Scottish Film Culture

Murray, Jonathan (2006) Local Heroics: Scottish cinema in the 1990s. PhD thesis http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6666/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Local Heroics: Scottish cinema in the 1990s Jonathan Murray A thesis submitted for examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Departments of Scottish History and Theatre, Film & Television Studies April 2006 © Jonathan Murray 2006 For my belovedfather, James Patrick (Jim) Murray (1946 - 2003) My friend andfirst teacher 2 Abstract This thesis surveys Scottish cinema during the 1990s. It takes as its starting point the fact that this period witnes~ed easily the highest and most consistent levels of indigenous feature film production In the history of Scottish film culture. By the end of the 1990s, many observers proposed that it was for the first time possible to talk about the existence ofa 'Scottish cinema' and/or a 'Scottish film industry', where before only occasional Scottish films and/or Scottish filmmakers could be discerned. This thesis argues that the most important precipitant of Scottish cinema's unprecedented 1990s industrial expansion involved local filmmakers' pre-meditated, industrially aspirant adaptation of American cinematic precedents and working practices. The nature of this 'adaptation' was two-fold. On one hand, it was institutional, relating to the reformation and creation of the kind of financial, training arid plant infrastructures which make feature production possible. On the other, it was creative, relating to the generic and aesthetic influences and reference points preferred by many 1990s Scottish filmmakers. This thesis presents the trajectory of the American agenda which dominated 1990s Scottish cinema within a 'Rise and Fall' paradigm. It proposes that the first half of the decade witnessed predominantly progressive local engagements, both industrially and ideologically speaking, with American film industrial and cultural practices. The latter part of the 1990s, however, was characterised by regressive misinterpretations of earlier, beneficial transatlantic appropriations. By the end of the decade, two things were clear about Scottish cinema's 1990s American agenda. Firstly, over the period in question, that agenda had either created or consolidated many previously lacking material conditions necessary for a sustainable national cinema. Secondly, that agenda had largely exhausted itself as a convincing blueprint for the further development of Scottish cinema in the early twenty first century. 3 Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................... 5 Introduction A Big Tease? 1990s Scottish cinema and the lure of America ................................. 6 Chapter 1 Trainspotting: structural ironies and central themes in Scottish film criticism ................ 40 Chapter 2 Metamorphosis: Scottish cinema, 1990 -1995 ...................................................96 'lI Chapter 3 A National Lottery? Institutional and industrial developments, 1995-2001 ................ 148 Chapter 4 'It's been great working with you': representational and ideological developments, 1995 - 2001 ........................................... 11.1 ••••••••••••••••••• II' ••••• 1 ••••• 1 •••• II. I ••••• t ••• 201 Conclusion Field of Dreams: Ratcatcher and Scottish cinema in the 1990s ..............................242 Filmography .............. , .........................................................................267 Bibliography .................................................................... I'" ••••••••••••••• 270 4 Acknowledgements This thesis has been in preparation for an unconscionably long period of time. But - to make the first, but probably not last, recourse to cliche within these pages - every cloud has a silver lining. The epic duration of my postgraduate studies enabled me to accumulate a huge number of debts to other people. I make no attempt to distinguish the personal from the professional, because as I write, I am deeply conscious of just how much many of the kindnesses shown me over the last eight-and-a-halfyears transcend such mealy-mouthed distinctions. lowe a particular debt of gratitude to my supervisors, Professor John Caughie and Professor Ted Cowan, for their guidance, faith and forbearance. Dr Valentina Bold was also a source of support and advice between 2001 and 2003, during which time the greater part of an early draft of the present work was written. Right at the other end, Davie Archibald got so tired of advising me to just do it that he just did it himself, so far as the thankless task of proofing was concerned. Thanks, too, to colleagues past and present in the Departments of Scottish History, Scottish Literature and Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, at the university's Crichton campus in Dumfries, and in the Centre for Visual & Cultural Studies at Edinburgh College of Art. Many others have feigned interest in my work due to disinterested ties of friendship and scholarship (which is just friendship with footnotes). Without their support, I wouldn't have completed the present work. To mention but a few: Davie Archibald, Jeremy Donald, Belle Doyle, Fidelma Farley, Niki Ferguson, Barry Gomell, Aline Hill, Jenny Hughes, Gordon Hush, Nathaniel Antonio Lloyd, Colin McArthur, David Martin-Jones, Sarah Neely, Maire O'Connor, Paula Quigley, Duncan Petrie, Rebecca Robinson, Carole Sheridan, Ben Smith, David Stenhouse, Rod Stoneman, David Sweeney, Sue Turnbull, Rachel Welsh. Finally, lowe an enduring debt to my family, who I know won't mind if! dedicate this specifically to my late father. This is for you, dad: sorry for taking too long. JM Edinburjh April3r 2006 5 Introduction: A Big Tease? 1990s Scottish cinema and the lure ofAmerica This thesis establishes and interrogates the defining institutional, aesthetic and representational characteristics of 1990s Scottish cinema. The most immediately salient observation that needs made of my object of study is that, over the period in question, it expanded in an unprecedented, locally un looked- and unhoped-for fashion. By 2000, Scottish cinema was materially 'there' in the eyes of interested parties, to a degree that it had not been less than ten years previous. In 1993, for example, the HMSO Charter for the Arts in Scotland could apprehend only "a massive hole at the centre of the [local] industry where feature film production should be"t. Yet as the 1990s progressed, Scottish cinema's novel, domestically and internationally felt presence became increasingly manifest. This was so in terms of escalating levels of indigenous filmmaking, local infrastructural maturation and expansion, growing amounts of mobile film productions and capital locating to Scotland. Such developments in turn precipitated the much enhanced critical profile of cinema as an important constituent part of contemporary Scottish cultural production. Indeed, by the early 'OOs, some commentators had begun to argue that the nation's film and television cultures were now, despite their relative infancy, and alongside the far better-established and studied Scottish novel, "the primary media" through which ''the myths and realities, experiences and dreams of Scotland and its inhabitants have been reflected and asserted, imagined and re-imagined,,2 for the benefit of local and international audiences. Accordingly, the central aim of this work is to consider both why and how Scottish cinema's striking material consolidation, and its attendant, deepening symbolic resonance, from 'massive hole' in to something like cornerstone of contemporary Scottish culture, came to pass during the last decade of the twentieth century. I therefore prioritise close examination of the evolving institutional and industrial conditions which facilitated the belated entry of a distinctive, indigenously produced Scottish cinema into wider European and Anglophone arenas. In doing so, this work accedes to Albert I HMSO, The Charter for the Arts in Scotland (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1993), pg. 29. My insert. 2 Duncan Petrie, Contemporary Scottish Fictions: Film. Television and the Novel (Edinburgh: EUP, 2004), pp.l.2. 6 Moran's dictum that, "it is worth remembering that the material existence of a film is a prior, necessary condition to its capacity to engender any ideological effects,,3, However, this does not represent a Gradgrindian form of crude economic determinism. As Nick Roddick notes, devoting intellectual energy to "arguing that film is not an art-form created by an individual in a garret but is manufactured by a capital-intensive industrial system" should remain a very different matter from concluding, "it is only that".4 Dissecting 1990s Scottish institutional interventions, and their undoubted success in creating a far broader, more variegated local production base then ever before, neither pre-empts nor supplants the need for alternative critical approaches related

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