Seen through a prism of booze and crack-cocaine, 80’s snooker legend, Jimmy White’s life and career is condensed into one crack-fueled night. A bloody night in which he receives six near-fatal wounds as he re-lives his six World Championship finals.
Through his altered-haze, all his snooker finals are switched for to-the-death fights. (to highlight the nature of top-level competition and also to demonstrate Jimmy’s personal struggles) So, while his bloody fists are wrapped like that of a bare-knuckle pug, as he smashes-up and chokes-out his toughest competitors, the piece is ultimately about a soul with a big heart who does – literally – raise hell itself.
Through the corridors of the rotting hotels he frequents, and pursued by an alluring and intriguing STRANGER, Jimmy has to negotiate his way through this self- inflicted Dante’s Inferno and claw his way back to sanity and reality. This, combined with his moving battle to save his twenty year marriage to his childhood sweetheart, propels him to strive for a future without such self-medicating hell.
On the surface WHITE is about a snooker legend who fails to win the six finals he fought so hard to compete in. What it’s really about is a man pursued by his own demons until he is forced to confront not just them but the STRANGER who turns out to be the Devil itself. And, in epilogue, a man who comes to realise – through a darkness of his own making – what is truly important in his life.
WHITE is set amid the austerity of Thatcher’s rule when snooker represented a way out for the working man, and much like boxing and other sports, it allowed a generation to dream. And Jimmy White was one of those dreamers.
CREDITS
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Cast
Ray Winstone
Aneurin Barnard
Alexis Rodney -
Producers
Antoine Dixon-Bellot
Kevin Harvey
Ray Winstone
Michael Wiggs
Tiernan Hanby -
Written & Directed
Steve Waddington
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Production
Blackwater Pictures