Gaz realizes that if working men cannot sell their labor, perhaps they can sell their bodies. He puts out notices for auditions and assembles a troupe of six, including himself, and calls the act Hot Metal. Not one of them has ever seen a Nautilus machine in his life. Desperation is driving these guys. The filmmakers let us get just enough of a whiff of their needs to give the film substance.
Men do hard, physical, dirty labor to feed their families.
Peter Cattaneo directed Simon Beaufoy's screenplay, and the film's humor is sly and quirky when the salaciousness of its subject matter suggests bawdiness. When one guy shows up to audition and reveals what he can bring to the act, Gaz doesn't even have him dance. The distributors were smart enough to give one of the most characteristic and funniest moments away in the trailer. They stand in their separate alphabetical queues, silent with the other men in the shame of being there, until a Donna Summer song is heard on a distant boom box. They'd been considering the song for the Hot Metal act.