NO TIME FOR PLOT
Scotland’s One-Man Film Industry
BY ERIC FLAUM
Comfort and Joy is Scottish director/writer Bill Forsyth’s
follow-up to his highly acclaimed box-office successes,
Local Hero and Gregory’s Girl. A soft-spoken, intense indi
vidual whose thick Scottish accent gives everything he says a
melodic, lyrical quality, Forsyth has little in common with the star
oriented Hollywood community that gathered for the Los Angeles
premiere of his movie.
Gossip pages featured photos of
Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins, but
Forsyth slunk through the glamorous
surroundings with the air of a man
forced to visit the dentist.
“I was quite out of it at the Opening,”
he admits over lunch in New York, just
before departing to his beloved Glas
gow. “I didn’t really feel like I belonged
there. I felt as if one of those Secret
Agents was going to come down and
remove me any minute. It was quite an
odd feeling.”
Wearing a yellow plaid shirt of the
picnic table variety with a blue and white
striped seersucker jacket, Forsyth was ac
tually more conspicuous in the chichi
hotel cafe we spoke in than the traveling
rock and roll band that had just noisily
checked in.
Comfort and Joy is the story of a
Glasgow DJ w’ho finds himself, improba
bly and unexpectedly, in the middle of a
mafioso ice cream war. “Dickie-Bird” is
a personable, velvet-voiced local celeb
rity whose girl has just abruptly left him.
In pursuit of new' romance he stumbles
into a war — “Mr. Bunny" against “Mr.
McCool’’—for dominion over Glasgow’s
ice cream truck routes. There’s a melee
of window smashing by McCool hood
lums of a Mr. Bunny van. The assailants
are doused with raspberry syrup. A flee
ing hood recognizes Dickie-Bird and
soon the hapless platter spinner is play
ing peacemaker while at the same time
Most films
, HAVE TOO MANY
H IDEAS OR TOO
[ MUCH PLOT IN
I THEM...
I AND IT’S A REAL
r ENCUMBRANCE f
Bill Forsyth
Mr. Bunny: Raspberry syrup violence. Bill Forsyth (below, left): Humane
comedies on a Glasgow basis.
nursing his broken heart.
Like Forsyth’s previous films, Comfort
and Joy is mostly a character study,
working off of a simple, amusing prem
ise. It is a developing trademark of
Forsyth's work to spin a simple story
in a rich atmosphere. “Usually there
is an idea, and usually it’s an idea that
strikes me as being funny,” says Forsyth.
“Most films have too many ideas or
too much plot in them," he continues.
“It just seems like a burden if you've got
a very complex plot. It just soaks up too
much time.”
Forsyth uses time to create and de
velop characters. The results have been
picturesque voyages through the lives of
interestingly off-beat people.
Bill Forsyth is a devout self-analyzer,
and his observatioas seem quite accu
rate. “I’m just kind of realistic,” Forsyth
says in a matter-of-fact way. “I think I can
see things pretty much as they are. I
think I'm quite perceptive, without get
ting distracted by too many things. This
wasn’t always the case.”
Over-contemplative in his earlier
years, Forsyth seems to have been a lot
like the central character in his first
commercial release, Gregory’s Girl, the
film that beat Chariots of Fire to win the
British Isles’ equivalent of an Oscar.
“I must have been about sixteen and I
had two friends and we formed our
selves into this little thinking cabal. One
Saturday night the three of us were in
the park and by that time the cafe had
closed and the evening had kind of whit
tled to nothing. You see, we wanted to
go see girls in the cafe. And we would
debate about it until the cafe was closed!
One of my friends says, ‘You know what
the problem is? We think too much!’ So
we just threw a bench into the pond and
went home.”
These days Bill Forsyth has found a
more constructive way of channeling his
energies. (He has not, however, forgot
ten the lesson.) Films have become an
ongoing passion, and the basis for some
of his friendships as well When we dis
cuss Mark Knopfler, guitarist-leader of
the group Dire Straits, who scored Gre
gory's Girl and Ix>cal Hero, Forsyth pays
him a high compliment when he credits
Knopfler with "a filmmaker’s brain, be
cause the way he works Ls very concep
tual. His work is often based on little
stories, much like my own."
In fact, two Knopfler compositions
from Dire Straits' last studio album, U>ve
Over Gold, inspired Forsyth in the crea
tion of Comfort and Joy.
“He played me the album,” recalls
Forsyth, ‘ before I’d sat down to write
the script, although I’d had most of the
general ideas for it, and there was a real
kind of coincidence in finding his album
going down the same road. The basic
concept in Telegraph Road’ of a city
being bom and dying, and then Private
Investigations, which was the other side
of my story about a solitary person with
an enigma, was all in the album, and it
was really inspirational.”
The result is a delightful story of a
jilted lover's search for companionship
and meaning. There is much humor, but
a deeper examination of human nature
as well, a concern that permeates For
syth’s work. Although all too often, how
ever, reviewers have chosen to focus en
tirely on the lighter side of Forsyth’s
movies.
‘‘I think the kind of humor that I work
with is always bordering on the darkness
of the other side of itself,” Forsyth re
flects. “I like working on the borderline,
but it just depends on how people per
ceive it. Maybe they’re scared to look
over the edge.
‘‘In almost indescribable ways you re
veal yourself when you make a film,” Bill
Forsyth says.