Bill Forsyth

Bill Forsyth was born on July 29, 1946 in Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland as William David Forsyth. He is a director and writer, known for Local Hero (1983), Comfort and Joy (1984), Gregory’s Girl (1980), Housekeeping (1987)

A Nostalgic Scottish Christmas: “Comfort and Joy”

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Bill Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy has the quiet dignity of an old Christmas jumper, albeit one with a distinctly odd pattern.

By Robert Cairns

Roger Ebert famously called cinema a great empathy machine, but movies are also nostalgia machines, especially when we feel like things are going wrong in the world. Look how well everyone dressed back then, we might say while watching North By Northwest; look how safe it was to walk the streets at night, we might observe with envy while watching Brief Encounter. This awakens in us a reactionary tendency which can be very illuminating, provided we reject that label as a cudgel and reclaim it as a tool to try and measure the distance between then and now.

The temptation to play games of compare and contrast is often heightened around Christmas. We compare our lives not only to the lives of others but also to the life we led the year before. Our cinematic favourites of the festive season are wistful portals and nostalgic blankets. Whether your Christmas movie of choice is Die Hard, Brazil, or It’s A Wonderful Life, there is something innocent about the ritual Christmas viewing, even if it involves John McClane running over broken glass, Sam Lowry being tormented by bureaucracy, or George Bailey contemplating suicide.

Bill Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy is another film deserving a seat at the Christmas table. It has the quiet dignity of an old Christmas jumper, albeit one with a distinctly odd pattern. As a Christmas odyssey of an everyman who, in mid-1980s Glasgow, gets caught in the middle of a preposterous turf war between two rival ice cream merchants, viewers will be surprised in equal measure by its farcical plot and its genuine lack of cynicism. It is a pleasure to laugh at our hero, Alan “Dicky” Bird, as he navigates his way out of his melancholy and becomes a version of himself he needs to be. The so-called normal life of today seems deeply unfunny by comparison.

It could be argued, in the vein of the famous “It’s Shite Being Scottish” monologue in Trainspotting, that the Scotland of the 1980s was not a place to get overly nostalgic about. In particular, Glasgow’s reputation as a rough, ship-building city is obviously not unwarranted. The real-world “Glasgow Ice Cream Wars” involved gangs using ice cream vans as cover for organised criminal activity. Bill Forsyth was not naive to these rough edges of his city. His debut, That Sinking Feeling, is charming but has a more kitchen-sink approach to Glasgow, so much so that American critic Vincent Canby described it as a film “in which just about everyone has a skin problem.”

With this in mind, the gentle, fable-like quality of Comfort and Joy deliberately eschews some of the harder realities of its time and setting, making it somewhat reactionary even back in 1984. Glasgow, warts and all, has been put under the magnifying glass by other filmmakers (the recovering-alcoholic drama of Ken Loach’s My Name is Joe, the doldrums escape fantasy of Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher). Every time I watch Comfort and Joy, I realise it deserves a place in the pantheon of cracked-up, mock-Homeric Odysseys, alongside the likes of After Hours or The Big Lebowski. It must be very enticing for a director to make an artistically ponderous slice of miserabilist social realism, and it says a lot that Comfort and Joy is a feel-good film instead.

In the years since Comfort and Joy’s 1984 release, we have seen changes in Scotland, the UK, and Europe that make the film seem much older than it actually is. In 2013, the decapitation in broad London daylight of British soldier Lee Rigby was a formative event for me. I recall how my father, born and raised in Fife and never shy to throw a playful barb at the English, pivoted to a more general sense of British solidarity. “That should be the end of that”, he remarked in reference to the obvious literal and symbolic incursion. Sadly, that was not the end of that.

Instead, Scotland received its own dose of all the unfortunate byproducts of forced diversity in Europe: Sharia councils, grooming gangs, a Glasgow where almost a third of the children don’t speak English as their first language, and a former first minister who has volleyed openly hostile, anti-white rhetoric towards native Scots. Curiously, the first minister in question, Mr. Humza Yousaf, was born into the Glaswegian world of Comfort and Joy in 1985, one year after the film’s release. Who could have foreseen what was coming down the pike?

In the wrong kind of mood, a film like Comfort and Joy can feel confusing and depressing when weighed up against these shifting realities. At a time when the holiday season in Europe routinely requires barriers to stop vehicular terror attacks at Christmas markets, Bill Forsyth’s story of opportunity and ice cream can feel rather quaint. There’s an irony, too, when we consider the fact that the film believes in the possibility of some sort of meaningful reconciliation with foreigners. An important part of our protagonist’s character arc, after all, is asserting himself with an entrepreneurial tact and ingenuity amongst the Italian and Chinese communities of his neighborhood.

The presence in Forsyth’s story of small Italian and Chinese groups is proportionally incomparable to the growing feeling of the present day, recently admitted even by Labour PM Keir Starmer, of the UK being “an island of strangers.” Comfort and Joy still had a romanticism about being part of a bigger world because the wider world was further away. The radio playing in the background of many scenes gives us updates about the Panda Diplomacy of the 1980s and the political strife in Burundi. This situates the Ice Cream Turf War, absurdly, in a global context. Although played for laughs, the gesture of Panda Diplomacy and the tensions in Burundi come to represent a more profound choice our character needs to make about his own inner torpor. He needs only to solve his own problems, not the entire world’s.

There is a lesson here for the viewer to both temper and take seriously their reactionary spirit. Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy, as the poster tagline says, is “a serious comedy.” We should take it seriously and allow it to uplift us, lest we get too lost in comparing and contrasting. In keeping with our Scottish theme, let’s reflect on the past and the future by remembering the words of Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse”, which the children of Scotland, whatever language they may speak, are hopefully still learning at school:

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess ‘an fear!

Bill Forsyth’s Comfort and Joy has the quiet dignity of an old Christmas jumper, albeit one with a distinctly odd pattern.
Robert S. Cairns is a film critic and ‘recovering academic’ with research interests in philosophy, theology, and conservatism in the movies.

Source: A Nostalgic Scottish Christmas: Comfort and Joy 42 Christmases Later

‘Mother of Scottish film’ Paddy Higson dies aged 83

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Paddy Higson

Higson worked on a number of renowned Scottish productions including Gregory’s Girl.

Veteran film producer Paddy Higson has died at the age of 83 following a battle with cancer.

She was known for her work with the director Bill Forsyth, with whom she made films including the 1981 cult classic Gregory’s Girl.

In a post on social media, her family said she had been surrounded “by so much love” before her death.

Actor David Hayman described her as “the mother of the Scottish film industry”.

Higson began her career with the BBC in the 1970s as a production secretary.

She later moved on to work with Forsyth and Peter Mullan, making films including The Magdalene Sister and Orphans.

On the smaller screen, she also produced episodes of Taggart, Monarch of the Glen and Cardiac Arrest.

Despite retiring, she continued to work on the children’s television show Katie Morag and headed up the filmmaking charity GMAC.

She also created several schemes helping other young people into the industry.

In 2018, Hayman presented her with a Scottish Bafta for for her outstanding contribution to the Scottish film industry.

Posting on social media, her children said her funeral would be arranged in due course.

They wrote: “Not only have the three of us lost our amazing and extraordinary mother, we as a wider community have lost a kind and generous, supportive and selfless pioneer.

“We are heartbroken but find comfort in knowing she is no longer suffering.”

Source: ‘Mother of Scottish film’ Paddy Higson dies aged 83

Local Hero: Why the iconic Scottish environmental film was decades ahead of its time

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Forty years ago, Bill Forsyth’s film Local Hero warned us to consider the consequences of putting short-term gain ahead of the environment, writes Anthony Frajman.

By Anthony Frajman | June 2023

Few films have been as enduring as Local Hero. Released 40 years ago, the landmark Scottish film starring Hollywood legend Burt Lancaster put Scottish cinema on the map, launched the career of a then-unknown Peter Capaldi and showcased the nation’s incredible landscapes to the world.

Yet, the film was also remarkably prophetic. Decades before climate change was a widely discussed issue, Local Hero was one of the first contemporary films to draw attention to our impact on our environment.

Set in the fictional village of Ferness, Local Hero follows US oil executive “Mac” MacIntyre (Peter Riegert), who is sent to Scotland by his eccentric billionaire boss Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) to buy the entire town and its surrounding areas to build an oil refinery. As he spends more time with the locals, Mac slowly falls in love with his adopted surroundings, and begins to question his role, its ethics, and his entire worldview.

Eerily relevant in our era, the climate satire shows almost no citizen standing up to the oil conglomerate. There is no environmental protection agency that steps in, no law against the oil company’s intended destruction of the land.

Alamy During his 2000 campaign for the US presidency, Vice President Al Gore told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that Local Hero was his favourite film (Credit: Alamy)
During his 2000 campaign for the US presidency, Vice President Al Gore told Oprah Winfrey in an interview that Local Hero was his favourite film (Credit: Alamy)

The film began with Chariots of Fire and The Mission producer, David Puttnam, whose films have been nominated for 26 Oscars. Puttnam had read an article in The Observer about a Scottish man’s battle against an oil giant, and was determined to make a film that addressed the unethical behaviour of oil firms and their toxic impact on natural landscapes.

Puttnam, who had been an environmentalist since the 1970s, and was president of the Council of Protection of Rural England, saw the potential for a film that directly addressed environmental issues. “I was really interested in the idea that a local accountant could sue a major, major international oil company and win on environmental grounds. I thought that was great. It was really a David and Goliath story,” Puttnam tells BBC Culture.

Puttnam had seen the debut feature of then largely unknown Scottish director Bill Forsyth, That Sinking Feeling, produced for £5,000, which he helped Forsyth sell to the BBC, and wanted to work with him. Sparked by the article he’d read, Puttnam brought the story to Forsyth, along with a proposal for a film set in Scotland dealing with ecological issues. “We hired two journalists, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, to give us cuttings or any other stories they had about communities being affected by a major oil company or major conglomerate coming in. And we were able to collect quite a lot of bits and pieces, and Bill then built that collage into the screenplay,” Puttnam remembers.

A hard sell

While Puttnam had produced the debut films of celebrated British directors Ridley Scott and Alan Parker, and had an eminent reputation as a producer, he struggled for years to get this unlikely Scottish film into production. “I couldn’t get much interest in it. I just found it very, very difficult getting traction,” says Puttnam.

Although he had only been able to secure half the budget for the film, that changed almost immediately when Puttnam won the Oscar for best picture for Chariots of Fire in 1982, on top of the best picture Bafta, bringing home Britain’s first best picture Oscar since 1968, when Oliver! won.

“I won the Bafta for Chariots and extraordinarily, was presented the award by Burt Lancaster. I mean, how that happened, God. But he happened to be presenting the best picture award that year. I walked back to my table and a guy called James Lee stopped me. He said, ‘If you’re still looking for money for Local Hero, you’ve got it’. And we shook hands. I went back to the table with a Bafta and the other half of the money,” Puttnam recalls.

As it happened, Puttnam and Forsyth had their eye on Lancaster to star in the film from get-go. “The first thing that Bill had said to me when he delivered the screenplay was, ‘I’d like Burt Lancaster to play Happer,” says Puttnam. While securing Lancaster was crucial for the film’s international appeal, this proved extremely difficult as the star’s salary took up half of the film’s budget. It took a year of negotiating to get him on board.

Despite considering stars such as Michael Douglas and Henry Winkler for the role of Mac, Forsyth was set on casting Peter Riegert as the oilman who experiences an awakening and succumbs to the charms of the rugged Scottish landscapes. For the key part of Oldsen, the local guide who escorts Mac around Ferness, Forsyth chose Peter Capaldi, a then fresh-faced Scottish actor just out of art school.

Another integral element of the film is the score by Scottish-born Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler, who Puttnam suggested to Forsyth. While it is regarded as a key component of the film, underscoring shots of the Scottish coastline and the Northern Lights, it almost never came about.

“I heard his (Dire Straits) album Making Movies. So, I wrote to him, I got a letter from his manager who said, ‘Oh, that’s really, really interesting’. I got Mark and Bill to meet, Bill didn’t like Mark’s music, so it was a very tense meeting. But Bill liked one track, Telegraph Road. So, I managed to have a meeting where the only track we talked about was Telegraph Road. And, in the end, they got to like each other and they got to work together,” says Puttnam.

Ahead of its time

Released to immediate acclaim, the film was a major success in the UK and in the US, going on to be honoured as one of the top 10 films of the year by the National Board of Review in New York and launching the career of future Doctor Who star and multi-Bafta winner Peter Capaldi. Forsyth – who’d garnered praise for his 1981 sleeper hit Gregory’s Girl – won a Bafta for best direction. It was hailed as “a small film to treasure, a loving, funny, understated portrait of a small Scottish town” by leading US critic Roger Ebert for The Chicago Sun-Times, while Janet Maslin wrote in a glowing review in The New York Times, “Mr Forsyth has put Scottish comedy on the map”.

While Local Hero remains arguably the finest film to have come out of Scotland, perhaps its most enduring legacy lies in its prescient caution on the environment. Fully aware that going ahead with the oil plant will irrevocably damage their village, the locals of Ferness willingly agree to sell their land, rather than oppose the corporation – bar one holdout, a dogged old man.

Well before it was echoed in the incident of the Scottish farmer who refused to sell his land to Trump when he built his golf course, Forsyth’s film implored audiences to conserve the environment, to stand up and fight for it, and to contemplate how easily it can be destroyed.

In the willingness of the residents to sell their land, Forsyth urged viewers to consider the irreversible repercussions of environmental harm. Looking back on the seminal Scottish film 40 years later, Puttnam says he believes it was prescient and is his favourite of the films he has produced: “It was certainly a good 20 years ahead of its time.”

Source: Local Hero: Why the iconic Scottish environmental film was decades ahead of its time