The Scotsman Bulletin Monday November 20 2023

The Scotsman

The Scotsman Bulletin Monday, November 20 2023

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin

00:07 for Monday the 20th of November.

00:09 I'm Dale Miller, Head of News at the Scotsman

00:13 and I'm joined by our Arts and Culture Correspondent,

00:16 Brian Ferguson.

00:17 Brian, it's only five weeks until Christmas

00:19 and we're in the thick of it.

00:21 - Absolutely, yep.

00:22 Counting down to the Huckabee Festival and much more.

00:25 - We're here to talk about the front page

00:27 of the Scotsman firstly,

00:28 and we led on the ceasefire call,

00:32 which has gained a lot of traction over the past week.

00:35 There will be a vote in the Scottish Parliament tomorrow

00:38 and MSPs are due to give cross-party support

00:41 to the want for an immediate ceasefire.

00:44 Now, Scottish Labor's position

00:46 has come under question on this one,

00:49 as well as Anas Sarwar.

00:50 He was questioned on Sunday about this.

00:53 A lot of focus on how Scottish Labor will vote tomorrow,

00:57 but the word from the party

00:58 is that they will back ceasefire calls.

01:00 There is a vote that's been submitted by the SNP.

01:04 It will be one to watch over the next 24 hours

01:07 after we saw several members of Labor's shadow cabinet

01:11 effectively resign last week

01:12 because they backed an SNP amendment at Westminster

01:17 along similar lines as well.

01:19 Brian, there's a lovely front page picture there

01:22 on the front of the Scotsman as well.

01:24 That was from the BAFTAs in Scotland

01:26 and you were there last night. Tell us all about it.

01:28 Yeah, very much Scotland's answer to the Oscars.

01:31 We were back in Glasgow last night,

01:33 probably the second year really they've been back in full effect

01:36 since the pandemic really obviously forced

01:39 the kind of much scaling back of that event

01:44 into an online version for a couple of years.

01:45 But yeah, it seemed like everyone involved in Scottish film

01:50 and TV was there last night.

01:52 As you say, a great picture on the front page.

01:54 One of the great stories from the event

01:56 and also really from Scottish film in the last couple of years

01:59 has been the success of Aftersun.

02:03 It's a film that again a lot of our readers

02:05 and people watching this might not have heard of,

02:07 but there's a kind of relatively new name

02:11 on the Scottish film scene, Charlotte Wells,

02:14 a kind of writer and director from Edinburgh

02:17 who went over to New York to try and pursue a career in film.

02:21 Aftersun is a debut film.

02:22 She brought it to the Edinburgh Film Festival last year,

02:26 not so long after it was in Cannes.

02:28 Did very well in both events,

02:30 you know, got some terrific reviews

02:31 and has had huge success kind of around the world

02:35 with various festivals and awards.

02:37 And since she won a UK BAFTA for Outstanding Debut earlier this year,

02:42 the film won three awards last night,

02:45 two for Charlotte herself,

02:47 one for Paul Mescal, who is in the film with Frankie Corio,

02:52 who is a young girl from West Lothian,

02:55 who was actually only 10 when she made the film,

02:57 she's 13 now.

02:59 And Paul and Frankie play a mother and daughter

03:03 in a kind of really moving drama

03:06 about them going on holiday together.

03:09 And yeah, it's a kind of tremendously moving and powerful film

03:14 that had a great impact, like I say, when it was in Edinburgh.

03:17 And when Charlotte had a bit of a homecoming

03:20 when she brought it back,

03:22 which was a very new name to us at the time.

03:25 And, you know, it felt like another big homecoming

03:28 for Charlotte and Frankie last night.

03:32 Paul wasn't there, unfortunately,

03:33 but Charlotte was on stage three times

03:35 during the course of the night.

03:36 And yeah, she was very much the big star of the night,

03:41 as was Frankie, obviously, who was nominated as well,

03:43 I have to say.

03:44 And yeah, there were some other great stories.

03:47 There was a huge gang of people involved

03:50 in a terrific BBC drama, Mayflies,

03:53 which won the best TV scripted production award.

03:56 For people who don't know, Mayflies was a book,

04:01 or is a book by Andrew O'Hagan, one of our best authors,

04:05 which was skewered by the producer Claire Mundell,

04:10 who worked with the screenwriter, Andrea Gim, to adapt it.

04:14 And they got the chance to make it last year at the BBC

04:17 at pretty short notice.

04:19 BBC wanted it for Christmas last year.

04:22 So they had to make it really quickly.

04:24 Got an absolutely terrific cast together,

04:27 including Tony Curran and Ashley Jensen,

04:29 who were both nominated for awards last night.

04:33 And, you know, it's very much a story

04:36 based on Andrew O'Hagan's own life,

04:39 and a kind of lifelong friendship,

04:41 and a kind of big dilemma that he and another friend faced.

04:47 It was, again, a very moving and powerful piece.

04:51 Tony Curran and Ashley Jensen spoke at length

04:55 about some of the issues involved in it,

04:58 which is a little bit the impact of a kind of cancer diagnosis

05:01 and how people cope with that.

05:03 So Tony was saying himself that even a lot of friends of his

05:07 haven't been able to watch the film as yet.

05:11 But yeah, that was one of the great stories of the night.

05:15 And then a rising star, relatively new name

05:18 in Scottish film and TV,

05:20 but has certainly been making a big name for herself,

05:22 is Lauren Lyle, who won two awards

05:24 for her terrific performance in "Carrie and Perry,"

05:28 which is, again, another book adaptation,

05:30 really interesting,

05:32 kind of a relatively big theme of the night.

05:37 Last night was the success of "Carrie and Perry"

05:41 and Lauren's performance.

05:42 "Carrie and Perry" is a series of novels

05:44 by the author Val McDermott.

05:46 I think there's seven now, a new one just out.

05:49 You know, there's just been one made for TV so far,

05:53 but as Lauren was saying last night,

05:55 that they've been commissioned to make a new one

05:59 in the new year.

06:00 So that'll be something we very much look forward to,

06:03 but she won the Audience Award

06:06 and Best TV Actress as well.

06:09 There's a couple other ones to mention.

06:10 There was a great true life story brought to the screen,

06:15 a story from the '90s, actually,

06:16 that a guy called Jonah MacLeod,

06:20 he was actually based on his bizarre experiences at school,

06:23 where it turned out one of the classmates at school

06:27 had managed to get back into the school

06:30 that he had been in, obviously, when he was a teenager,

06:33 but he was in his 30s when he managed to get back in

06:36 and re-enroll as a pupil.

06:37 So the incredible story,

06:39 which hit the headlines in the '90s,

06:40 and a lot of people remember,

06:42 he has revisited what happened,

06:45 and the absolutely bizarre,

06:48 the bizarre the way that this guy managed to dupe

06:51 as a lot of his old teachers,

06:53 who actually taught him the first time round,

06:55 he managed to get back into the school.

06:57 There's a great documentary that Alan Cumming stars in,

07:01 lip syncing a kind of real life interview

07:05 with Brian McKinnon,

07:06 this undoubtedly Scotland's most famous schoolboy imposter.

07:11 And then a couple of new stars,

07:13 it was really great to catch up with them last night.

07:15 I'd met one of them before, Lewis Gribbon,

07:18 who is the star of a Channel 4 drama, "Somewhere Boy".

07:22 Yeah, again, a kind of father-son drama this time.

07:27 And Lewis is very much a kind of new star

07:29 of Scottish film and TV.

07:30 He's been really making a big name for himself.

07:32 He made one of the absolute best speeches of the night.

07:36 As did Lucy Halliday, who's a new name,

07:40 when the BATA nominations came out for me,

07:42 and she was nominated for,

07:44 and won Best Actress for her role in the feature film,

07:48 a queer identity drama, "Blue Jean",

07:51 which was her first onscreen performance.

07:53 And intriguingly, she was telling me that

07:56 she almost gave up.

07:57 She was doing acting with a youth theatre group

07:59 in Paisley versus Robin.

08:01 She almost gave up,

08:02 but she actually happened to spot a post on Instagram

08:06 for auditions for this production,

08:09 and went along, got the audition,

08:11 and not so long later,

08:14 she's won a BAFTA Scotland Award,

08:16 so that was an incredible moment for her last night.

08:19 But those two young actors made terrific speeches.

08:22 Yeah, it went down an absolute storm with the audience

08:28 in Glasgow last night.

08:29 So it was a terrific event, all in.

08:32 - You can read Brian's full report at scotsman.com.

08:37 You can also read his exclusive about the stands

08:40 pulling out of the Newtown Theatre

08:44 for the festival next year,

08:45 a significant step as the festival and its partners

08:49 continue to battle with rising costs as we head into 2024.

08:54 Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter,

08:57 and go out and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow

08:59 and support local journalism.

09:01 Brian and everyone else, thanks for joining us.

09:04 (upbeat music)

09:06 (upbeat music)

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