1. The document tells the story of Stanley, a football player in early 20th century Britain, and how his life intersects with Olivia, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. 2. Stanley rises to fame and success in football but becomes increasingly interested in politics and charitable causes, bringing him closer to Olivia. They fall in love and get married in Berlin in 1936. 3. The story then follows both Stanley and Olivia through the rise of communism in Germany, World War 2, and the building of the Berlin Wall, and how their political views and relationship evolve through these tumultuous times in history.

1. KICK.
The top middle and bottom of it.
and so,
unable to paint the paint,
they painted it,
paintless.
THE TOP
STAN AND OLLIE. 1914/2000
The owner of the estate on which STANLEY’S family live and are employed, have a
daughter, OLIVIA . Both their lives as well as the societies they stem from within
the same Britain, but divided by their respective class sub-divisions, reflect the age
they are both born into. On the same day, new years day, in the year 1900.
The first world war and beyond are indeed illuminating tines particularly for
STANLEY, through professional football , under the tutelage and guidance of his
coach and mentor DR. ROBERT, the father he never had, provided Guidance both on
and off the field, continuing throughout STANLEY’S playing days and his own
career as an internationally renowned, though controversial coach.
The facts of his life and professional achievements are shown as newsreel of the day.
For example his club are runners up in Division One. They become the first team in
history to lift the title consecutively in 1924/25/26. These facts are shown as if in a
Pathe Pictorial/ newsreel style of the period along with interviews and news of DR
ROBERTS marriage, as well as STANS commitment to politically loaded charity
work for the Dispossessed as well as his dalliance with starlets of the day. Naturally
before the term Champaign Socialism had been coined the Press had a field day. This
delights STANLEY, as it raises the profile of the cause which is rapidly challenging
football in his list of priorities.
This fascinating life takes him and us through times 0f great historical and political
significance toward the murmurings of discontent and conflict leading to the war only
twenty years after the war they called ‘the war to end all wars.
One summer, during a European tour he jumps at the chance to escape the
commercial constraints of the coaching duties of his club, he is offered like DR.
ROBERTS earlier on, a job coaching in Spain for their upcoming participation in the
38th Olympics, in Berlin, in '36. By that time, however, the civil war is tearing that
country apart, at the same time setting STANLEYS mind that through sport his
involvement in politics could have a deeper significance.
In Germany his path crosses with OLIVIA at a society wedding in Berlin. A meeting
which will ultimately change the course of both their lives.
Dividing her time between Berlin and Moscow she is that curious mixture,
fashionable at that time of Aristocrat & Communist that STANLEY finds utterly
irresistible.

2. At this point in the picture we will see events around Europe and Britain as seen from
a Communist perspective as period newsreel culminating at the Olympic games in
Berlin in 1936, on his birthday. He marries OLIVIA, who is pregnant.
He leaves football and Spain to bring up the twins in Berlin. He is still politically
active but not in the same league as OLIVIA who unbeknown to either of them is
being monitored for un-German activities. On the eve of the outbreak of WW2,
Largely unaware of her covert espionage involving Cambridge and Moscow he
imagines attention on them is due to his brushes with authority, discovering their
attention is focused on her he is devastated and feels betrayed. As an interfering
aggressive Englishman STAN like DR ROBERTS last time around, despite his
exalted status, he is interned for the duration of the war.
Like the game itself this is really a tale of two halves. In every sense. The light
hearted attitude of his life so far is replaced post internment with a crusading spirit
previously only hinted at. He now feels his time has arrived.
Deliriously happy at the prospect of the annexation of Berlin by the USSR he happily
accepts his old job of head coach at the State run F.C. Bertha in East Berlin, in the
newly established D.D.R. as he enters his and the Century’s mid term with great hope
for the future.
The ‘Beautiful game’ and the game of life, politics, are vividly shown to be as one.
Still carrying the baton, STAN is England’s representative in the sexual Olympics,
though by now treading a little more sensitively since the largely ignored enormous
crimes against humanity since the fall of Berlin perpetrated mainly by the Russian
soldiers regarded by them as soils of war against the female population of Berlin.
What begins as a dalliance with the wife of a hated party boss, previously a top city
official under the ‘previous administration’, becomes something much more.
From this point at this the main story in the picture becomes intermeshed with the
following two stories over the page. The MIDDLE and the BOTTOM.
When we return to the main story the mood has changed as it chronicles a creeping
disillusion with the gradual slide toward the totalitarianism previously unknown in
East Germany. Reaching its zenith with the erection of the Berlin wall one weekend
in 1961 which STANLEY acknowledges is the final insult to the people he has spent
ten years trying to convince that the pursuit of individual excellence for the collective
good is as rewarding as financial gain suddenly makes him feel cheated.
For the first time in his life he feels useless. But life hasn’t finished with him yet. She
still has some tricks up her sleeve taking him as she does back to the place of his
origin rekindling the passion he thought had deserted him forever. though not before a
few more surprise’s.
THE MIDDLE
THE MUSIC LESSON 1961
A music student STANLEY is an ambitious scholarship grammar school job has
several first division clubs competing for his signature. He looks for guidance from
his music tutor and mentor DR ROBERT who has a decision of his own to make as
his marriage to FRIEDA is floundering. This situation is given more urgency as their
children’s nanny OLIVIA has given him an ultimatum. Leave his wife or she will end

3. their affair. Meanwhile FRIEDA bored with her husbands misplaced socialist ideals
finds his students youthful promise an ideal replacement for her own fading youth.
Though the males mutual passion for Football and Musical Theatre continues to bond
them, playing dead peoples music is no match for the northern based kitchen sink
drama beckoning STANLEY since his film debut in a drama/doc. made at his
hometown Football club where FRIEDA through her Amateur Dramatic Society took
the opportunity to divert STANLEYS attention from OLIVIA whom she knows no
longer has any interest in STANLEY leaving the way clear for her escape the open
coffin her marriage has become.
THE BOTTOM
A RED RAG TO A BULLDOG. 2005.
DR. ROBERTS the labour prime minister, his daughter OLIVIA a champagne
socialist, and STANLEY her radical ultra left boyfriend and STANS political mentor
but outgoing lover FRIEDA. Academically brilliant STANLEY was until recently
addicted to violence till he realized would be more productive and less un-cool if it
was more specifically directed. The Anti-Global, Anti-Capitalist demo’s at G7
meetings show him the way forward. Though paradoxically he is less confident about
his life’s purpose now than he ever has been. Little likelihood of that ever happening
to his twin brother OLIVER a mega successful Footballer in the unreal financial
circus called the Premier league. A simple soul for whom life is simple. Take it while
you got it. Enjoy it while you can it could all disappear tomorrow. Similarly there is
even less likelihood of that happening in OLIVIA'S life. Guilty about her privilege
she is learning to live with it. STANLEYS mixture of anarchy and Marxism confuse
but excite her. Law and order are high on her fathers list of election promises while to
STANLEY they represent everything the Conservative Government’s he has grown
up with have used, to repress the people this allegedly Socialist Government have
finally been successful in overthrowing. Her father is intuitively distrustful of all his
daughters boyfriends but especially this one. STANLEY despises him and all the
other phoney Socialist actors like him.
The Movement and the Method and the Means.
We move from segment to segment by splitting the screen. Some minutes before the
current story moves to the next, we have already seen its progress silently, but
simultaneously with the current segment, till the dialogue of the new replaces the
dialogue of the previous, shortly before it moves over the whole screen.
The main four parts in each of the three segments will be played by the same Actors.
The idea of a trilogy, a trinity. three sides of the same coin. Before, during and after
Socialism in this country. Paralleled with football, from passionate amateur through
crude professional with its maximum wage to big International business. The game
devised on the playing fields of Eton college but refined by the common working man
of Britain for the working man but embraced by the whole world. Socialism may or
may not have met its natural demise but Football has certainly replaced it as a unifier
of different cultures. We see how the Proletariat’s lot has been developed. How
alleged social mobility far from eradicating the divisions have only increased
resentment now the division’s have been laid bare, through the increased technology
of mass communication, for all to see.
kevancurrie. January 2004 ©thirteenpictures.co.uk