Scotland Substitute

Now and again as part of my job I meet people who are interested in Wales as a film location. It’s very rare this happens and most of the time it’s guaranteed to be someone making a programme for a terrestrial channel. A couple of weeks ago I was asked to meet with a film director who was looking at the Cardiff area as a possible location for some scenes in his next production. Upon meeting him he immediately seemed familiar, he introduced himself as Robin Hardy. Despite learning his name I found myself not being able to place him, he went on to say he needed locations that could be passed off as Scotland. You can appreciate the lack of etiquette of coming out and asking him “Hey mate what are you famous for?” It took about ten minutes of talking to him and gathering information before it all clicked into place. Robin Hardy directed the 1973 classic ‘The Wicker Man’, one of my favourite films. The reason I’d recognised his voice was because I’d listened to the audio commentary on the DVD of ‘The Wicker Man’ the week before. Upon realising who he was I managed to keep my composure and was just about able not to launch into an embarrassing “I love that film, it is brilliant!” rant. I only got round to watching ‘The Wicker Man’ recently but it made an immediate impact on me, if you haven’t seen it please do. A variety of film and television work owes a debt to it, ranging from ‘Hot Fuzz’ to ‘The League of Gentlemen’. The iconic last few shots of the film are reason enough to watch it. I’m glad to say he’s an extremely nice man. He was not at all stuck up and listened to any opinions I expressed. Unfortunately I didn’t have an opportunity to talk to him about ‘The Wicker Man’, mind you he’s had over thirty years of geeks like me pestering him about it.

It turns out Hardy is in the process of putting together his next film ‘Cowboys for Christ’, which has been billed a re-imagining of his original horror. It’s about a young Christian couple from Texas who go to Scotland to preach door to door about Jesus. Slowly they are drawn into a frightening new world, so very different to the one they know. It sounds like they’ll be plenty of parallels between this and ‘The Wicker Man’. It’s all very exciting but best of all living legend Christopher Lee is taking on the role of Sir Lachlan Morrison. Lee of course played the sinister Lord Summerisle in ‘The Wicker Man’, the prospect of these two working together again is absolutely fantastic. The prospect of possibly meeting Christopher Lee is even better.

I don’t know if anything will come of it, most of these visits don’t. About a year back Roger Christian was looking for places to film a big budget horror movie about vampires. I’m a big Star Wars fan so I was made up to meet him, he was part of the team that won an Oscar for set and art direction for ‘A New Hope’ and was 2nd unit director on ‘The Phantom Menace’. Nothing came from that visit, possibly a good thing seeing as he did also direct the awful ‘Battlefield Earth’. The last I heard plans for the film have been put of hold and it’s no longer in pre-production. So I wont be holding my breathe over the chances of this new film being made in Wales. After all if they are looking for somewhere to look like Scotland they might want to try Scotland.