They've gone and put him in movies

AN egalitarian soul, Don Coutts can't thole the status-bound flummery that accompanies his new role as a feature film director. Jings, as the grizzled TV veteran goes about shooting his first big-screen movie on location in and around Glasgow, he's mightily unnerved by his film editor observing industry convention and calling him ''Sir'', while there's the additional matter of the film's first assistant director becoming distressed when Coutts nips to the shops on props-buying errands.

In the fuss-free world of TV production, Coutts has long been used to doing it all himself, without prima donna histrionics. In the movies, however, there's a hierarchy - and Coutts is unexpectedly at the top.

He's uncomfortable with a deference he feels is undeserved. Thankfully, though, he's turning this unease into a modus operandi that should assist his movie, American Cousins.

''When I hear some guff about the auteur theory, or see some director proclaiming himself to be god, I think to myself 'What utter shite.' '' chuckles Coutts in his well-brung-up Perthshire tones. Coutts is striding manfully beside me through the grimy streets of Govanhill - no limo for Mr Coutts - to the film's lunch wagon, which is pitched on a rubbish-strewn fly-tipper's paradise near Eglinton Street.

''And another thing,'' he continues. ''You sometimes see a director give himself a title-credit saying 'A film by . . .' If I did that with American Cousins, there'd be a list of 60-odd technicians, plus the cast.

''I'm proud that, like me, the technicians are virtually all Scottish-based as well as being

feature first-timers. Because, as director, it's my job to create a pleasant and humane working atmosphere, one that allows people to succeed. Thirty years ago, I began my career in features, working as second assistant editor on the worst six films in British cinema history.

''One of them was The Wicker Man. That alone was bad enough to convince me to flee movie-making and go into television. Every night, we'd sit watching The Wicker Man's rushes. They were appalling.

''I had to have a hankie crammed into my mouth to stop myself bursting out laughing, especially as the writer and director were sitting next to me, rhapsodizing about the brilliance of their work.''

Coutts is naturally generous in his praise of the writer of American Cousins, his long-time Scottish-Italian cohort, Sergio Casci. ''American Cousins is a romantic feel-good comedy with a thriller edge, but thanks to Sergio's witty script, it has a sadder, more serious core, too.

''It's a film about the Italian Diaspora, and that phenomenon's beneficial effects on Scotland, and it's also about people who end up far removed from where they began their lives, due to economic and social pressures.''

It's ironic that those same pressures can, one way or another, be seen to have moulded the excellent cast assembled for American Cousins. None of them is a headlining star, but they have all mastered their craft in a variety of theatres around the world.

Take the movie's Scottish lead, Gerald Lepkowski. The Glaswegian screen newcomer left his homeland as a teenager, having had his electrician's apprenticeship in a Clydeside shipyard scuppered by redundancy. He headed for Australia, studied drama and became a stage success.

American Cousins also sports three well-kent American faces. Danny Nucci was Leonard di Caprio's pal in Titanic. Prior to being rubbed out by his Mafia buddies in The Sopranos, Vincent Pastore was Big Pussy in three series of the Channel 4 hit. Dan Hedaya's long career encompasses everything from Shaft to A Life Less Ordinary, as well as David Lynch's newie, Mulholland Drive.

Exported northwards from Liverpool, two streetwise Scousers further enliven Coutts and Casci's movie. Jake Abraham was a scallie joy in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Ditto Stephen Graham in Snatch.

Certainly, the duo were subtly hilarious in the scene I saw being filmed last week in a scabby Govanhill flat, where they were pitched against one of the stars of BBC2's Cops, the irascible and menacing John Henshaw. All this acting talent in one film - plus the lugubrious genius of wur ain Russell Hunter, 77 not out, and wur ain pixie charmer Shirley Henderson, soon to be seen in the next big bucks Harry Potter opus.

Not that American Cousins has even a tenth of the blockbuster's budget. No one's complaining about that, however, American Cousins only having reached production by chance, after three fruitless years in limbo, when another film suddenly fell apart.

''Sergio and I were 24 hours away from buying the screenplay back for the same pound coin we'd sold it for when we got a last-minute go-ahead from Little Wing Films in London,'' says Coutts. However, despite American Cousins being shot within a cost-effective 33 days, it's friendship rather than economics which explains a couple of unusual names on the cast-list: dramatist John Byrne and guitar-toting Big John Duncan, once of Shirley Manson's first band, Goodbye Mr Mackenzie.

Byrne plays a customs officer, while Big John is a heavy. The former is a neighbour of Coutts's on the Black Isle, while he encountered the latter when directing live TV coverage of the Big Day in Glasgow in 1990.

When American Cousins reaches cinemas - which could be at any point over the next two years - Messrs Casci and Coutts will be up there on the silver screen, too, in fleeting cameos.

Neither man is indulging in any Alfred Hitchcock-style showboating, of course. ''Sergio cast me as an elderly Prestwick airport cleaner who has his

uniform stolen,'' says Coutts. ''I am thus seen naked, trussed up in a cupboard.

''In return, I made Sergio walk along Loch Lomondside bare-chested in a freezing wind, wearing only a windsurfing suit, rolled down at the waist.

''It's sometimes reckoned that, at its best, a movie set should function with regimental precision, like a well-oiled military operation.

''From time to time, I've loosely presided over what resembles a meeting between the Territorial Army and Gerry

Cottle's Circus. I hope it'll be all the better a movie for it.''

FROM BARGA TO THE BARRAS

l THE list of Scottish locations used in American Cousins ranges from the bonny banks of Loch Lomond to down-at-heel Garturk Street in the gritty Glasgow burgh of Govanhill. The film's makers have also recreated the family business that writer Sergio Casci's grandad established in 1937 in Bridge Street, Cafe del Rio. The shop's exterior has been re-located to the Barras, where it provoked an eerie reaction from one elderly passer-by. ''A local came up to us as we were filming, and told us that our cafe was standing on the site of a real one that had been destroyed by German bombs during the blitz,'' says Don Coutts.

l Glaswegian Sergio Casci studied psychology at Edinburgh University, and then set out in pursuit of his dream job - as a journalist. During a post-graduate journalism course, he was thrilled to earn a two-week placement on The Herald's newsdesk. Thereafter, he worked for the Irvine Times, the Milngavie and Bearsden Herald, and the Lennox Herald, before spending nine years in the BBC's Glasgow newsroom working behind the scenes on Reporting Scotland. Casci abandoned the low and venal trade of hackery for full-time screenwriting 18 months ago.

l The Casci-Coutts creative axis first came together by accident nine years ago on a BBC Scotland Ex-S documentary, Pesce e Patate (or Fish and Chips). ''Don directed my story about the little Tuscan village of Barga, where all my relatives emigrated from to Glasgow, beginning in 1899. Barga has actually sent more folk to the west of Scotland than any other place in Italy, including Rome. Walk down its main street in summer and the language you'll hear most is Glaswegian, as Scottish-Italian expats return on their hols. Instead of going to Glasgow, though, some of my relatives wound up in New York - and that's what gave me the basis of American Cousins. Years later, what would two distant branches of the same family be like if they met up?''

l Coutts and Casci have collaborated on three award-winning short films, Dead Sea Reels (starring Ian Bannen), St Anthony's Day Off, and Rose. In addition, Casci wrote another short, The Centurion, which starred Stuart Cosmo. He has also written one Radio 4 serial drama, Still Waters, as well as for children's TV.

l Casci's current project is Flesh and Blood, a TV drama series set in Glasgow,

co-written with another Scottish-Italian, Anne Marie di Mambro. ''It's not the usual grim, downbeat picture of Glasgow. It's about a passionate, wealthy, glam

and glitzy Glasgow family. We hope to hear soon that it will be fully commissioned by

BBC Scotland.''

l As a TV director, Coutts has worked on a wide range of projects including Words With Wark and Blue Peter. He has also directed videos for bands Simply Red, Deacon Blue, the Proclaimers, and Jimmy Somerville.

l Born in Perth and resident in Cromarty, Coutts is the co-director of BBC2's aristocratic weekly rural travelogue, Clarissa and the Countryman. Most of the technical crew on the show have accompanied Coutts to American Cousins, including wizard cameraman Jerry Kelly. ''We're all big fans of Clarissa Dickson Wright,'' says Coutts, ''and she's semi-seriously promised to help out with location catering when we're filming this week at the Pearce Institute in Govan. Clarissa Goes to Govan - it has a certain ring to it.''