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Dougray Scott as Frankie the Fence.
one last chance
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ONE LAST CHANCE
(FORMERLY THE BUM’S RUSH) IS AN OFFBEAT
COMEDY SET IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS FROM DOUGRAY
SCOTT’S COMPANY,
HERO FILMS. BUT,
SAYS MAX LEVANT,
DON’T EXPECT KILTS
AND CABER-TOSSING.
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In that classic episode of Fawlty Towers where a German couple come to stay at Basil’s hotel, ‘Don’t mention the war!’ becomes the comic catchphrase. When you’re talking to Stewart Svaasand, about One Last Chance, though, it’s more like ‘Don’t mention Brigadoon!’
Nothing could be further from Hollywood’s highland fantasy than Tullybridge, the small town where the film is set. But One Last Chance - which was, until recently known as The Bum’s Rush - is a very Scottish film. It’s set in Scotland, with Scottish actors, a Scottish writer and director (Svaasand), and it is the debut production of Scottish star Dougray Scott’s production company, Hero Films. Oh, and it features curling, the sport which became briefly famous when Britain won gold in it at the Winter Olympics. Curling is very popular in Scotland, perhaps because it is the only part of Britain where it’s cold enough to play it.
The curling scene, set on a frozen loch, “was one thing guaranteed to come up in any meeting with producers,” jokes Svaasand, especially since the loch also holds a grisly secret which becomes a turning-point of the plot. Frozen lochs are not as common in Scotland as you might think, and mocking one up was one of production designer Pat Campbell’s biggest challenges.
Svaasand wrote the script in 1997, a couple of years after graduating from film school, with help from Scottish Screen, the quasi-governmental agency whose job it is to promote film-making in Scotland and which has had a hand in most of the recent hits to come from north of the border. Lots of people showed interest but, in the way it is with scripts, they all thought they knew better than Svaasand the direction it should go in.
Svaasand held firm. “It’s a black comedy,” he insists. “It’s not romanticised, although it has moments in it which are quite gentle as well. But it’s not Local Hero. Anyway, it stopped and started again for a while. Then I showed it to Anne Batz, who I met on one of those Arista [screenwriting] courses in Spain.”
Batz had recently set up Hero Films with Dougray Scott and Mike Barker, director of To Kill a King (formerly known as Cromwell and Fairfax, which is due to open in the UK this summer). “I met Dougray through Anne,” continues Svaasand. “We hit it off and we’ve been working on the film for the past couple of years.” One thing that changed in the process was the title. “I guess people didn’t really know what ‘The Bum’s Rush’ meant,” he concedes, “and we didn’t want them sitting there trying to figure out the title when they should be watching the film.”
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