|
18th September 2001
After the hype of Star Wars, the triumph of Moulin Rouge and
the embarrassment of just about everything else in recent years,
Ewan McGregor should have been back in Scotland this week shooting
his first feature film on native soil since Trainspotting six
years ago. Sean Connery’s heir apparent was all set to co-star
in the thriller Young Adam with Tilda Swinton, now considered
one of Scotland’s leading film actresses following acclaimed performances
in The Beach and the new American thriller The Deep End.
 |
 |
| |
 |
|
| |
Tilda Swinton - lined up to play the female lead in Young
Adam
|
 |
|
McGregor was to play a drifter who discovers a dead woman in
a canal. But it is the film that now looks like it might be dead
in the water, postponed until next February at the earliest, following
a last-minute collapse of financing.
This is not however the first time a potentially great Scottish
film has stalled between the initial brainwave and the all-star
premiere. A top ten of the greatest Scottish films never made
is one to prompt a sigh or two at the thought of what might have
been.
1 Scotland’s prototype psycho-killer
James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner sounds dull as
ditch water. It was written in the early 19th Century and focuses
on the religious doctrine of "predestination". It is however an
astoundingly modern and compelling psychological thriller.
The protagonist, Robert Wringhim, is a religious fanatic, who
believes entry to Heaven is predetermined and nothing will change
it. Under the influence of the shadowy Gil-Martin, who may be
the Devil, he stalks and murders his own brother. Ingmar Bergman
and Sandy Mackendrick considered filming it, and Bill Douglas,
best known for his My Childhood trilogy, talked about it in the
Seventies, though it was many years later before he completed
the script many consider his best work.
It was considered a dark and risky project in those days before
Hannibal Lecter took a mass audience on a journey to the dark
side of human nature. Douglas died in 1991 without managing to
raise the money to make it. His friend Lindsay Anderson, who directed
If..., was linked with the project but died three years after
Douglas. In 1996 Rob Roy producer Peter Broughan received a grant
to develop a new version, and it may yet see the light of day
with Peter Mullan as director.
2. Sean Connery’s Macbeth
While no one would dispute Connery’s status as Scotland’s greatest
film star, his Scottish output pales beside that of American Mel
Gibson. Mad Mac came to Scotland to play William Wallace, and
even relocated Shakespeare’s Hamlet from Elsinore to Dunnottar,
while Connery’s ambitions to bring the Bard to Scotland never
got past the planning stage. He played Macbeth on Canadian TV
and wanted to reprise the role on the big screen, after rocketing
to fame as James Bond. He had a script, which he described as
"revolutionary", and planned to direct and produce the film, as
well as play the title role. Unfortunately Roman Polanski got
in first with his version, and the words "the name’s Macbeth,
King Macbeth" died on Connery’s lips.
3. The Scottish Mary Queen of Scots
Sandy Mackendrick directed one of the great Scottish classics,
Whisky Galore!, while James Kennaway won an Oscar nomination for
writing Tunes of Glory. Together they planned a version of Mary’s
story that would dispense with the usual comprehensive storybook
approach and focus on the murder of Rizzio and the romance with
Bothwell. Mackendrick first proposed a film about Mary in the
early Fifties when he was making Ealing comedies, but the project
only really took off when he teamed up with Kennaway a decade
later. Eventually they got backing from Universal, Gore Vidal
collaborated on fresh drafts of the script and sets were built,
before Universal pulled the plug on all its British projects.
Ironically the studio revived the idea a few years later, but
it was with a different writer, different director and the English
actresses Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson as Mary and Elizabeth.
It was dismissed by Halliwell’s as "schoolbook history", exactly
what Mackendrick and Kennaway had been so keen to avoid. Cracker
writer Jimmy McGovern has been working on a new version, also
focussing on the relationship with Bothwell, and Connery’s production
company is now involved.
4. The Brian MacKinnon story
Hollywood could not have come up with a better storyline than
that of MacKinnon, the 32-year-old who pretended to be a teenager
and went back to school in Bearsden to get the Highers he needed
to study medicine at university. He got away with it for a year
before he was rumbled. Producer Peter Broughan secured £850,000
(850,000 pounds) of lottery money to film the story as Younger
than Springtime and Alan Cumming was to play MacKinnon, alias
Brandon Lee. But there were public squabbles with MacKinnon and
the rest of the money never quite came together. "We haven’t been
actively developing it for a while," says Broughan, "which isn’t
to say it’s entirely dead."
5. The crook from Scotland Yard
Anthony Williams was a senior official at Scotland Yard, but,
far from helping to solve crimes, he was committing larceny on
a grand scale. He siphoned off millions and set himself up as
an aristocrat in the Banffshire village of Tomintoul. He bought
the local hotel, provided employment and dispensed lavish hospitality
until his former colleagues caught up with him and he was sent
down for seven and a half years. Phoenix Pictures, the Hollywood
company that made The Thin Red Line, planned to turn it into a
comedy, under the title The Laird, with Mel Smith as director.
The project stalled just before shooting in summer 1999.
6. A Christmas present for a nation
It had all the makings of Ealing comedy - Christmas 1950, while
the nation celebrates, four young nationalists swipe that great
symbol of national pride, the Stone of Destiny, from Westminster
Abbey, where it has been for six centuries, and take it back to
Scotland in their car. In the mid-Nineties, there were two rival
films in development. One was based on Ian Hamilton’s insider
account, No Stone Unturned, and producer Lynda Myles insisted
it would play as drama rather than comedy. The other had Paramount
behind it and Peter Capaldi was mooted as director. Scotland got
the stone back, but the films proved more elusive.
7. Sean Connery’s Glasgow detective
In the mid-Seventies, novelist William McIlvanney received a mysterious
phone call from Connery, proposing a secret meeting at Edinburgh
Zoo. Surrounded by wild animals, Connery proceeded to outline
his hopes for turning McIlvanney’s Glasgow detective novel Laidlaw
into a film. Connery would star in it and direct it. McIlvanney
wrote a screenplay, while Connery attempted to raise finance,
but this was at a time when his popularity and clout had fallen,
and financiers felt it was "too Scottish". Discussions were held
with Scottish Television, then they went away and came up with
their own, remarkably similar, concept, entitled Taggart.
8. Cinderella in Scotland
Producers Mike Alexander and Douglas Eadie planned a Celtic reinterpretation
of the Cinderella story, set in the Dark Ages and secured £3 million
(3m pounds) from abroad and almost £1 million (1m pounds) of lottery
money. They planned to shoot in the Highlands and courted Kelly
Macdonald and Anjelica Huston. But Huston committed to the rival
Hollywood version, Ever After, with Drew Barrymore. Ironically
Ever After provided a carriage to international stardom for Dougray
Scott, while Alexander and Eadie’s dream turned back into a pumpkin.
9 Robert Burns
If Shakespeare could be the romantic hero of an Oscar-winning
blockbuster, why not Burns? In recent years there have been at
least four different projects going the rounds, with Ewan McGregor
and Robert Carlyle supposedly starring in all of them, though
Johnny Depp’s name made an interesting variation. The Edward Scissorhands
star clarified the position earlier this year when he said: "It’s
hilarious. I’ve never been approached to play him... If I were
Scottish, I’d be upset if some hillbilly from Kentucky was playing
one of your greatest poets." That’ll be a "no" then.
10 Batman
Warners are currently considering their options for the next Batman
film. They may go back to his early days, though an alternative
script has him retiring and commissioning a new caped crusader.
They could do worse however than consider an adaptation of Alan
Grant’s 1998 graphic novel Batman: Scottish Connection, in which
alter ego Bruce Wayne attends a ceremony for one of his ancestors
on Skye, and Batman gets mixed up with the ancient secrets of
the Knights Templar and a masked, kilted villain. Other locations
include the Forth Bridge and Rossyln Chapel. Surprisingly the
film rights have never been sold. Spider-Man, Tintin and James
Bond also have Scottish adventures just crying out to be developed
by some enterprising producer.
17th Septermber 2001: Top Scottish films
by Brian Pendreigh
August 1999: Richard
Mowe, curator of film at the Royal Museum of Scotland, selects
his top Scottish films of the 20th Century
|
Buy
one of Brian's books
