to it.

"If you talk to Bono from U2, Ian was one of the reasons he wanted to be in a band. Even if you look at Anton [Corbijn], the reason he moved from Holland to England, the Joy Division's music moved him so much that he just wanted the chance to photograph him."

Corbijn did document the band, taking an iconic photograph in a tube station. Nearly three decades later, he became part of an improbable team telling the story of Curtis as the director of "Control."

Although a successful and celebrated photographer and music video director, Corbijn had never made a feature film. Neither had cinematographer Martin Ruhe, nor writer Matt Greenhalgh. It had been Corbijn's idea to make the movie in black and white.

"In many ways, I was disinclined toward it, because as a producer, I really thought it would limit our audience and it may very well," but it ended up looking like "Bergman with a better soundtrack" and wound up not only beautiful but evocative of 1970s Manchester, England.

The movie is based on the book "Touching From a Distance" by Deborah Curtis, Ian's wife and mother of their daughter.

Eckert, a former teenage music critic and longtime friend of fellow producer Orian Williams, once worked exclusively in the financial side of the film industry.

"He and I had always said we would do something together, and I always said that I didn't want to actually produce anything until it was something that I was really passionate about," Eckert recalled. Turning "Touching From a Distance" into a movie was exactly what he was talking about.

"It took eight months to get the rights to the book, so it was not a short process." Plus, the filmmakers told Debbie Curtis they would need to include events and emotions she wasn't privy to, with the band and the other woman, a Belgian named Annik Honore.

"He was definitely torn between the two," Eckert said of the women. "If you meet Annik, I'd say there's just not an ounce of her personality that you would describe as 'home wrecker.' "

When Honore sat down with Eckert and screenwriter Greenhalgh in Belgium, it had been decades since she had talked to anyone about Curtis. "She was still very emotional about it," crying three times in the course of an hour.

In fact, she shared some letters from the performer that gave no indication he was considering suicide, including some plans he mapped out for his time off during the U.S. tour.

The movie conveys how impulsive Curtis could be, proposing to Debbie at age 17 and marrying her at 19.

"I think that his suicide was equally impetuous," Eckert says. "I think if he had survived, I think he would have continued making amazing art, but I think it may not have stuck with music because his creation of music took so very much out of him, and that was exacerbated by the epilepsy. ... I think he would have created a body of work that would have astonished everyone."

Post-Gazette movie editor Barbara Vancheri can be reached at bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632.

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