If you like your true stories outrageous and hard-to-believe, then you’ll want to make time this weekend for the brilliant California Schemin’, which marks James McAvoy’s directorial debut. It tells the story of how a Scottish rap duo gained fame and fortune by pretending to be American in the early 2000s.
To celebrate California Schemin’ landing in UK and Irish cinemas this Friday, Digital Spy has an exclusive clip from the movie which you can watch above right now. It sees Billy (Samuel Bottomley) and Gavin (Séamus McLean Ross) bluff their way through a meeting with record label boss Anthony Reid (McAvoy) as they reveal their fake life story.
The clip gives a tease of the terrific performances from Bottomley and Ross in the movie as Silibil N’ Brains, with the duo seeing their friendship tested as their audacious scheme spirals out of their control. As the lies pile up and their fame grows, do either of them have the guts to follow through on their plan to reveal all on live TV?
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Related: Don’t miss the trailer for James McAvoy’s near-perfect drama
The movie is based on Bain’s 2010 memoir California Schemin’: How Two Lads from Scotland Conned the Music Industry. While there is some creative licence taken, as in most biopics, you won’t mind as California Schemin’ is so entertaining that you’ll enjoy the ride.
If you want the full true story, you could always check out 2013 documentary The Great Hip Hop Hoax which was also about Silibil N’ Brains. It’s available to watch now on Netflix for you to watch after seeing California Schemin’ at the cinema this weekend.
Following its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival last September, California Schemin’ received its UK premiere as the closing gala of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival. It currently holds a near-perfect 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes if you don’t just want to take our word for it.
“It felt weirdly quite personal to me, even though I’ve never been into hip-hop music. I feel that they’re people that I recognise from growing up,” McAvoy told BBC News about his directorial debut.
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Related: James McAvoy’s improvised thriller gets surprise streaming release
“I was keen to do something entertaining, but I was also keen to do something about people from a background like my own – lower income, lower socio-economic level on the ladder and not a lot of opportunities.
“Those kinds of people don’t generally get aspirational entertaining movies made about them so when a film came along to me that gave me a chance to tell a story about people from council estates, which was good fun but still underpinned by real stakes and real loss as well, it was the perfect opportunity to do everything I wanted to do.”
California Schemin’ is released in UK and Irish cinemas on Friday 10 April.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.