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FILM: Jobson's choice

Rory Ford

THE Central Bar has never looked so ethereal. At 11.30am on Sunday morning the famous pub situated at the foot of Leith Walk still smells faintly of the night before ­ a perfume of ashtrays and spilt beer.

Although outside the sky is overcast, bright diffuse light spills through the windows playing on the wispy odourless smoke emanating from a machine tucked in one of the booths.

A dark-haired woman enters and pauses when she sees the tall man. Their eyes lock and the three jakey blokes at the bar pick up their pints and file out in regimented fashion towards the men's toilets.

The man and woman speak.

He: "You." She: "Me."

He: "You and Me."

She: "Forever and ever."

It is not the sort of exchange that you would expect to hear in the Central Bar, even on a bleary-eyed Sunday morning. The man leaves and the woman is left, her head bowed as if in the throes of some awful existential angst, balling her fists in silent torment inside the sleeves of her cardigan.

"Right," shouts Richard Jobson standing in the corner behind a huge camera. "Let's do that one more time." And the jakey blokes file back to their positions at the bar once more.

The reason for the elliptical dialogue, the smoke-belching machine and the arc lights outside the window illuminating the proceedings is the filming of Jobson's directorial debut, 16 Years Of Alcohol. Starring Trainspotting's Kevin McKidd, right, and Northern Irish actress Susan Lynch (Beautiful Creatures) the movie is based on a performance poem that the former Skids frontman recorded in 1987 for avant-garde Belgian label Les Disques Du Crepuscule, who also published it as a slim, long out-of- print volume.

Jobson used to perform the poem when he toured with cult author William Burroughs. "So it was 16 Years Of Alcohol, followed by 60 Years Of Smack," jokes producer Hamish McAlpine.

The film is being shot entirely in Edinburgh and was originally touted by its producers as "a Scottish Boyz 'N' The Hood". Well, it sounds a bit better than "based on the obscure poem by Richard Jobson" doesn't it?

However, anyone familiar with the high-concept pitch-speak of Hollywood won't be surprised to learn that Jobson has no intention of cranking out Jockz 'N' The Hood. "To me, this is quite a romantic story," says Jobson. "It's almost like a ghost story about a man trying to escape the ghosts of his past, and at the moment he's just about to, tragedy strikes. The film is him trying to piece together his past as he lies dying. It's a very sad piece because it's about a man who tries to break away from the chains of the past because they tyrannise him."

It would be easy to see Jobson himself as spending much of the last 20 years trying to break away from his own past. The suffix 'former' has never been so liberally applied to one man. Former Skids vocalist, former cabaret poet, former TV presenter, former film critic ­ even former husband of Mariella Frostrup ­ Jobson has reinvented himself with the fevered energy of someone perennially dissatisfied with his lot.

Right now, during a break in filming at the movie's makeshift production HQ at Leith Academy, Jobson looks very satisfied.

"I love this," beams the lantern-jawed auteur. "Just walking to work every morning makes me feel joyful. Edinburgh's always been my adopted city ever since the days of the Skids. We were based in Fife but we used to have a flat here. I always thought of Edinburgh as my magical home and now I have a flat here on the Royal Mile."

Unlike the film's main character Frankie or his old bandmate Stuart Adamson, Jobson has managed to outrun the ghosts of his own past. Adamson succumbed to his own ghosts when he started drinking again and hanged himself in a Hawaiian hotel room last year.

Jobson first learned of the news when he came out of a London screening room, turned on his mobile and found he had 48 messages. "I thought: 'Something is very wrong'. I couldn't believe it," recalls Jobson. "Without Stuart, I'd have amounted to nothing ­ I had no musical qualities whatsoever. The fact that somebody I'd spent such a big part of my life with was no longer around was hard to take in."

While the title of the movie has proved contentious ­ it's been shortened to 16 Years while shooting so local establishments don't think they're playing host to some grim movie about alcoholism ­ Jobson maintains it is completely unrelated to his friend's tragic illness.

"Yes, it's called 16 Years Of Alcohol but it's not the story of an alcoholic ­ that's just ridiculous," he asserts. "When Hamish was in Cannes talking to distributors from Europe and South East Asia they loved the title because in their culture alcohol is something they celebrate. It's only in our culture that alcohol means something miserable."

Jobson was persuaded to make the movie after interviewing acclaimed Chinese director Wong Kar-wai (Chungking Express) at the Edinburgh Film Festival two years ago. "He was up here with his film In The Mood For Love and he said: 'Why has there not been a modern ove story told in this city?' " says Jobson. "I think he was very taken with the conflicting scenery of the Old and New Towns. They're both beautiful, sure, but it's a harsh kind of beauty."

Jobson showed Kar-wai the book and the director ­ who is best known for creating a stylised visual poetry in his films ­ suggested that he shoot it in Edinburgh.

Jobson knows he's setting himself up for a critical kicking when the film is released. Basing your film on a book of your own poetry is one thing, but a film critic turned director is quite another. Isn't he worried that people won't review the film at all, rather they'll review what they see as his pretensions of getting above his station?

"Yeah, but they'd do that anyway," concurs the 41-year-old director. "Particularly since I was in a band as well. That doesn't happen in any other culture in the world, but in Britain if you're a person who's come from one alleged discipline you're setting yourself up for a fall. In other countries there's always been a relationship between music and film and there's been a history of critics turned directors in Europe."

Which is true. Jobson is joining a rather august list of European directors such as Francois Truffaut, Wim Wenders, Claude Chabrol and Dario Argento, all of whom were scribblers before they looked at life through a lens.

None of them, however, were poets and Jobson is aiming to present a side of Auld Reekie that has never been seen on film before. Although produced on a low budget ("under two million" is all McAlpine will say) and filmed on high-definition video to be transferred to film later, Jobson is aiming for a lush visual look that will complement the dream logic of his story.

"It's almost like I'm projecting a mythical Edinburgh on top of the real one," he says. "The locations that we're using are all very authentic Edinburgh locations. So I'm very proud of the fact that I've used Edinburgh in a way that no-one has ever thought about before.

Jobson denies the film is a memoir ("aspects of it are based on experiences in my life," he admits "but it's not autobiographical ­ not at all ­ the film is completely fictional"), but he's fallen into the old director's trap of casting a younger actor who somewhat resembles him as his protagonist.

Kevin McKidd seems surprised by the suggestion that he might be a proxy for his director. "I never thought of that, but a few people have pointed out how similar we are," muses the 28-year-old actor. "There are a lot of weird coincidences in our lives. I was in a band at school ­ admittedly not a successful band like the Skids ­ and we think about a lot of things the same way."

A former student of Queen Margaret Drama College, McKidd originally started studying engineering at Edinburgh University ("for some weird reason," he shrugs). After graduating from QMUC McKidd went straight into a production of John McGrath's The Silver Darlings, which toured Scotland and then moved to London where he won the part of the ill-fated Tommy (the one they left off the poster) in Trainspotting.

While most of his co-stars have gone on to considerably bigger films with varying degrees of success, McKidd has been quietly amassing a solidly impressive body of work in lower-budget productions. After Small Faces, Hideous Kinky and this year's British sleeper hit Dog Soldiers, everyone wants to talk to the big lad from Elgin. The producers of the next Lara Croft movie have been trying to set-up a meeting but McKidd's six-day-a-week schedule for this movie has precluded it.

"There are elements of my character Frankie in Richard," says McKidd, "but the last thing I want it to become is an impersonation of Richard Jobson. But I've used Richard as a real tool because he knows this film and the life that it deals with inside out.

"He's been willing to give me anecdotes that have enabled me to get under the skin of the character, which is a resource you don't normally have."

And in a world where if you haven't made your first hit movie by the time you're 20 you're considered an underachiever, Jobson is confident that he can bring the benefit of experience to the project.

"This is my fourth film as a producer and I've been writing about film for the last 20 years, so I've been in and around it every which way for a long, long time," he says. "I take your point about a lot of directors being 19 these days but a lot of the time that shows in the work. What I'm trying to do is a little more experimental and I know the characters inside out."

But for a man telling the story of another trying to outrun his past, Jobson's keeps catching up with him. At a cast and crew party at The Edinburgh College Of Art some wag brought a karaoke machine ­ fully equipped with a backing track for the Skids' Into The Valley. Jobson, back on his home turf, couldn't resist.

"It was one of the most bizarre moments of post-modernism I've ever seen," recalls Hamish McAlpine. "Here was Richard singing along to this track that he had originally recorded over 20 years ago. And it was, without doubt, the worst version of Into The Valley I've ever heard."

Recapturing the past is never easy.

16 Years Of Alcohol is still shooting in Edinburgh, it is scheduled for release next year.

Evening News 27 June 2002

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