EWEN BREMNER
SPUD U LIKE
Hot on the heels of The Life Of Stuff, EWEN BREMNER is back in Mojo, cast as the loser yet again. But the chips are down, says the man who was Trainspotting’s Spud - no more Mr Fall Guy.
Words: Andrew Burnet Photograph: Colin Mckay
12 THE lIST 9—23 Jul I998
AT THE BEGINNING of his latest film. Mojo. Ewen Bremner swings into view on a pushbike. getting lippy with a passing copper. Minutes later. he‘s standing shamefaced while the officer takes down his particulars. It’s the start of a long. violent night. during which
he'll be brutally threatened with a pair of
daggers.
At the beginning of Bremner's last film. The Life ()fStn/f. he sets his own arm on fire in a bungled attempt to incinerate a van. Minutes later. he‘s naked but for Y-fronts. shaving his head with Ajax and a disposable razor. It's the start of a long. violent night. during which he’ll be brutally threatened with an electric drill.
Other roles haven‘t done his ego many favours either. In Deacon Brodie. he plays an incompetent petty criminal who is finally led weeping to the gallows. In Sarah Kane and
Vincent O‘Connell‘s short film Skin. he plays a vicious racist receiving poetic justice at the hands of a young black woman.
And in Trainspotting. the film that made him famous. he plays Spud. the one who nearly gets his first shag in ages. only to pass out in an alcoholic stupor and wake up naked. awash in his own puke and shite.
Why doesn‘t Bremner just cut out the middle man and have the word 'loser’ stapled to his forehead? Because he’s had enough. that‘s why.
‘It's the same part in Mojo and in Life Of Stu/j? he says. ‘I’m a complete victim in both films. the sympathy part. really vulnerable. I mean. I‘ve always had a capacity for receiving that kind of abuse in my work — it ain’t ever really got to me — but I shot them back-to- back: four months of twelve. fourteen hours a day going. “AAAAAGH! Leave me alone ya