The Scottish Movie

By Paul Collis

A Book Readers Appreciation Group MedallionTM Honoree.

Harry Greenville, a young actor and part-time writer struggling to make a living in modern Los Angeles, writes a novel about Shakespeare.

‘It’s 1606 and The Bard needs a new play for King James, who is notoriously hard to please. As history tells us, he comes up with 'Macbeth'. But the rehearsals are dogged by illnesses and accidents, the royal premiere gets the royal thumbs down, and the actors consider the play to be more than unlucky; they believe it’s cursed. The question is: Why?’

Harry’s novel offers an intriguing answer; Shakespeare stole it, and the real author sabotaged the production. He posts the first draft on a website in the hope that a Hollywood agent will discover it. Eventually, when someone in the movie business does discover it, life mirrors art; they steal it.

With the help of his girlfriend and a few under-employed pals, Harry sets out to find the culprit. The trail leads him to the core of the mighty Galactic Studios, where his decision to act like the vengeful character in his purloined novel evolves into a truly Shakespearean study of theft, revenge and just desserts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Collis
• Release date: Aug 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476136790

Paul Collis

Born in Greater London. Art school in the seventies. The next few decades spent at ad agencies creating TV commercials in London, Milan, New York and San Francisco. Some fishing here, some photography there. Now thinking about the next project...

Book preview

The Scottish Movie

Paul Collis

Copyright: Paul Collis 2012

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Scottish Movie. Copyright © 2012 by Paul Collis.

Registered with the Writers Guild of America, West, 2005, 2012. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781476136790

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To all of you who helped.

‘Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;

’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.’

William Shakespeare,

as Iago in ‘Othello’, 1604.

Contents:

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4.

Acknowledgements.

List of Characters.

About the Author.

The Scottish Movie

Part 1

Chapter 1

London, England. February 1606.

The sun had been up for several hours but, beneath the gray, horizon-spanning slab of cloud, no one felt its presence.

The night’s cold air declined to budge, held captive by the city’s labyrinth of mildewed walls, and vestiges of frost lingered in a million gloomy shadows. In one such dismal spot stood a man, well cloaked and hatted, still as a heron, his gaze focused fifteen yards distant on two younger men. He observed them embrace each other, their own small wintry clouds of breath merging briefly into one, and he continued to watch and listen as they conversed.

His eyes were average for his middle-age; their acuity had dulled in recent years and, beyond a dozen paces, they barely managed to resolve a widened eye, a furrowed brow, the glint of teeth behind parted lips. His ears, however, were keen — keener than most — and when the young men spoke he heard each word distinctly. This heightened sense of hearing was coupled with a rare talent for language; together they formed the basis of his livelihood. Moreover, because these faculties had been tempered by a life lived in dangerous times, he was well equipped for concealing truths — and recognizing those who tried to do the same.

The men he studied were less than half his age. One was almost static, the other restless. The less animated had long, yellow hair and round cheeks that, despite the gelid climate, matched the dusky pink of his coarse linen smock. His taller, darker companion, clad in a pale-blue woolen tunic and black leggings, reached out towards him. Pink Smock drew back a little.

Blue Tunic suddenly dropped to his knees and, both hands pressed against his heart, declared ‘If I profane with my unworthy hand this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this; my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand, to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.’

Pink Smock remained impassive, moving only his eyes. ‘Good pilgrim. You do wrong your hand too much—’

‘Too much indeed!’ The observer’s deeper voice cut through space with an easy authority. ‘I’ve seen and heard sufficient.’

Despite the sudden interruption the two men turned towards the voice without any sign of surprise.

‘Sir, you’re right,’ declared Blue Tunic, appearing suitably disappointed with himself. ‘I admit my performance needs a little polishing.’

‘And mine too, sir, a little, uh, polish,’ added Pink Smock, his face a portrait of unease.

The older man said nothing, but walked quickly from the dim recess just inside the theater’s entrance into the pool of pallid light that fell through the opening in the encircling roof, forty feet above him. He crossed the empty auditorium and passed the outer side of one of two massive pillars, solid oak beneath their marbled surfaces and gilded pediments. These wooden columns supported a ceiling that those in his profession called ‘the Heavens’. Decorated with stars and clouds, this celestial covering adorned the rear half of the large wooden stage where the two young actors stood, now quite subdued. The man climbed the seven steps up to the thick oak boards and approached the players purposefully. He came to a halt between the duo and, leaning in as if to exchange a confidence, spoke softly. ‘You, sirs, admit a need for polish. And I, sirs, submit that you’ll be polishing a pair of turds.’

The players smiled sheepishly.

‘Your ‘performances’ require not polishing, but crushing. Burning. Drowning.’

Blue Tunic’s ovine smile disappeared and he attempted to speak, mouth working like a carp’s, but his mentor continued the critique, made all the more brutal by its hushed delivery. ‘Stabbing. Axing. Throttling. Shooting. Strangling. Hanging. Drawing. Quartering.’ The man paused his murderous invective and his gaze flicked between the wincing apprentices. He stroked the point of his silver-flecked goatee in a crude mimicry of concentrated thought. ‘Hmm. But perhaps polishing would suffice.’ A beat later, his eyes widened in mock epiphany. ‘Yes!’ he hissed, ‘Polish, and continue to polish — until your hideous portrayals are rubbed away completely, never to reappear!’ The grin he fixed to his face was worthy of a gargoyle.

The persistent young actor took the critic’s pause as a cue, and dared once more to voice a response. ‘Sir, if I may—’

‘No, you may not.’

The fun was over. The tutor abandoned his mordant tone and spoke plainly. ‘Your time is brief, and mine more so. You are a man of twenty, yes? And here you play a youth of barely seventeen. If he spoke in keeping with his age, the play would be a short and sorry one; a hundred clumsy, awkward mumbles and — The End. But your character is precocious, his vocabulary much more adult than his manner. So, redden your face, scratch at your crotch, stamp your feet at trifles. Show us the energy, the passion of this youth, yet with a riper wit. Study a younger brother. Observe the stable lads outside. You know the manly words; just become the boy who speaks them.’

He turned his attention to the player in the pink smock and noticed the youth’s hands nervously fingering the small, tattered scroll that held his speeches and his entrances and exits. ‘And you, sir. You mind your roll, but you play it closer to a dull and fading spinster than maid in first bloom. You know there is no place for women in our trade — we men must study for them. So do it! Don’t be weary of this young girl’s world; be breathless, wide-eyed, giddy, like any girl of fourteen years. Act like your careless younger sister, fuss with your curls and ribbons as if they were truly yours.’ He pointed up to the third and highest tier of seats. ‘And show the gallery that, despite your family’s objections, you ache for this boy’s love, your heart hungers for him — you know you’ll never meet another like him. Never! This boy is perfection; your one true love, ’til death.’

The master stood back, his tutorial ended, and was about to turn away but stopped himself. Sensing their disappointment, their doubts about their future, he offered them some consolation. ‘Now, remember what I’ve said, and study the other players well. And do not fret; your time will come. For now, your positions at the Globe are safe — as long as we need soldiers, rabble, and a corpse or two.’

Relieved, they smiled in unison. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Romeo.

‘Yes,’ said Juliet. ‘Thank you, Master Shakespeare.’

While his students attempted to put his instructions into practice, William Shakespeare walked to the back of the stage and into the ’tiring room, which was little more than a large wardrobe where the players changed their costumes during performances. Three men, all of them a few years younger than the playwright, acknowledged his arrival.

Richard Burbage, a robust man with a quiet and compelling manner, and acclaimed by many as the best actor of his time, was sitting on a table, his long legs dangling, tapping his sturdy leather boots against each other. When Shakespeare entered he looked up. ‘Ah, Will. Good. The partners are all here before the noon-time bell. No one waits for no one.’

Leaning against a post was John Heminge, not much shorter than Burbage but as rotund as the Falstaff he often played. He appeared to be in a less than jocular mood; ‘True, we all wait for one thing only.’

Shakespeare looked at him. ‘And good day to you too, sir. Now, John, what is this thing we all await? What makes us eye the sandglass so? Come, spell it out.’

‘You know it well enough,’ sighed Heminge.

‘You’re right, I do. I’ll tell you, then. ‘The coming season needs a new play, Will. The empty rolls await the quill, Will. How goes it, Will?’ Well, friend, to that last I say — it don’t.’

Robert Armin sprung to his feet. In appearance he was similar to Shakespeare, less an inch or so in height and girth, but his movements were more elastic and his oval face more mobile. As the company’s principal clown he was a favorite of the crowd; they saw in him the mouthpiece for their own shrewd wisdom, and his droll delivery had set the tone for the fool in King Lear and the grave-digger in Hamlet. ‘If desperation will serve as inspiration, Will, have some of mine,’ he chirruped. ‘The taxes is due! The salaries is due! The roof wants thatching! The costumes need patching! You know the score.’

Armin returned to his stool, giving Burbage his cue. ‘And we all know that the older plays don’t lose us money, but neither do they make us any. We need a good season at the court to make a living.’

‘Indeed, Richard, we do,’ agreed Shakespeare. With one hand he removed his thick woolen cap, revealing a bald dome above a curtain of straight, dark hair. His other hand reached past Burbage’s shoulder to take a copper crown from a hook on the wall. He briefly studied its worn gilding and crude glass catch-lights, then placed it on his barren pate. ‘You’re right. We need a play that pleases our most noble patron, for without his ten sovereigns to vouch for our efforts I fear the fickle crowds will not reward us with their pennies.’

‘That’s true for every season, Will. So why the gloomy countenance?’ Heminge appeared genuinely puzzled. ‘Are you saying that you doubt your… your capabilities? How so? I mean, I mean to say that, well, in years just passed you’ve delivered us Othello, and Lear, and Hamlet, and—’

‘I appreciate your faith, my friend. And no, I have no doubt that I can conjure up a story that would please the groundlings and their betters. But I worry that I might misread the mind of our new King.’

Burbage tried to be encouraging. ‘Well, you know as much of James as we know, if not more. You’ve seen him, what, ten times at court, and then once more at his reception up in Oxford, haven’t you?’

Shakespeare nodded. ‘I’ve read his ‘Demonology’, but it’s a scholarly effort that reveals nothing about the man apart from his belief in the existence of witches and other such ungodly creatures. And I’ve met him, as you say, and he spoke to me several times; but pleasantries, nothing more. We are the King’s Men, his players, but not his confidantes.’ He took off the crown and restored it to its hook. ‘Come, let’s walk. I want to show you something.’ He turned to go.

Heminge rolled his eyes. ‘Now?’

‘Yes, John. Now. Cancel your appointment; your whores will wait.’

‘That’s just the thing; they never did, nor do they now, and I doubt they ever will.’

They left the theater by the eastern door. Shakespeare led them north, passing one of their rivals in popular entertainment, a bear-baiting pit, announced by its dogs’ incessant barking, and on up to the Bankside. This paved roadway allowed them to walk eastwards along the south bank of the Thames and to avoid the muddy lanes and sewer-lined streets that formed the rest of Southwark, but the one disadvantage of this route was exposure to the wind; unrestricted by the warren of tenements and warehouses, it blew free and cold along the river and clawed at their lowered faces. His companions’ comments were as bitter as the weather, but Shakespeare ignored them, and pressed on.

They passed by a small and malodorous tannery, the last surviving vellum maker in the area — all others had been ordered to move their stink to the outskirts of the expanding city. The factory’s foul and bloody outpourings were discharged through a slot in the embankment, a dripping wound in the granite wall adding yet another shade of brown to the river’s muddy palette. To complain about the stench of urine-marinated lambskins meant breathing, an act the players willingly postponed until they passed upwind of it. A few hundred yards further on they reached the portal of the parish church, St. Saviour’s. Armin took a cue from it. ‘Oh the pity, it’s come to this. Do we now have to pray for a play? Let’s hope the Chamberlain’s Men are not around to see us.’

Shakespeare paused at the church steps, as if to prove the comedian right, and then continued at an even brisker pace.

Armin’s commentary did not slacken; ‘Well, give thanks to all the saints, it seems we have no need for Godly favors. Unless, of course, our Will knows that we’re beyond the scope of prayer, and leads us to the docks, to board a vessel bound for foreign shores in order to escape our certain bankruptcy. If only our creditors were kind and gentle, patient and forgiving, but they are not, sirs. No, no, not they; they are evil, wicked, bloodstai—’ The Fool stopped in mid-sentence. Directing his monologue over his shoulder towards the trailing Heminge and Burbage, he had not seen Shakespeare slowing to a halt and had walked straight into him. ‘Beg pardon, Will. Didn’t see you throw the anchor.’

The playwright remained unsmiling. ‘You play your part well, Rob, but what I have to say concerns me seriously.’ Burbage and Heminge soon caught up, and he addressed them all. ‘Friends, we won’t be boarding any ship; we’ve reached our destination.’

They stood against the wall where Bankside met Borough High Street, and the High Street became the Bridge. It was London’s only bridge, and one of the busiest and most important crossings in the world. The junction was filled with the usual confluence of people and livestock, milling around in all directions but heading mainly north or south, pushing each other to make headway, shouting, or laughing, or cursing the impatient cart drivers whose rumbling, iron-clad wheels showed slow feet no mercy.

‘Remember our friend, Essex?’ Will’s lowered voice ensured his friends’ attention.

‘How could any of us forget that vain, misguided Earl?’ said Heminge. ‘We agreed to stage Richard the Second for him with only two days’ notice, and—’

‘We nearly died for forty shillings,’ spat Armin.

‘Quite so,’ said Shakespeare. ‘He meant our play about the killing of a monarch to be the yeast in his uprising; thank God we weren’t privy to his treason, else our heads would have been on show with his.’

He turned to face the entrance to the bridge, the great Southwark Gate, London’s main defense against invasion from the south. Arranged upon its ramparts stood twenty poles equipped with spikes, and on each spike was skewered a human head. Shakespeare’s companions followed his gaze.

‘And five years on, what do we see? Observe the middle pike, the one which sports the head with reddish hair. The beard remains, but the crows have had the eyes. Last week he was—’

‘Guy Fawkes. I saw him on the scaffold,’ interjected Burbage. ‘He didn’t have much to say, unlike the others. He’d been tortured and was weak, and fell unconscious before they cut him up.’

Shakespeare continued. ‘And, to each side of Fawkes, we see the heads of seven other plotters including their leader, Garnett. Traitors to James the King, but loyal to their religion.’ His comment went unchallenged. Certain things were best left unasked and unanswered; life in these times of religious upheaval and shifting social boundaries was complicated enough. In all the time he’d lived in London the actor had never discussed his true spiritual allegiance, or that of his family, and none of his friends had raised the subject. Even if they had, he would not have told them that, twenty years earlier, his cousin’s head adorned the ramparts that loomed above them now.

Heminge, now shivering and stamping his feet, was the first to turn away from the gory exhibit. ‘Well, they deserved it. They weren’t exactly poaching rabbits. But what are they to us?’

‘Because I truly fear that, although those scab-eyed fellows failed to deprive our monarch of his life, they have robbed him of his humor — of his very appetite for entertainment.’

To witness William in a mood this glum was rare; he was normally a cheerful man — good company. His colleagues stood in silence as they considered how to counter his concern.

They all knew the story, more or less. A candid remark by a Catholic aristocrat had been casually relayed to the King, who reacted with what his courtiers judged to be an unfitting display of anxiety. What they dismissed as ‘an idle papist boast’, James interpreted as a real and imminent threat against his life. ‘You fools! Good God, don’t you know what day dawns next?’ While his retinue stood dumbstruck he feverishly summoned the guard, told his captains to look for assassins in every conceivable place.

They spent the evening searching. When they returned empty handed he raged in despair, spat orders for them to search again, and emphasized the importance of White Hall’s labyrinthine cellars. It was there, some hours after midnight, that his guards discovered Guy Fawkes, gentleman and sometime soldier, hidden in an angle where the palace’s buttressed walls met their foundations. Given the basement’s coal-seam darkness and the searchers’ feeble, flickering torches, Fawkes might well have escaped discovery; but the villain had failed to subdue the metallic, tell-tale ticking of his watch. The guards found him next to it. The watch — a small clock in a traveling case — was accompanied by a flint, a fuse, and two thousand pounds of black powder, piled up in twenty wooden kegs and covered by dozens of heavy, brittle iron bars.

James was right; undetected by his secret service and undisclosed by any Catholic turncoat, there had been a plot and he, alone, had foiled it. Fawkes was taken to the Tower immediately, before the sun cleared the horizon. That morning, November 5th, was the opening day of Parliament. The Great Hall of the palace was right above the cellar and would have been occupied by the Protestant King, his Queen, his family, his Protestant Ministers, most of the country’s Protestant aristocracy and a few of its Catholic; in all, about two hundred of the most prominent and influential people in the British Isles. It was said that, if Fawkes had detonated the explosive as planned, the entire building and all who were in it would have been blown to pieces. The nation would have been plunged into a turmoil that exceeded the ability of anyone, lord or commoner, to imagine. Their suspicious, distrusting King had saved them all.

The subsequent trial of the traitorous fusilier and his fellow plotters had been swift, and its outcome met with universal applause. Well, seemingly universal; if Catholics had not feigned enthusiasm for the breaking of Fawkes on the rack, for the hanging by his neck, for the drawing out of his heart and guts, for the hacking of his torso into quarters and for the spiking of his head above London’s front door, they too would have been deemed traitors.

Armin was first to break their silence. ‘So, the king’s a gloomy soul. What of it?’

Shakespeare smiled. ‘This, Robert, merely this: to please a king so superstitious that he blames his discomforts on the color of the nearest cat, a king so god-fearing that he has executed scores of men and women declared, by him, to be enchanted slaves of Satan, would be difficult enough. But to please this same king, who now trusts no one and sees plots and treachery in every sideways glance, is… well, it’s more than twice the task.’

‘That’s true today,’ said Armin. ‘But, by the time the play is ready, James’s mood might change. Distracted by some mincing courtier, or an unexpected gift from an ambassador — who knows? So perhaps we should cross that bridge when we come to it.’ He looked up at the array of severed heads, and offered an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry, Will. Couldn’t help myself.’

Burbage was more encouraging. ‘My friend, I’ll wager that once you’ve found your tale, the telling will come to you as easily as breathing. As it always does.’

The playwright met his eye briefly. He appreciated the compliment, even though he currently felt undeserving of it.

Heminge’s comment was less subtle. ‘He’s right. Concern yourself with the story, not its reception, or both will be dull. And hurry up about it, before another bout of plague brings out the bailiffs to shut down our precious theater and our livelihoods.’

The players looked at each other, saw that there was nothing more to say, and headed back towards the Globe, leaving their playwright where he stood. He remained motionless for a while, unsure of his next step, until he heard a voice engage him. Turning around he faced a short, pale man of no particular note, in the garb of a tradesman of some sort.

‘Mr. Shakespeare, sir?’

‘That is who I am.’

‘Ah, I’m not mistaken then. I saw your Merry Wives of Windsor last week, sir.’

‘Good. Well, good if you saw it and paid your penny.’

‘I did just that, sir. It was worth the whole coin, despite the rain. But it was better a month ago, when you yourself was Mistress Page. I think she sounded better with your voice behind ’er opinions.’

‘Thank you. I’ll tell my paymaster you said so.’

The admirer continued on his way, and the playwright turned towards the dreary river. He needed a place to sit and think, and he decided to search out somewhere unfamiliar in the hope that it might prove stimulating. He waited for two young cowherds and their charge of half a dozen skittish cattle to pass by, then cut through the gyrating crowd of determined locals and gawping day-trippers and continued walking east.

The city was the world’s most densely populated; quarter of a million people crowded streets designed by Romans to serve ten thousand. The buildings were mainly framed with oak, their walls filled with mud or brick, and those at crossroads were reinforced with special corner-posts, made to protect their walls from being rubbed away by shoes and shoulders. Like their inhabitants, the buildings jostled one another and competed for breathing space, one leaning upon the next, their attics built wider than their footings. Most roofs were thatched with reeds, the more costly were tiled, and both overlapped each other and shaded the narrow streets. These streets were now like lanes, and the lanes like alleys, and the alleys — sometimes not even as wide as a man’s shoulders — were always dark, even in summer. Only on the broader thoroughfares, such as Cheapside and the radiating streets on which Hadrian had once assembled armies, did unimpeded daylight strike the cobbles at every time of year.

Above the huddled roofs, soot-laden smoke from thousands of chimneys rose upwards in Medusan tendrils, each mingling with the others to form a toxic canopy. It doubled the natural gloom of the corpse-gray clouds above, and deposited a corrosive film of ash and smuts on palaces and tenements alike.

One of those smoking chimneys belonged to an inn, bordered on its northern side by the Thames and to its east by what was once a sparkling stream and was now a fetid ditch. ‘The Ship Aground’ enticed customers with a large room and the warmth of a fire glowing in its grate, fed now with staves from a broken barrel by a sullen, stunted boy of nine. The grime-faced lad was also charged with keeping a watery eye on the large iron cauldron that hung from a hook beneath the flue. If its contents boiled over he would be rewarded with the rap of a wooden ladle on the back of his head, administered by his mother, the landlord’s wife; she hadn’t soaked peas and split ham-bones before dawn in order for them to end up among the ashes.

The tavern’s low-beamed ceiling trapped both the fire’s heat and the lesser warmth that radiated from the crush of lunchtime patrons, evaporating the dampness from their linen blouses and woolen cloaks and causing their own sour odors to mix with the more welcoming aromas of simmering soup and flaming oak. The landlord perspired with the effort of carrying a full barrel of ale up from the cellar and hoisting it into the rack upon the counter. As soon as the keg was settled in its cradle his crop-haired daughter, a hard working twelve-year-old, turned its spigot and released the contents into dented, leaden tankards, their weight testing the muscles of her skinny arms. She, too, was sweating while she made her way among the tables, intent on delivering her father’s tawny brew to its new owners without spilling any, which was hard to do when shoving past those customers too cheap to sit. When a drop of perspiration traversed her cheek, lost its grip on her chin, fell into a mug and sank beneath the foam, she did not notice it, and neither did the man who was to drink it.

Shakespeare had chosen a seat by a window in a corner, furnished with a small table for two people and hidden from the view of most customers by a wooden screen. The stool opposite him was occupied by a middle-aged artisan who, by the white dust in his clothes and the calluses on his hands, the playwright judged to be a mason. The stonecutter looked around the room from one group to another, but not merely out of curiosity; the man facing him was a gentleman, and the gentleman’s pressed linen blouse and finely turned collar, neatly stitched velvet tunic and closely woven woolen cloak made the artisan feel awkward. His own clothing — several layers of well-worn shirts and jerkins — had at one time been equally presentable, chosen carefully and bought for full price by their original owners; now they were patched and mended, stained by sweat and smoke and grime, more rags than clothes. The uncomfortable mason decided to finish his ale and leave. When he set down the empty tankard and rose from his seat he went unnoticed by the playwright; Shakespeare was staring distractedly at the Thames flowing past the rime-encrusted oak and stone embankment.

From this perch on the Bermondsey shore he could see hundreds of boats and ships of all shapes and sizes. The bulging merchantmen, tied up to the wharves and to each other, formed an impressive forest of masts and rigging. Dozens of wakes crosshatched the ochre surface of the silt-heavy ebb tide as boatmen in their ferries and wherries rowed passengers and goods from one bank to the other.

His gaze drifted upstream, along the northern shoreline, past the Tower’s impenetrable walls and ageless strength, and halted inevitably at the bridge; even from a mile away it was impressive.

Four centuries had passed since ingenious architects and relentless laborers had driven its iron-hard pillars — whole trunks of seasoned oak — deep into the blue clay riverbed to support nineteen massive limestone piers and twenty-one arches. Nine yards wide, with a drawbridge at its southern end, the span across the nation’s most important artery supported dozens of ornate buildings,

Reviews for The Scottish Movie

[thequietreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When Henry Greenville learns that his unique, first draft novel has been stolen and is in the process of being turned into a Hollywood movie, he is rightfully furious. What is this struggling actor/author to do? Revenge, Shakespearean style.At first I had a hard time getting into this novel as it starts off with the first two chapters of Henry's first draft. Once the actual story gets started, it definitely had my attention. Following Henry as he gets his revenge was a lot of fun.The only downside is the swearing. Four letter words are used FREQUENTLY. I received a free copy of the book from the author in exchange for an honest review.

[bburns21 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a great book! I did find the beginning a little hard to get into, but it was well worth it. I especially like the twist in the ending. Well done!

[bkshs · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Scottish Movie opens as historical fiction set in London just after the death of Queen Elizabeth I. James VI of Scotland has become King James I of the union of the kingdoms, and he's paranoid about conspiracies and rebellions. The notorious Guy Fawkes plot has been discovered and those involved savagely executed. But the king's paranoia has increased and has become quite contagious.The theatre world is as uneasy as everyone else. No one wants to do anything to cause suspicion or offense. The famous Shakespeare hasn't come up with a new play and everyone is waiting. Expectations are high and creditors are increasingly impatient.Meanwhile, an aspiring writer has an entire play churning in his head, but only partially written. He’s a printer’s assistant and writes only when he isn’t working and has enough light. He describes his play to friends in a tavern and happens to be overheard by Shakespeare. Shakespeare takes the plot, reworks it slightly, and sets it in Scotland to please the king. He uses historical figures of centuries past, Macbeth, Duncan, and others, to carry out the action of the pilfered plot, making sure that any that King James might have descended from are cast more positively than they might actually have been in real life. This means that Macbeth, who opposed them, must be cast as a villain.Shakespeare has his Macbeth in production before Henry, the original author, can finish his version. Henry tries in vain to convince everyone that the ideas were his, and when he cannot, he devotes himself to sabotaging the play and giving it the reputation of being cursed.Centuries later and thousands of miles west, a parallel scene unfolds. Harry, an actor and aspiring playwright in present-day California, has written a screenplay about the curse of avarice and ambition and uses a real figure in history (Shakespeare), who is generally positively regarded, to play the role of villain. The screenplay has Shakespeare steal a plot from an aspiring playwright about the curse of avarice and ambition, using a real figure in history (MacBeth), who is generally positively regarded, to play the role of villain.This, in a nutshell, is The Scottish Movie. As you might guess, the ideas in the screenplay that Harry is writing about Shakespeare’s MacBeth are stolen and worked into a movie before Harry has a chance to finish it. Since he can’t stop the production, he follows his character’s lead in trying to make the movie a disaster.I'm going to assume that author Paul Collis didn't steal the idea for this book from someone else and publish it preemptively. I’m also going to assume that MacBeth himself hadn’t stolen a tale to start the whole thing off, but those inclined to think in Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid kinds of infinite spirals might have fun pondering it. In any case, it was a fun read. There were some antics and occasional sabotaging acts that strained plausibility or a sense of fair play, particularly where innocent bystanders were concerned. But to steal a line from Shakespeare (or whomever he might have stolen it from), all’s well that ends well. I generally respect Smashwords' policy of paying for a book even if reading a copy that a friend has already paid for. In this case however, it seemed fitting not to. Since the friend had ideas for a review, but hadn’t quite gotten around to it, I’ve taken a few of them – in the spirit of this book – and am writing this review and posting it before she can do it herself. (That part was my idea, but she did think it was funny when I told her that I was thinking of it. Since it's with her approval, I'm assuming there will be no curses and sabotage of The Scottish Movie Book Review. Unless, of course, Mr. Collis does it for being cheated out of his royalties.)