‘Being in Madness kept some of them out of jail’: how the baggy-trousered nutty boys made a guerrilla cinema classic — SkimNews
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- Dave Robinson, founder of Stiff Records, directed and co-financed Madness's 1981 film Take It or Leave It, securing £20,000 contributions from each of the seven band members and manager to cover the budget
- Take It or Leave It initially played only one Camden cinema before fading from view, but a new 4K restoration is repositioning it as a time-capsule of late-70s London and an unusually honest film about getting a band together
- Robinson pursued deliberate kitchen-sink realism, shooting at real locations including The Dublin Castle, Mike Barson's childhood home in Crouch End and the shabby rehearsal rooms where the group first formed, and screening Kes, Bronco Bullfrog and Raging Bull as tonal reference points
- Mike Barson was sentenced to three weeks at Wormwood Scrubs for smashing lightbulbs with a friend, while bandmates recall Lee Thompson's father serving multiple prison stints and the pal who got him his saxophone being later stabbed to death
- On a DVD commentary track, Robinson said "being in Madness kept some of these lads out of jail," with frontman Suggs describing the band as "the artistic side of that coin" compared with friends who went fully criminal
- The shoot stretched from a planned week to somewhere between a fortnight and a month after Robinson paid off a 50-strong union crew on day one and reverted to guerrilla methods, filming tracking shots from a cameraman in a trolley
Why it matters: The 4K restoration gives a film that never received proper distribution a second life, reframing Madness from a nutty pop novelty into chroniclers of late-70s working-class London. Its most striking revelation is the candid depiction of how the band functioned as an exit ramp from petty criminality, with members recalling prison sentences, murdered friends and social services scrutiny.
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