Human Traffic

Human Traffic is a 1999 British independent film that revolves around five twenty-something friends and their wider work and social circle, the latter devotees of the club scene, taking place over the course of a drug-fuelled weekend in Cardiff, Wales. The film explores themes of coming of age, drug and club cultures, as well as relationships.

• The weekend has landed. All that exists now is clubs, drugs, pubs and parties. I've got 48 hours off from the world, man. I'm gonna blow steam out my head like a screaming kettle, I'm gonna talk cod shit to strangers all night, I'm gonna lose the plot on the dancefloor. The free radicals inside me are freakin', man! Tonight I'm Jip Travolta, the Peter Popper, I'm going to never-never land with my chosen family, man. We're gonna get more spaced out than Neil Armstrong ever did, anything could happen tonight, you know? This could be the best night of my life. I've got 73 quid in my back burner - I'm gonna wax the lot, man! The Milky Bars are on me! Yeah!
• Present is gone. Fantasy is a part of reality and we take the brakes off. We are thinking clearly yet not thinking at all. And this feels right. We stop trying to control things. Warm rush of chemicals through us. We are fluctuating. Is this brain damage? We forget all the pain and the hurt in life. We want to go somewhere else. We are not threatened by people anymore. All our insecurities have evaporated. We are in the clouds now, wide open. We are spacemen, orbiting the Earth. Yeah, the world looks beautiful from here, man. We are nympholeptics, desiring for the unobtainable. We risk sanity for moments of temporary enlightenment. So many ideas, so little memory. The last thought killed by anticipation of the next. We embrace an overwhelming feeling of love. We flow in unison, we are together. I wish this was real. We want a universal level of togetherness, where we are comfortable with everyone. We are in rhythm, part of a movement. A movement to escape. We wave goodbye. Ultimately, we just want to be happy. Heh, yeah. (Laughs.) Hang on... what the fuck was I just talking about? (Laughs some more.)
• What goes up must come down, and down, and down. Everyone looks ill at the end of the night. All have lost the power of speech, desperately avoiding eye contact. Your new soulmate, that you have been talking cod shit to for the past five hours about the story of creation or the fourth Star Wars film, is now a complete stranger. You can't even look him in the eye. The only thing that you have got in common now is paranoia. Is is coming through the walls, man. The children of ecstasy are not safe anymore. We are no longer all together as one but separate mental patients, that yearn to be ejected out of this poisoned atmosphere m bed and a friendly therapist. Reality is on her way. Where am I? What have I done? Huh... Was it worth it? By the way, what the fuck happened here? All you have to look forward to now is u can never sleep...
• Reality, it's all--It's alone

Moff

• I'm having sex with music, man. And believe me, I can go all night.
• See ya later Pete, no one gives a fuck about ya.
• The Emperor... wants to conquer outer space. Yoda... wants to explore inner space, and that is the fundamental difference between the good and the bad side of the force.

Others

• Koop: [Playing a Jungle Record] This could turn Hare Krishna into a Bad Boy!
• Lulu: Why would I want a man? They're all emotionally retarded, egotistical pricks who fuck with your head. They try to control you and make you feel like the whore of Babylon if you wear a mini skirt. I'm an independent girl who wears lipstick because she wants to, not because men find it more attractive. I'm fine being single. I am! Peachy fuckin' creamy.
• Nina: I can voluntarily perform a fanny fart at any time.
• Jeremy Faxman: Whats your name? What have you had? Reach for the lasers. Safe as fuck.

Dialogue

Jip: How many times have I told ya, get your own fucking flat. Get your own flat man, you need your own flat. It's a piece of piss, you can get it on the social.

Moff: [sighs] Where am I gonna go for fuck's sake?

Jip: I dunno. What the fuck do you care? As long as it's got a fucking phone line you're all right ain't ya?

Moff: [laughs] Fuck off you cunt.

---

Lulu: Take me to a place where the drugs are free, the clubs have no gravity and every shag guarantees an orgasm!

Nina: Yeah! 2 orgasms!

Cast

• John Simm - Jip
• Lorraine Pilkington - Lulu
• Shaun Parkes - Koop
• Danny Dyer - Moff
• Nicola Reynolds - Nina
• Dean Davies - Lee