Today, the Edinburgh Festival will shut up shop for another year, more or less signalling the end of our first full year in Edinburgh. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean the city is pulling down the shutters. Last February, I wrote to Tiny Letter subscribers that even in the depths of January, Edinburgh maintains a wide range of treats for the arts enthusiast, and that Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth and I had recently seen The Lanterns Of Terracotta Warriors in the quad of the University of Edinburgh’s Old College.
[You can sign up for apoplectic.me Tiny Letters here. It’s a chance to read some more personal thoughts and join the conversation. I’d love to hear from you.]
It was pleasingly nostalgic to wander around the old quad of the faculty of law for the first time in around 18 years. And we were back there last week. There were no ghosts, of Chinese warriors or law students. Just a pretty building in the place we live. And I was excited to be there.
We were in the quad for a showing of Restless Natives, a Scottish comedy. I mean, it’s billed as a comedy, and it passes the laugh test. But it’s clearly inspired by Bill Forsyth of Local Hero and Gregory’s Girl fame, so there’s plenty of pathos, too.
Long plot short, it’s the story of two lads in mid-eighties Edinburgh who become modern day highwaymen and folk heroes. The screening was billed as “a rare chance to see a Scottish comedy classic.” Rare is right. I saw Restless Natives for the first time in my early-mid teens, and over twenty-five years later couldn’t have been more excited to see it again. I once spent an afternoon’s lawyering trying to find a place online to buy a DVD of Restless Natives, to absolutely no avail.
It was drizzling as the film began, but I was still amazed to find the quad almost deserted. I guess people who saw the movie at an properly impressionable age are now in or approaching their forties and aren’t so inclined to hunker under an academic arch in the rain to see it again.
Beth took a look at what Ian Wiki had to say about the movie:
The film performed well at the box office in Scotland but struggled to make an impact elsewhere.
The source for that report being Alexander Walker’s brilliantly-titled Icons in the Fire: The Rise and Fall of Practically Everyone in the British Film Industry 1984-2000. I can see why Restless Natives did well in Scotland, though. Firstly, it’s got a cracking soundtrack by Big Country’s Stuart Adamson.
And while I’d seen Ian Charleson as Eric Liddell sprint around Goldenacre playing grounds for Chariots Of Fire, Restless Natives was the first time I saw a movie set in contemporary Edinburgh, beautiful and gritty. Finally, the lead character was a hopeless romantic of a daft young Edinburgh laddie. While back then I was already aspiring (!) to hard-headed realism, for better or worse Wilde and (young) Morrissey and films like Restless Natives had already left their indelible mark.
More contemporary Edinburgh cinema was on the horizon, though: Shallow Grave in 1994; Trainspotting in 1996. And as Beth and I headed out of the rain to get some grub at Ti Amo across the road, they were changing the reels to show Trainspotting in the quad, cognitive dissonance be damned.
The next night, we saw the author of Trainspotting the novel at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It was kind of sad. Irvine Welsh shows shards of being a good bloke. He likes good music, and answered the obligatory YES/NO #indyref question from the audience with some insight.
But it seems like he had one good book in him, the one he had to write, and very quickly The Acid House cash-in collection of stuff from the back of the drawer and the ambitious misstep of Maribou Stork Nightmares rode off the edge of a cliff. Now he’s had another twenty years to fill. So rather than reading from the Florida-set book he was ostensibly at the Book Festival to promote, Irv read from his work in progress, a crowd-pleasing collection of Sick Boy-isms.
And the crowd lapped it up, gales of laughter sweeping across the main tent. As he swore! In a Scottish accent! Just like it was 1993! Just like everyone wanted to be a teenager again.
Except, did they? In last week’s comments thread, I reflected that
…remembering some of the upsides — the thrill of new discoveries, the excitement of different experiences — helps me remember how fresh those things can make everyday life. For me, that’s something worth aspiring to. So I hope that’s what I mean when I tell Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth that I’m seventeen in my heart.
The laughing crowd were in The Baillie Gifford Main Theatre to rehear the words of their youth, hoping they would rekindle that thrill, when the pressures of being grown-up had distracted them from — hadn’t left them time amid the priorities for — the new and the exciting.
First: Who in the tiny letter only? I have an angry set of eyebrows for you.
And thanks for the prompts, otherwise I would have to write a short essay on Scottish comedy of the 90s. Which even my ability to extemporaneously discuss themes about which I know nothing would be pressed to deliver.
As to the prompts in the tiny letter, I dunno. RoboCop and Running Man left a pretty big impression on youthful me as they were superviolent and that was the first time I’d seen such a thing though they haven’t stood the test of time for me. And since I now guess I’m from new york (huh – funny that) a book about where I’m from seems to have quite a lot of options.
But movie soundtracks. I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately because, as I mentioned, the autumn contains, among other things, a medium-strong desire to try writing music for film. They are interesting music. The fascinating thing about movie soundtracks are just how modern they are and you miss it. Dissonances and rhythms which would get people looking 5 ways to something at a concert are fine as the backdrop of a bad guy hunting the good guy.
The best example of this: here is an entire slate article just about the time signature of that weird music from terminator.
I challenge you to find something that long about non-rhythmic dissonant music elsewhere on slate.
So I dunno I guess my fall/winter is writing some songs, writing some things about man-chicken-love (proposal: hereafter “MCL” amongst the apoplectic crew) and maybe some short film scoring. Any readers here have a short film they want scored?
Ah, it’s a very NewWho dilemma. I think the #capalday TinyLetter will eventually hit the main site so my Whovian friends can be directed to it, but going day and date wouldn’t be very fair on those who have supported the endeavour through thin and less thin. In the meantime, Friendoftheblogkirk has pointed me to a rather good review in The Atlantic.
As Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth might say, “I got your ‘nineties Scottish comedy right here, Buddy.”
I never saw Running Man, but I enjoyed Robocop as a nipper. One might think it would stand up well. That’s a shame. I assume you didn’t see the remake…?
Oh, and I’ve got to write the Auster appreciation myself, have I? Well that figures. Right after I finish with the MCL project.
That Slate article is fab. Particularly the second page about the creative process. Thanks! Beats the android goo out of Arcade Fire kitschily covering Axel F. We’ve probably discussed that in a predictably more pedestrian fashion, I enjoyed Hans Zimmer’s Inception score. And of course, I’ve discovered in the last ten seconds that Johnny Marr played the guitar on it.
Oh. And have you thought about scoring a short movie that’s a cross between Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads and Eraserhead? Of course you have….
Hmmm. Fall/winter. Ongoing project. Other ongoing project. Simmering project. New Project. Prep for other project. How exciting.
That’s what I’m talking about.