Director Boyle talks about his new film and the experience of shooting in India
October 22The Daily sat down with renowned English director Danny Boyle as part of a roundtable interview at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston. Boyle put himself on the map with his 1996 hit "Trainspotting." His new movie, "Slumdog Millionaire," which opens on Nov. 12, is based on the book "Q&A" (2006) by Vikas Swarup. The film follows an Indian teenager who gets onto the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and is suspected of cheating when he keeps getting questions right. Told in a flashback style, the movie showcases the incredible story of Jamal Malik, starting from his early childhood and going until he is a young adult. Question: How did you get involved with the movie and what made you want to make it? Danny Boyle: Well, it was the script, really. They sent the script and they said it's a film about "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." And, although I had watched the show a lot at home, I'd never want to make a film about it. Why would you want to make a film about that? It's on TV and it's not really a film and I wasn't going to read it even. Literally, I wasn't going to read it, because you get a script and it takes you like three hours to read but I saw the name on the front, it was Simon Beaufoy, who I knew had written "[The] Full Monty" [1997], and I respected him as a writer, a British writer. So I said I should read some of it, I'll read 50 pages of it so at least I could write to him. As soon as I read it, I knew I wanted to make it ... I remember reading "Trainspotting," the book [1993], before we ever did the script and I just knew I wanted to make the film of it after chapter one. And like "28 Days Later" [2002], I remember reading the script of that and there was a little paragraph in the beginning saying he walks around London on his own and I just thought [scoffs] and you don't even get to the end. I think when you get to the end of a script, it's not a particularly good place to judge it because then all these other questions come in like: Who could be in it? What's it going to cost? Who will distribute it? While when you were reading it, you were lost in it, really, you weren't thinking about all these practical things, and that's the best time to make the decisions about what you're doing. Because I think it's closer to what the audience will experience then, that instinct you have, the first time you read it, it's close if you can do it well, hopefully. Q: How did you go about filming in a different country, and how did you feel about it? DB: Have you ever been to India? It is a really extraordinary place and it demands of you a very kind of different approach. It is so complicated and complex and busy and everything is inseparable: poverty, wealth, dirt, cleanliness, everything. You can't separate things at all. It just comes at you the whole time. And what directing is about often is control. In fact, Bollywood movies are made in the studios there because they don't try and go out in the streets because it's uncontrollable. And especially in their cases, if you have a big Bollywood star in the movie, the place goes nuts, completely nuts, because they adore their stars. So you have to find a different way of approaching it ... I didn't want to just make a film about some white guys ... so I wanted to try and tell it from the point of view of the characters, like insider, very subjective, and so lots of stuff we shot you had no idea whether it worked, really, because you can't control things ... just unbelievable things happened and you can't let it drive you mad and you've got to kind of embrace it and love it really in a way, and I did, I really got on with it. Q: Has the author of "Q&A" seen the film yet? DB: No, he has not actually. I never read the book originally, I read the script and it was an amazing script, I thought. Then when I read the book — it's so different, the book; it wasn't the book I related to, it was the script — so I never did that thing. Normally I get in touch with the writers and I want them around a lot,;even the writers of the book, like Irvine Welsh, who wrote "Trainspotting" [the book], is in "Trainspotting" as an actor, and John Hodge, the screenwriter, is often in the films I make and Frank Cottrell Boyce, who wrote "Millions" [2004], is the teacher. So I always try and have them around a lot but I didn't want Vikas around because I wanted to relate only to Simon and to the screenplay because it felt like a very different screenplay to a book and he's quite happy with that it seems. Q: How is it that you are so able to tap into the vivid inner world of children that you have done in "Millions" and "Slumdog Millionaire?" DB: I like kids. I have three of my own; they are a bit grown -p now. I'm a bit of a big kid myself, which helps. It helps relax everyone and it says you're in an imaginative world rather than a precise, economic, kind-of realistic factual world and that helps in making films. So I have always loved working with them. When they're very young in India, they don't speak English; they pick up this ‘Hinglish', this mixture of Indian English when they get in their teens and lots of people can speak English after that. When they're seven they speak Hindi really, and the local dialect. So I had this woman with me who was originally the casting director, and then I had to run the set the whole time and then I sent her off with my second units so she is effectively the co-director of the film and she was incredibly helpful to me. But kids are kids: They know what you want because you show it to them and they can get the feeling of you of what's necessary. And they are good actors in India. It's got such a culture and tradition of acting that it comes very natural to them, it feels very natural to dance and act and sing, all those things; they find it very natural. Q: What sets this apart from all the other rags-to-riches stories? DB: What's different about it? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the [setting] that separates it. It uses this vehicle of Western expansion and capitalism, which "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," is the epitome of, isn't it? It's offering people the ultimate dream and it's offering it to them on a plate and it turns out to be a slightly poisoned chalice because the guy gives him the wrong answer ... It's got a forked tongue, but whatever you say, it's not quite the dream. What that does, is it puts it back on the underdog and says there are no easy lift-ups, these are all illusions and it's up to you and your dream and you've got to stick to that. So, it's the purity of that, it is an underdog with a dream and he will get there. His riches are not to do with money; although he wins it, he's not really focused on the money, he's focused on the girl. That's really why he's on. That's probably why he wins the money. They would say that in India, and that's why he wins — because he is relaxed. If you chase the money, it runs away from you. If he were really there for the money, he probably would have accepted the guy's answer as being correct. He's there for the girl; he wants to stay on there as long as he can.
