SNIFF MOVIE

No apologies to Antonioni here, boring old shit that he was...

For those of you who’ve missed me lately, you’ll be glad to know I haven’t drowned in a flood, caught foot-and-mouth disease or been kidnapped by terrorists. No, a fortnight self-catering with three drug and sex-crazed girlfriends in Ibiza was way worse… but that’s another story.

Still, it’s nice to be back, especially now the Edinburgh festival’s kicking in and the EIFF’s just around the corner. Window-shopping what’s on offer, it looks like yet another duff year for UK films – with the possible exception of Anton Corbijn’s ‘Control’ and Wilma and Duncan Finnegan’s ‘My Life as a Bus Stop’, the first screening of which has already sold out.

The rest? Well, if you’ve got a short attention span they’re right up your street – a lot of them run around 90 minutes, some less. You’ll note I’m not including David Mackenzie’s ‘Hallam Foe’ here, since it’s already bagged the Opening Gala slot, the film being conveniently set in Edinburgh, where during the shoot, the director was allegedly spot-fined in the street for chucking away a fag, the smoking kind. So the story goes… And you can be sure there won’t be anything remotely Scottish about the film, though I guess you can say the same for the city.

I worry about David Mackenzie, I really do. Not that I know the guy, but I saw him one time drinking in the old St Judes in Bath Street, and he looked to me like a character out of some crapola 70s TV show, because he’s got one of those period faces like David Hemmings in his pre-alcoholocaust days. And I thought, does he know this? And even if he doesn’t, how long will it be before he ends up looking like the dead David Hemmings? All this trying so hard to be pervy with your pictures might be good for your profile but it can’t be that good for your soul, so unless he’s got a portrait lurking in the attic… And where is his brother these days? It’s been a while since Monarch of the Glen, but maybe I’m watching the wrong channels.

Anyway, I was talking about Wilma and Duncan. A few years ago, I spent a night at the GFT where they gave a wee retrospective on their work, showing their early shorts. They’ve been a real inspiration to me since, having made a few features, shot on DV with no funding. ‘My Life as a Bus Stop’ is their second outing to Edinburgh, having screened ‘Four Eyes’ a few years back. Their trick, sadly missing in UK film these days, is having a sense of humour. They don’t agonise over raising finance, they don’t spend years in painful ‘development’. They accept the crapiness of being Scottish filmmakers and in that spirit of, say, the Belgians, go out and shoot their movies, using whatever and whoever's available. Even their website is admirable in its low-tech attitude. The point being, they love what they do and they have a laugh doing it.

Unlike, I suspect, Mr Mackenzie. I remember reading something in Sight and Sound a while back, around the time of the whole DIY digital movie thing. Mackenzie was quoted as saying something about the future of film being in the hands of the amateur. Maybe he’s right. But amateur is in the eye of the beholder – and besides, any prick with a 4 or 5 million budget can elevate himself and patronise all the wannabe ‘amateurs’ out there who’ll never get a sniff of what’s he’s on.

But here’s the thing – who’s having the better time? I’d sooner spend my hard-earned on ‘My Life as Bus Stop’ and be entertained than watch a pile of up-yourself, glossy-but-vacant, middle-class, emotionally-zero tripe from someone who’s rapidly turning into Scotland’s answer to Michael Winterbottom. In other words, a perplexing so-what, who no doubt will keep churning them out, even though audiences will stay away in droves. Meanwhile Wilma and Duncan, good on them – could probably make about six movies on Hallam Foe’s marketing budget alone… And what’s the answer to Scotland’s non-existent film biz? Duh-uh…

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