Born in Glasgow, educated Sir John Maxwell Primary and Shawlands Academy. Degree in English Language and Literature from Newcastle University. Poet, novelist, playwright, screenwriter - director of theatre and screen - movie producer. His first movie was 35mm shoestring budget Love The One You're With which was nominated for best Scottish Film 2000...
If your career is a failure, then make sure you are a success as a person. Some celebrities get it the wrong way round.
2
Apart from the occasional poem in response to events, I ceased to write poetry in any meaningful manner in the mid 1990s. I guess I ran out of anger and I now leave it to more able poets to remind the world of where it is going wrong.
3
The problem with the Scottish film industry is it's run by a bunch of egghead types up at the Film Commission, your Allan Shiach and so forth who are always telling you what your films gotta have. It's gotta have a certain number of local actors, it's gotta have cultural content, it's gotta have a decent script and so on. Well I've got by pretty nicely without any of these things for 20 years and look where it's got me.
4
Anybody can make an arty, intellectual Red Road Ratcatcher flick that no bastard wants to see. I can do it. You give me a week with a camera, a couple of topless chicks and an open-topped sports car and a shitload of cash and I'll give you Out of Africa.
5
To date I have ten unpublished novels sitting in one of my filing cabinets.
6
Why I spent the best part of my twenties and early thirties writing novels that no-one seemed to want is still a mystery to me.
7
Anyone can make a story. I could make a story about you reading this and you could make up a story about how you have read this and that you could do much better than me.
#
Fact
1
On the Winter Warrior trilogy (which was only two films), instead of calling action he would say Ayo Gorkhali and instead of cut he would say Jaya Mahakali, the famous Gurkha war cry, in an effort to channel their warrior spirit into the film.
$850,000
