The Reluctant Father of Gregory's Girl

12 times2 RM THE TIMES Wednesday February 6 2008 THE TIMES Wednesday February 6 2008 RM times2 13 SOPHIE LASLETT/PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE HOSPITAL, LONDON WC2 arts The reluctant father of Gregory’s Girl Gregory’s Girl, free with The Times on Saturday, is a much-loved cult film. Yet its director, Bill Forsyth, hated his job and tells TIM TEEMAN whyhewasgladtogiveitup t is his best-known and best- it) . Forsyth says he wanted it to industry. “We thought they were they were cheaper to work with. I I’m now the retiring loved work but Bill Forsyth, the be a calling card, a ticket to bigger masterpieces and some Hollywood thought it would be easier, too, writer and director of Gregory’s films with bigger budgets. “Sorry if studio would see them and say: ‘You rather than having grown-up profes- ploughman poet of Girl, doesn’t own a copy, and it bursts your bubble,” says the are the guys for our next picture’. I sionals [only Dee Hepburn, Dor- Scottish cinema Idoesn’t want to. “I’ve always said, as director, now 61 and attractively put my heart and soul into them. othy, had real acting experience in ‘‘ far as I’m concerned once you’ve rumpled. Gregory’s Girl was an act of despera- Gregory’s Girl]. They didn’t know an- (living up a hill with made a movie, it’s the kid that’s left It is a teenage love story stripped tion. I was in my early thirties. It ything, I didn’t know anything. But home,” he says plainly. “I used to of sentiment, in which the boy gets was a last roll of the dice. I had I discussed their parts with them in some trout as say, if I saw one of my movies walk- the girl but not the girl he thought, never worked with actors before.” the same way as I came to discuss- ing down the street, I wouldn’t and we thought, he wanted. It is a Indeed, Forsyth is pretty people- ing adult parts with adults and they neighbours), and cross the road to say hello.” low-budget curio set in a bare-look- phobic, although he rejects being demanded exactly the same as adult with the one residing The genesis and legacy of Greg- ing new town, Cumbernauld. It is called a recluse. As a boy, growing actors. It was a big lesson.” ory’s Girl is far removed from the chippy. It has strange little scenes: a up around Glasgow’s docks where Maybe the film’s uniqueness is ambition of wanting sweetness we associate with it, even garden full of crying babies, and Gre- his father once worked before down to those self-possessed kids. if that sweetness flowed directly gory and his eventual “girl” lying on becoming a grocer, he recalls hiding “I don’t know how to make a con- to make people laugh from Forsyth himself. It did lead to the grass as the Earth magically tilts. in his room from the “Sunday visits” ventional film,” Forsyth says. great things for him, and then it all “The truth,” Forsyth adds force- of aunties and relations. He was “There are no surfaces to Gregory’s went wrong. Or seemed to. What fully, “is that when I was directing I quiet and happiest in his own com- Girl. Maybe that’s why it disarms happened to his once blazing star? always felt like I was killing the pany. “There was nothing torment- people. I don’t buy into that kind of Why does he seem so happy to see it script, never bringing it alive.” ed or unhappy about it,” he insists. audience-driven cinema.” extinguished? But Gregory’s Girl fizzes with life, He read a lot, guided to Henry The story “wrote itself”, he says. Gregory’s Girl was a calculated I say. “Sure,” Forsyth says dismiss- James and Camus by his best friend He had originally planned to make movie on Forsyth’s part. He knew ively, before talking about “the com- Stu. He hated teenage Saturday it on 16mm film for £29,000 but end- which buttons to press: “young love promises” any director makes, as clubs, “where you’d be herded in to ed up with £200,000 and shooting and football”, as he puts it. But those with the rain that changed the col- watch films, there was so much on 35mm. “There were five million lovely touches, I suggest: the boy in our of the football pitch at inoppor- noise — I wasn’t hooked on movie- people living in Scotland who had the penguin suit, Clare Grogan look- tune moments during the filming of going at all.” He and his pals would rarely seen their lives on the cinema ing cute in a beret (or “berry” as the Gregory’s Girl. He had been making enact books such as Just William. screen, and I figured if only half of gangly John Gordon Sinclair calls promotional films about Scottish He wanted to be a journalist. “I them saw it, and paid two quid a Bill Forsyth, above, reveals that he was never happy making films, yet his school-set romantic comedy Gregory’s Girl, below left, starring Dee Hepburn and John Gordon Sinclair, became a cult movie wasn’t sure what it meant. But we were part of that first generation to more than three people in a scene at to impose that on anyone else.” wherewithal to tell myself to quit.” memory”. The screening of Water- envisage breaking away from where any one time,” he says. The boy in He was a director, then, that hat- The His two children, Sam and Doone, loo led to a mass walkout, Forsyth we’d been bought up.” At 17 he saw the penguin suit came from watch- ed directing. Some said he was hard Forsyth are in their twenties. They are “infi- recalls: “One person in the middle of an advertisement for a lad required ing someone at Abronhill High to work with, prone to paranoia. sagas nitely more sociable” than their a row would stand to leave and for a film company. He had no great school, where the film was shot, His onetime producer Lord father and Doone may work in film. rather than adjust in their seats to love of film, but “it felt glamorous His lowest point was carrying a papier-mâché head down Puttnam said he felt “desperately let The difference between a good let him exit, the whole row would and cool and interesting. I had this ‘making films and a corridor “and no one batting an down” by him. “I don’t remember Gregory’s Girl movie and a bad one is “infinitesi- file out before him. It was utterly image of crewcuts, baggy trousers, eyelid; a school is a place where any- being hard on crews or actors,” is all (1981) Boy mal”, he claims. “I can’t stand the thrilling. Terrifying too, but I loved cameras and jazz music”. ‘‘not having the thing can happen.” It was nothing Forsyth will say. In 1999 came the meets girl, but cinema. We did go once three or it . We had literally moved an audi- In his early twenties he and Stu — special, “I was just recording their sequel to Forsyth’s famous calling not at first the four years ago just to experience it. ence. I haven’t done so in such a who had applied for the same job wherewithal to tell acting. I didn’t have any cinematic card, Gregory’s Two Girls. John right girl, in his We went to a mall outside Glasgow thrilling way since.” and hadn’t got it, “which I still feel myself to quit’ ambition. It was an attempt to make Gordon Sinclair’s character was breakthrough and had a pretty horrendous experi- This was a “crossroads”, he says. guilty about” — started going to art- a film I thought people might want now a teacher. Critical reaction was movie. ence.” What did he see? “I’m blush- “Either I would . spend the follow- house films. “He took me to my first to see, and quite divorced from the decidedly mixed. ing,” he says, and he is, and he is ing decades tenaciously developing Godard, Pierrot le Fou, which blew ticket, that was still £5 million.” The films I imagined myself making.” Silence has reigned for the last Local Hero laughing too. “Wedding Crashers,” what was finally manifest as the me out of the water. It was another new-town setting was deliberate. “I Forsyth’s next two films, Local eight years. No films. No word of (1983) An oil he says. “We just wanted a night gallery video-installation genre, or language, a real language. Watching wanted a backdrop where nothing Hero and Comfort and Joy, were crit- Forsyth. “I just write, live, have a company out. But the experience of being I’d make that slow backwards re- it moved me in every meaning of was touched or old.” ically hailed successes. “Bigger nice life,” he says. He and his part- wants to build with the audience, the stench of pop- treat into conventional cinema. We that word. After it finished, Stu and I Forsyth immediately hated direct- budgets were nice but I didn’t want ner Moira have been together for a refinery in a corn. I objected to the way they know what happened. To think that were walking down the street smok- ing: it was “time-consuming” and, to disappear to Hollywood,” he five years and live in the Western Scottish village, were being manipulated, infanti- I might now have been the grand ing our Gauloises” — he cackles — of course, it involved people.

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