CLACTON has been given the Hollywood treatment in the latest film starring James Bond star Daniel Craig.

In Flashbacks of a Fool, due to open tomorrow, Daniel Craig plays the once golden boy of Hollywood, handsome actor Joe Scot, who has fallen out of public favour, seduced by the hedonistic lifestyle of sex, drugs and booze.

When tragedy touches his life once more, he recalls the trials and tribulations of growing up in a 1970s English seaside town, as he and his pals ran amok exploring their burgeoning sexuality and testing allegiances to a soundtrack of David Bowie and Roxy Music.

The film marks the directorial movie debut for Baillie Walsh, who spent his formative years growing up in Clacton-on-Sea, but although the story, written by Baillie, is based partly on his own experiences growing up in the Essex seaside resort, when it came to shooting the picture the crew headed for somewhere a little more exotic.

It meant building an English seaside village at Silverstroom beach on the Cape West Coast of South Africa.

Baillie said: "I was brought up in Clacton-on-Sea and lived there as a teenager, but I wanted Joe's seaside home to have an extraordinary beauty, I wanted to be in that world.So I created an idealised kind of poverty."

Baillie described how he was inspired to write the script after a visit to an artist's studio made him recall his own childhood.

He said: "I walked into his studio and I suddenly saw this painting which just took my breath away. It was a portrait of a young boy running through a hayfield with insects flying all around him. The joy on this boy's face made me remember a similar feeling. It took me right back. It was like having one of those moments, like the way a smell can make memories rush back to you. I loved that picture and bought it immediately.

"This is what got me started on the flashback thing. It made me want to recreate something that I knew. I wanted to enter into the world of that little boy""

Despite having directed music videos and award-winning documentaries, Baillie was still an unknown force when it came to major movies, but thankfully having a friend like Daniel Craig helped, who not only agreed to be in the film but also signed up as executive producer.

Baillie said: "Actually, I wrote the script for Daniel, who is my friend. We have gone on a creative adventure together and it has been so exciting."