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Glaswegian Films
"Diabastric and blohooroble!"
At first sight the inclusion of this particular category might smack of being a self-serving desperation tactic too far, since one of us here has to commute from Glasgow to the Filmguide fireplace on a regular basis (that is, we live in Glasgow), but we reckon there's a good bit to be said about the sort of films that identify themselves with a particular place and what they are usually like. So what we're really talking about is, in a word, whimsy and realism. For when a film is set in a town or city which is not London, New York or Los Angeles then what normally tends to be on offer is what is generically referred to as a `whimsical comedy'. This catch-all term covers most other parts of the globe in fact, from Liverpool to Melbourne, since it seems it's impossible to set a `proper' film in a place where you don't recognise every other street corner and notice when the taxis change slightly.
It has to be said though, that apart from the whimsical comedy there are always the other ones, which are always all described as `gritty realism'. Essentially, as far as film directors are concerned, if you live somewhere like Sheffield or Manchester or Cardiff, when you're not laughing uproariously whilst sliding down hills on tea trays to save the local railway line, you're sitting around in the kitchen watching the cats die. Or something similar. You never get superheroes, `cos how super can they be confining their talents to protecting the denizens of Dundee from the rain? You don't get psychological thrillers, `cos serial killers probably wouldn't have the motivation to off a string of prosaically linked seemingly- random victims if they lived in Stockport. And you don't get science fiction films, since it's not deemed realistic (!) that aliens would traverse the endless void to make contact with an Alderman in Wrexham. So out here in the provinces (which is in itself a ghastly patronising term) we get chips and rats and things. Hey-ho.
Concentrating on Glasgow (which you can really replace for the purposes of this with Liverpool or anywhere else with a large enough bus service) there have always been two persons concerned with each of our associated sub-genres, the whimsical comedy and gritty realism. In the former case it's always been Bill Forsyth. For the latter, Ken Loach. Quite why Red Ken has spent so much time dwelling on Glasgow we'll never know. It's gloomy enough most of the time without Loach turning up every couple of years to provide conclusive prove of that to us in words and pictures for an hour and a half. CARLA'S SONG concerned a bus driver, played by Robert Carlyle, who falls for the titular girl then follows her to El Salvador (or somewhere similarly steamy) to get involved in a bloody and relentless civil war, thereby at least demonstrating the point that most people from Glasgow will quite happily spend time anywhere else on the planet, no matter how grim, as long as it's nice and warm. MY NAME IS JOE starred proto-Loach Peter Mullen as an alcoholic struggling to rebuild his life and the appearing-now AE FOND KISS sounds too depressing for us to even think about. We'll watch it eventually though, since we won't be able to escape the lure of pointing at shops and buildings and saying, "That's that clothes shop in Argyle Street!" even though we'd passed by that clothes shop in Argyle Street on the way to the cinema without a comment fifteen minutes previously. Of course, there's always humour in these things – and it's often genuinely funny – but always in the vein of noble working class underlings chuckling at adversity whilst being carted off in an ambulance or taking it on the lamb from a loan shark.
Besides Loach, the aforementioned Peter Mullen has contributed his own entries to the ranks of bloody miserable films, and though we don't usually condone bleakness, we have a place in our hearts for his debut feature ORPHANS. Admittedly on one count this is less to do with the plot, script and performances than the fact that you can see our bedroom window in one scene, but that's by the bypass. The winning factor is in fact the appearance of the Sensational Hugh Ferris, the late and great cabaret (pronounced cabarette) singer who features heavily in the scene at the outset in the pub singing in the background. He also gets a full-on close-up which, when we saw it at the pictures, with Hughie's face fifty feet high, fairly made us catch our breath.
Although not having people we know in them, the saving grace of the Loach canon is that, while you wouldn't want to sit through a retrospective without a bottle of Prozac and a copy of Das Kapital to hand, they are well made and quite good. Just not very cheery. The problem with gritty realism comes when it's not even good and here we stumble into Gritty Realism the Billy Connolly Years and two films specifically; THE BIG MAN which was a bloody awful adaptation of a bloody good book, and THE DEBT COLLECTOR which was just plain rubbish. Not only that, but it was bleak. And bleak is something we can't stand in films. Depressing we can take (A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN is about as depressing a film as your ever likely to see, but it's great and we love it) bleak we can't. What's the point? If we wanted to see something unremittingly bleak that lasted two hours on a regular basis we'd have taped Simply the Best. Again, at least Loach films have Something To Say, whereas these two just boldly say Billy Connolly Can't Act. That's not to say we haven't liked *any* film he's been in, `cos MUPPET'S TREASURE ISLAND was brilliant. So if we're looking for a Pest In Show, then it's THE DEBT COLLECTOR.
Still, leaving all that aside, we'll press on with the whimsical bobbins instead. Thankfully there's quite a bit of this and, amazingly, much of it is quite good and almost all of that comes from Bill Forsyth. His most famous outing that fits the bill here is Wigan-pleasing GREGORY'S GIRL (although it was actually filmed in Cumbernauld, which would only really be `in Glasgow' in the Ryanair definition of the term) but there have been others, and G'sG has been covered pretty extensively elsewhere anyway. Forsyth almost blew his whimsical reputation by going a bit serious for COMFORT AND JOY starring the really very good Bill `Traffik' Patterson but it doesn't jar as much as it might and he gets away with it (he'll be pleased to hear). THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE was a relatively late period entry and, despite featuring John Gordon Sinclair heavily, is pretty good and really the perfect piece of regional whimsy; you don't laugh out loud especially, but instead keep a wry smile affixed throughout whilst keeping an eye out for bits of the park you recognise. The best without any fear of contradiction, and easily the best film ever made in or around Glasgow (and you can fuck off, TRAINSPOTTING) is THAT SINKING FEELING. It's in the Top 100, this is, and it really is brilliant. Filmed for about two quid and starring a bunch of junior nobodies from the Glasgow Youth Theatre it's whimsical, yes, but it's bloody good as well. Centring around the decision by a bunch of twats to steal some sinks (geddit?) in order to sell them and finally have some cash in their sky rockets, everything about it is great. It's hardly ever seen now and the question of where the rights to it lie hasn't been resolved recently so a release on DVD doesn't seem very likely at the moment (even though there was definitely a VHS release ten years or so ago) but it turns up on Channel 4 every now and again. If it does, watch it. The final scene – of one of the lads playing `You Are The Sunshine Of My Life' on the electric guitar he had dreamed about having and finally got to buy having sold his sinks to real-life artist Richard DeMarco as an art installation – is genuinely one of the very best ever made. So there's the best, right there.
There's some miscellaneous bobbins to be had along the way here, too. RESTLESS NATIVES is pretty good (and also stars Hugh Ferris as well) but hardly ever crops up on telly and never seems to get a release on VHS either. Why? Pull your fingers out, you distribution johnnies! SOFT TOP HARD SHOULDER wasn't so good, unfortunately, but wasn't as bad as RATCATCHER which was hugely successful critically but it's bleak so, you know the rules, out it goes. Also recently, those with a penchant for Ewan McGregor's knob could watch YOUNG ADAM and enjoy their bleakness with the added attraction of narrow- boating. Rosie and Jim it ain't.
And that's Movie! Movie!
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