Many of us, in some aspect of our lives, could probably benefit from a do-over. With the advantage of hindsight, who doesn’t have something in their past that they would do differently the second time around? For most people, such a scenario remains purely hypothetical. Not so for one young(ish) man in an affluent Glasgow suburb during the mid-‘90s, who fleeced the faculty and entire student body at a secondary school with his elaborate deceptions.
Directed by one of the man’s former classmates, Jono McLeod, and featuring interviews with many of those who occupied the same halls as the fraudulent pupil at the time, the fascinating documentary My Old School looks back at a story that seems too bizarre to be true. The arrival of a peculiar new student named Brandon Lee—mere months after Bruce Lee’s son of the same name was accidently killed on the set of The Crow, no less—caught the attention of the student body at Bearsden Academy. Upon his arrival, many mistook him for a student teacher, as he appeared notably older than everyone else. With a mop of oddly curly hair and wearing unique glasses, he claimed to be from Canada, the son of a dead opera singer, and he explained away his unusual face as the result of minor burns from a car accident.
McLeod utilizes two notable dramatic elements in an effort to make the strange tale at the heart of his documentary even more compelling. One of them works well; the other less so. In addition to interviewees speaking from sets built to look like the since-demolished Bearsden, My Old School incorporates a healthy dose of effective, Daria-like animation to illustrate these recollections. Far less necessary is Alan Cumming lip-synching the words of the man who once called himself Brandon Lee—eventually revealed to be an imposter named Brian Mackinnon, who agreed to be interviewed but refused to appear on camera. Interestingly, Cumming was tapped to star as Mackinnon in a feature film about this story shortly after it first broke in 1995, making Cumming’s return to this subject matter to unnecessarily stand in as Mackinnon an odd kind of parallel to the story itself.
For the spoiler-averse, you may want to skip this next paragraph. The film withholds the details of the fraud perpetrated by “Brandon” until its midpoint, as readily Googleable as they may be. This decision perhaps makes My Old School a bit more engaging, but its effectiveness as a twist is sapped by the fact that most people who would seek out the film will likely already know at least the basics of the big secret. McLeod spends ample time with former classmates recounting what they liked so much about Brandon, a star student who dazzled his teachers with his knowledge in pursuit of his dream of becoming a doctor. He even had a standout performance in the school musical. But as McLeod reveals that the teenage boy who called himself Brandon was actually Mackinnon, a man in his early thirties, even the pleasant memories of his former friends, teachers and acquaintances take on a strange hue when cast in the light of this deception.
When it’s revealed that Mackinnon concocted a new, younger identity with the intention of taking a second crack at medical school, which typically didn’t take on new students older than 30, he begins to seem both a relatively benign exploiter and, at least within the context of this film, somewhat pitiably exploited. He denies that he re-enrolled in Bearsden, the same school he once graduated from a decade and a half prior, for anything other than another chance at getting into medical school. But that assertion is challenged by his former classmates, who with hindsight posit he was a once-unpopular kid who was also taking a second attempt at higher social standing.
What’s certain, however, is that Mackinnon’s fraud was a sensational one, the kind that made for juicy tabloid fodder at the time and is no less outrageous today. The film showcases a scandal where the perpetrator committed no apparent crime and in which nobody else got hurt, but it highlights how such a scheme obviously runs afoul of social mores even if stopping short of outright taboo. With Mackinnon nevertheless cast as a somewhat sympathetic figure, it’s up to the viewer to decide whether this aspect of the man’s character is even true, given the lengths to which he once went in order to deceive.
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
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