Dougray Scott thriller preview ahead of LondonBy Brian Pendreigh
One is a world-famous festival with 300 films and top Hollywood stars such as Benicio Del Toro and Gwyneth Paltrow. The other is an amateur event, taking place in a variety of halls over a long weekend in Perthshire.
The entire population of Aberfeldy would fit inside the Leicester Square Odeon. Yet the Aberfeldy Film Festival has scooped its glamorous, big-budget London counterpart to be the first to show footage from New Town Killers, the new Scottish thriller starring Dougray Scott, Alastair Mackenzie and Karen Gillan.
The film's director, Richard Jobson, will be screening scenes from the action thriller when he visits the Aberfeldy event later this month, before flying down to London and the film's full world premiere.
The London festival is organised by the government-funded British Film Institute and has a budget of around £4million, including Lottery funds. The Aberfeldy festival, now in its second year, is organised by the local film club and is financed by ticket sales and a raffle.
The festival committee simply got in touch with Jobson and invited him along, according to Norman McCandlish, one of its members. Not only did Jobson know the town, but he was also familiar with the Watermill, the bookshop and art gallery that will double for a cinema on Friday October 24, when Jobson shows scenes from his new film, with temporary seating for around 40 people.
Tickets for the London Film Festival's opening and closing galas are £25 and those for the London screenings of New Town Killers are £11. Meanwhile in Aberfeldy, a fiver buys you a sneak preview of the film, a talk by Jobson and a glass of wine as well.
Jobson will be talking about his work, with particular emphasis on the use of Edinburgh as a location. Last week, however, he was holed up in an editing suite, battling to get New Town Killers finished in time for the Aberfeldy and London events.
Jobson, a Fifer who found fame in the pop group The Skids in the 1970s, said: "It's a story based around two hedge-fund managers who are out of control and get their kicks from hunting people rather than animals."
Dougray Scott, recently seen in American drama series Desperate Housewives, and Monarch Of The Glen star Alastair Mackenzie play two financiers who target a young man, played by James Anthony Pearson, who played Bernard Sumner in last year's Joy Division film Control.
They plan the hunt months in advance, entrapping their target financially and forcing him into a deadly 12-hour game of hide and seek.
"The hunt is all over the city," said Jobson. "I'm using everything from the Innocent Tunnel to the canal, various back streets and alleyways, bars from the port of Leith to a whole array of different restaurants and clubs.
"They just pick on the wrong kid who fights back The kid they hunt ends up hunting them through the New Town."
Jobson drew inspiration from the stories of Burke and Hare and Jekyll and Hyde and the idea of the historical city having a secret dark side. "The bare bones of the story are rooted in Edinburgh tradition, but I've tried to put a modern spin on that," he said. "It's a way of showing Edinburgh in a different light."
Jobson said his film had a serious theme, looking at two strands of Edinburgh society at opposite ends of the social spectrum.
He thought the issue was more likely to reach a mass audience in a thriller and chase movie, than in a social realist drama. "It has a rock'n'roll quality," he said. And it could hardly be more timely, with financial markets collapsing in dramatic style and renewed focus on fat-cat City bonuses and lifestyles.
Jobson's previous films, including the semi-autobiographical 16 Years Of Alcohol (2003) and the Scottish kung- fu movie The Purifiers (2004), have had only a limited cinema release. But this looks set to be his most commercial. The presence of Dougray Scott in particular is likely to help the film's box-office prospects.
It is a huge coup for the Aberfeldy event to get a sneak preview. Jobson will be catching an early morning flight to London next day for an appearance on the Radio 4 programme Loose Ends, ahead of the London screenings of New Town Killers at the Odeon West End complex on October 28 and 30.
The two screenings can fit 1300 people and the first is sold out.
The Aberfeldy event runs from October 24 to October 26 and other screenings include Jobson's 2005 film A Woman In Winter, featuring Brian Cox, the Scottish Bollywood spectacular Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and a selection of new Scottish shorts, with the audience determining the winner of the festival's Palme Dewar Award.
