Here be tourists: how a Scottish black comedy satirises cultural Disneyfication

With his debut feature The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, Scottish writer-director Seán Robert Dunn looks to his hometown of Edinburgh for inspiration in a black comedy-drama where fantasy and reality literally collide. Peter Mullan stars as widower and local tour guide Kenneth who becomes unstuck when a fantasy TV crew descend upon the town where he lives. His obsession with an Enlightenment-era philosopher and inventor leads him to some dark places as he battles with feelings of loneliness and alienation.

When the visitor centre where he works in the fictional Scottish village of Aberloch becomes a dedicated fan zone for the big-budget Game of Thrones-style show that is now the main draw of tourism for the area, Kenneth becomes a stranger in his own home and starts acting out in dangerous ways. Dunn has crafted a satirical comedy on the Disneyfication of culture that is also a melancholic portrait of masculinity in crisis.

Katherine McLaughlin: What was behind the decision of choosing an Enlightenment-era philosopher as Kenneth’s hero of sorts? Is that something you studied or was it more about the subject of ancestral heritage?

Seán Robert Dunn: Getting brought up in Scotland, and in Edinburgh in particular, we’re quite proud of our Enlightenment period. We have statues of Adam Smith and David Hume. It was really just that, a national pride that some people have with inventors in Scotland. They think we pretty much invented everything and will tell everybody.

Peter Mullan mentioned the films of Bill Forsyth, especially Local Hero (1983), as something of a touchstone. Are his films an important reference for you?

He said that to me as well. I do like Bill Forsyth; Local Hero is always a big one. [This film] is kind of the inverse of that. They embrace [foreign investment] in Local Hero, and the Texan guy learns to love the place. There are maybe some similarities there that weren’t conscious at all actually in the writing of it. When I spoke to Peter he mentioned Local Hero, and I think that’s what partly attracted him to the role. He’s an amazing actor, and we were so lucky to get him. He’s obviously usually more in social realist films so it’s a change.

As far as the comedy aspect of the film goes, what were your touchstones?

They’re not really like this, but I like Roy Andersson films. I was reading A Confederacy of Dunces and watching The King of Comedy [1982] at the time I was writing the film… I’m not saying the film is the same as those humour-wise, but those were the kind of characters and situations I was thinking about.

What were your conversations like with Peter about how his character is handling grief? Grief sometimes manifests in strange ways.

Thematically, he’s basically an untethered character, and the only thing that grounds him is the tours that he does, and claiming ownership and heritage of Weatherford. Him grieving was to make him untethered, where he is isolated and could go off on one. He’s someone who’s stuck in the past. The world’s moving on and he’s left behind a little bit.

I honestly didn’t have to say much to Peter. Peter got to it himself, and I’m not sure what he’s tapping into for that. Kenneth is caught up in things that don’t really matter, and he’s alienated from his family. He’s obsessive and dogmatic. Whereas, family and nature, these things that are grounded and are important to human beings on a more spiritual level, he’s shutting out.

I enjoyed Kenneth’s rant about Robert Louis Stevenson…

Peter actually came up with that himself. The scene on the beach where there’s the lighthouse… it just happened to be there, so he came up with that. He did that a lot actually. He’s a very good improviser and was good at coming up with better ideas than what was written.

The World Health Organisation declared loneliness as a global health epidemic following Covid-19. Kenneth’s alienation from the modern world is what partly drives him to make some harmful choices. How much did Covid come into play for the writing, and how much did you want to look at male mental health in these terms?

Covid did in the sense that I had a script before it came along that I couldn’t make. So I had a lot of time to write. It wasn’t really a conscious thing. I like the films of Alexander Payne, films about masculinity in crisis, so that was feeding in a bit. The world moving at a fast rate, AI coming in, and thinking about what the future would hold. All the things that we thought were sacred and were guaranteed to last into the future have all been thrown into doubt a little bit. At the time I was writing it, I felt that the cultural discourse was quite punitive. There wasn’t much humanity extended to a lot of people on all sides of the spectrum. I was thinking about extending humanity to people we may disagree with; I was in New York at the time and there was a lot going on in America. There were the riots, and it was a volatile time. I wanted to tell a humane story. 

As much as you’re gently poking fun at fantasy, there’s some nice nods to the genre. Are you a fan of The Lord of the Rings? And would directing a fantasy film be on your list of future projects? 

I do like The Lord of the Rings films, and yes I’d be up for directing a film like that… for the money! I’m not one for Game of Thrones.

I guess Outlander is the big one in Scotland?

Aye, everyone in the Scottish crew had worked on Outlander.

Did any of their experiences feed into the film?

Peter is in an Outlander spinoff now! I didn’t really speak to them much about it. We were actually competing with Outlander on a location or something like that, and we didn’t stand much chance against them. It’s good for jobs in Scotland and the crews. The critique of it is it becomes part of the backdrop of Scotland. Especially with things like Harry Potter in Edinburgh, which is huge business. It can become a bit Disneyfied.

The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, backed by BFI Filmmaking Fund, is in cinemas from 12 June.