Big Man hits the small screen as writer turns actor in music video

Published on Saturday 20 March 2010 19:34

ONE of Scotland's best-known novelists, famous for his gritty Glasgow crime thrillers, is at the age of 73 about to embark on a career departure – and star in a music video.

• The video's director, Peter Martin, discusses the shoot with William McIlvanney, author of The Big Man. Picture: Robert Perry

William McIlvanney – who for 40 years has portrayed in print a certain type of hard Glaswegian – has turned from writing to acting, making flesh a character who could come straight from the pages of one of his novels.

The acclaimed author of Laidlaw, Docherty and The Big Man has taken a break from working on his latest novel to make his on-screen debut.

He stars in a short film shot in the city and featuring many of the ingredients of his fiction: a disillusioned young man, a difficult father and strong drink.

McIlvanney plays a ghost in the music video, which was shot yesterday, to accompany the song My Father's Coat by James Grant, formerly of the band Love and Money.

The creator of such memorable characters as Tam Docherty and Detective Jack Laidlaw, McIlvanney said he was looking forward to "an incomprehensible day out".

He said: "I'm still hazy about it all. The director asked me if I would do it and I said: 'Yes, no problem.' I know there is a mirror in it. I've been asked to wear a suit and tie. I'll wear the sharpest I have got. He specified wear a tie which seems a strange one and I'll have a coat and that is the size of it. It's a Charlie Chaplin routine – silent."

The short film sees a young man visit the grave of his father, with whom he had a difficult relationship. Later, he falls asleep in his dingy flat only to be awakened by his father, who is standing behind the sofa in his best suit and tie.

Now unable to sleep, the son grabs some money and wanders into the city streets. At the Barras market he stops and stares at a coat he recognises as belonging to his father. Standing in the market and reflected in a mirror, his father watches over his son once again. The ghost later reappears in an old-fashioned pub, wearing the coat and reading the Racing Post.

The video's director, Peter Martin, said: "It is about how you turn into your dad in your middle age. The song is nine minutes long with a four-and-a-half-minute guitar solo and is unusually Scottish in tone.

"People, particularly in the West Coast, will understand the references, about the alcohol and the passing of the torch from one generation to another and all the baggage that comes with it. I had known Willie McIlvanney and I thought he had a classic older man look so I thought he would be brilliant and lined him up to play the father. The idea is that his dad is still haunting him."

In a novel twist, Martin decided that the perfect "son" for McIlvanney – who is credited with triggering Scottish crime fiction with his three critically acclaimed novels featuring the Glasgow detective Laidlaw – would be Tony Black, one of the new generation of Scottish crime writers.

The author of three novels featuring Gus Dury, an alcoholic private eye, Black was only too pleased to accept the role despite insisting his acting experience did not extend past the Nativity play as a child.

Black said: "They got in touch with me and asked if I'd like to get involved and I said, 'Yes, absolutely delighted to share the screen with William McIlvanney, but he has slightly more matinee good looks than me.'

"It is an absolute honour to be paired up with someone of his calibre. He is the 'Godfather of Tartan Noir'. He might object to that description, but however you look at it, the current state of Scottish crime fiction is down to just how successful he was conveying it with Laidlaw."

In a long and distinguished career, McIlvanney has been on his fair share of film sets. In 1990 Liam Neeson starred in an adaptation of his novel The Big Man, which was filmed in Glasgow, and the author won a Bafta for his screenplay of Dreaming, based on his own short story.

However, his only previous acting experience was playing Sergei Diaghilev, the Russian impresario who discovered the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, a silent role in an arts documentary for Channel 4 that was never shown.