June 2003 Interview: Don Coutts (1)

'American Cousins' is a new feature film made in Scotland, which will premiere at the Highland Festival. Film director DON COUTTS reflects on the making of the movie.

Film director, Don Coutts

AMERICAN COUSINS started out as script by Sergio Casci, who is a former BBC journalist turned freelance scriptwriter that I have worked with several times, including our film for the the Tartan Shorts series, Dead Sea Scrolls, with the late Ian Bannen.

Sergio’s script was originally called Strawberry Whistler, which came from a story about a guy working in an ice cream shop who had to whistle while he was preparing the sundaes, so that the owner knew he wasn’t eating the fruit. Of course, he just stuck them in his pocket for later!

Anyway, we had the script schlepping around for about 3 years, and eventually linked up with Margaret Matheson, who is a film producer. Margaret is a Borders Scot based in London, and she is that rare thing in the film business, someone you feel you can trust!

A scene from 'American Cousins'

Nothing much was happening, and eventually I rang Margaret and said let's just forget about this, and she was very apologetic about not being able to place it for us. She rang back literally about two hours later, and said you're not going to believe this, but I just had a call from a company who make tax break movies.

They had been doing a film with John Hannah that had fallen apart, and wanted to do American Cousins. We had to sign over the rights and come in basically as hired hands. That was November 2001, and I was already working with Clarissa Dixon-Wright on Clarissa and The Countryman for the BBC. We are an unlikely mixture of vegetarian socialist (that’s me) and carnivorous libertarian!

I can't say I was really desperate to make a feature film, but I wasn't going to pass up on the chance, either. We decamped to my mother in law's at Bridge of Allan, and started shooting on 14 January in Govan, where it rained every day! We got two really good American actors, Darren Hedaya and Danny Nucci, who was the very handsome guy who won the ticket in Titanic, but didn't get the girl.

Next Page | Previous Page Page 1 | 2 | 3