David Beckham and the golden generation of 1992 Man Utd squad reunited on ...
The director Gabe Turner, one of the two brothers who made 'Class of 92', has a revealing story about Paul Scholes' debut in the movie business.
The feature-length documentary is about the great Manchester United generation of Scholes, Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and the Neville brothers (pictured) and is released next month.
When Gabe and his brother Ben sat down to interview Scholes, recently retired for the second time and third on the club's all-time appearances list, the man himself had one major question.
Gabe takes up the story: "Paul said, 'Is this a movie then?'. And we said, 'Yes'. 'Not television?' Paul said. 'No, Paul'. You could see him thinking. He said, 'Does that mean there'll be a premiere?'. We were like, 'Yes, probably there'll be a premiere'. He said, 'Would I have to come to that?'. We said, 'I'm sure we'd want you to come to that. Would you like to?'. 'No,' he said. 'Not massively'."
But it would be wrong to say that the Turner brothers, who made the excellent Laurie Cunningham documentary 'First Among Equals' for ITV, found their subjects an awkward bunch.
On the contrary, the five former United players - and one current - came to them with the idea for the film and embraced the process from start to finish. To the extent that one imagines they will be coercing Scholes up the red carpet come December 1.
The film, made by the Turners for Universal, starts in 1992, when five of the group won the FA Youth Cup together (including Giggs, already a first-team player by then) and culminates seven years later with the Champions League triumph of 1999 that completed the famous treble.
The project was, Gabe says, "the brainchild" of Gary Neville. He in turn was introduced to the Turner brothers by a mutual acquaintance, Dave Gardner, who is a friend of the players.
It was shot during the summer, with all six of the key protagonists together in one place for just one day - necessitating a lot of hard work and, as Gabe says, "making a movie on a TV shooting schedule".
There are contributions from others in the 1992 FA Youth Cup-winning team, including Robbie Savage, and others who did not go on to have pro careers in football like George Switzer, Andy Noone and Raphael Burke, originally regarded as the most talented of the lot.
Ben Thornley was unable to make the date and Northern Ireland's Keith Gillespie just could not be tracked down at the time, according to the director.
But essentially this is a story about the six who did make it. When they brought them all together at the Cliff, United's former first-team training ground in Salford, the Turners were struck by just how much they still love to play football.
"Give them a ball and they are happy," Ben says. "I don't think they have lost any of that enjoyment from when they were kids playing together."
Central to the project was the social context to the story, an element that is critical to the Turner brothers' work. As with the Cunningham documentary, and its examination of attitudes towards race in Britain in the 1970s and '80s, in making 'Class of 92' they wanted to encompass the mood of '90s Britain.
The six talking heads in the documentary were chosen carefully. From a football perspective they have Zinedine Zidane and Eric Cantona. Eric Harrison, the coach of the 1992 youth team, is another.
Mani Mounfield from The Stone Roses and film director Danny Boyle provide a take on popular culture and Tony Blair, who was first elected British prime minister in the month the new United generation won their second Premier League title together (1997).
There is, however, no contribution to the documentary from Alex Ferguson. "To be honest, we didn't really think about it too much," Gabe says. "It was all about Fergie when we landed the film (with his retirement at the end of last season). It was nice just to have the boys tell their story. He is such a voice that he would potentially dominate it."
From the outside, one of the key problems would surely be telling a story that is so well entrenched in public consciousness in a way that is different.
After all, four of the six have released autobiographies in the last 10 years. Yet the Turners are confident "there is stuff in there that people haven't heard before".
"You get a different aspect from seeing them together," Ben says. "Our worry going into it was that they had such a lot of media training to say nothing in interviews and be really cagey. What was amazing was that they were very, very open and trusting.
"You get a totally different personality from them. I have never seen them in this way before. That's really fresh."
Gabe adds: "We have built it around the 'moments', as with the best sports documentaries in America. It culminates with the 1999 Champions League final. Watching that through their eyes, with them talking you through it, is proper hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck territory.
"You get a really warm sense that these are six ordinary dudes who achieved something incredible but haven't lost that humility. They are just good blokes. When we show the movie to people they say, 'Oh, I remember that'. It is something about the way these guys arrived in the public eye which is really evocative of anyone who grew up in that period."
Strictly speaking, Phil Neville, born in 1977, was not part of the 1992 generation, although he played in the 1993 team that lost the FA Youth Cup final to Leeds United and broke into the Manchester United first team around the same time as the others. And clearly, in terms of global fame, none of them get close to Beckham.
"David Beckham was probably the easiest to deal with," Gabe says. "The man is a complete legend. One of our runners came up on the night of the shoot with a smile on his face. I asked him what had happened. He said he was working away behind the scenes and when we had finished shooting Beckham walked up to him and said, 'Do you want me to get you a beer?'
"Sometimes in our world people don't talk to the runners or there is a bit of a hierarchy but he was absolutely lovely with people. It sounds gushing but they were such good blokes to hang out with."
The film, they believe, will show the six as they have never been seen before - especially Butt, now U-19s coach at United.
"Working with them you see that Nicky was to some degree their Bryan Robson," Gabe says, "their leader."
It was talking to Butt about the medals he had won that brought home their success.
"Nicky was saying, 'I've won three FA Cups. Or is it four?'" Ben says. "And we were thinking, 'We support a club (Sunderland) that last won something in 1973!'. They were instrumental in making the Premier League what it is."
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