Sunday Herald August 31, 2003
Media: Named after a piece of computer hardware and with a superstar's mother
as co-founder, McDongall Films is making its mark in movies, writes Brian
Pendreigh
On a beautiful, cloudless afternoon at the St Andrews Bay
golf resort, Jim Caviezel lines up a short putt and misses, over and over again,
until eventually the ball drops into the hole. But that is no use either.
Caviezel is trying to get the ball to stop as close to the hole as possible
without falling in, and it is proving extraordinarily difficult.
Resplendent in plus-twos and diamond-patterned Argyll socks,
Caviezel is playing golfer Bobby Jones, a 1920s cross between Tiger Woods and
John McEnroe, in the feature film, Stroke of Genius.
In the crowd are Ewan McGregor's mum Carol, and Janice
Cutting, a former executive with the public film agency, Scottish Screen, and
they are not here just to ogle the handsome, fast-rising star of The Thin Red
Line and Mel Gibson's forthcoming Gospel film, The Passion.
These days most independent producers start with a low-budget
short, but McGregor and Cutting are co-producers of the $15 million (£9.5m)
period drama, also starring Malcolm McDowell, Claire Forlani and Aidan Quinn.
McGregor and Cutting were responsible for recruiting local
cast and crew, organizing locations, finding hundreds of extras and making sure
they were attired in correct period costume. McGregor is no stranger to film
sets, of course. 'I've never felt I'm in the way or anything, but this time I
have a purpose and that's really exciting,' says the former schoolteacher.
'Being a producer is fantastic.'
They hope their involvement in Stroke of Genius will help
them get other major projects off the ground and turn their company, McDongall
Films, into a major force in a Scottish industry that is looking increasingly
vibrant, following the acclaim with which Edinburgh Film Festival audiences and
critics greeted local films, including McGregor's Young Adam.
'We've got four features we're actively working on and loads
of other ideas,' says Cutting, who combines the role of film producer with work
as a marketing and film industry consultant and being mother to two young
children.
It was while she was at Scottish Screen that Cutting got to
know McGregor, who had taken early retirement from teaching and was developing a
second career in movies, first as her son's personal assistant and then
providing audio descriptions of films for the blind.
Cutting left Scottish Screen four years ago to work as a
consultant and she accompanied McGregor to Los Angeles to lobby the major
studios to put audio descriptions on DVDs. 'We got on really well. I did English
at university and Carol's very creative and loves films, so we ended up thinking
about ideas for films.
'It became more and more apparent that what we actually
wanted to do was produce films, so we set up McDongall about two years ago with
a view to pulling together scripts that we liked and trying to get money to make
them.'
Although it sounds vaguely rude, Cutting insists the name was
inspired by a piece of computer equipment -- the dongle -- which prevents
unauthorized use of software. 'We thought that was quite sweet, because it's
worldwide, but sounds Scottish.' Distance seems to mean little to them: Cutting
is based in Edinburgh, McGregor lives in Perthshire, and they have an office
address in Glasgow.
They were shortlisted under the prestigious Tartan Shorts
scheme not long after setting up McDongall. They lost out on that occasion, but
now ironically McDongall is making its debut with a star-studded feature film
which more or less landed in their laps.
McGregor and Cutting were at the Cannes Film Festival in May,
as was the American producer Kim Dawson, whose credits include the phenomenally
successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and who had been nursing the Bobby Jones
project for a decade.
He wanted to shoot at St Andrews and needed someone to look
after the Scottish end. Julie Craik of the Dundee film agency TayScreen pointed
him towards McGregor and Cutting. Such is the nature of Cannes that they never
met, but spoke on the phone. It helped that Cutting and McGregor had a lot of
contacts in Scottish golf.
Their involvement in the film was confirmed as recently as
July. With little more than a month to prepare, they hired 100 local crew and
had to find and dress hundreds of extras as golf course spectators. 'We went
round every secondhand charity warehouse in Scotland,' says Cutting, 'and we've
got a very good deal with Pringle, who are making all the principals' costumes
for us, in return for product placement, because they were obviously around in
the 1920s.
'We've got contacts into the golf world and we helped smooth
the way to shoot at the R&A,' she adds. The Old Course is traditionally
closed on Sundays. The film crew was there last week with hundreds of extras,
and will be back today.
The showbiz connections McGregor made through her son came in
handy when taking on actors. She met Aidan Quinn at Billy Connolly's Lonach
Highland Gathering a couple of years ago. A keen golfer, he had appeared in a
pro-celebrity event for her audio description charity. They bumped into each
other at the Edinburgh Film Festival a few weeks ago, got to talking about what
they were doing and he wound up in the role of Jones's great rival, Harry Vardon.
Carol McGregor's is a familiar face at premieres and she
admits her son's celebrity status has opened doors. But it can only do so much.
'We're here because we've done it ourselves,' she insists. 'We have a vast
network of people that we know through our businesses and people pay attention
to us because of what we have done.
'A lot of people, when we started here, had no idea that
there was any connection to Ewan at all, and that was fine.'
Between them McGregor, Cutting and Scottish Screen's
locations department persuaded Dawson to use Scotland to double for England, and
even some American settings, and the production has spent about $2 million
(£1.26m) in Scotland over the past week.
The stations on the Bo'ness and Kinneil steam railway in West
Lothian serve as Pittsburgh and the rural East Lake station in Jones's home
state of Georgia. St Andrews Bay doubles both as Royal Lytham and as Hoylake in
1930, in the scene in which Jones is struggling with his putting. Nevertheless,
that was the year he won the four major titles of the time -- the amateur and
open championships of Britain and the US -- inspiring a journalist to borrow the
term 'Grand Slam' from bridge to describe his unique achievement. Then, at 28,
with the world at his feet, Jones quit the game.
Filming will continue in the United States throughout
September and into October. While McGregor and Cutting intend to visit the film
set in Georgia, their official role will be over and they will be thinking about
other projects. By this time next year, they hope to have shot another feature
film, one they have developed themselves.
But first McGregor and Cutting intend returning to St Andrews
Bay, and this time they will be the ones lining up the putts. McGregor is a
member of Crieff Golf Club, but has had little chance to play in recent times.
'It's very funny being on golf courses all the time and really wanting to play
on them and not being able to, because you're too busy,' she says. It sounds
like she still has something to learn from Scotland's big film names and could
benefit from a tip on that particular problem from Sean Connery.
© Sunday Herald 2003
Archived 2003-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net