HEAVEN KNOWS WE'RE MISERABLE

Scottish filmmaking doesn't get a whole lot of coverage. Maybe just as well. Every time a hack puts two fingers to the keys you can be sure the adjective miserable will turn up with a rent book in its pocket.

From Bill Douglas to Peter Mullan, Scottish films are universally derided as self-lacerating, skanky realism, set in a world where everyone talks in thick monosyllables and where everyone's an addict living in a council shithole. Ken Loach hit paydirt with this gag, in a set of films lovingly depicting such losers, films generously subsidised by Scottish Screen to the tune of two million quid so far, the logic, no doubt, being that nobody does miserable better than Loach.

In its way-past-it's-sell-by Fast Forward scheme, Scottish Screen deflected the Buckie, blaw and blade brigade by dictating a new set of rules. Scripts must be 'upbeat', they tell us. That public servants with no filmmaking experience should prescribe the content of our cultural output is an exercise in futility. The FF scheme, almost two years down the line with zero to show looks as if it's on permanent pause. Even worse, Ken Hay has more or less put the boot into film as an expression of our lives and values.

So do we get the culture we deserve because of our films? Let's face it, Scotland's never been known for great action movies, drawing room dramas or even comedy. The closest we get to genre is horror/thriller but like the rest of the nation, our budgets are so paltry even a Blair Witch is a stretch for most of us. Partly it's confidence and partly it's lack of ambition. If New Zealand can build a film industry from scratch, what's stopping us? We've got mountains, we've got the same weather and just as many sheep.

Too bad we don't have Peter Jackson, even if we can boast a lot of lookalikes - in his fat and hairy phase, that is. If that's talent (in the Weegie sense of the word) then no wonder I'm miserable. Baaad luck, girls.