His latest movie could
have been a shot in the arm for our film industry – but Billy Boyd is
frustrated that new “Scottish” flick Ecstasy is full of Canadians.
The Lord of The Rings
star, from Cranhill, Glasgow, has spoken out about the “nightmare” scenario
faced by Canadian film-maker Rob Heydon when he tried to secure funding from
creative bodies in Scotland for the film adapted from an Irvine Welsh story.
Instead of a cast full
of Scots, Ecstasy, released this week, has only two homegrown stars, including
Billy.
And the actor says the
reluctance of funding bodies to cough up over the last decade has deprived
Scots in the film industry of work in the recession.
Billy, 43, said: “I
first met Rob 10 years ago to talk about this project.
“He’s been
trying to get it made in Scotland since then and couldn’t get the finance from
Scottish Screen (the now defunct Scottish film body).
“In the end, he just
gave up and made it in Canada instead.
“When he met with the
funding bodies in Scotland, he was told that it ‘wasn’t Scottish enough’.
“I’m sure there must be
all sorts of ins and outs business wise. But why the hell in this country would
we not make a film that would give something like 20 actors work and 40 crew
jobs? It beats me.
“The film’s set in Leith,
after all. The guy’s been trying to get an Irvine Welsh film with a good script
made for years in Scotland. I have no idea why that wouldn’t happen.”
Billy appears with Scots
actor Adam Sinclair (currently appearing in BBC3’s Lip Service) and a slew of
Canadian names, including Smallville star Kristin Kreuk.
He said: “Kristin plays
it Canadian but there are a lot of Canadians doing Scottish accents.”
Only a handful of scenes
in the adaptation of Edinburgh writer Welsh’s short story, The Undefeated, were
filmed here.
It tells of two lonely
souls who hook up on the Scottish club scene in the Nineties.
Kreuk plays the lead as
a Canadian living in Scotland but most of the film was shot around Toronto.
Welsh has also been
quoted as saying the film was “an absolute banker” to be shot in Scotland,
pointing out a combination of nostalgia for the Nineties and healthy sales on
release would suggest a ready-made audience here.
Billy – who also plays
in a band called Beecake – concedes he has no idea if it will have the same
success as Welsh’s most famous adaptation, 1996’s Trainspotting.
He said: “You can never
second guess these things. Nobody knew what would happen with Trainspotting
until it happened. Everything just hit in the right place. It’s like making a
war movie and asking if it’s going to be an Apocalypse Now.
“Sometimes it takes off,
sometimes it doesn’t. But I’ve done my bit.”
A critical mauling on
the back of the Scottish première of Stone of Destiny, in which he starred in
2008, also proved a salutary experience for Billy.
He said: “They were
thinking about opening Ecstasy in Scotland and I told them I didn’t think it
was a good idea.
“I love Scotland but the
weird thing is there tends to be a, ‘don’t touch our stories’ thing going on.
“Stone of Destiny had an
American director who didn’t know Scotland as well as we do. But if I go and
make a film in the US I’m not going to know it as well as Francis Ford
Coppola.”
Billy plays DJ and
e-prophet Woodsy in Ecstasy, which went on release last night, after a première
at London’s Ministry of Sound this week.
As a 19-year-old during
the so-called “second summer of love”, and in his 20s at the birth of the
e-fuelled rave scene in the Nineties, Billy plays his cards close to his chest
about how much of it he experienced first-hand.
He said: “We went to
Ibiza when I was about 17 and we couldn’t believe all these happy faces. We
didn’t know what was happening, we were more used to everyone fighting in
Glasgow.”
Did he partake himself?
“That’s a
question you know I’m not going to answer,” he said, politely.
If he’s adept at dodging
a tricky question, it may be due to the research he’s done for his upcoming
theatre role. Billy joins Maureen Beattie, John Bett and James Pearson in
National Theatre of Scotland’s latest project Enquirer, an “investigation into
newspapers”.
The play, which opens at
Glasgow’s Hub next Thursday, is based on interviews done by three British
journalists with people in the media in the days of circulation battles and
debates on ethics.
Directed by Black
Watch’s John Tiffany and NTS Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone, it has been
edited by top Scots writer Andrew O’Hagan.
As someone whose
affinity for newspapers stretches back to his days delivering them in Cranhill,
Billy still prefers buying a paper to going online. “I like to get to know the
writers and their work and still like the feel of a newspaper,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have been
interested in doing a piece that was about bashing newspapers. There has been
some horrible stuff going on, with the Leveson Inquiry, phone hacking and so
on, but you can’t destroy a whole industry because of that.”
After Enquirer, Billy
will provide The Voice of the Book in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy at
Glasgow’s King’s Theatre in June, and also has a couple of films in the
pipeline.
After co-producing
inter-galactic comedy Space Milkshake – about “four people in a space station
who collect rubbish in space” – he starred in Carmel opposite true Hollywood
royalty.
He said: “It’s set in
the art world in the town Clint Eastwood was mayor of. I’m in it with Lauren
Bacall, Hayden Panettiere (Heroes) and Alfred Molina. It was quite something to
be working with Lauren Bacall.
“She’s hardcore, real
Hollywood. But she was great to me, and was really good with my son Jack when
she came out for dinner with my wife Ali and I.
“I’d be sitting with my
family and listening to her telling stories about Humphrey Bogart. It was
incredible.”
Ecstasy is
out now. Enquirer, The Hub, Glasgow, April 26 to May 13. Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy, Glasgow, King’s Theatre, June 8-9. Beecake appear with Jon Fratelli
and Tom Urie at the MacRobert Arts Centre, Stirling, on June 15.
The National Theatre of Scotland have
shared a link to comments following the preview of Enquirer
