Student films (London Film School):
Charlie Chaplin's London (1969)
Striptease (1969)
Globe (1969/70)
Come Dancing (1970)
My Childhood (1972)
My Ain Folk (1973)
My Way Home (1978)
The Ring of Truth (1990)
Unproduced scripts:
Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1988)
Flying Horse (1990)
Whilst Bill wrote The Ring of Truth, he was not involved in its production. Students from Strathclyde University, where Bill taught in 1990, produced it and it was directed by Richard Downes.
Confessions of a Justified Sinner is an adaptation by Bill of the novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner written by Scottish author James Hogg in 1824. Bill was commissioned to write the screenplay in 1988 by producer Mamoun Hassan, an important supporter of Bill’s career.
Flying Horse is another finished but unproduced screenplay by Bill. Simon Relph, the producer on Comrades, was set to produce this project which, like Comrades, was preoccupied with the influence of pre-cinema technology and visual representation. The screenplay of Flying Horse tells the story of late nineteenth century moving image pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, and it includes a narrative which alternates between Muybridge’s lifetime and 1940s Hollywood. Muybridge is most famous for a groundbreaking experiment involving the innovative use of photographic technology to capture the movements of horses which proved that they do indeed ‘fly’ when they run.
Sadly, Bill died before either film was able to go into production.
Printed Screenplays
The screenplays to The Trilogy are reproduced in Bill Douglas: A Lanternist's Account, edited by Eddie Dick, Andrew Noble and Duncan Petrie (London: British Film Institute, 1993, ISBN 0-85170-348-8).
The screenplay to Comrades, published by Faber is unfortunately now out of print but both books can be consulted in the Special Collections Reading Room in the Old Library. Contact us for more information.
