Film director Bill Forsyth doesn\u2019t watch a lot of movies. In fact, a boxed set of about a dozen classic films, given to him by a friend a few years ago, makes up the bulk of his DVD collection. His spare time is more likely to be spent reading, writing or thinking through the detail of future film projects. Director of such memorable films as Gregory\u2019s Girl, Local Hero and Housekeeping he will be coming to Bridport in April to participate in Bridport\u2019s unique Film Festival \u2018From Page to Screen\u2019. It is one of many film festivals that Bill has attended in recent years which has become a pastime that he laughingly says if he\u2019s not careful, could turn him into someone who actually likes watching movies. However that doesn\u2019t necessarily apply to his own work. When he comes to Bridport he will talk about his film Housekeeping with festival curator Jonathan Coe. Although he tells me it is probably his favourite of the films he has made, he finds watching his own work an uncomfortable experience. \u201cIt\u2019s just not an experience I like.\u201d he says. \u201cEven just after the films were made \u2013 and I don\u2019t think I\u2019m unusual in this \u2013 I didn\u2019t like to see them. You just see all the flaws, all the things that weren\u2019t how you wanted them to be. You enjoy the nice bits but you mostly remember where something better could have happened.\u201d When he met film critic Mark Kermode on the set of Local Hero 26 years after it was made, and watched it in the local village hall with a hundred local people, he was watching the film for first time since its release.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an experience that most artists feel after their work has gone into the public domain and it must be doubly harrowing for those whose written work is then taken into a different medium. The vision behind the Bridport Film Festival is to highlight films that were adapted from previously published books, and Housekeeping was Bill Forsyth\u2019s first foray into adapting someone else\u2019s work. He actually optioned the book himself. He says: \u201cAn actress friend had recommended it to me \u2013 it took me a long while to realise that she probably wanted a part in it. Anyway I got the book and fell in love with it really. It was a fairly difficult process because I had never adapted a book before. The only reason I made the film is because I love the book so much.\u201d But although the film is described as \u2018a faithful adaptation\u2019 of Marilynne Robinson\u2019s novel, he had no worries about how his interpretation might have been perceived by the author. They met several times to discuss the work and as Bill points out: \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone could try to do anything else with that book. It was what it was. I think she knew that anybody who was going to be interested in it was going to be interested for the right reasons.\u201d However that doesn\u2019t mean that the film wasn\u2019t a process of original work. \u201cYou actually get quite possessive and quite selfish about how you see it\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think most novelists aren\u2019t particularly precious about their work when they hand it over \u2013 because they can\u2019t be. Adapting any kind of work to a film is such a violent process. I think it was one of the classic American novelists who said \u2018There\u2019s only one way to deal with this. You drive to the Californian border, throw your book over the fence and then you drive home \u2013 and wait for the cheque.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Bill Forsyth is not by any means a prolific film maker but the films he has made show an attention to detail that creates the sort of depth so lacking in much of what cinema-going audiences are fed today. Born in Glasgow next to the river Clyde, his father worked in the shipyards and Bill applied for what few jobs there were available to him as a youngster. One of them was for a local documentary production company which was making films before sound recording was available. Consequently people didn\u2019t feature much in those films, so when Bill got the opportunity to make his own features he tried to bring out the little bits of individuality of every character. I asked him if he was always attracted to eccentric characters. \u201cI feel that everyone is an eccentric and all that I try to do is bring out individuals, whether they are a main character or not. And it comes across as eccentricity because in most films the standard is to have two or three main characters who are painted very vividly, not in a naturalistic way, but in a vivid way for the sake of the narrative. So the smaller characters don\u2019t really have much of a profile. I think it\u2019s a little device that I cooked up to make all the characters more interesting. It comes across as eccentricity but in a funny way it\u2019s the opposite of that \u2013 it looks eccentric because it didn\u2019t happen a lot in movies. The whole idea of movies in those days was that they were kind of clich\u00e9d, so you knew what to expect. I think if you took the time to get to know anybody on the planet you would find things that you might term as eccentric about them. We all just wear a lot of masks to hide it from the world anyway. It\u2019s easier than having to explain yourself everywhere you go.\u201d
\nA quiet and relatively shy man Bill Forsyth could never be seen as the bullying type of Director and he is somewhat bemused by the fact that he is touted as some kind of founding father of the Scottish film industry. \u201cIt\u2019s strange to be given a label and apportioned a place in history\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a very common thing in my generation for people to leave home if they had any kind of ambition. In fact it was necessary, especially if you had an eccentric ambition like working in film. It wasn\u2019t a conscious decision for me to start a film industry \u2013 it\u2019s just that we were the ones that didn\u2019t have the wherewithal to leave the place. We ended up having to make the films here rather than go somewhere else to make them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today he is working on \u2018a few projects\u2019 but has seen a huge change in the way these things develop. He says: \u201cThe industry is changing so much even in terms of where you would go for finance. There are so many tie-ups and so many different sources and different countries that producers have to pull together. It\u2019s such a complex process that you really have to hook up with a good producer and hang onto their coat-tails.\u201d And although the industry may have changed, the film-making formula seems to be hanging in a time warp. He says: \u201cThe whole thing about a feature film is there has got to be what the American studios would call a \u2018journey\u2019. The main characters have got to be better, or smarter, or richer, or happier in the end, than they were in the beginning. The underlying message is that you have witnessed the character grow in some way. Whether it\u2019s because of adverse situations or whatever, the idea is that the main characters have made a worthwhile \u2018journey\u2019 at the end of the day. And that\u2019s the thing that I enjoy disputing really. Because I can wake up today and make exactly the same mistakes I made yesterday.\u201d His comment carries a poignant reflection on the society we live in, where even the biggest lessons in history don\u2019t seem to stop us making the same mistakes again.<\/p>\n
Bill feels that he is still \u2018a journeyman film maker, still trying to get projects and still writing every day and reading and thinking.\u2019 Writing is for him the most enjoyable part of the process of film making. But his perception, sense of reality and sense of humour are starkly missing from the industry\u2019s day to day churn and I know that I am just one of many that are eagerly awaiting the results of those \u2018few projects\u2019 that he is working on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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