The Full Monty

The Full Monty is a 1997 British comedy-drama film directed by Peter Cattaneo, starring Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber, and Hugo Speer. The screenplay was written by Simon Beaufoy. The film is set in Sheffield, England, and it tells the story of six unemployed men, four of them former steel workers, who decide to form a male striptease act (à la Chippendale dancers) in order to gather enough money to get somewhere else and for main character, Gaz, to be able to see his son. Gaz declares that their show will be better than the Chippendales dancers because they will go "the full monty", hence the film's title.

Plot
Six unemployed steel workers, inspired by the Chippendale's dancers, form a male striptease act. The women cheer them on to go for "the full monty" - total nudity.

Trivia
In November 1998, Prince Charles re-enacted the unemployment office scene on national television with some young members of the Prince's Trust. The title is a British slang phrase meaning "the whole thing." According to screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, US studio executives found it perplexing since nobody in the film is named Monty. The six leads did in fact perform a full-frontal strip-tease in front of 400 extras. Director Peter Cattaneo described it as "a one-take deal." The original cut of the film was too short, so three months after shooting ended, some more footage was shot, including the football/exercise montage. Robert Carlyle is not in that sequence; the actor was working on another project by then. They shot the scene with Horse in the telephone box three times: the first with an old woman outside overhearing the conversation, the second with a gang of girls on a night out overhearing, and when neither of them worked, they reshot it with no one listening. A number of American cinemas had special leaflets printed containing translations to some of the British slang left in the U.S version of the film so that audiences would be able to follow the dialog more easily. For the final sequence, the films choreographer was lying just in front of the stage, out of sight of the cameras, shouting out instructions to the actors. Danny Boyle was offered the chance to direct the movie, but turned it down because he wasn't impressed with the story. The film's working title was "Eggs, Beans and Chippendales". The film holds the record for the highest-grossing UK film in history.

Box office
The movie grossed $257,850,122 worldwide.

Henry's copy
Henry has the 1998 VHS of this movie from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. It has no previews.