His name was Brandon and to almost everyone at Glasgow’s Bearsden Academy, he seemed a bit odd. This new pupil was much taller than the other students, said he was from Canada and, well, his face looked…strange. At least for a 15-year-old in 1995. But if you made inquiries, Brandon had answers for everything. Until he didn’t. That true-life scenario sets the stage for Jono McLeod‘s entertaining documentary, “My Old School,” which makes its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival this weekend.
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Speaking from his flat in London, McLeod reveals he has a very personal connection to Brandon’s story, he was one of his classmates. But when he decided to tackle telling the ultimate “dinner party story,” he went in a number of unconventional and creative directions. The first rule, outside of one actor, only Brandon’s classmates and teachers would appear on screen to tell the story. Second, he’d use animation inspired by the ’90s animated hit “Daria” to depict events. And, third, a decision that wasn’t his to make. While Brandon agreed to submit to an interview for the documentary, he did not want his face to be shown. That sparked an idea from McLeod, who reached out to his friend Alan Cumming to portray modern-day Brandon in a lip-sync performance in the film. It also didn’t hurt, that Cumming was at one time slated to star as Brandon in a narrative feature that never truly got off the ground.
“Part of the folklore of this story in Scotland is that Alan was supposed to make this movie and it was the great unmade Scottish movie, and so I always had in the back of my head that that was the case,” McLeod says. “So then I was like, “Well, actually, what I need is a 50-something Brandon to do this role,” then, of course, it made sense to approach Alan and see if he was up for it. Basically, it’s just embarrassing when you’re trying to make your friend do something like this and you don’t really know what the end result’s going to be like: ‘I’m doing this. It might be a film.’ You know what I mean? It’s just embarrassing, but thank God Alan was up for it and it became this.”
Cumming says he jumped at the chance to participate partially because it was such a different project.
“Getting older, it’s really lovely, if you see the cyclic nature of things or you see patterns repeating and you decide to maybe behave differently, and this is definitely something that happened that wasn’t meant to be then and it all kind of came around,” Cumming says. “Now, here I am effectively playing him but in a much different way. A much better way, actually, I think. I think this is, to me, a much more interesting film than the one that I would’ve produced all those years ago because it asks more interesting questions rather than just retelling a story.”
The pair took some time this past week to discuss the genesis of “My Old School,” how the world would treat Brandon today, and much more.
Please note, Brandon’s story is quite public, but be warned, there are major spoilers ahead in the context of our conversation.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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The Playlist: The events in the film happened to you while you were in school. Have you been thinking about turning it into a film for the past few decades?
Jono McLeod: Well, I’d never had it in my head as a documentary. One of my producers, Olivia Lichtenstein, I’ve been working with, on and off, for like over a decade, and she’d always said to me, “That’s an amazing [story].” Everybody at the school, it’s their dinner-party story. It’s the story you pull out of the bag and everyone goes, “What?” It was Olivia who kind of pushed me into pursuing it, and my mother, who kept all the newspapers up in her loft and in her attic. We went up and we were having a dig and I found all the newspapers from the time that I’d kept. Yeah, basically that kind of led to me reaching out to Brandon, and from there on out suddenly it was tumbling and it was happening.
The Playlist: I think you live in London now, but had you run into him at all in the years since? Would you go to the supermarket and see him? Or cross him on a sidewalk?
Jono McLeod: The answer to that for me is no, but one of the things about me making the film and being in the class is I am not from the suburb of Bearsden. It’s kind of a character in the film in itself, and I am not from that place. I was a bussed-in kid from the rougher part of town, so I was always kind of an outsider and stuff at school. So, in a way, it kind of almost made me the perfect observer to then suddenly make a documentary about it. But the kids I know from my class who stayed on in Bearsden would always see Brandon around in years afterward and stuff. I still get messages from them now, saying, “Oh, I saw Brandon in the supermarket,” or whatever, but he doesn’t necessarily want to hang with us. We’re not his crew, as it were, as the class of ’95. But he’s still around, though. He’s still very much present.
The Playlist: Alan, how did you get involved in this project?
Alan Cumming: Well, I have a long history with this story, actually. ’95 is when this happened. I was aware of it because it was such a huge story in our country. Then, in about ’97, I think, I got asked if I would like to be in and direct a film about it. I was going to play him. A narrative drama. That kind of puttered on for a couple of years and then it fell apart. think we were supposed to shoot it in ’99, then, like a lot of these things, it fell apart and it never happened. But then, many years later, Jono and I are friends and he tells me [about] this new thing he’s doing is about Brandon. I was like, “Oh my God. I was going to be in a film about him.” Of course, he knew that, and that was partly why, in a funny way, then he told me about it, so it kind of came back to me in this. I was just talking about how getting older, it’s really lovely if you see the cyclic nature of things or you see patterns repeating and you decide to maybe behave differently, and this is definitely something that happened that wasn’t meant to be then and it all kind of came around and now here I am effectively playing him but in a much different way. A much better way, actually, I think. I think this is, to me, a much more interesting film than the one that I would’ve produced all those years ago because it asks more interesting questions rather than just retelling a story.
The Playlist: Was he involved back with the original project? Had you met him?
Alan Cumming: I hadn’t because at the time, ’98, ’99, I was living in America at the time, that’s when I was doing “Cabaret” on Broadway the first time, so I didn’t actually meet him. I think I was scheduled to and it never happened. But much in the same way as I think Jono’s talking about with this, he was a sort of a shadowy figure: involved, but kind of keeping his distance. He gave his voice, but not his face to this. So I think that’s a metaphorical equivalent of how he was with the last one. I think maybe, perhaps, the last one, he was a little more… strictly because it was nearer to the thing actually happening. Now, I think time has moved on and he’s a bit more sanguine about it.
The Playlist: Jono, I guess my question for you then is why do you think he never wrote a book about it? He went on television and did interviews, but he didn’t try and own his story. He didn’t try to sell it to somebody else to make a film. He clearly sort of stepped away. Why do you think that is? Or maybe he didn’t?
Jono McLeod: No, he has told the story in multiple ways over the years. That was a film deal that he got back then. That was the Alan project. He has written a couple of published accounts. As we see in the film at the time, back at the time, he gave multiple TV interviews. He’s given multiple newspaper interviews. He does want to tell his story, he just, in recent years, does not want us to see what he looks like. Obviously, I’ve seen what he looks like, but he does not want the wider world to see him now for whatever reasons he goes with. That was basically the gauntlet that he set down to me, was he said, “If you want me to tell my story, I’ll tell it on the proviso that you find a way to make a film where my face isn’t seen.” I was aware of films like Clio Barnard‘s “The Arbor” and lip-sync documentaries that been done in the past, but it’s still a big ask. So, I’d always had it in the back of my head. Part of the folklore of this story in Scotland is that Alan was supposed to make this movie and it was the great unmade Scottish movie, and so I always had in the back of my head that that was the case. So then I was like, “Well, actually, what I need is a 50-something Brandon to do this role,” then of course it made sense to approach Alan and see if he was up for it. Basically, it’s just embarrassing when you’re trying to make your friend do something like this and you don’t really know what the end result’s going to be like: “I’m doing this. It might be a film.” You know what I mean? It’s just embarrassing, but thank God Alan was up for it and it became this.
The Playlist: Alan, when you did your performance were you watching a video of him, or did you only have the audio as a reference?
Alan Cumming: No, there wasn’t a video, so it was just audio. I’ve seen videos of him, obviously. I had the various cuts of the film as Jono was doing it. But I actually shot my bits about a year ago, still in prevaccination times. At the end of 2020. Basically, I had the interview and then Jono told me the bits he wanted, and I had these little clips on a loop. So, it was a very weird couple of days because it was just me in this room with the crew and Jono off-camera, playing the thing, and there would just be beeps like in an ADR session. Then I’d have these little chunks and just do them again and again and again and again and again until I kind of felt that I’d got it. You had to be really focused. It was really one of those kinds of things, because if you let it go for a second… It’s funny, you think the long ones are quite easy and it’s like when you do your own ADR on a film: you realize that if you breathe in a certain way, it’s really hard. Especially on a windy day, is an old actors’ rule. On a windy day, speak very clearly and don’t hesitate because, more than often, you might have to redo it in the studio and it gets harder and harder. Also, you’re listening to the windy version of what you said as well. I’ve done thousands of ADR stuff before, but always as myself, and it was a really interesting thing to do. You have to really listen to this person to try and not just lip-sync but also to sort of condense who they are and what they’re trying to say and what they were like at that moment to then portray that with your face. So it was very interesting.
The Playlist: The mid-’90s was a different media world. There was no social media, the cultural environment was much different. Do you think if what Brandon did happened today, there would have been more outrage? Or is that why it’s inherently a Scottish story?
Jono McLeod: I think a big part of it is that it’s funny. Not the situation that Brandon found himself in, but the fact that he managed to fool all our teachers, who we were so terrified of and looked up to and had this respect for; that this person came in and managed to make[total fools of them]. I think there’s a certain fondness among for the fact that he managed to sort of prick the pompousness of the school and also Bearsden, as well. It was such an incredible thing to pull off, and I think that, to some extent, that’s where some of that comes from. Also, I was very conscious when I was putting together the assembled cast, the interviewees for the film, that I wasn’t interested in speaking to journalists or to any experts or anything like that. I only wanted to tell this story from the perspective of those who were actually there at the time. I think that’s really important because I’m aware that if people know the plot line of this movie and come to it, they might be expecting a more scandalous film, perhaps, than I’ve made. Maybe someone who wasn’t in the class would’ve made that film, but that wasn’t the film that I wanted to make.
Alan Cumming: Also, in those days there was, obviously, no social media. It was much harder to do a pile-on. Nowadays, if something like that happens, literally millions of people around the world would all pile on and everyone would have an opinion about it, and it would sort of mushroom in that way. We forget how much that’s changed how we get news and how we all have opinions about things. I think, in a funny way, it’s sort of like in the film: it leaves everyone a bit like, “Well, gosh, that was terrible. How could this have happened? He must have known. They must have known. What were they thinking?” Well, did he do anything actually wrong? He was never charged with anything. There’s no crime. There’s maybe some moral ambiguity that people might think but I think that’s what I find more interesting. That, I think, probably would’ve been less nuanced if it happened now. One way or another, there would’ve been a much more definite and bigger decision about what had happened and how we were to think about it. I think that’s what we lack a little bit in our culture these days, the nuance of things.
The Playlist: Jono, was it hard to get some of your former classmates to be involved?
Jono McLeod: Yeah. Some people didn’t want to be in the film, and that’s totally fair enough. I think the interesting thing was I left school and didn’t look back, kind of thing. So, a lot of these classmates taking part are people who I had to call up and be like, “Hi. I haven’t spoken to you in 25 years. Do you remember me?” Some of them didn’t remember me, but for the most part, they did. The question you always get asked if you were in Brandon’s class is, “How did you not know? How on Earth did you not know?” For me, the reason I didn’t know is because I had a secret that I was too busy focusing on. I was a 16-year-old gay kid who was trying to keep the lid on that. I was so focused with the blinkers on. How the hell would I notice that there was this world-first going on three desks away from me? I didn’t necessarily think I had the best relationship with high school and I don’t have the best memories of it, but the process of reconnecting with all my classmates? Somebody asked me earlier, “What are school reunions like for you?” and the answer is we don’t really do them in Scotland, and so this is my school reunion.
Alan Cumming: That’s sad you had to make a film in order to have a school reunion.
Jono McLeod: That’s kind of what I tried to capture in the film. Everybody does the down-the-lens thing and my classmates are obviously looking at me and talking to me, and I wanted for the audience to almost feel like a member of Class 5C. I think that’s what I’ve tried to kind of capture in terms of the camaraderie and the fun that we had reminiscing, and how quickly things come back to you. You’re like, “Yeah, of course. That’s what that teacher used to do and make…” and all this. Things that I thought were buried in my mind, and suddenly all this stuff comes out. It’s been a real joy and a real special trip to reconnect with 16-year-old me. Alan’s gone back to do this role. It’s taken him back in time. It’s taken me back in time. So, basically, we’ve all done a Brandon in the process of making this film.
The Playlist; By the way, how did you get Lulu to do a song for your movie? Did you have a connection?
Jono McLeod: Before I started making the movie, I met her. I was at the theater, the lights were about to go down, there were two empty seats next to me, and the next thing Lulu comes moving towards me. Now, what we can tell you is that it was amazing there wasn’t a restraining order. I’m a massive Lulu fan, and so I kind of did the embarrassing thing of telling her, after the show, what a big fan I was. We got on and we were hanging out, and I kind of thought, “Well, why not? In for a penny, in for a pound.” She does remind me of the teacher that she plays. She’s definitive, but she can shout a bit, so I thought, “Why not give it go?” and I put it to her and she said yes.