David Mackenzie Interview

We talk to the director of The Last Great Wilderness

Clayton: I saw the film last night, and I was very impressed. You co wrote it with your brother and star of the film Alastair and Gillian Berrie your producer, but whose idea was it initially?

David Mackenzie: Ahhh…mine! It was my initial idea, and I spoke about it to Al and he went away with Mick (Tait) and they wrote a draft and tweaked that around for a while. And then I came in and changed it quite a lot. And that’s what we ended up with. Gillian was also busy doing stuff with it while we were shooting.

C: So, where did you get the idea for the film?

DM: Alastair and I grew up in the highlands of North Perthshire, and everyday I would be walking on the hills and you’d get this feeling that someone was lining you up in their gun-sights. You get this idea that the hills have eyes and ears. I think that’s where the germ of the idea was – the idea of people being hunted in some ways in the highlands. I know what you see in the film is only partially related to that, buts that’s where the germ of the idea came from.

C: When did you come up with that? Was it recently, or have you had it in your head for a while?

DM: I think we came up with it a few years back. But in the way of these things, you move them forward a couple of steps and then they sit on the shelf for a while. Then you move them forward another couple of steps – when the opportunities come to move forward, you take them.

C: Who exactly do you feel that Charlie and Vincente are? Where did those characters come from?

DM: (laughs) I’m not sure I can answer that question. I don’t know. Charlie is kind of everyman, from the car he drives to the suit he wears he’s not quite Mr Groovy or whatever. Vincente is a kind of down at heels drifter. Where they came from? Our heads, I guess. They’re not based on anyone and are just invented like most characters are.

C: The people in the retreat are a pretty unusual bunch of people. How did you come up with such a weird group? Were they based on real people?

DM: That element of the film came very much from me and I wanted to make sure that we had a bunch of pariahs or people who were not only living on the edge of civilisation but were actually on the edge of civilisation themselves. There’s a line in the film where David Hayman says to Alastair about “If a man like Paul can’t live in a place like this without fear, where can he?” That was kind of the idea of that retreat – the last chance salon.

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C: Do you feel that you’re somehow betraying your Scottish heritage by portraying it as the middle of nowhere?

DM: It’s very interesting in some ways because you’re split between thinking that these very remote areas in the highlands are un-police able, anarchic and pagan, which is to a certain extent true, but there’s also a very rich culture and they’re very religious. I certainly don’t think we’re betraying anybody by saying that we’re on the edge. I mean, the west coast of the North of Scotland is pretty much the outer fringe of Europe – it ain’t the middle of nowhere in Alaska or Siberia, but I think that “The Last Great Wilderness” being inside of the people was what we were trying to get at. At least part of the movie is the road element and eventually the road runs out. And as for people thinking that we’re saying that everyone there is a weirdo, well everybody has a history, and there are plenty of communities where there are fractured elements. There are certainly people in places like London that have the problems and issues that we have in our film. So no, I don’t think that we were betraying anyone.

C: There are some pretty intense moments in the film, but also a lot of humour, I loved the part after Charlie and Claire’s love scene, when they are suddenly sitting apart on the end of the bed, was it always your idea to balance these two aspects?

DM: That’s part of what I really tried to bring to it. Playing with shades of light and dark is something that I’ve done in all of my short films. It’s a kind of theme of mine, I think, that I’m keen an exploring. They don’t necessarily always sit that comfortably together but I really like the idea…

C: How difficult was it to direct Alastair in that sex scene – do you think it was easier or harder than directing someone you didn’t know personally?

DM: Well I was shooting it as well, so it was pretty much Victoria Al and myself, and in the background a sound guy, so it wasn’t that difficult at all. It came very much toward the end of the shoot and we’d all got very close together – it was a very bonding type shoot. It was difficult not to laugh at it…

C: As Charlie and Vicente approached the retreat, I thought of ‘An American Werewolf In London’, and later I kept thinking of the Eagles song Hotel California, what were your influences while writing and filming?

DM: Well, those two are not bad ones. There are loads of others. I’m a big fan of a Jean Luc Godard film called ‘Weekend’ that was a crazy journey into lunacy that I really liked, bits of ‘The Wicker Man’… I’m not trying to wear the influences too heavily on my sleeve but I’ve seen a lot of films and there are various spins on various genre during the film.

C: The music in the film is a very strong element. What prompted you to feature the music of the Pastels in the film?

DM: Basically there is a song that runs through the film and I wanted to find a band to do it, and the Pastels had got involved with Jarvis, and as a Glasgow band that we knew they were very keen to do the soundtrack work. I knew their work and knew that they had a lot of interesting influences, and subsequently became pretty good friends.

C: You mentioned Jarvis Cocker who is the unnamed pop star who stole Charlie’s wife away. Cocker also who wrote the song that reminds Charlie of his wife’s unfaithfulness. Are you a fan of Pulp? And how did he get involved with the project?

DM: Well, Jarvis knows the Pastels pretty well and we wanted to find someone with a distinctive enough voice for it to be an unnamed person and yet still to know roughly who it might be.
So Jarvis became a very obvious choice and because there was this connection we were able to get him involved which was great. He mucked in very well, and came up with what would be nice to be a hit – or at least to have a song that is on the radio when the film is released.

C: The final act of revenge is pretty gory, without actually showing any of the violence graphically, how did you decide exactly what you were and were not going to show?

DM: Well, it was a combination of what you actually can in terms of physical prosthetics and there were decisions that we made in the edit as well. I shot some slightly more graphic stuff that we ended up cutting. I a funny kind of way it diminishes the power of it to show more, the suggestion of it is more powerful. Part of it was in the planning and part in the editing

C: The filming suffered a major setback when most of your locations became closed to you with the outbreak of Foot and mouth, how did you cope with that? And what extra pressure did that put you under?

DM: What it did was something very amazing. I wouldn’t wish that sort of situation on anyone, but it gave everyone a kind of “blitz mentality” and as a director it meant I had to think on my feet incredibly quickly and it made everything much more organic. There was a sort of vibrant madness to the whole shoot which I tuned into and enjoyed very much. Obviously the crew were knackered but most people tuned into it too.

C: At the end of the film, since you hadn’t shied away from showing a ghost on screen, I felt sure that we would see Vincente and Flora together somewhere, was that something that you ever considered?

DM: Ah, we shot it, but I thought that it was too cheesy. It’s one of those agonies about an ending, especially when there are so many characters that you want to explain about. We vaguely referred to a couple of them, but I could have gone on for another half an hour. I might have my regrets about that but we ended up with what we ended up with. But, yes we did shoot it but I felt it just didn’t cut it.

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C: So do I see a directors cut DVD in the offing?

DM: There will be a DVD with an enormous number of brilliant deleted scenes, particularly with all the other characters which we would have loved to have put into the edit. There were some very comic moments and some very, very sad moments that went the way of some scenes as a result of trying to focus the film a little more.

C: Which of the characters featured in the film could have been explored a little more if you’d had the screen time?

DM: To be honest, all of them really. There were huge back stories for lots of the characters that were only hinted at in the finished film. It’s not really fair to talk about all the deleted stuff, but there were some great scenes that will find their way on to the DVD, I hope.

C: You have made nine short films, was this the first time that you had used the digital medium?

DM: No, I made a documentary, which is probably my favourite of everything I’ve done, called ‘Two Fingers: A Portrait Of An Awkward Bastard’ and the majority of that was digital and it was great. Unfortunately we had a problem with Channel 4 at the time, they wimped out and I had to re-cut it and I lost my favourite scenes. Whatever got broadcast late at night wasn’t nearly as good as the original. I’m actually thinking about putting that on the DVD as well.

C: How does digital compare, from a behind the camera viewpoint, with film?

DM: It depends how you use it. There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t use a high definition digital camera in exactly the same way as you’d use a film camera. But there’s something about it that gives it a different kind of authenticity – there’s a contemporary vibe to digital that feels like it belongs to now. It doesn’t feel like it’s being nostalgic and there’s something somehow less pretentious about it which I think is kind of nice. Certainly when we started shooting there were things that happened with performance, in terms of the authenticity and in terms of the spaces, that really excited me and blew me away. It made me feel “This is a new medium that’s different and lets play up to it.”

C: What was the atmosphere like on the set?

DM: There were times when we virtually had to stop shooting because there was so much hysteria. There were times when I couldn’t even say “Cut” because I was laughing so much.
There is a scene where the old lady Ellie is singing, and poor Sheila was trying her hardest and there were all these people with tears rolling down their cheeks but in reality shaking with laughter. I had to get the AD (assistant director) to call action and cut because I was in a corner shaking with hysterics. It was brilliant. All of my shoots have had fantastically funny moments and with this one all of the cast came away saying it was one of the best things they had worked on. It’s a very good process for actors being a bit more organic and being a bit more playful with the material.

C: Your next project is already being talked about with a lot of enthusiasm, what can you tell me about ‘Young Adam’?

DM: It’s being filmed in Glasgow and Edinburgh, it’s finished, it’ll be released in September by Warner Bros, and it’s basically the story of two bargemen who find a woman’s body in the water which then gets around to the younger of the two, a deckhand, having an affair with the boss’s wife.

C: You’ve got Ewan Mac Gregor in ‘Young Adam’, was he pleased to be working at home as opposed to in a galaxy far, far away?

DM: I think he was very pleased to be working at home on a film that has adult morality and all of those kind of things and something that allowed him to do some acting against real people rather than a blue screen. He was a great supporter of the project all the way through and fantastic to work with.

C: Thank you for taking the time to talk to us, and can you tell Alastair that my girlfriend thinks he’s lovely – and can’t wait to see him in this or back on TV as the Laird…

DM: (laughs) Yeah I’ll tell him – thanks.