SOME SHOW-BIZ LESSONS IN ‘RESTLESS NATIVES’

Scotland has become a kind of mini film center, specializing in small, bright comedies with the tasty warmth of scones. Bill Forsyth’s “Gregory’s Girl” was the first of a charming subgenre, followed by “Local Hero” and “Comfort and Joy.” The latest Scots import, as Sheila Benson noted in her favoring review, is “Restless Natives.”

The natives are two lads who take to knocking off buses loaded with tourists in pursuit of the Loch Ness monster or a single malt distillery. The moral of the piece is that crime with a brogue does pay, which might be distressing if the film weren’t so unstressfully, nonviolently and colorfully funny, which it is.

Remarkably “Restless Natives” is not the work of an ambitious Scot but of a pair of restless young Americans, producer Rich Stevens and director Michael Hoffman, now resident in Oxford, where they were students.

The lightfoot lads are Vincent Friell and Joe Mullaney, and the only star in view is the fine American character actor Ned Beatty, in a shining cameo as a pompous and overbearing American agent who arrives to make short work of the troubles. Americans have been victimized and, in a light tweaking of the current national paranoia, Beatty’s people suspect there is more to the bus capers than meets the eye. Beatty also has private, marital troubles and spends much of his screen time whispering angrily into a telephone.

It is highly supportive work by an actor who, after years at the Arena Stage in Washington, made his debut in “Deliverance” and has since given a range of performances from a zealous tycoon in “Network” to Carol Burnett’s husband in the television docudrama “Friendly Fire.”

The question might be: How was Beatty recruited for an obviously low-budget film by nearly absolute beginners amid the distant misty Highland foothills near Fort William, Scotland? The answer is instructive for all young film makers.

“They were absolutely up front about what they could and couldn’t do financially,” Beatty said the other day. “I wish more film makers understood that honesty up front is the best policy.

“If they try to get clever, the actor and his agent begin to feel his price has dropped, and that’s worrying. It’s also the way to get a quick turn-down.

“Rich and Michael said I was their first choice. That was nice. It was a lovely script, and I liked it that they had been so forthright with my agent. I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ ”

The trouble with the scenario as general guidance is that many a young film maker has complained of the near impossibility of getting an agent to glance at a script, let alone forward it to the client, no matter what price (short of the British national debt) has been hinted at.

“Ah,” says Beatty. “As an actor, you do have an employer’s responsibility to the agent. He’s working for you, after all. If you don’t tell him what you’d like to do and what you’re willing to do and in what circumstances, you don’t have confidence in him. And you have to give yourself part of the blame if you miss something that you might have got a bang out of doing.

“So many agencies have become packaging entities. I’ve only had one agent in my career--Jack Fields--and I like him and I’m still with him.”

There are films, Beatty thinks, that the actor is blessed to have been part of. He felt that way about “Deliverance.” He had had his best season ever at the Arena Stage. “I came in with such hubris as an actor. I felt strong; I thought if they don’t like what I do, they’re wrong. I didn’t realize the intensity of the work I was going to be involved in. If I had, I’d have been scared to death.

“Like ‘Nashville’ and ‘All the President’s Men,’ there was something special going on, and you were so lucky to be part of it.”

“When ‘Wise Blood’ came along, I told my agent, ‘I know exactly what that’s about. I loved Flannery O’Connor’s stories. Whatever you pretend, or the characters pretend, it’s about, what it’s about really is personal salvation. And the seriousness with which the matter is regarded in the South, in the black and white cultures alike, is what can make it comical. I’m not sure but what we missed it somewhat.

“It’s like watching Jimmy Swaggart on television; you can believe in it or not, but you’d better believe that he’s talking about something that’s real to him, and to the people who watch him.”

Beatty is in Toronto, playing an evil saloonkeeper. Variety is the spice of the actor’s life, at any price.