Every once in a while a documentary comes along with a real-life story that absolutely knocks your socks off. Rarely, however, does the story in question take place on your very doorstep.
Now, one such film has been released that's so close to home it's practically sat next to you on the sofa.
Directed by Jono McLeod, My Old School, recalls the stranger-than-fiction tale of 32-year-old Brian MacKinnon who, back in 1993, managed to dupe an entire school of teachers and pupils to not only enrol, but excel, at Glasgow’s Bearsden Academy.
Posing as 5th year student Brandon Lee, MacKinnon fools all before him after claiming to be an orphan from Canada, who has arrived in the posh Glasgow suburb of Bearsden to live with his grandmother. He becomes dux of the class, befriends fellow students and even bags a starring role in the school's production of South Pacific.
It’s all part of an elaborate scheme dreamt up by MacKinnon to allow him to re-sit his Highers and get into medical school - a goal that had been denied to him due to his age.
Months later, however, when the truth is finally revealed, MacKinnon’s fantastical double life unravels, making headlines around the world and leaving all those who brushed shoulders with the wannabe teen positively stunned.
One person whose jaw was certainly dropped was the director himself. Aged 16, Jono McLeod, was able to call MacKinnon’s alter ego one of his classmates.
With the man behind Brandon Lee unwilling to appear on camera, the film features Jono’s own audio recordings of Brian MacKinnon, brilliantly lip-synched by Alan Cumming, plus modern-day and archive interviews with several of Brandon Lee’s old teachers and classmates.
Animated sequences, drawn in the style of ‘90s MTV cartoon Daria and voiced by the likes of Lulu and Clare Grogan, are cleverly woven in for flashback scenes.
With the movie going out on general release in cinemas on August 19, Glasgow Live caught up with Jono McLeod to get the lowdown on the one-of-a-kind documentary.
GL: Congratulations on the film, Jono! How has the response been so far?
JM: It’s been amazing, the Glasgow screenings in particular have been really special and having the classmates all there, it doubles up as our school reunion and our film premiere.
GL: The story is relatively well-known in Scotland, and has been retold by new sites, Glasgow Live included, in the past. What can people learn from the documentary that they didn’t know previously?
JM: There’s the tale that everyone knows from the press, but our film uncovers more to the story. It’s difficult to talk about without spoiling the film, and I’d encourage people to talk about the film, but not reveal too much about what you find out, because the enjoyment is gone otherwise. It’s all about trying to get people to come and see it without giving too much away.
GL: The Daria-style flashbacks are incredible and very much at the heart of the film. What prompted you to do it this way?
JM: It just felt perfect really, because it was a 1990s high school and you have this character with big dark curly hair, and a North American monotone voice walking into the class - it just felt like a male Daria! The decision was made quite late on in the process actually, and the animation was the last thing to be done.
GL: Were there other options discussed for the flashback scenes?
JM: I was thinking we could maybe film the actual reconstruction scenes, but I realised how difficult they could be to pull off and how difficult it can be for an audience to suspend disbelief in a documentary setting. And actually the simpler I could make things, the more that people connect.
There’s a way that people can connect with a little cartoon face in a way that they might struggle with with a bunch of actors. And it would’ve been a nightmare to cast a bunch of kids to be in a film because we’d need them all to look like younger versions of ourselves.
It was an all-Scottish animation company that we worked with, Wild Child, based in Stirling, and they were really amazing, they did a great job.
GL: Many are asking how it is that Brandon Lee managed to fool everyone; how do you think he did it?
JM: He was the Great Pretender. He was so skilled at creating this perfect academy schoolboy and that’s what impressed the teachers enough to let him get away with it, and then we were all sat back in awe of this star pupil.
It’s unusual to occur on your doorstep, but it’s kind of the plot of multiple high school movies. It’s the plot of Drew Barrymore’s Never Been Kissed, it’s the Fast Times at Ridgemont High, it’s Back To The Future, it’s Peggy Sue Got Married. It’s the plot of so many high school movies.
The bizarre thing for me was that no-one had told this story on film. Myself and all my classmates were waiting for this to appear. There was meant to be this 1990s film on the story that Alan Cumming was going to star in, so, of course, I felt the perfect person to play the role was the man who was all set to do it back then. Alan does an amazing job.
GL: Alan's lip-synching is excellent. It really does feel like Alan Cumming is the man we're talking about.
JM: Yeah, it's like he's possessed - it was so fun. When we were doing the scenes with Lulu, who does one of the voices in the film and sings the title song, I had some of the film assembled for her to see, and she goes: 'Oh, that's fantastic, but did Alan have a cold that day? He sounds so different'. We managed to fool Lulu, so I know if we could do that then we were home and dry.
GL: The man himself [Brian MacKinnon] is still around. Are you able to divulge why he was unwilling to appear on camera?
JM: That was just his stipulation. He maybe found the press stuff back then a lot, although, as the film shows, he did do the whole chat show circuit etc. at the time. It's hard to say. Some of the classmates who still live in Bearsden, they still see him around and he doesn't want to interact with them, he doesn't want to say hello or have anything to do with them. But, yeah, he's still there.
GL: Perhaps it's easy to say now with hindsight, but was it obvious to you at the time that Brandon wasn't who he said he was, especially given that he looked much older?
JM: I think the thing is, there were other kids who looked a bit older in the year. Say if Brandon never came to our school and it became known that a 32-year-old man was in our class, we'd all have gone, 'David McKinlay?'. He was the one who would go out and get bevvied with everyone back then.
Of course, Brandon Lee was the first person we would've thought of, but if he hadn't been there then we could've easily assumed it was someone else in the class, like David McKinlay.
GL: So what's next after this, can we expect to see the documentary appear on any of the big streaming services at some point?
JM: At the moment we're just focusing on the cinema, and I really want people to experience it in the cinema, because there's just something really special about seeing it with a crowd of people - and especially if they go to see it with their old high school mates.
There's something about what's in this film, and it's not necessarily about Brandon Lee, but there's something that takes viewers back to that place and time, and a lot of people have been coming up to me and saying, 'Oh my God, that takes me back to my high school years', as a result of watching the film. That's been really special.
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