Stop sniggering at the front there, and get your minds out of the gutter, I’m not talking about that. I am talking about the film called “Snatch”, and a long time obsession with it.
For a start it isn’t my favourite film, it would be in my top ten I suppose, but wouldn’t be in my top five. You really don’t want to know what’s there. Such a collection of random (and mainly critically savaged) films you are less likely to see.
I had seen Guy Richie’s previous comedy / crime classic “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” when it came out. It got a lot of airplay on video (remember them?) and was quite quotable. I even saw the TV stories “Lock, Stock and…”, which weren’t bad (and certainly not as shocking as the recent “Snatch” TV series inflicted on us by Ron Weasley.) But for some reason I’d totally missed “Snatch” when it was released, and it was two years before I first saw it.
“Snatch” is funny and very entertaining; but it is violent, sweary, and definitely not PC, and followed on from “Lock Stock” in keeping with the London underworld theme. It just expanded to bring in a more global set of players. Guy Richie had kept Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Alan Ford and Vinnie Jones from “Lock Stock”, but added Hollywood clout with Brad Pitt as the pikey bare knuckle boxing champion, Dennis Farina and Benicio Del Toro as American gangsters, and Rade Sherbdgia as ex KGB and the almost impossible to kill “sneaky effing Russian”. It plays on some well-established stereotypes that it gets away with due to the pacing not allowing the watcher to pause long enough for it to sink in. You got all that years later with his absolute stinker “Revolver”.
By the time I got to see “Snatch”, my life had changed beyond recognition and I’d found myself washed up in Manchester, leading a faux student lifestyle in and around Fallowfield. It was the Christmas and New Year period of 2001-02 when I was introduced to the film by Mike. It is probably something he regrets doing as further commentary will show. From then on I would watch it at every opportunity. A lot of which were at 3am on stumbling back from a club. There were a lot of times that I woke on the sofa in the morning light with Klint’s “Diamond” playing on loop from the DVD’s main menu.
The obsession came from the fact that it is so eminently quotable. Eighteen years on, there is barely a day where I don’t slip a quote from “Snatch” into a conversation. Watching a film so many times during my Manchester years when I spent most of my time in an alcoholic haze seems to have embedded the script into my mind. I rarely break the DVD out to watch it now, but if there happens to be a live showing on any channel, then it is highly likely that I will dip in and watch it. The only thing I can’t promise is to keep my mouth shut during it.
By the summer of 2002, Mike had moved into the shared house I was in, bringing with him his PlayStation 2 and the DVD, and therefore a way to watch the film at home. This led to an increase in screenings. By the time he had broken his leg and was bed-bound in the room next to the living room, Mark had also moved in.
He got tired of us stumbling home and putting “Snatch” on, so he hid the DVD, putting it in the case of one of the other DVD cases. This didn’t deter me. I went out and bought my own copy (well I actually bought two, just in case the first went missing). The next day whilst we were out, Mike hobbled through to the living room and removed his PlayStation 2. I went to Argos and bought a DVD player the same day.
When I started writing my first e-zine – Surerandomality – I littered it with quotes from “Snatch” and kept a running total. By the end of issue eighty when I stopped writing it; the running total was over two thousand.
By then we had been through another shared house, and there was the day I got up on a Saturday morning and spoken in pikey all day. To everyone. Not just my housemates, but to those who served in the Co-op. Barmaids in pubs, doormen in clubs, bus drivers, taxi drivers and the all-important server of the kebab at three in the morning. How I didn’t die that day is one of life’s little mysteries.
When that shared house broke up I moved in with Mark when he bought a flat. His girlfriend Amanda moved in not long afterwards, and pretty soon bought a kitten. Somehow we managed to persuade her to call it Pikey. This obviously led to a lot of quoting “I effing hate Pikey” whenever it did something. One day it escaped, it got out the flat door, and down to the ground level and outside. When I got home, Amanda (and Mark to an extent) were looking for it. My immediate response to this was to quote from the film, “You won’t find a pikey that doesn’t want to be found. He could be in a campsite in Kampu-effing-chea by now.” This went down like the proverbial lead balloon. Her frantic searching got Mark a letter reminding him that the covenant to the flat prohibited the keeping of pets. Pikey turned up a day later, and it wasn’t long before I moved out.
At the outset my most used quote from the film would have been “Nothing, it’s tip top, I’m just not sure about the colour”, where colour would get replaced by whatever was relevant at the time. Now that I’m driving again, “it was at a funny angle” probably gets used the most, followed by “You can help me out, by showing me out.”
I must have been an annoying SOB for years with the “Snatch” obsession (I was bad enough before it). Yet when it gets triggered I can’t stop myself. One of the guys I went to school with, Dino, posted about watching the film on Friday night, and I had to jump into the chat quoting from the film. Nearly eighteen years on from the first viewing it’s a part of me. Other films may be better known, or be more obviously quotable than “Snatch”, just not by me.