Scotland PA [2001]

Welcome back to My Year Of Shakespeare, the blog series where I watch 50-plus Shakespeare adaptations and write about them. Today we watched Scotland, PA, a slight latecomer to both of its genres — a late 90s Teen Shakespeare adaptation, and an indie 90s screwball slacker comedy — and it executes on both counts admirably.

A Brief Synopsis

Mac is stuck in a dead-end job at Duncan's, a fast food burger joint in Scotland PA, having been passed over for in favor of Douglas. A chance conversation with three hippies, one of whom is a fortune teller, inform Mac that they see him managing a bank drive-thru style restaurant in his future; Mac finds and brings news of his coworker stealing to Mr Duncan and earns his favor. Duncan shares with Mac and Mac's wife Pat his plans for adding a drive-thru. Pat and Mac decide to stage a robbery to murder Duncan. They tie him up and threaten to plunge him face-first into the deepfryer if he doesn't give the safe code. Duncan gives up the code, but then Mac has a vision of the hippies and accidentally lets him fall, face-first, into the deepfryer, which splashes and burns Pat's hand and kills Duncan. Mac frames a local homeless guy for the murder, then bargains with Duncan's son, Malcolm, to take over the restaurant.

Investigator McDuff, a vegetarian policeman, has questions about the murder. Mac arranges the murder of his coworker, Banko, after he starts asking questions about Mac taking over Duncans, now known as McBeth's. Mac, increasingly paranoid, freaks out after calling on a hallucination of Banko at a press conference. Pat, increasingly delusional, seeks help for her "burned" (not visibly hurt at all) hand. The hippies suggest Mac kill McDuff; he invites McDuff to the restaurant and tries to kill him but falls off the roof and is impaled on McDuff's hood ornament. Pat, increasingly sure her hand is mutilated, uses a cleaver to chop it off, then dies of blood loss. McDuff takes over the restaurant, changing the menu to include garden burgers, and changing its name to McDuff's.

Performances

Most of the performances are more in line with what you'd expect from a slacker/indie 90s comedy, and if that is the type of movie you enjoy, this is a treat.

• Kevin Corrigan (Banko) is in his Uncle Eddie mode that he'd go on to use in much of Grounded For Life.
• Christopher Walken (McDuff) is doing his thing, maybe a little warmer/lucid than the flanderized, self-aware version he started in on with Balls of Fury and the like. He's given interviews about the "self-aware" "Doing The Walken Thing" where he says he's secretly playing it like how Bugs Bunny would, which (while it rules that he does that) isn't what's on offer here.
• Maura Tierney as Pat McBeth/Lady Macbeth, does a much better job than Frances McDormand's fairly flat version of the role last week — it's much clearer that she is a driver of Macbeth's ambitions in this than in McDormand's performance. I think it'd be interesting to see her in a more straightforward version of the role.
• Andy Dick, who I usually find a fairly repugnant presence, is, to my chagrin, extremely well-cast as one of the hippies/witches that constantly encourages Mac to do the stupidest possible thing. If there was ever an earthly avatar for stupid intrusive thoughts, it is surely Andy Dick.

Production

The film's soundtrack is all Bad Company songs, which really drives home the rural feeling. They are as good (or poor) as Bad Company songs ever are. The lighting is atrocious for most of the film - too dark, rendering its characters all red and yellow. The set piece design team was actually quite competent — the restaurant rebranding from Duncan's to McDuff's was handled well, everything looked very "70s".

Ultimately

I think this movie brings out a lot of the potential dark humor in Macbeth; if that's not "your thing" or if you're looking for a "faithful" Macbeth adaptation, I can understand how this movie isn't for you. However, if you like the 90s slacker comedy, if you want to see Maura Tierney give a great performance, you could do much worse than this. A solid "B+" film.

Next week we are watching Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. Thank you for reading along with My Year of Shakespeare