Ever Restless

The clown and the wolfman return to delight Big Country fans as cult classic film Restless Natives is reimagined as a musical

- by KATRINA PATRICK

IN 1984, journalist Ninian Dunnett saw a screenwriting competition advertised in his local bank. On a whim, he wrote Restless Natives - a love story of sorts to his hometown of Edinburgh - on the back of blank menu cards, while the soaring riffs of Big Country's debut album The Crossing blared in the background.

It was an amusing tale of two down-on-their-luck locals, Ronnie and Will, who started holding up Scottish tour buses in novelty masks to make ends meet. It was both a parody of Robin Hood (or Rob Roy, if you will) and a retaliation against the much romanticised shortbread tin image of Scotland.

"It really was a bit of fun," Ninian says. "I didn't know what I was doing! I just sent it off to this competition. It's so hard to break into the film business - I just inadvertently hit the jackpot with that."

Luckily for Ninian, one of the competition judges was film producer David Putnam - fresh from Chariots Of Fire (1981) and Local Hero (1983) - who recognised the next big Scottish film when he saw it.

The screenplay won, and very swiftly a film began to take shape. Michael Hoffman came on board as director, they bagged Ned Beatty (Deliverance, Superman) to play the CIA agent sent to track the duo down, and Restless Natives was released in cinemas in 1985.