William McIlvanney talks about his life as a writer at Glasgow Film Festival 2015
William McIlvanney provided a classic Glasgow Film Festival Q&A following the premiere of Maurice O’Brien’s Living with Words, which profiles the author, who has become known as the godfather of tartan noir.
Speaking to GFF co-director Allan Hunter, the charismatic writer of Scottish classics like Laidlaw and Docherty talked about how he first started out, who his inspirations were, what his parents thought of their son’s writing ambitions and his movie heroes as a young man growing up in Ayrshire. During the twenty minute Q&A, McIlvanney is also full of hilarious anecdotes about the responses he gets from readers on the streets of Glasgow. Telling Hunter and the audience about one of the negative reviews, he recalls that “this big guy, he was walking down the other side of the road in the opposite direction and he shouted ‘McIlvanney, who told you you could effin’ write?’ And I shouted back, ‘Probably the same person who told you you could effin’ read’... And I hastened on, because he was a large fellow.”
Watch the full Q&A above.
Video produced by Cutscene Media Ltd. and Glasgow Film Festival.