<\/p>\n
A lot of the important stuff was real: the songs, the rhymes, the flow, the friendship. It was the window-dressing that was, well, dressing. In the early aughts, a pair of Scottish BFFs, Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, were desperate to escape their provincial lives in coastal Scotland. The boys loved rapping and revered acts like D12 and Eminem, and they weren\u2019t half-bad at it, either. The problem? No one wanted to hear or see or support Scottish dudes rapping, with one now-iconic audition ending when a scout sniffed at them and called them \u201crapping Proclaimers.\u201d<\/p>\n
What are two plucky boys to do? In real life, just as in James McAvoy\u2019s peppy<\/a> feature directorial debut \u201cCalifornia Schemin’\u201d<\/a> that tracks the story two decades later, it became a question of giving the audience what they wanted. And what they wanted, Gavin and Billy decided, was a pair of rappers from California. So from California they shall be.<\/p>\n More from IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n For his feature directorial debut, proud Scotsman James McAvoy<\/a> has plenty of material to pull from: The real story of Gavin and Billy, of course, plus Bain\u2019s 2010 memoir of the same name and a 2013 documentary entitled \u201cThe Great Hip Hop Hoax,\u201d Archie Thomson and Elaine Gracie\u2019s screenplay, and McAvoy\u2019s own apparently complicated feelings about his homeland. Scotland was complicated to Gavin and Billy too, and while their scheme initially involved a planned big reveal of their actual provenance, all the better to stick it to a classist and elitist industry that didn\u2019t want their brogues in their rap music<\/a>, that slowly falls away.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fun enough at first, thanks to McAvoy\u2019s energetic direction and strong turns from its young stars, including Seamus McLean Ross (as Gavin, later to be known as Brains), Samuel Bottomley (as Billy, later to be known as Silibil), and the very charming Lucy Halliday (as Billy\u2019s girlfriend Mary). The trio work together in a call center in suburban Dundee, but quiet Gavin can\u2019t help but dream big. When he hears about an open audition in London (McAvoy himself plays a wonderfully scuzzy music executive who puts out the call), he and Billy alight for the big city.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t go well, and when the boys are laughed out of the office, the city, the country, Gavin won\u2019t give up. Free-wheeling, high-spirited Billy doesn\u2019t seem so very bothered, but it\u2019s Billy\u2019s own work ethos that gives Gavin his brilliant idea: at the call center, they give the customers what they want. Why not do that with their rapping? Bolstered by a delightful montage that sees the boys boning up on their American culture and accents \u2014 watching \u201cDie Hard\u201d and screaming \u201cshow me the money!\u201d and \u201cwe were on a break!\u201d \u2014 the energy is flying by the time they set out for London again.<\/p>\n This time, they are from \u201cSan de Angeles.\u201d They speak with a surfer boy affect. They are wearing a metric ton of skater kid apparel. They are Silibil N Brainz. The duo essentially bluff their way through the city, eventually catching the eye of scout Tessa (Rebekah Murrell), who helps them land a contract almost immediately, their dreams coming true with startling speed. But as they zip through early aughts London (a trip to the MTV studios to appear on \u201cThe Hook\u201d will give Millennial movie-goers some serious flashbacks), their quest to \u201cexpose the wankers\u201d takes a hard turn. Turns out, the razzle-dazzle of the industry can blind just about anyone.<\/p>\n Many of the story beats here are quite traditional to the music biopic genre \u2014 Billy starts sleeping around and skipping calls from Mary, Gavin gets really into drugs and alcohol, both of the boys go all-in on being \u201cfrom California\u201d \u2014 and it all starts careening toward the inevitable. But that\u2019s sort of the point: these stories, both real and fake, follow this trope-laden arc because that\u2019s what tends to happen most often. The industry chews people up and spits them (and their dreams) right back out.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the oldest story in the book, but it\u2019s made all the more crushing in \u201cCalifornia Schemin’\u201d because Gavin and Billy are so very convinced they\u2019re the ones pulling one over on the brass. That tension is never quite resolved, however, and as the film moves closer to its expected revelations, we can already guess how and where this all might end. Same old song, just with a slightly different tempo.<\/p>\n \u201cCalifornia Schemin\u2019\u201d premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Best of IndieWire<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Indiewire’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A lot of the important stuff was real: the songs, the rhymes, the flow, the friendship. It was the window-dressing that was, well, dressing. In the early aughts, a pair of Scottish BFFs, Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, were desperate to escape their provincial lives in coastal Scotland. The boys loved rapping and revered acts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2011413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[348605,22691,367942,366803],"class_list":["post-2011412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-billy-boyd","tag-california","tag-gavin-bain","tag-james-mcavoy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/James-McAvoy-Makes-His-Directorial-Debut-with-a-Real-Biopic.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2011412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2011413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2011412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2011412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2011412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Grade: B-<\/h2>\n