...continuing to work on the "French Project"

As I sit here and type, listening to Aimee Mann and Spotify ads, Glasgow has been blessed with sunny breaks in the rain clouds.

The "French Project" was always going to set in Glasgow, The work done on the Beachy Head ascent and in and around Eastbourne was just hardware testing and a bit of fun: (see http://drivingkolo.blogspot.com/2009/10/switchbacks-of-beachy-head.html )

Glasgow is what it was always about.

Now it wasn't just "C'etait un rendez vous" that has influenced me into starting this project. The way the streets of San Francisco are shot in "Bullitt"; the hilly terrain, the shops, people and houses are as much a part of the 'best ever car chase' as the actors and the Charger & Mustang. If anything, the chase would not be as well regarded as it is without the cityscape at the start of it. Another trigger for me was San Francisco 9 or 10 years before Steve Mcqueen's version of the city was shot; Hitchcock's more sedate and more gentrified San Francisco in "Vertigo". At the start of "Bullitt", post credits and after Lalo's theme dies down, a taxi pulls up at a very distinctive hotel perched in a hilltop at a busy cross-roads. This hotel was used as a very spanky block of apartments in Hitchcock's film. The traffic was almost non existent in the earlier version. I'm not going to go into the debate about how landmarks are used or how productions alter places to there own ends, well not now. I'm merely saying that it is interesting how you can dress up or down a place to meet your own ends. It can be a backdrop as a curtain is a backdrop of a stage production, or the city can be an integral part of the piece. Now San Francisco is more of a feature in films than say, LA (Dirty Harry verses Heat for example), because it has a number of older landmarks and set pieces. LA is a modern urban sprawl, a giant of corporate towers and business suits with a theme-park in the middle (Hollywood).

Glasgow, like San Francisco, has a grid of streets, distinct residential and city centre business districts. Glasgow also shares a blessing of historic landmarks and urban set pieces.

Glasgow has also suffered from a real negative image. It's either thought of as a drug addled of it's former Victorian masterpiece, or it's just thought of as the deep fried fat man of Europe; the collective heart-attack waiting to happen. The Scottish Tourist board has yet to fully reverse this, the way Edinburgh has. Remember Edinburgh has it's fair share of blight but the capital comes first in Scotland's strive for a modern, positive identity. I'm not saying I'm going to change all that with this, far from it. I can imagine it'll be used in a powerpoint at the highways department, showing the one-way gridlocked chaos of the city centre. What I think will happen though, is non Glaswegians, non Scots, will see a busy, lively city from the view of a car travelling from Westend to Dennistoun in the Eastend.

What I have noticed, youtubing about, is that Glasgow has yet to feature in a copy version of Claude Lelouche's seminal work. As yet, I've not realised why.

Today, I might just find out....