My Brand, My Movies

So last night we watch Rob Roy, a wonderfully-set, large-screen movie with big name stars just eking “Scottish.” It succeeds at the box office in 1996, if $28-31.6 million is any standard. A 1995 American biographical historical drama, the film was directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Liam Neeson stars as Rob Roy MacGregor, an 18th-century Scottish clan chief and the movie chronicles his battles with an unscrupulous nobleman in the Scottish Highlands.

All the things I love about it are right—the beautiful highlands, my ancestry—and subject in my latest series, The Highland-Cape-Fear-Thriller-Conspiracy Series. The fact that it shows awesome costumery (more about that later), the great love story of a man and his wife, the warrior Highlander genre in all his masculine, swashbuckling glory, my favorite movie star of all time, Liam Neeson (I always forgive his Irish beginnings), shocking scenes which make the blood boil produced by Peter Broughan and Richard Jackson, with music by Carter Burwell and screen play by Alan Sharp.

They deserve credit for the massive effort of projecting visually the novel by Sir Walter Scott, famous Scottish novelist, which none of the reviewers seem to even realize. Rob Roy is one of the Waverley novels, says the author himself about his historical written in 1817, followed by The Heart of Midlothian. Scott writes in the literary omniscient style of yesteryear with the named narrator, Frank Osbaldistone.

Scott is of interest to me for his love of Rosslyn Chapel as a Mason, a subject which arises in my books as well.

Rob Roy lived. A historical figure. Just how historical they made him does not worry me one bit. I like a wee bit of playing around with history as you will know upon reading my series if you haven’t already. If he was low country instead of high, I prefer the Highlands, so there you have it.

Tim Roth played the fop who I hated so much I refuse to remember his name. Was he ever the master of innuendo and expression. However, it’s those expressions that make one ill.

Rob’s wife Mary was played by Jessica Lange, and again, red hair glows on many of my leading women’s heads as well. That she exists beyond her relationship with her husband is my main rave to the part and person, a character to be reckoned with but also to be loved, so unlike the snippy, snarky strong women often portrayed in sitcoms.

I don’t care how many rotten tomatoes it got, ’twas a great movie. Back to the costumes as I promised–I got a little bored with it, and I think that can directly be traced to the period and costumery. That’s why, even when I love the look, it’s so limiting to the human psyche in terms of pigeonholing them in time, I don’t do it in my books. Yours truly threads in historical chords, but the main characters are thoroughly modern in today’s day and time, reaching into the future.

I prefer a main couple solving mysteries and taking on world would-be destroyers.

No more spoilers for ye. It’s worth it just for soaking up a bit of atmosphere. And thank you for waiting for my full-blown series, Book I, Stone of Her Destiny, of which is available right now. It’s the Prequel, Inheritance Spurned and Book II, The Tarbert Legacy, that ye’ll be looking for.