Tag: Trainspotting

THE MAKING OF TRAINSPOTTING

HOLLYWOOD – In the latest in our celebrated Making of… series, we look at the behind the scenes drama that went into the making of Danny Boyle’s cult hit Trainspotting.

Pre-Production

Danny Boyle first read Irvine Welsh’s novel while in hospital having a tennis ball removed:

I’d been playing a doubles match with Alec Baldwin, Ridley Scott and Helen Mirren and boy does she have a powerdriver of a serve!  I’d heard this book was great but I thought that I hated anything to do with Wales and the hobby of trainspotting seemed a dull subject to approach cinematically. Little did I know that Welsh was actually Scottish and Trainspotting was actually about heroin. Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle were already on board and once the tennis ball was out I was raring to go.

Production

Ewan McGregor describes the process:

Filming often is very glamorous but I’m afraid Trainspotting was just as grim as it looked. Not only was it cold and our surroundings were often ugly but some of the cast were less than friendly. I had to do a series of films with a dead baby and Jesus the baby who played the dead baby was one of the most arrogant and self-involved people I’ve had the misfortune to work with. As for the infamous toilet scene… Danny thought it would be hilarious if everyone contributed to the set decoration, if you know what I mean. It wouldn’t be so bad but we delayed the shoot because of an electrical fault and this was the hottest July in recorded history.

Post-production

Irvine Welsh had a say on the music:

The music was very important to me and I had written the book with a playlist in mind. I was very into the Spice Girls at that period as well as Take That and New Kids on the Block, but no one wanted to hear me. Even to this day I can still hear some of those songs when I watch the film. Danny decided they didn’t go and he put the music in place. I was furious at the time, but I think in the end he was probably right.

For more of The Making of… CLICK HERE.

 

MAN COMPLAINS TRAINSPOTTING 2 TRAILER RUINED HIS EARLY 20S

EDINBURGH – The trailer for Trainspotting 2 dropped today causing a storm of protest with many men complaining that the prospect of the new film ruined memories of their young adulthood.

Danny Boyle’s follow-up to Trainspotting has been eagerly awaited for over four hundred years, but the trailer caused disappointment as Ewan McGregor’s Renton invoked an all too predictable rant about Instagram and Facebook like some sort of Jeremy Clarkson type. Jimmy Spaggs led the complaints:

The original Trainspotting was very important for me and my pals. It got me into heroin. What with the Lou Reed song, overdosing looked great. Then shagging school girls and stealing from your pals, what more could you want? But this new film everyone looks old and tired. Old Ben Kenobi does his best, but there are all these shots that recall the original and it doesn’t do either film any favors. It’s put me right off drugs. I guess I’ll have to go onto crack now.

Trainspotting 2 will be released in 2017.

TRAINSPOTTING 2 WILL FEATURE ACTUAL TRAINSPOTTING

HOLLYWOOD – Danny Boyle spills the beans on Trainspotting 2 to the Studio Exec, EXCLUSIVELY.

The excitement for the sequel of the Nineties hit movie Trainspotting, provisionally entitled Trainspotting 2, is palpable. But what can we expect? Well, director Danny Boyle popped into the Studio Exec Crack House to jaw about addiction, his new movie and literalism.

Tell us about the new film Trainspotting 2. What will be different? 

We’ve been talking about the sequel ever since we made the first film, but Trainspotting was ultimately about a very depressing subject, heroin addiction, so I very much felt that I didn’t want to go back and do another film about the same subject, unless I could do something new. Fortunately, Irvine Welsh was thinking along the same lines and he wrote a script which reflected changes in the lives of the characters, but also to some extent, changes in our own outlooks.

What do you mean?

Well, Renton, Begsby, Spud and Sick Boy were all in a certain stage of their lives at the end of the first film. Renton was on his way out of it, but we didn’t have a real feeling that he would escape. However in the new version all the main characters have grown and matured. None of them do heroin anymore, and they have replaced their addiction with a fascination in locomotives.

They’ve become trainspotters? 

Exactly. I laughed out loud when I read the script. I just thought perfect. Whereas in the first film trainspotting was the metaphor for a pointless time wasting pass time, in the second film they actually literally spend much of the film standing on platforms in Edingburgh and Crewe and spot trains.

Wow. But isn’t that a little difficult to make visually interesting.

Are you kidding? Trains come into stations, they go out of stations. Renton’s biro isn’t working. Sick Boy does his Sean Connery impersonation when he spots the Flying Scotsman. Spud shits himself when  he sees The Mallard. It’s amazing.

Trainspotting 2: Trainspotting will be released in 2016.

BREAKFAST WITH ASSHOLES: 17. DANNY BOYLE

Danny Boyle – director of such an eclectic range of films as Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, Sunshine, 28 Days Later and A Life Less Ordinary – is chopping bananas, kiwis, apples, crushing cranberries and dropping them all into a blender. ‘I’m making you one of my famous smoothies,’ he says, scratching himself with a free hand. ‘You have one of these and you can run a mile, chum!’

Once it’s done I taste it and say it’s very nice. Danny runs around the kitchen, punching the air in a victory dance. ‘I’m simply the best,’ he sings at the top of his little lungs.

So Danny what’s all this about Trainspotting 2?

I’m done thinking up new shit. I’m all out of ideas. Think about it. I’ve worked in every genre: science fiction with Sunshine, horror with 28 Days Later, straight drama, Bollywood. I’ve even worked in the shit Cameron Diaz film genre with A Life Less Ordinary. Well, that’s it I can’t do it any more. From now on, I’m just making sequels. Do you want some more?

Yes please. So what do you have planned?

After Trainspotting 2, I’m going to do Sunshine 2, Slumdog Billionaire and 254 Hours. Then I’m going to direct the Olympics 2.

But the Olympics will be in …

Yeah, whatever. I haven’t thought that far ahead. There you go. I put a little of my secret stuff in there. What people don’t understand about the Olympics is I really wanted the Queen to be in it, I mean the actual Queen, but they just gave me some hammy old stand in, not even my second choice Helen Mirren. 

No, that was the actual Queen. 

 Bloody Nora. I made a pass at her. 

What are your plans for Trainspotting?

Ewan MacGregor has given me a lot of input, but he’s a catholic priest now (for more on that story CLICK HERE) so he’s asking we clean it up a lot and cast younger male leads. Other than that I have pressure from Irvine Welsh that he be given a larger acting role. And the Americans want the characters to go to the States. Some have suggested that our heroes accidentally buy a zoo, rather than use heroin. As long as we’re true to the spirit of the original, I’ll do anything.

Abruptly, I need to get to the bathroom and when I emerge Danny is gone and I have lost two stone.

For all the Breakfasts CLICK HERE.