Interview: Christopher Young, film producer

THE drunken antics of sex-obsessed English lads abroad are rarely celebrated in Scotland, unless it derails their rugby tournament. But The Inbetweeners Movie wasn’t just a watershed for the hapless Will, Simon, Neil and Jay, as they struggled to leave their schooldays and virginity behind in sunny Crete. The phenomenal success of the feature-length adaptation of the E4 sitcom – which has grossed over £45 million and claimed the best opening weekend of any comedy in the UK– is also a triumph for Skye-based producer Christopher Young. After 22 years of critically appreciated but largely overlooked films, he’s belatedly enjoying the creative opportunities that come from backing a commercial smash.

“My life has changed completely,” the 51-year-old reflects. “People who wouldn’t give me the time of day are suddenly keen to talk about projects they want me to do and things I might want to do for them. I’m waiting for the whirlwind to subside because you want to make decisions in a cool frame of mind and it’s difficult when the numbers are so big – which is a problem but a nice problem. I’m trying to let the dust settle a bit.”

That dust includes Mortal, a film about two brothers who arrive in Skye to scatter their father’s ashes, penned by The Inbetweeners’ writers Iain Morris and Damon Beesley. Pre-dating the trio’s breakout film, it was “written when we didn’t know if there would be a series two or a series three [of The Inbetweeners], let alone a movie”.

Young is also developing an Edinburgh-based BBC sitcom with new writer Colin McLaren and his Young Films colleague Rhianna Andrews for next year. “The next thing I want to do is very likely to be a Scottish film,” he says, while remaining tight-lipped about the details.

His seventh theatrical feature, The Inbetweeners Movie also broke opening week records for a UK independent production. Before this, he’d always faced an uphill financial struggle, ever since his low-budget 1989 debut Venus Peter. His second film, Prague, starring Alan Cumming, took £15,000, and Gregory’s Two Girls, the sequel to Bill Forysth’s much-loved tale of Scottish adolescence, and Festival, a comedy set at the Edinburgh Fringe, made £130,000 and £178,000 respectively.

In 2007 Young produced the Skye-set, Gaelic-language children’s film, Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle, which attracted favourable reviews but was reportedly seen by just 2000 people. He resigned his Bafta membership after the academy failed to submit the film in the 2008 Oscars’ Best Foreign Language category.

With virtually no television experience, he reluctantly accepted Channel 4’s commission to produce a teen sitcom called Baggy Trousers, later renamed The Inbetweeners.

“Even when we made series one, I still don’t think we knew what we had on our hands,” he says. “It was only halfway through series two, in terms of fan response and DVD sales, that we realised, ‘Gosh, this is something!’”

The sitcom never lacked cinematic ambition, he points out, citing the scene in which Simon’s car rolls into a reservoir. As early as the first series, he and the writers were discussing making a British version of US teen comedy films like American Pie and Superbad. When The Inbetweeners took off, they resolved to use their established characters.

“We had fairly high expectations for the movie because we’d already made 18 half hours,” he recalls. “But we encountered a lot of naysaying about it being a spin-off. And we had conversations with potential financiers who balked, saying, ‘These guys are all very well on the small screen but can they hold a big one?’

“It always felt naturally cinematic to us though, capturing the boys at that iconic moment of leaving school. And we were very confident about the characters’ strength. It was hard for Channel 4 though, as the film effectively drew a line under The Inbetweeners, taking them to an end point.”

Naturally there is now considerable pressure for them to deliver a sequel – despite the fact that the core cast of James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Simon Bird and Joe Thomas are already in their mid-to-late twenties.

“Even as I was telling Iain and Damon to finalise the script, they were saying, ‘We’ve got this great scene for the sequel.’ It’s tricky because it has to be creatively justified. But financiers love a sequel.”

After acquiescing on his initial suggestion to shoot The Inbetweeners series in Scotland, “without being too messianic or missionary about it”, Young remains “passionate about being Scottish-based and a Scottish filmmaker”, unwilling to consider uprooting his four children.

“Iain and Damon were the engine room for all of this and they love Skye. And it made a huge difference that [executive producer] Caroline Leddy, [director] Ben Palmer and the cast were open to coming here for script meetings. I’ve had to do a crazy amount of travelling as well but it’s vindication of the fact that you don’t have to be London-based to pull off a hit.”

Two days before this interview, Young hosted a Bafta production masterclass for Screen Academy Scotland students at Edinburgh Napier University. He remains philosophical about the academy’s treatment of Seachd.

“My feeling about that situation remains the same, that they handled it very badly. I think it was a political decision and that’s why I protested so strongly about it. There’s no question in my mind that it was disregarded for being Scottish and in a minority language, which diminished it in their eyes. Their prejudice had nothing to do with the quality of the material or the film’s intrinsic merit.

“I never really had a war with them, it was a battle. I don’t have an overriding issue with Bafta because I think film needs all the help it can get in the UK and it’s great to have an academy promoting it. The next time I make a film in the Gaelic language, we’ll probably have another battle. But I suspect it will be a battle I can win thanks to The Inbetweeners.”

• The Inbetweeners Movie is released on DVD on Monday