How an Aussie, a Kiwi and a Scot made a Braveheart 'sequel' in Montana

Robert the Bruce is one of Scotland's great national heroes – second only, perhaps, to William Wallace, immortalised in Mel Gibson's multi-Oscar-winning Braveheart 25 years ago. So how did a new movie about him come to be made by an Australian, a Kiwi and one of the stars of Braveheart in Montana?

"I was trying to get a Western up about four years ago, and I'd always had Montana in mind because I'd seen two episodes Anthony Bourdain had done here, and so I came here for no good reason," says Richard Gray, the Melbourne-raised director of Robert the Bruce, who now lives in Livingstone, Montana with his producer wife Michele and their two young children.

The screenplay for Robert the Bruce was written by Angus Macfadyen, the Scottish actor who played the character in Gibson's film and reprises the role in Gray's.

"Angus was very young in Braveheart," says Gray, "and he'd always wanted to continue the story. He'd given up hope of making it as he got older, but actually his age really suits the story, because Robert has given up at the start of our film. So it really worked for us."

Like his hero, Macfadyen had tried, tried and tried again to get his story filmed without success. But then he acted in an English comedy film alongside Anna Hutchison, the New Zealand-born actress who starred in Gray's Aussie Rules movie Blinder and his Alaskan wilderness thriller Sugar Mountain, and things took a surprise turn.

"He was telling her about this script he'd written," Gray says. "And she knew how much I love Braveheart, so she said, 'You should get this to Richie, he might be able to make it happen'."

Angus Macfadyen as Robert the Bruce in the film of the same name, which he wrote.

Gray, it should be said, has an uncanny knack of making things happen.

He finished runner-up in 2005's Project Greenlight (the reality TV series that offered $1 million in funding to the winning screenplay), and sat on his unproduced project for years before finally deciding the only way Summer Coda was going to get made was if he did it himself.

"It was Natalie Miller [distributor and co-owner of Cinema Nova in Melbourne] who said to me, 'What are you waiting for?'," Gray recalls of the moment that changed his life. "And ever since then if there's even a glimmer of hope we just go for it because after waiting seven years to do something I could have done seven years earlier you get the message – you're either going to do it or you're not."

Macfadyen also played Robert the Bruce in Mel Gibson's Braveheart (1995).

Aged 39, Gray now has seven features to his name, and two more waiting to go, including that Western. He's also busily developing a studio ranch in Montana, which recently introduced tax concessions that will allow movies and TV series set in the state to actually film there, rather than heading to New Mexico (for the deserts) or Canada (for the snow).

"We're building an 1870s Western town, the Yellowstone Film Ranch. I tried to get it done in Queensland but we couldn't quite pull it off," he says.

So the boy from Box Hill is becoming a studio mogul?

"I don't know any studio mogul who gets paid as little as I get paid," he laughs. "But I'm certainly building sets and doing my best."

Richard Gray on the set of his film, which was shot over winter in Montana and Scotland.Credit: Richard Gray

Many of the buildings in Robert the Bruce were built on the property, and unlike most film sets they're still standing long after production has wrapped. "The church, the village, the tavern, the blacksmith – they're built for real, all bluestone," he says. "They won't ever be torn down."

Some of the film was shot in Scotland, but the bulk of it was filmed in Montana. And all of it was shot in the depths of winter, with temperatures frequently plummeting to minus 20 degrees.

"You don't see many of these films made in winter," Gray notes wryly. "And we found out why.

"The actors were playing peasants, so they're in hessian sacks, and I'm watching their lips turn blue. The positive was that we didn't have to pay for visual effects. But the negative was we couldn't film for more than half an hour at a time for their safety.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever done," he adds, "but the most rewarding".

Robert the Bruce screens at the Mini British Film Festival. Details: britishfilmfestival.com.au

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