Scotland is to get a big new film studio.
Existing facilities at Film City Glasgow, based in Govan, cannot cope with demand. The way it’s going there will be so much reverse migration of TV and film talent to Glasgow that the BBC won’t have to fly guests from London to Govan for The Culture Show.
The new studio may the first of many more in Scotland. I can see Peter Mullan setting up his own studio. It will be called Metro-Goldwyn-Mullan. It will be based on Mosspark Boulevard because Peter is from Mosspark, it’s near Govan, and boulevard is a good Hollywood address.
When I win the £154m Euromillions lottery this week, I will build a studio. It will be in my old barrio, Househillwood, which is ideal because it ends in wood and has the same number of syllables as Hollywood.
Also, the sun always shines in Househillwood. At least it did years ago when we made imaginary movies which were mostly about war and involved histrionic death scenes.
Our first movie will be an upbeat musical called Hooray For Househillwood!
You’re going to say the weather isn’t actually all that good. So, we’ll do a remake of Singing In The Rain. As a variation from film noir, we can do Glasgow gris.
With a history of numerous gangs in Househillwood and other nearby housing projects, we can do realistic violence. The perfect example (I was going to say paradigm but that would be pretentious) was South Pollok, also known as the Bundy. On a good day the Bundy could give the Bronx a run for its money.
The Bundy was so-called because it had a Bundy clock where bus conductors were required to stamp their time dockets. But that is too much information.
South Pollok has been built over completely by Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Debenhams and hundreds of other shops. It is now called Silverburn.
But we could still get enough former members of the Mad Mental Wee Bundy to be extras in the Gangs Of Greater Pollok. They may, in fact, still be going strong as the Continuing Mad Mental Wee Bundy. To keep on the cheery side, we will do it along the lines of West Side Story.
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