Transcription

• Speaker #0

  I have used the film as a litmus test for like every boyfriend I've ever had. If they don't like local hero, I'm a little bit worried about the future of our relationship.

• Speaker #1

  It's a shame there wasn't a sequel really. I suppose it would be very hard to do a sequel. How can you do a sequel? Or maybe I'd like a different ending. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe I didn't want to see him go back. Maybe I wanted to see him stay and settle there.

• Speaker #2

  Scotland Nothing else. If it ain't Scottish, it's crap.

• Speaker #3

  Welcome to Real Lives, a podcast about movies and the people who love them. In each episode, we focus on one film and hear stories from people about the ways in which the film made an impact on their lives. My name is Tim Kirkman, and today we're talking about Local Hero.

• Speaker #4

  Who was sending to Scotland on that refinery deal?

• Speaker #5

  Mr. Crabb has selected, um, Mr. McIntyre of acquisitions for the trip, sir. His Scottish connection seemed to fit the bill, and he handled Mexico pretty well last year.

• Speaker #4

  I remember Mexico. Tell him I want to see him before he leaves.

• Speaker #3

  When it was released into theaters in 1983, Local Hero received widespread critical acclaim, even if it didn't shatter the box office in the United States. It was named one of the top ten films of the year by the National Board of Review and the legendary U.S. film critic Roger Ebert gave it a perfect four-star review, famously calling it a small film to treasure. Written and directed by Bill Forsyth, the film follows a young Houston oil executive named Mack, played by Peter Riegert, who is sent by his eccentric, astronomy-obsessed billionaire boss Felix Happer, portrayed by Hollywood legend Burt Lancaster, to a small Scottish village with a simple task, buy it. The plan is to take the coastal village and pave over its pristine beaches to build a massive oil refinery. Alongside a quirky local company representative named Danny Oldson, Mack prepares to negotiate with the townspeople, led by the shrewd innkeeper and accountant Gordon Urquhart. Sounds like a pretty typical David vs. Goliath Hollywood story, right? Big oil company against a small village? Wrong. Part of the appeal of Local Hero is its surprising upending of our expectations. Instead of hostile resistance, Mac finds a town of eccentric locals eager to cash in, even as the magic of the landscape begins to cast a life-changing spell over him. Part of Local Hero's enduring legacy is this subversion of audience expectations, but it's also a deeply philosophical film about what happens when we slow down enough to let place. reshape our values. It asks us to look at the sky, question our definition of progress, and wonder what we actually lose when we sell out for a paycheck. For these reasons and more, Local Hero has become one of Scotland's most deeply treasured cultural films, giving the nation a distinct poetic voice on the global stage, countering lazy Hollywood stereotypes and capturing the hearts and imaginations of people all over the world.

• Speaker #0

  We all are guided by art. You imagine ways to be through books and through films. And I can't say that my decision to uproot my life and move it wasn't affected by that 15-year-old girl watching Local Hero and knowing what Mac... needed to do in his life and hoping that he could find the strength to do it. My name is Caitlin Dixon. I am a writer and film editor and I live in northern Portugal. My husband and I have had a joke almost throughout our entire marriage that we were living to retire and we don't mean retire. like stop everything. What we meant was we felt we both worked very hard, have worked very hard for many years and really loved our jobs, love our jobs, but felt that there was part of us that was not. that we weren't doing things that felt essential to ourselves and not really working on the creative parts of our lives that maybe we had dreamed of when we were younger. We're both readers, we are both writers, and these are things that were neglected for lots of years. In ways we are not at all upset about, we were working, we were raising our child, we were having a house and a life, and I was really, I've been really lucky to do creative work. that I love. But there was part of us that said, you know, that there's a time that we want to live a little simpler way. And we started coming to Portugal. We fell in love with it. And we found a house in the north in a quiet village. And we've moved here. And there's a real parallel between the choices we've made and the journey that Mac makes in Local Hero. And what I love about it, and to bring it back to the parallel in our lives, is that in a simpler movie, oh, he would have realized that he needed to change his life and he just would have uprooted and moved there and everything would have been so easy. But that's not really how we live our lives. You can't, it takes a very long time to recognize. The way your life is needs to change, to make those changes. And all you can do is begin to crack. Am I living the life I want?

• Speaker #6

  Well, we don't see the point. Why don't you just ask him to make us an offer?

• Speaker #7

  It's not that simple. We can't appear too eager. We string him along and the price goes up. Don't you see that?

• Speaker #8

  Aye, put a few pulls out.

• Speaker #6

  It's too much of a gamble. We think you should ask him what he has to offer right now.

• Speaker #7

  I told you I needed your trust and your patience. Let me take this train. Relax. Give me till the Kelly at least. 24 hours.

• Speaker #1

  I have one of the original film posters in one of our day rooms. And it has various quotes on the film poster from various newspapers. And there's a quote from The Standard. And it says, I have only seen it twice and twice is not enough. I always look at that quote and it just says it all, really. You can't watch the film just the once and you can't go to visit the area just the once. It captures you. It's like a drug, almost. Hello, my name's Alison Knowles. I was born and brought up in Edinburgh in Scotland but currently live in Norfolk down in England. I first saw the film Local Hero. probably quite soon after it was released in the early 80s. Loved the film from start to finish, and it became a constant in my top ten whenever it was available. Back in those days, it was probably when I was able to view on video and would watch it many times. But I didn't actually visit the area where the film was made. until a lot later in 2011. With my current husband on holiday in Scotland, we had gone specifically to climb Ben Nevis, which is in Fort William, which again was one of the areas used within the filming. And we knew that the beach film scenes had been filmed on that coastline, but we weren't sure exactly where. So we did ask in Malague at the local tourist office. And the gentleman there was very kind and gave us specific directions. And we found it. Our first experience of Camasdair Beach was a very windswept, typically bleak Scottish day. But the beauty hit us immediately. It was stunning. We were the only two people on the beach. Our dogs ran ahead of us, paddling in the water. And it was very dramatic looking. And it just... stole our hearts and I can feel myself welling up just listening to myself talking about that first visit and how special that first visit was and to just stand there at the end of the beach and look back so you instantly recognised it you instantly could could recall them walking along that beach and and where the shack was or where it would have been when they filmed so yes it was a very special day and I think we both felt It would be somewhere that we would return to. And of course, as it turned out, we did return every year since then, since 2011. And in that sort of first year after our first visit, we decided that we would look into the possibility of actually having our wedding there.

• Speaker #7

  It's some business. It's the only business.

• Speaker #8

  Could you imagine a world without oil? No automobiles, no ink. And polish. No ink.

• Speaker #7

  And nylon.

• Speaker #8

  No detergents.

• Speaker #7

  And perspex. You don't get any perspex.

• Speaker #8

  No polythene.

• Speaker #7

  Dry cleaning fluid.

• Speaker #8

  And waterproof coats. They make dry cleaning fluid out of oil.

• Speaker #7

  Oh yeah, I do not know that.

• Speaker #2

  All I have to say is Scotland and everyone's got their own view of what that may be. Maybe it's men in kilts, maybe it's whiskey. There's plenty of that. My name is Brian Anderson. I live in the Bronx in New York City and I'm the former commissioner of New York City's Department of Records, which was the archives for the city of New York. My wife and I saw it the week it came out in 1983 when it was showing in Manhattan. We would always go... downtown before we had kids. And people from the Bronx always say, we're going downtown. We're not going into the city. We live in the city. We were going downtown. So we saw, and again, it didn't smack us right in the head when we saw it, but we knew we had seen something special. So then we could rent movies we had seen that we kind of liked. And that's when we started watching it more and more often and realizing, how did I miss? That's a funny line. How did I miss that? remember this and it's just a joy to watch. Reach out to see what else Bill Forsyth had done before and watch some of his earlier movies where I did need subtitles on a few of them. Because it's like, I don't know what he does. A lot of that's getting right by me. And I've got a good ear for the Scottish burr and the Irish accents as well. Anyway, it was quirky. It didn't go for, as a lot of Europeans accuse Americans of always going for that big har har kind of laugh. It was all. very subtle humor. And sometimes it went right by you. You didn't catch it until you saw the movie, maybe the second, third, or maybe even the fourth time. And it was a gentle movie as well. It didn't seek to preach, although there was a message in there, a couple of messages. It doesn't look to punch you in the face with what they're trying to say. Again, it's just that subtle humor. They don't care if you get the joke or not. It's there. You may discover it. And when you do, it's even more rewarding. And that appealed to me.

• Speaker #0

  In the 80s, there were a number of movie channels that would just show films. And if they showed a movie, they showed it a number of times in a given month. So you could, if you liked a movie, you could watch it a lot. And I watched Local Hero because I had seen earlier a movie called Gregory's Girl, which was made by the director of Local Hero, Bill Forsythe. And Gregory's Girl was a very charming, very quirky. Scottish movie about an awkward young man and a crush he had on a girl. And I liked it. And so I saw that there was this other movie by Bill Forsyth and I wanted to watch it. And Local Hero has a lot of the same hallmark quirky comedy. And so then I went to introduce it to my mother because I thought my mother would like it. And I remember at the end of the movie, turning to her. in order to say wasn't that funny and charming and I couldn't get the words out because I had burst into tears and I had no idea what had just happened. I was completely blindsided by what I felt and I remember being so confused. How could a movie be so funny and so charming and make me laugh and also make me cry? And I have been. I've been chasing that high ever since. I mean, in part to see how it worked, but also to feel it, primarily to feel it, because it was such a thrill to me to feel both those things. I've seen that movie probably 40 times.

• Speaker #8

  Sorry to trouble you so early. We'd like to check in and maybe eat something.

• Speaker #7

  A breakfast isn't till eight.

• Speaker #8

  Seven in the fishing season.

• Speaker #7

  It's not the fishing season.

• Speaker #8

  We'd check in anyway. We've been on the road all night. We have an injured rabbit also.

• Speaker #1

  It was a June day. It was the longest day, which is the 21st of June. And because it was a second marriage for both of us, we decided on a very small, intimate wedding with just immediate family and our own children. We have five children between the two of us. We had the theme tune, the famous Mark Knopfler theme tune, as we were walking on or as I was arriving and walking through the Saturn Dune at the end where the shack was, where Ben's shack was. There is a pathway. And I walked through that pathway with my brother in his Highland dress and our minister and our guests waiting for me just on the beach there by the rocks. There is a magical feel about the whole area, really. And yes, I may be biased because I am Scottish, but my husband is not Scottish. And we have introduced not many because it's a very secret place. We don't want to tell too many people. out it. But we have shared the venue with a few people and they have also fallen in love with it and returned to visit more than once. I've actually arranged to have my ashes scattered there.

• Speaker #2

  My avocation and hobby was genealogy. I've always been a history geek as well. I was always inquisitive growing up in the Bronx. I wanted to know why was it called the Bronx? And that's another story. Because I was always the kid that would ask this, Mom, how come that... And her answer would always be, why don't you look it up? I would do just that. I would trek to the library and look something up kind of as a dare. So when it came to genealogy, I knew I would have to go down to the New York Public Library and spin microfilm for endless hours. Remember those days? People now do genealogy at home in their pajamas. I love looking at maps. I mean, Google Maps to me is a miracle. You know, I live in the future now. I used to do microfilm and now I can look at a town and walk through it on Google Maps. so you know one of the first places I looked for was where were the where are these scenes filmed and I haven't been there yet we've been to Scotland but we haven't been able to get up to that part of that part of Scotland yet but we will be assured that's going to be a pilgrimage

• Speaker #9

  Virgo is well up this time of the year sir I'm talking about the sky McIntyre The constellation of Virgo is very prominent in the sky right now in Scotland. I want you to keep an eye on Virgo for me. Would you do that?

• Speaker #7

  Oh, sure.

• Speaker #0

  I grew up in a household that was very volatile. My dad had a lot of anger and it was... unpredictable when that anger would emerge. And so we, as a family, the rest of us, my mom and brother and I, were very frequently guarding against possible eruptions. You know, we couldn't control it, but we tried to be very careful. It's hard to describe what that feels like. Just this constant underlying anxiety about what will today be an explosion. At the same time, my dad, who had a lot of anger, also had really good taste. I mean, our house was full of books. And he also introduced us as a family to these kind of films that I really loved. He loved... British cinema, kitchen sink dramas, gentle comedies. I was introduced to these through this person who also was a source of a lot of turmoil and anger in the house. And it's very hard for me to separate that. Because I'm grateful for being a person who loves books and loves these films. That is me. And it was a gift from my dad. At the same time, in guarding against these possible explosions, there were certain times when we were safe. Those times were when we were sitting as a family watching these movies that my dad loved. So if you found a movie that he liked, you could guarantee two hours in our house, then it would be calm and we would share that. And it did become a movie that we would watch together.

• Speaker #1

  I don't want to mention any names, but I'm a president of your country. You know what I'm going to say, don't you? We've seen his acts of deliverance around Trump trying to build the golf course in the hotel complex and the heavy handed way that he dealt with people and the way that some people were treated and how people were paid off to make it happen at the cost of local lives. there was a film made or a sort of documentary about what he'd done. And there was a showing of it in our local theatre. And Graham and I went along and the filmmaker interviewed, I think it was a chap who just refused, flat refused, to leave his home that he'd been born in. And this poor person had no running water. And that was very sad, very sad. But it was all about that part of the... complex that was being built they just bulldozed all this earth up all the way around this old house so that it couldn't be seen by the hotel guests and this film the film local hero touches a little bit on that you know in the beginning you you think for god's sake how can they possibly dream of turning this you know almost world heritage site into something really not important at all, disregarding the feelings of the people that live there.

• Speaker #8

  Would you give me a pound note for every grain of sand I hold in my hand? Now you can have the beach for that. Saved you a pound or two, eh? Come on, Ben, I don't want to play games. I'm negotiating a business-like way. Oh dear, oh dear. You could have had a very nice purchase there, Mr. McIntyre. I can't hold much more than 10,000 grains of sand in my hand at a time. Did you think it would be a bigger number? You took advantage of me, Ben. Did I?

• Speaker #0

  They're not fighting. They're friends. And so he comes in and they basically embrace him. And it completely throws him off guard. There's my absolute favorite scene in the movie. It's a scene that I did not understand when I first saw it. The spokesperson for the town is a man named Gordon Urquhart. And so he's the lawyer, essentially, that Mac is dealing with. And Urquhart is trying to string him along and get a price. After the town, Cayley, which is a dance, they've been plying Mac with liquor and he is pretty tipsy. But they've come to a deal. They've come to a price. Urquhart has extracted money. And so Urquhart and Mack are celebrating a loan at the bar. Mack speaks in the language of deals. And so he says, tell you what, I've got my apartment in Houston. I've got a car. It's paid for. It's got a great engine. I've got a great job. You can have all of it. And Urquhart says, okay, Mac. And Mac says, and I'll come and I'll live here and I'll run the hotel and I'll have your job and we can trade. And Urquhart says, that sounds great. What about Stella? Stella is Urquhart's wife. And Mac says,

• Speaker #8

  I was coming to that. I love her very, very much. She's wonderful. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever loved. And I think she knows it. I want you to leave Stella here with me, Gordon. Would you do that? Would you leave Stella here with me? Sure, Matthew.

• Speaker #0

  And I thought, wow, this is pretty unusual. I thought the next step in the movie... would be the mechanisms of them trading lives. Because this is what Mac wants. And what happens in the movie is they never mention it again. And I was very confused when I first saw it. And I thought, well, I mean, wow, it's strange that Gordon Urquhart would just give up his wife. When are they going to start trading lives? And it didn't happen. Thank you. only in later viewings did I realize what was actually happening, is Mac doesn't know how to say I'm unhappy. The only thing he can say is, you seem to be happy, and if I have your life, I'll also be happy. And the beautiful thing about that scene... Is, you know, you would think in a movie that he would say, well, what are you talking about? That's my wife and you can't have my life. And what are you saying? And Gordon Urquhart simply said, okay, Mac, because Urquhart understood what he was saying. He wasn't angry and he just let Mac have this moment. He just very gently allowed Mac to want something and to be confused without judgment. with full acceptance and letting him be that. And I'm thinking of young Caitlin. How much that would have meant to me.

• Speaker #7

  Well, so long. You should say goodbye to Stella. She's upstairs.

• Speaker #8

  Oh, no, it doesn't matter.

• Speaker #7

  Go and see her, Matt.

• Speaker #8

  You say toodaloo for me, Gordon. And toodaloo to you, too.

• Speaker #7

  I'll see you off.

• Speaker #2

  What impressed me was the way the movie changed when Mac goes back to Houston.

• Speaker #0

  And he enters into his apartment that we have seen before. It's a high rise. And he goes in in his suit. He puts down his suitcase. And then he removes the shells he has gathered on the beach in Scotland. And he puts them on the counter. And the sound those shells make when they hit that counter simply takes my breath away.

• Speaker #1

  And then he empties his pockets and yeah I find that quite moving actually at the end. That definitely brought a tear to my eye.

• Speaker #2

  And he opens the glass doors. You can almost feel the humidity and the sound, the city sounds.

• Speaker #1

  Then you can just hear the sounds, can't you, of the streets and the sirens. And all through the movie, it's been very quiet, peaceful sort of sounds.

• Speaker #0

  And then after he looks out the window, it cuts to a wide shot of the town he's just left. Very far away. You can see the entirety of the town and a phone booth on the shore that he has used repeatedly to call back to America. And all you can hear from a very far distance is that phone ringing. Sorry. You hear that phone ringing and you don't see anybody answer it.

• Speaker #1

  I find that quite sad, really, that last scene when he's back.

• Speaker #2

  That's the part of the movie I think that touched everyone. It's like... How it resonates is just everyone, I think, has those moments in their lives where they just immediately start to realize that they're missing something. Why is that phone ringing? What happens now? What did happen? But it's just perfect.

• Speaker #0

  All you know is that he's reaching out into the void and you hope that someone answers.

• Speaker #3

  This episode of Real Lives was written, produced, and edited by me, Tim Kirkman. The executive producer is Mary Beth Greeley. The original music was composed by John Crook for Space Factory. Thank you to my guests on this episode, Brian Anderson, Alison Knowles, and Caitlin Dixon, who provided such an excellent synopsis of the film, we've decided to share it with a private link in the show notes. Be sure to check that out. Follow Real Lives Podcast on all of the usual social media platforms. And if you like what you heard, tell your friends. Post a review. Give us some stars. You can also support the podcast by subscribing to the Real Lives Substack. Visit our website at reallivespodcast.com. That's R-E-E-L livespodcast.com to see original artwork specially designed for each episode. Real Lives Podcast is produced in collaboration with Transylvania University. Drop us a line. Let us know what movie you'd like to hear more about or maybe even talk about. Until next time, see you at the movies.