READER'S INDIGESTION

You have to admire the persistence of the wannabe Scottish filmmaker. Poring over the local Sundays online, I couldn’t help but notice a bunch of loosely related articles about film. To take our hacks to task about the way film gets reported here needs a blog of its own, so until then I’ll stick with the crop in question, namely a piece on Douglas Gordon, a report on the Scottish film lobby and a pair of features about two local filmers.

Interviewed in an Edinburgh wine bar, we learn Douglas Gordon wants to make a film version of James Hogg’s The Sins and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Not that old chestnut surely. Ever since the late Bill Douglas wrote a spec script back in the 80s, the idea of turning the book into a film has floated around – and sank. Actor/director Peter Mullan was supposedly up for it one time – and yes, nothing happened. But if anyone can pull it off, then surely it’s our Dougie who, having reinvented himself as a filmmaker, can simply bend a few well-connected ears. In the end though it’s a non-story. The journalist could as easily have interviewed me – ‘yeah, well, I’m thinking of doing a remake of Taxi Driver set in the mean streets of Paisley. I might even approach Bobby Carlyle to play Travis Bickle’. Doesn’t quite have the same cachet, does it?

Meanwhile, in another non-story, the Scottish film lobby gets quoted in the Sunday Herald, following a meeting of the Scottish Screen/SAC board on Friday, discussing the ‘mounting support’ for a separate film body as part of the proposed Creative Scotland.

Do we learn what the board said?
No.

Do we believe another bureaucratic outfit can solve the problem of not getting films made?
Nope.

Do we care about three ex-beneficiaries of SS lottery funding trying to hitch their bandwagon to a decommissioned gravy train?
Not really.

Are we enlightened in any way by this article?
Nah.

For some useful comment, I point you to Ruth Wishart’s informative piece in the Herald –

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/68958.html

Let’s move on to a heart-warming little tale of an Edinburgh student who made it to the EIFF with a film that cost £200. It’s the kind of article that turns up in the Scottish rags all too often – plucky but hard-up filmmaker makes short and wins the day. ‘Well, y’know, we were so skint I had to sell my sperm/granny/arse to get the film made’. Jamie Stone managed to make his film, Fritz, and get it all the way to the festival. But what kind of career can he expect when so-called established filmmakers can’t get it together? I’m all for can-do and DIY, but you can’t take your camcorder short to the bank. And with Scottish Screen girning about too many pointless short film schemes (that they created), where do all the Jamie Stones go? How many self-funded calling card shorts does it take before anyone thinks your talent’s worth paying for?

Slightly higher up the food chain is Martin Smith. No offence Martin, but while the States has Martin Scorcese, we have you - Martin ‘I’m not part of that short filmmaking world’ Smith, with three shorts and a bunch of music vids to your name. So what world are you part of? Beats me why the Sunday Herald bothered to write you up because it’s not like you’ve scored a major deal or anything – one film festival outing isn’t news, even if it’s in LA - a bit like Penilee with sunshine. So what if, like me, you’ve written a feature? It’s not much of a story when you can’t walk into a Glasgow pub without falling over somebody with a script in ‘development’. I seem to remember reading about you in another non-article a while back and even then I wondered, how long can your pals in the press keep talking you up as the next big thing? At least the Aberdonian boys got their sci-fi feature made…

Maybe a little less wishful thinking by the media and a little less empire-building by the quangos is what’s needed. Instead of how Jamie scraped to make his short, we need some real reporting on the problems of trying to make films in a hostile climate, how telly taps into public funds and how much moolah gets burned on salaries for public servants seemingly incapable of making decisions, let alone the right ones.

Now excuse me while I eat my fry-up and turn to the Nudes of the Screws for some quality journalism…