This series highlights cinema created in and around Glasgow over the years, from micro-budget amateur fare to top-of-the-range Hollywood productions, with a view to fostering viewing (so no spoilers here).
The Greyness of Autumn (2012): Quick Off the Mark Productions
We’ve had offbeat social realist comedy about unemployed youths robbing a sink warehouse and measured tragicomedy about four siblings losing their mother: for our third ‘Glasgow on Film,’ we turn to a modern short about post-financial crisis economic hardship and relationship woes… all through the perspective of an ostrich called Danny.
The Greyness of Autumn is a weird wee black comedy, more than exemplifying that love for the surreal that Glaswegians seem to have. The film also displays how a bit of Glasgow Gallows humour and absurdity can turn an on-the-face-of-it grim tale about a life spiralling out of control into a superb slice of short form comedy.
As you can see, Danny McGuire (Duncan Airlie James) is an ostrich hand puppet. He lives with his unemployed flatmate Nelson (voiced by writer-director Chris Quick), a monkey with a penchant for cornflakes, Jeremy Kyle, and porn. Danny works selling loft insulation in a call centre. On the same day at the beginning of Autumn, Danny discovers that the call centre is being relocated to India, making him redundant, and that his girlfriend Katie (Amy E. Watson) is leaving him for another man. On that day, the first day of autumn, Danny is confronted with ‘the greyness of autumn,’ as his life derails.
At only about fourteen minutes long, it is a mark of quality that the film has so many memorable moments. Personally, Danny being mugged for his shoes and trying to explain that, as an ostrich, he doesn’t have any, the story of the builder being fired, and the legal notice Danny receives near the end are my stand-out moments.
The Greyness of Autumn exemplifies a quality that has been noted throughout this series: a predilection for the quirky that you see across Glasgow Films. Quirkiness needn’t be humorous, necessarily (as we shall see with future entries), but rather a willingness to embrace idiosyncrasy and wear this uniqueness proudly.
The Greyness of Autumn screened at numerous festivals, including the Edinburgh Short Film Festival, Dublin Short Film & Music Festival, Portobello Film Festival, and People of Passion Festival, where it won Best Short Comedy. My own appraisal joins numerous similarly positive assessments of the piece. As a slice of Glasgow on Film, The Greyness of Autumn comes well recommended.
The Greyness of Autumn can be watched on YouTube.
Words by Adam Nicholson.