\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe paperback of \u201cStraight Outta Scotland\u201d by Gavin Bain, which tells the real-life yarn on which James McAvoy\u2018s directing debut is based, boasts a cover quote from the patron saint of working-class Scot-lit, Irvine Welsh: \u201cOne of the most amazing, high-octane, hedonistic morality tales of our time.\u201d McAvoy\u2019s take on the story of Bain (Seamus McLean Ross) and best mate Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley), who as rap duo Silibil N\u2019 Brains briefly hoodwinked the UK hip-hop establishment into thinking they were California MCs rather than call-center employees from Dundee, is a little more housebroken than that.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut even though McAvoy, working from Archie Thomson and Elaine Gracie\u2019s screenplay, domesticates the tale into a familiar but effective underdog narrative, it is by no means unworthy of the company. \u201cCalifornia Schemin\u2019\u201d is perhaps a few degrees lower in octane-level than Bain\u2019s book, and in terms of directorial verve, some way off Danny Boyle\u2019s epochal adaptation of Welsh\u2019s own \u201cTrainspotting\u201d \u2014 McAvoy hardly comes out of the gate as a great visual stylist, with DP James Rhodes\u2019 pleasant but not especially memorable cinematography contributing to a slightly bland aesthetic, and the staging of certain scenes feeling scrappy and uncertain. But in the small areas of freedom McAvoy allows himself outside the main thrust of the familiar rags-to-riches-to-regret arc there are sharp little digressions and darker shadowy corners that suggest there\u2019s more to the film, and to McAvoy as a filmmaker, than initially meets the eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBut first, what meets the eye: Quiet, socially awkward Gavin and his more stable bestie Billy kick about the worn-down suburbs of Dundee with Billy\u2019s funny, spiky girlfriend Mary (an utterly charming Lucy Halliday), dreaming of hip-hop stardom. After a trip to London \u2014 \u201cWhere the English are?\u201d Mary gasps in mock alarm \u2014 ends in ridicule and rejection though, the pair hit on a scheme so ridiculous it just might work. <\/p>\n
\n\tWith every scout and label exec snickering poshly at their thick Dundee brogues, why not fake generic American accents and see how far they can get with the same material? Cue a montage of learning to \u201cspeak American\u201d from movies and TV, including a decent imitation of Ross\u2019 \u201cWe were on a break!\u201d whinge from \u201cFriends.\u201d Now, Silibil N\u2019Brains have new personas to unleash on an unsuspecting UK hip-hop world, which, in the person of fresh-faced newbie manager Tessa (Rebekah Murrell) and grizzled veteran Anthony Reid (McAvoy), head of Neotone records, is duly duped by their slouchy, yo-yo-yo facade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBilly, Mary and Gavin take the remade Silibil N\u2019 Brains\u2019 early success as a hilarious prank, with Mary especially excited \u2014 from a distance \u2014 for the moment that, at the height of their duplicity, the pair will unmask their real identities and expose the music industry for its shallow, manipulative insincerity. But that moment, in shape of a coveted appearance on MTV, comes and goes, with Gavin, huffing the intoxicating whiff of cocaine-scented\u00a0fame, reneging on the deal to reveal themselves at the last second. Billy reluctantly goes along with it, while Mary, watching far away in Scotland, folds her disappointment up like laundry and gets on with business of waiting for her two friends to snap out of it. Instead, Billy cheats on her and Gavin keeps doubling down on their scam, which gives the movie\u2019s second half its jittery momentum. Gamble all you like in the game of fame, the house always wins.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhat non-UK viewers might not appreciate is that the story unfolds specifically during a time in British media when RP (\u201creceived pronunciation\u201d) was falling out of fashion with more youth-oriented broadcasting, and regional accents were starting to become more widely accepted \u2014 witness, for example, the iconically Geordie-accented narrator of the UK version of \u201cBig Brother,\u201d which began in 2000. It makes it doubly ironic that the hip-hop industry, with its emphasis on street-level authenticity, might have been so disdainful of Silibil N\u2019 Brains when they rapped in their natural voices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBut as much as the film swipes at music industry hypocrisy, it is just as scathing about the peculiar sociopathy of success. Gavin, in particular, reveals an otherwise unsuspected vicious streak when it comes to protecting his precarious new status. It\u2019s a bravely unsympathetic portrayal, considering Bain himself retains an executive producer credit, though it also suggests a certain degree of ventriloquism is needed to make ragged real life sound like breezy entertainment.\u00a0McAvoy\u2019s smarts in bringing out some of those unusual textures \u2014 also demonstrated in his own, viperish portrayal of label chief Reid \u2014 while the main engine of his movie chugs merrily away to an audience-friendly, exportable beat, is good reason to watch \u201cCalifornia Schemin\u2019\u201d and better reason still to be curious about what he might deliver in future, working in his own voice.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The paperback of \u201cStraight Outta Scotland\u201d by Gavin Bain, which tells the real-life yarn on which James McAvoy\u2018s directing debut is based, boasts a cover quote from the patron saint of working-class Scot-lit, Irvine Welsh: \u201cOne of the most amazing, high-octane, hedonistic morality tales of our time.\u201d McAvoy\u2019s take on the story of Bain (Seamus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[15577,3269,9708,817,15576],"class_list":{"0":"post-25822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-canny","9":"tag-debut","10":"tag-directorial","11":"tag-james","12":"tag-mcavoys"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}