A FILM about the double life of schoolboy impostor Brandon Lee is to be filmed at last, it was revealed yesterday.
Scottish producer Peter Broughan's Bronco Films is to go ahead after the final finance for the #4m film was put in place in Cannes with the Isle of Man Film Commission coming to the rescue.
Cash from Glasgow film fans and lottery money from the Scottish Arts Council is also involved in bringing the story of Britain's oldest schoolboy to the screen.
In 1995, a then 32-year-old university dropout, Brian MacKinnon, hit the headlines when it was revealed he masqueraded as a 17- year-old schoolboy at Bearsden Academy - where years earlier he had legitimately studied.
Mr MacKinnon took on the fake persona of Brandon Lee - Brandon from the character in Beverly Hills 90210 and horror actor Christopher Lee's surname - to do his Highers and fulfil his ambition to become a doctor.
An anonymous caller tipped off the head teacher of Mr MacKinnon's duplicity and education chiefs launched an investigation as to how he managed to fool officials and teachers into accepting him as a fifth former.
The impostor had his place in medical studies at Dundee University withdrawn when his deception hit the headlines.
Years earlier, he had dropped out of medicine at Glasgow University and in 1997 he failed to enter Aberdeen University in another attempt to study medicine.
Mr Broughan, producer of Rob Roy, began working on a screenplay about the fake schoolboy back in 1996.
Later, he bought rights to Mr MacKinnon's autobiography Margin Walker - which was only published on the Internet after it ran into legal difficulties.
The Brian MacKinnon/Brandon Lee film, entitled Younger Than Springtime, will star Scottish actor Alan Cumming, who previously played a camp air steward in the comedy The High Life and a Russian computer boffin in the James Bond blockbuster movie, Goldeneye.
The Isle of Man Commission has been behind several recent films, including the hugely successful Waking Ned, where the island stood in for Ireland.
It looks certain that some of Younger Than Springtime will be shot there.
The go-ahead comes just in time because Mr Cumming, who received a Tony award for his performance in Cabaret and can be seen playing an effete lord in Plunkett and Macleane, is getting on in years to play a 17-year-old.
Meantime, at Cannes, it looks as if Lynne Ramsay's Rat Catcher, which is set in Glasgow during the dustbin men's strike, may have peaked too early in the contest for the Camera d'Or, the prize awarded to first-time directors.
It is never a good thing to come too early in the programme and although the film was rapturously received, the hot favourite now is Virgin Suicides, directed by Sophia Coppola, about five sisters in Michigan who committed suicide in the 1970s.
But Rat Catcher has been a huge success and is selling well. British hopes also rest with Beautiful People, directed by Jasmin Dizdar, a Yugoslav who is now a nationalised Briton.
It is set in London during the height of the Bosnian crisis and is the last film to be made by the British Film Institute whose film-making arm has been wound up. Its success ensures that it has gone out on a high note.
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