- Hey, I'm Ignatiy Vishnevetsky,
hello A.V. Club, we are
here with Danny Boyle,
director of T2 Trainspotting,
many other films.
I think, generally when
people picture an image
from a Danny Boyle movie...
I think it's usually of people running.
I think, whether, the things
that stick with people.
Whether it's the opening of
the original Trainspotting,
or it's something like 28 Days Later.
I feel like there's a lot
of running in your films
and that it's as much,
perhaps as much literal
as it is metaphorical.
- You would think about
it because obviously
in the first film, that opening
sequence of the first film,
is quite famous now in a way
that kind of like haunts you.
So if you've ever had running in a movie,
you've got to think oh my
God, yeah, is it gonna be
the same as in Trainspotting or not?
I like momentum.
Like, really genuinely I'm addicted to it
and I also believe the
art form of cinema...
It defines the art form of cinema.
Two things for me, define
the art form of cinema
which is momentum, which is this...
And it used to be, the cameras
are different now of course,
but it used to be literally.
To watch a film, you were watching
a series of still pictures
forced through a project
at enormous speed.
You know, literally the
act itself was momemntum,
was forward momentum,
and that reflected I think in the stories
and the way we, especially
mainstream cinema.
But also time, you see an
extraordinary art form of time
because you can speed up
that momentum, stretch it,
you can stop it, freeze it,
there's no other art form
that could do that sort of stuff.
And people who sit in the
cinema have given you,
and they've paid for it,
they've given you two hours of their time.
I mean, which other art form
does that where they go,
here you go, I'm gonna sit in this room,
I'm not gonna talk to anyone,
I'm not gonna wander around.
Nothing.
Just gonna sit still, that's
it, you've got me for two.
I mean it's like those, seems
to me fine cinema really,
and I think back to the origins of cinema
and where it came from
which is working people.
Obliterated by work, would
sit in a darkened room
and watch a train come
towards them and scream
as a way of relief from
the burden of their lives.
And I connect with
that, I don't make those
huge, huge movies, but
I love watching them
and I understand they are
the kind of moans in a room
which we gather, you know?
- Well there's kind of a
beautiful contradiction
to the idea of a medium where people pay
to sit and be quiet and
watch other people talk
and run around.
- Yes.
- But there's something a little bit,
I think because of that, it seems to me
like such a central theme
for you, or a motif,
there is something perverse
about making a film
about characters returning,
having escaped, in this case.
- [Danny] Indeed, yeah.
- [Ignatiy] Sort of
reverting back to the past.
- Yeah, there is a pullback
and it obviously...
The film is a lot
concerned with nostalgia,
not as a sentimental item
but actually as a force
that's impossible to ignore
and for reasons that
you see at the beginning
of the film, Renton returns to Edinburgh.
An Edinburgh that he's left
with his friend's money,
you know, as he's vanished to Amsterdam,
well they know not where, but it turns out
to have been Amsterdam.
And he's not even returned
for his mother's funeral,
you know, not even that
has brought him back,
but something else brings him
back, that forces him back,
and the past is alive in all of us,
is alive in all four of them.
And unusually actually,
well it's not unusual
because they're not really
social realist films,
they're realistic and painful sometimes
but they're not social realism
because none of the
four have met each other
in that 20 years, even
though three of them
live in the same town still.
And I mean, one of them is in jail,
one of those three is in jail anyway,
but they haven't been to visit him in jail
or anything like that.
So the four of them, they
kind of wait for the movie
in a way, to reignite the
chemistry of their friendship
which is both wonderful to experience
and they do try to relive some
of the glories of the past,
so you do get that sense of
the great side of nostalgia which is
hey, we're the good times,
and also they realize
they can't keep doing that
in their mid 40s, you know?
- Theme of these characters changing,
they're in someways trying to
recapture some of that energy,
I think of the sequence
where they basically
crash this sectarian gathering
where they're almost
lapsing back into this
sort of subversive energy that
they have in the first film.
But it seems to me
like, obviously the city
that you're portraying is changing
and I know there's some
EU funds that play a role
in this plot that obviously
in light of Brexit seem...
- It's very ironic.
It's very, very ironic.
Especially as we go out to Scotland
cause we were in Scotland
shooting when the vote happened,
so, and the double irony was that
Scotland of course, voting overwhelmingly
to remain in the EU.
In contrast to the rest of
the UK which voted to leave,
so the natural
consequence of that will be I think,
that Scotland will leave the UK,
it will choose Europe over
England any day, I think.
Because it's...
The Scots don't really like
the English very much anyway,
there's been a, since
1707 in the Acts of Union,
there's been some tension between them
and as a Brit, I'm English,
so going to work in Scotland,
you are aware of that.
You can't behave like an idiot,
otherwise they'll kill you,
you have to behave appropriately
to being in Scotland,
and to the great traditions
and cultures of Scotland.
So yeah, ironically, although
there is EU money in the film
it remains unresolved--
- [Ignatiy] And as a plot point.
- As a plot point, and it
remains unresolved actually,
what happens to that money at the end.
So, maybe there's more to
come from all that, you know?
- [Ignatiy] But it's
interesting because it gives it
a fairly large, you could
say economic reality
to a film that's about fairly
small economic realities,
about these characters just struggling
to get a little bit of money,
trying to get this quote on
quote "bar" up and running.
You know, these are these smaller,
sort of dingier form of economics,
and then you've got the
huge economic forces
going on on top.
- Economics in their
world are opportunities
to betray each other really,
which is what they were in the first film,
and it's certainly what they are
in this next film.
And they try to kind of relive this cycle
of opportunity and betrayal.
And in fact, ironically,
it's another element
of the modern economy of Scotland.
A young woman from Eastern Europe
and Scotland is full of migrant workers
from Eastern Europe.
Takes advantage of their
foolishness, really.
- Well there's a moment
when Renton arrives,
he returns back from
Amsterdam and he is greeted
by a Slovenian woman in a kilt
handing out brochures about Scotland,
presuming that he is a tourist...
But he is in a sense, there's
a line I think in the film
where somebody says "You're
a tourist in your own past."
- Yeah, no he is.
I mean the city's changed, it's...
I mean some of its
architecture hasn't, it can't,
it's a medieval and a Georgian city.
But actually the nature
of the city has changed,
it's a much younger city, ironically.
Given that he's in his mid 40s returning.
There's been a huge student
influx into the town
since we've made the first film,
so up to a quarter of
the town's population now
is a young student population.
So there's a vibrancy about
it which was not there before,
and it's ironic these
older guys returning.
There is a meta-irony, as of
so many in this kind of film
which is a lot of people
said that the reason
the student population has exploded
is because of the first film.
Everybody though "Oh, that
looks like a good place
to study, let's go there."
And they all end up in Ediburgh.
- [Ignatiy] Well, it doesn't necessarily
have the happiest portrayal of that city,
but sometimes it's the scuzz that draws.
- [Danny] Yeah, the energy, yeah.
- [Ignatiy] So, speaking of meta-ironies,
I mean, you're making a
film about someone basically
returning to their old
relationships from 20 years ago
and it's a sequel to a
film you made 20 years ago,
with, I understand, there was a time when
you and Ewan McGregor drifted
apart for quite a while.
- Yeah, and what we should've
done is exactly what
he and Sick Boy do when they re-meet,
which is had a fight and hit each other
with pool cues and get it out in the open,
but we didn't of course
cause we're British
and we kind of like,
tend to sit in our corner
and sulk a little bit and not say anything
about emotion, generally.
But we did, eventually, thankfully,
and we were able to make this film again.
- This was a project that
was in the works for a while,
I remember there was some talk about it
back almost in the mid 2000s.
So did its conception
have to change a lot,
because say, if you were
originally thinking of
revisiting the characters 10 years later,
now you're revisiting them 20 years later.
- It wasn't so much that
it changed, it became...
It was the only way that
it made sense really,
to do it now.
You're right, we tried it 10 years ago
and it was not good,
we didn't even send it
to the actors, it felt like a rehash.
Like just basic.
Which, sequels can be, you
know, there's nothing wrong
with that necessarily,
but it didn't feel like we would do honor
to the first one if we just rehashed it,
and it was just a caper,
really, a slightly different caper,
but everything the same basically.
In fact, the actors didn't
even look that different,
and I used to joke as an excuse then
that they moisturized and
they looked after themselves
and they didn't seem to age,
there was a bit of a
Dorian Gray about actors
and stuff like that.
But actually, it was...
I realized that it was John
and I, the screenwriter,
who weren't ready to actually
make a decent film yet,
and it was only after a true
reckoning amount of time,
20 years past, and the
actors did look different
that that gives a reason to make the film.
Cause then it's the tension
between what they done before
and where they were now,
whereas there really wasn't any
in that shorter period, you know?
- [Ignatiy] For a lot of people,
Trainspotting was the film
that sort of first
attracted their attention
to your name.
So, obviously you've had a
lot of your career since then.
Do you feel differently
about the original film,
going back to the subject
matter 20 years later,
going back to some of its ideas,
do you feel like it was a
chance to address something?
- What I try to inherit from the original
was the principles of the way we made it,
which we made it really as a co-op,
it was a bunch of kind of equal people
and we mirrored that on this film,
everybody was paid the same.
Which wasn't a great deal of money,
you know, they get back-end equally
if it's a success.
But it was a sense of a project,
an ambition, rather than a cash in really.
And one of the other
principles I inherited,
tried to copy from the first film,
was that we made as many
decisions as possible
as late as possible.
Cause I remember doing that,
that we only made them when the actors
were in the room, really.
Now you can make a film
without the actors, virtually,
and then you bring them in to
just do what you tell them,
that leads usually to unhappy actors.
For understandable
reasons, they've just been
moved around like mannequins.
But what we done in the first film,
and what we tried to on this,
was actually let the ideas,
the way that we film emerge
out of their participation in it as well.
And I think it has sort
of as a quid pro quo
thing that happens is
that that encourages them
to feel like kind of ownership
and they begin to push themselves a bit,
and so their performances get bigger,
because what's interesting
about both films
is that, these are not
like Mumblecore realism,
they're quite big presented films
with big, big scenes in them, you know?
There's no kind of like, taking it easy
and making sure they just say the lines,
which you do on movies and
just potter through them.
This is like presented, you know,
you're in for a ride straight away.
Even though this one is a
slightly more reflective one
than the first one, I suppose.
Because of the nature
of time having passed.
- One big sort of
collaborator you've acquired
in that time, or to my
mind, is Anthony Dod Mantle.
So, returning with him...
I feel like he's, there's a point,
there's a creative...
I don't know what the word is,
but I feel like he has a certain juice
that he brings.
- I'm very lucky, I mean
Anthony's one of them,
I'm very lucky to have a
series of partnerships,
and that's how I think of
them, as partnerships really,
there's a lot of these people,
like the designer I
work with, Mark Tilsley,
and the editor, especially
on this film, John Harris.
And they are like mini directors.
They just don't want the
ultimate responsibility.
For whatever reason, it's a
personality thing usually.
- [Ignatiy] So do you
think you're the fall guy?
Is that what it comes around to--
- Well, if it goes wrong,
obviously I do, yeah.
But no, I benefit from them,
cause you get, kind of,
almost like a fully fledged
series of directors working with you,
with their kind of ideas, and you know,
they're constantly kind of prompting you.
And everybody has bad days,
when you're kind of like below your best.
And when you've surround
you by people like that,
they're the compensation for it, in a way.
So, I've been very lucky like that,
and hence trying to
nourish those partnerships,
and Anthony's one of them as I said,
and John Harris on this one,
cause this particularly a
film that grew in the editing.
You know, sometimes
they grow on the flower,
like Slumdog Millionaire
was very much a flower film.
It was made as we were
shooting it, you know.
It was very well edited
and everything like that,
but the key stage was
being in Mumbai filming it.
This one, not so much.
It was actually, we had a
lovely time shooting it,
but it was the editing
that was extraordinary,
where you worked out this relationship
with the original film.
And also...
Which I wasn't aware of
when we were doing it
even in editing,
the relationship with the audience.
Because people knew the first film,
because it was a staging pulse for them,
for so many people,
people talk about it like,
"Oh, I remember when I saw it,
I remember who I was with."
All this kind of stuff.
There's a conversation going on between
the two films and the audience.
Which I'd never known before,
cause normally you present a film
and you're constantly
introducing it to people
cause they know nothing about it,
and you're trying to
ease them into the film.
This one, everybody had an
opinion at the beginning.
Quite clear opinion, whether this was
a good idea or not,
but here they were to have
a look at it, you know?
So, that was interesting, you know.
There was a different dynamic
with your audience, which
I'd never experienced before.
