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Ewen has explored everything from drugs to German sausages
Make it this exclusive interview with Scots actor Ewen Bremner on his upcoming roles
IN a tiny ghost town right in the middle of the New Mexico desert, Ewen Bremner is suddenly and unusually in need of sausages. As a lifelong vegetarian, the Scots actor has had little experience of any kind of links, but after landing in south west USA to play a depressed German butcher for his latest film, he was in need of some urgent lessons.
“I was begging for the chance to do some training but there just wasn’t the facility to do it,” Ewen says.
The Trainspotting and Wonder Woman star was forced to wing it when he found that all meat had been banned from the set of new movie Gutterbee by the movie’s strictly vegan writer director – even though the film is centred around Ewen’s character who dreams of opening a sausage restaurant.
“He’s totally vegan, which is kind of ridiculous for him to make a film about sausages,” Ewen says. “I’m vegetarian, but I was expecting to have to deal with real sausage meat.”
Edinburgh-born Ewen had to make do with a gloopy soya mix to fill his casings, but it was just another adventure in the life of this globe-trotting actor. Ewen has successfully bounced between lo-fi charm and blockbuster smashes since making his name as the troubled soul of the Trainspotting gang 24 years ago.
The acclaimed performer has excelled with a diverse CV which includes blockbusters like Black Hawk Down, Aliens vs Predator, Jack the Giant Slayer and sharing the screen with Chris Evans for Oscarwinner Bong-joon Ho’s Snowpiercer.
But he’s also been at the heart of popular indies on either side of the Atlantic, working with directors like
“He’s totally vegan, which is kind of ridiculous for him to make a film sausages” about
Mike Leigh and Woody Allen. This year alone, coronavirus lockdown notwithstanding, he was due to appear in US civil war drama Freedom’s Path and one of the biggest British movies in years, the Alan Mcgee biopic Creation Stories – as well as sausage drama Gutterbee.
For Creation Stories, Ewen is re-teaming with Trainspotting author and director Irvine Welsh and Danny Boyle to play the title role of Alan Mcgee, Glasgow-born music svengali who signed the most influential rock and indie bands of the 80s and 90s, from Jesus and Mary Chain to Primal Scream and most famously, Oasis.
The film is produced, written and directed by an Avengers-style pop culture line-up of Danny Boyle, Irvine Welsh and Nick Moran, and will see the riotous world of Britpop brought to the screen with a stellar cast led by Ewen, and also featuring Jason Isaacs, Suki Waterhouse, Paul Kaye, Rupert Everett and Jason Flemyng.
But with Bremner, Welsh and Boyle on board as respective star, writer and producer – with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells actor Nick Moran directing – it’s fitting that a film about a popular culture icon of the 1990s is being made by a the team behind Trainspotting.
If Alan Mcgee’s label provided the sounds of that era, the Trainspotting posters featuring Spud and co provided the iconic visuals. And after experiencing his own side of 90s culture, Ewen said the team have been trying to live up to the madness that Mcgee’s music stars lived through.
“It was great fun to film,” Ewen said.
“It was a thrill ride. The filming and the shoot was just like a mad hell ride of fun, kind of like the Creation Records offices in their heyday.
“They really reflected the energy and chaos that Alan Mcgee magnetically attracted and made magic with, like he had mystical powers, alchemical magician powers which he weaved together chaotically but he always came out on top.
“I was also really impressed with the director Nick Moran, I knew him as an actor but had never worked with him, as actor or director.
“But he brought this ingenuity to it and I was kind of blown away. He had a great way about him – he’s a force of nature and it was a great combination of him and Alan Mcgee, whose energy was really intense and impressive.”
Creation Stories producer Danny Boyle heaped praise on Bremner and predicted great things for the movie. After working with him twice on both Trainspotting movies, he’s tipping him for even bigger success in their new collaboration.
Bremner was a comedy standout in the first film back in 1996, but for the 2017 sequel T2 Trainspotting, Boyle made Bremner‘s hapless addict Spud the inspirational heart and soul of the story about the original gang reconnecting after two decades.
That was rewarded when he beat castmates Ewan Mcgregor and Robert Carlyle for the Bafta Scotland Best Actor Award in 2017.
“Ewen Bremner as Alan Mcgee is casting heaven,” said Danny Boyle. “I can’t think of a better piece of casting that I’ve ever heard. “
He’s been perfect casting for all kinds of roles in his long and varied career. The Scot’s versatility between indie film, TV, blockbusters and the stage has been one of his great strengths in an almost 30-year career.
His TV standouts have included a broad range of shows, from a guest star spot in hillbilly sitcom My Name
is Earl, to action series like Spooks and Strike Back, and the US drama Will about Shakespeare’s early days.
This year, he was thrilled to see Gutterbee up in lights for a premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival, though he missed the big night himself as he was in New York premiering a Broadway run of In Bruges and Three Billboards director Martin Mcdonagh’s hit Hangmen.
Gutterbee was a hot ticket in Glasgow, and Ewen said he’s looking forward to the day when audiences across Scotland get to see the quirky drama for themselves.
He plays German butcher Edward Hofler, who winds up in small town America desperate a chance to fulfil his dream of bring teutonic snacks to American restaurants.
Created by Danish born actor/director Ulrich Thomsen, the movie sees Bremner’s hapless butcher team up with a local con-man, played by Antony Starr, best known for hit Amazon Prime series The Boys.
And even though that kind of low budget film-making is all about cutting corners, squeezing as much as you can into tiny shooting schedules and making do with what you have, Ewen is a big fan of the kind of carmaraderie that’s to be found in a tight unit.
His colleagues Antony Starr and Ulrich Thomsen may be known to fans of Sky Atlantic crime TV series Banshee,
where they play violent rivals, but Ewen said the spirit on set was fantastic.
“Ulrich is really gentle, he’s really good humoured and peaceful.
“Antony is like this New Zealand surf guy who’s very physically accomplished and I’m this little Scottish twig transplanted into the desert, but we got on great.”
The quirky and funny indie movie sees his character take on a xenophobic “America first” local mayor, in order to open his dream German restaurant.
“Ulrich gave me a long leash to have fun. The character is a depressed alcoholic orphan who has this dream which is just too big for him until a con-man tries to rob him and then suggest they go into business together,” Ewen says. “They make a dangerous brotherhood of suspicion and sausages.”
Ewen’s frequent adventures in Hollywood have seen him shine in massive productions. He was a comic sidekick to Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett in Second World War melodrama Pearl Harbor, and then monster fodder in Alien Vs Predator.
One of his biggest studio adventures was the 2017 superhero film Wonder Woman. While the film, set during the First World War, won plaudits for proving to sceptics that a female hero could carry a smash hit, Bremner’s role as shell-shocked sharp shooter Charlie provided a sensitive and timely portrayal of PTSD and the effects of conflict.
He was thrilled to be part of it and said its success was “really quite overwhelming.”
Ewen’s looking forward to Wonder Woman sequel 1984 later this year. While set a good 70 years after the first film, the new instalment sees Chris Pine’s character Steve Trevor resurrected, so is there a chance for Ewen’s character making a comeback also?
“I’m not sure is the answer,” Ewen says. “We did have some kind of reunion but I don’t know if that fits with what they’re doing or not.”
We’ll have to wait and see…
“A sausages” brotherhood of suspicion and
Find out more about Ewen’s latest film Gutterbee online at www.facebook.com/gutterbeefilm