During the first 30 seconds, the chick in the immaculate designer suit and the Prada bag hauls out the dick of the bloke with the Marvin Gaye fixation, hitches up her pencil skirt to reveal a fine, suspender clad arse, straddles him and casually remarks she couldn't concentrate on driving for thinking about his stiff cock. As far as opening scenes go, this is pretty much up there with the best of them, but it continues to develop into a cracker of a short movie called Spooktime, crammed full of drugs, violence, sex, homosexuality, boozin', jelly poppin' cab drivers and ultimately, but not surprisingly, murder.
Fitting, then, that this 15 minute short, currently opening for either Twelve Monkeys or Trainspotting, should double up as a promotional vehicle for "A Happy Pocket", the latest album from the Trash Can Sinatras, a band whose very name conjures up lowlife glamour and whose music is choc-full of sleazy narcotic double-entendres and perverse sexuality.
Spooktime was written by Tony Crean (Warchild) and Paolo Hewitt (Oasis and Weller biographer), and scripted and directed by the bloke behind 35 Irn Bru commercials, John MacFarlane. He's aware of the obvious parallels with Trainspotting, but is keen to mark out his own territory. "We wanted to stay as far away from Trainspotting as possible," he explains,"even though it's a brilliant film, but what you get here are my experiences and the things I've been confronted with in Glasgow. We just wanted to show as much stuff as possible in the 15 minutes, kind of like a really good promo."
Though the Trash Cans aren't altogether central to the main storyline, their fleeting appearances are still memorable. Guitarist John Douglas explains the whole idea. "The film came about because we were pissed off with spending a lot of money without much gain, 'cos our videos never really got shown anywhere. The record company knew we were a wee bit pissed off, so Tony Crean suggested that we make a film, and that sounded a bit more interesting. So the three of them developed this script, and it sounded like a bit of a laugh and that was it really."
The scriptwriters have taken several key songs from the album and used the characters to come up witha top piece of contemporary drama. "All these characters were in our songs anyway, so what's happened is somebody else has taken their impressions of them and brought them to life in the film. The story doesn't actually stick to what goes on in the songs but these characters are the initial inspiration."
So if you're into birds, booze, drugs, footie, music and a bit of a laugh, then catch this while you can. McFarlane is a doubtless gonna be someone to look out for in the future, and is one director who doesn't have a problem with acknowledging his influences on the screen. "I looked at things like Get Carter," he says, "and other films I really love, like Mean Streets and Night on Earth, and tried to pay some sort of homage to them in my own way. You know, if you're gonna rip people off, you may as well rip off the best."
"A Happy Pocket" by the Trash Can Sinatras is released on Go Discs! on 20 May.
If you have any questions, comments, etc, e-mail me at jdimaria@gis.net