We were lucky to catch up with Dougie Brimson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dougie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Chris, one the team, actually has an old London Routemaster bus in his front garden whilst another member, Sonia, is actually qualified to drive them so when we were scratching our heads for a name, Red Bus Movies was the obvious choice!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Like most things, I fell into the industry by accident. After a long career in the Royal Air Force, I’d done some work as a film and TV extra and then written a few books with my younger brother. These did quite well so I carried on as an author and was then approached by Jon S Baird (Filth, Tetris, etc) who wanted me to write a short movie for him. Whilst that was going on, I’d also become involved in Green Street (and that’s a saga of it’s own) and the rest is history.

I formed Red Bus Movies during the pandemic essentially to umbrella my own projects primarily because people take production companies more seriously than writers. It’s been hard graft, and a huge learning curve, but we’re close to getting our first movie over the line and then who knows what’ll happen.

I think the thing I’m most proud of is that we have two key ideals for the company and those are that I’ll only work with people who everyone on the team get on with. I’ve worked with enough a***holes over the years to want to go through that again and I’m certainly not going to employ any. Secondly, my primary aim is to provide opportunities for as many veterans as possible, be that simple jobs, or as ways of transitioning into the industry. Ultimately, I want to extend that to writers who have served as there are loads out there looking for a break.

So far, we’ve done OK but we’ll certainly do better.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I don’t think people outside the creative world understand just how important writers are to the film and television industry and how badly the majority are treated.

The reality is that not only are most criminally underpaid, they’re also terribly under appreciated yet without someone dreaming up an idea and sitting at a computer for weeks, months or even years to bang out a script, there would be no industry. Nothing.

Thankfully, the WGA strike is starting to wake people up to the reality of how tough writers have been having that and all being well, we’ll start to see a change in how they’re treated and, more importantly, paid

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Screenwriting was always primarily a hobby for me as once I’d starting writing as a career, it was primarily as an author. I think I’d done 6 or 7 books before the world of screen made a proper appearance into my writing life.

However, as time passed it became increasingly difficult to secure a publishing deal worthy of the name and with more and more offers of screenwriting work coming in, I eventually took the plunge and made the switch. Now I’m at the point where I doubt I’ll ever write another book.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://redbusmovies.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dougiebrimson/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougiebrimson/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dougiebrimson