Scotland, PA | |
---|---|
Directed by | Billy Morrissette |
Screenplay by | Billy Morrissette |
Based on | Macbeth by William Shakespeare |
Produced by | Richard Shepard Jonathan Stern |
Starring | Maura Tierney James LeGros Christopher Walken |
Cinematography | Wally Pfister |
Edited by | Adam Lichtenstein |
Music by | Anton Sanko |
Distributed by | Lot 47 Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 104 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Scotland, PA is a 2001 American black comedy crime film written and directed by Billy Morrissette as a modernized retelling of Macbeth . [1] The film stars James LeGros, Maura Tierney, and Christopher Walken. The Shakespearean tragedy, originally set in Dunsinane Castle in 11th-century Scotland, is reworked into a dark comedy set in 1975, [2] centered on "Duncan's Cafe", a fast-food restaurant in the small town of Scotland, Pennsylvania. The film was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia. [3] [4] [5]
In 1975, Duncan's, a fast-food restaurant owned by Norm Duncan in the tiny hamlet of Scotland, Pennsylvania, hosts a variety of workers. [6] [7] Joe “Mac” McBeth is passed over for a promotion to manager by Douglas McKenna, who has been embezzling the restaurant's money. Three stoned hippies, one a fortune teller, inform Mac that they see a bank drive-thru style restaurant in his future as management. Mac and his wife Pat then play informants on McKenna, and Duncan recognizes the value of Mac's efforts on behalf of the restaurant. Duncan shares with the McBeths his plans to turn his failing burger joint into a drive-through, and Mac realizes how profitable the drive-through could be, after which Duncan is hit in the head with a refrigerator door and passes out briefly. Pat then decides to murder Duncan in a staged robbery. Mac and Pat attack Duncan to acquire the combination to the restaurant's safe, and Mac assaults Duncan, but is distracted by a vision of the three hippies, allowing Duncan to fall head first into a deep fryer that splatters and burns Pat's hand. Investigator McDuff arrests a local homeless man, to whom Pat has given Duncan's jewelry, and the restaurant is willed to Duncan's eldest son, Malcolm. Malcolm sells the restaurant to the McBeths who immediately realize Mac's ideas, and the restaurant's business takes off.
Investigator McDuff returns to Scotland, where the homeless man is cleared, and the McBeths focus their attention on Malcolm. Banko, Mac's friend, questions why Mac had never mentioned the drive-thru concept. Mac grows withdrawn and paranoid and on a hunting trip contemplates killing off Banko, but a vision of the three hippies dressed as deer distracts him. Pat becomes obsessed with her burn injury and accuses people of staring at her repulsive-looking hand, though no scar is visible. Mac then kills Banko with the homeless man's gun, and the body is discovered while new celebrity Mac gives a press conference. Mac calls on an hallucination of Banko to ask a question at the press conference and loses his sanity as the town watches on TV. He then returns to the woods to look for the hippies while Pat becomes deluded into thinking her hand is falling off. Mac then completely loses his sanity, answering and talking on the phone when no one is on the other end. In one conversation, the hippies suggest he kill McDuff's family. Mac grabs the sheriff's gun and orders the officer to call McDuff to the restaurant, where he then shoots McDuff, but the gun proves to be empty. They then wrestle for the inspector's gun on the roof of the restaurant and both fall off. Mac is impaled on the horns of his car. Pat self-medicates with alcohol, but then cuts her hand off and bleeds to death. McDuff takes over the restaurant, fulfilling his dream of working with food.
In South Windsor, Connecticut, his hometown, "I (Morrissette) was 16 and worked at Dairy Queen, and I hated my boss. I had read 'Macbeth' that same year and started telling people that this play would be hysterical if it took place in a fast food restaurant and everyone in the restaurant is named Mac". [8] [9] Morrissette completed the script in 1998. [8]
The press kit for the movie was printed in the form of a CliffsNotes booklet, [10] written by Professor David Linton of Marymount Manhattan College, [11] which is what Morrissette was reading when he was studying Shakespeare.
The soundtrack is made up of Bad Company songs [12] because, in Morrissette's words, "the band's catalogue was surprisingly inexpensive".
Orlando Weekly called it "high-spirited", with "era-hopping giddiness"and "a rib-poking gambol". [13]
The New York Observer called it "a trailer-trash version of Macbeth that should be avoided like an Elizabethan pox" and "grubby low-budget sendup of 70’s pop culture". [14]
Movieguide called it "a hilarious, modern re-telling of William Shakespeare’s great tragic play" and a "morality tale". [15]
Salon.com called it "a one-note movie — the note being a smart-aleck adolescent's idea of a Shakespeare parody". [16]
SPLICEDwire called it "deliriously funny, fast and loose, accessible to the uninitiated, and full of surprises". [17]
The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001.
In 2019 it was announced that a musical adaptation would premiere Off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre by Roundabout Theatre Company. [18] [3] The musical, directed by Lonny Price, features book by Michael Mitnick, music and lyrics by Adam Gwon, and choreography by Josh Rhodes. It starred Ryan McCartan, Taylor Iman Jones, Megan Lawrence, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Jeb Brown, Lacretta, Will Meyers, Alysha Umphress, Kaleb Wells, and David Rossmer. [19]
Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation, English
Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin was King of Alba (Scotland) between 15 August 1057 and 17 March 1058.
Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, Macbeth most clearly reflects his relationship with King James, patron of Shakespeare's acting company. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy.
Macbethad mac Findláech, nicknamed the Red King, was King of Scotland from 1040 until his death in 1057. He ruled during the period of Scottish history known as the kingdom of Alba.
Cináed mac Duib, anglicised as Kenneth III, and nicknamed An Donn, was King of Alba (Scotland) from 997 to 1005. He was the son of Dub. Many of the Scots sources refer to him as Giric son of Kenneth son of Dub, which is taken to be an error. An alternate explanation is that Kenneth had a son, Giric, who ruled jointly with his father.
Maura Therese Tierney is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Lisa Miller on the sitcom NewsRadio (1995–1999), Abby Lockhart on the medical drama ER (1999–2009), and Helen Solloway on the mystery drama The Affair (2014–2019), the last of which won her a Golden Globe Award.
Lord Macduff, the Thane of Fife, is a character and the heroic main protagonist in William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1603–1607) that is loosely based on history. Macduff, a legendary hero, plays a pivotal role in the play: he suspects Macbeth of regicide and eventually kills Macbeth in the final act. He can be seen as the avenging hero who helps save Scotland from Macbeth's tyranny in the play.
Macbeth is a 1971 historical drama film directed by Roman Polanski, and co-written by Polanski and Kenneth Tynan. A film adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name, it tells the story of the Highland lord who becomes King of Scotland through treachery and murder. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis star as the title character and his wife, noted for their relative youth as actors. Themes of historic recurrence, greater pessimism and internal ugliness in physically beautiful characters are added to Shakespeare's story of moral decline, which is presented in a more realistic style.
The Scottish Play and the Bard's play are euphemisms for William Shakespeare's Macbeth. The first is a reference to the play's Scottish setting, the second a reference to Shakespeare's popular nickname. According to a theatrical superstition, called the Scottish curse, speaking the name Macbeth inside a theatre, other than as called for in the script while rehearsing or performing, will cause disaster. On top of the aforementioned alternative titles, some people also refer to the classical tragedy as Mackers for this reason. Variations of the superstition may also forbid quoting lines from the play within a theatre except as part of an actual rehearsal or performance of the play.
Gruoch ingen Boite was a Scottish queen, the daughter of Boite mac Cináeda, son of Cináed II. The dates of her life are uncertain. She is most famous for being the wife and queen of MacBethad mac Findlaích (Macbeth), as well as through the character of Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth. However, Shakespeare's Macbeth is based on Holinshed's Chronicles and is not historically accurate.
Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth. As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. Some regard her as becoming more powerful than Macbeth when she does this, because she is able to manipulate him into doing what she wants. After Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant, she is driven to madness by guilt over their crimes and kills herself offstage.
Fleance is a figure in legendary Scottish history. He was depicted by 16th-century historians as the son of Lord Banquo, Thane of Lochaber, and the ancestor of the kings of the House of Stuart. Fleance is best known as a character in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth, in which the Three Witches prophesy that Banquo's descendants shall be kings. Some screen adaptations of the story expand on Fleance's role by showing his return to the kingdom after Macbeth's death.
Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare's Macbeth has been screened numerous times, featuring many of the biggest names from stage, film, and television.
The Three Witches, also known as the Weird Sisters, Weyward Sisters or Wayward Sisters, are characters in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. The witches eventually lead Macbeth to his demise, and they hold a striking resemblance to the three Fates of classical mythology. Their origin lies in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland and Ireland. Other possible sources, apart from Shakespeare, include British folklore, contemporary treatises on witchcraft as King James VI of Scotland's Daemonologie, the Witch of Endor from the Bible, the Norns of Norse mythology, and ancient classical myths of the Fates: the Greek Moirai and the Roman Parcae.
Hamish Macbeth is a Scottish mystery comedy-drama television series produced by BBC Scotland that aired from 26 March 1995 to 4 May 1997. It is loosely based on a series of mystery novels by M. C. Beaton. The series concerns a local police officer, Constable Hamish Macbeth, in the fictitious town of Lochdubh on the west coast of Scotland. The title character was played by Robert Carlyle. It consisted of three series, with the first two series containing six episodes and the third containing eight.
Macbeth is a live television adaptation of the William Shakespeare play presented as the November 28, 1954 episode of the American anthology series Hallmark Hall of Fame. Directed by George Schaefer, and starring Maurice Evans and Dame Judith Anderson, the production was telecast in color, but has only been preserved on black-and-white kinescope.
Just Macbeth is an adaptation of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. It was written by Australian children’s author Andy Griffiths, produced by Bell Shakespeare, and was released as a book.
King Duncan is a fictional character in Shakespeare's Macbeth. He is the father of two youthful sons, and the victim of a well-plotted regicide in a power grab by his trusted captain Macbeth. The origin of the character lies in a narrative of the historical Donnchad mac Crinain, King of Scots, in Raphael Holinshed's 1587 The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a history of Britain familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Unlike Holinshed's incompetent King Duncan, Shakespeare's King Duncan is crafted as a sensitive, insightful, and generous father-figure whose murder grieves Scotland and is accounted the cause of turmoil in the natural world.
The tragic play Macbeth by William Shakespeare has appeared and been reinterpreted in many forms of art and culture since it was written in the early 17th century.
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a 2021 American historical thriller film written, directed and produced by Joel Coen, based on the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare. It is the first film directed by one of the Coen brothers without the other's involvement. The film stars Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Bertie Carvel, Alex Hassell, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Kathryn Hunter, and Brendan Gleeson.
Morrissette captured the essence of Pennsylvania's Scotland and the surrounding area without even filming there. The movie was shot in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but it's such an accurate portrait that he surely must have stopped in Scotland at least once.
a trailer-trash version of Macbeth that should be avoided like an Elizabethan pox. Joe and Pat McBeth (James Le Gros and Maura Tierney) are a waitress and short-order cook in a greasy fast-food joint with ambitions to operate a traveling French-fry truck with chicken bits and dipping sauce. First they must murder Duncan, the owner, by frying him alive in deep fat. Not clever enough to be a satire and not creatively sound enough to be a viable revisionist drama, this grubby low-budget sendup of 70's pop culture
The journal was founded in 2013 by the Institute of Foreign Languages, University of Montenegro.