On the surface, it appears that director Danny Boyle’s films have very little in common. From the harrowing, cautionary descent into drug-addiction and madness that is Trainspotting to the unbridled optimism contained in Millions, it seems that this artist revels in keeping critics and the public off-guard. With two misguided modern adventures under his belt (The Beach, A Life Less Ordinary) as well as two well-made and received sci-fi films (28 Days Later, Sunshine), Boyle’s filmography seems to be nothing but a mixed bag of genre experiments.
However, a closer look reveals that the one recurring theme in all of his films is that of underdogs trying to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds as they try to reinvent their lives. His latest project, Slumdog Millionaire, explores this theme even further as it focuses on one young man’s efforts to gain instant riches on India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Already garnering mostly positive reviews, the film is posed to be the little movie that might, as it is being touted as a dark horse in this year’s Oscar race.
Click the jump to read Chuck’s interview with Danny Boyle.
Recently, in Chicago, where Slumdog was screened at the Chicago International Film Festival, Boyle was kind enough to take a few moments to discuss the difficulties and challenges of filming in India, as well as how he grew as an artist while making this crowd-pleasing film.
Chuck Koplinski: If your films are any indication, you seem to me a very optimistic person.The characters in your movies are really run through the ringer, but by the end there’s some sort of redemption or chance at a better life. That seems to be one of the recurring themes in your films.
Danny Boyle: You have to be very careful when you make a film, because you don’t think about them in terms of other things you’ve made. Occasionally, you’ll do a scene and you’ll say, “Oh fuck, this is exactly the same scene we did in the other film.” But when you go out to do publicity that’s when it becomes more obvious when people ask you questions. Especially the last couple years, people have been trying to connect the dots.
C.K.: I guess that’s our urge to apply the auteur theory, as flawed as that may be.
D.B.: Well, when I read a piece in which that theory is applied to other directors, I think, “That’s interesting.” But, that’s what film theory and journalism is all about. But I tend not to think about making those connections between films. Obviously, the thing that attracted me to Slumdog was that the main character was an underdog and that there were great odds against him. I like that very much, as well as the extremes in storytelling, though I don’t want to work in fantasy or superhero movies and the extremes of drama have gone in that direction in the last ten to fifteen years. Regular films are much less extreme now as far as the drama they deal with, like relationships. I like to be able to tell a big story with small people and that’s what this script has.
C.K.: I know this was the first time you worked in India and that you also used non-traditional actors. How did that change the way you approached making Slumdog?
D.B.: I quickly learned that you can’t control India in any way, shape or form. It is beyond that. There’s a billion people who live there and that’s a good-sized population for a planet, let alone the relatively small place they are in. Mumbai, where twenty million of them live, is a tiny island, and you can’t live in parts of it because it is Mangrove swamp. If you do nothing but think of all of the difficulties you’re going to encounter, you’re dead, so you just have to embrace the environment and see what it can teach you. I loved being there; they had to drag me away at the end. There’s so much you can film. It’s not like special event filming where you focus on getting a specific shot and you get it. You’re not going to be able to do that. My main goal was that people who see the film would have a sense of what it was like to be there.
C.K.: The child actors in the film come off so naturally. Did you take a similar approach working with them as you did in capturing Mumbai?
D.B.: They’re great actors. It’s not America. Everyone there loves film. The kids there, even as young as seven years old, have already been to loads of movies; they know movie quotes, and they’ll do the dances from their movies there. As a result, the kids we worked with were natural performers. They were brilliant and really a delight to work with. They didn’t speak much English, so we had the casting director stay with us throughout and I made her a co-director on the film because she deserved it in the way she worked with the kids. Two of the little ones were from the slums and we sent them to school. To get into school in India you have to have a birthday, and they didn’t even know what day they were born on. We set it up so that there is a sum of money for them that’s been put aside that they will get if they stay in school until they are 16, and in Mumbai, it will be a lot of money.
C.K.: That was so harrowing to see them in the huge garbage dump where they live in the film. The film really is a wake up call putting forth again how good we have it here.
D.B.: What you can’t convey about the dumping grounds is that they are so unstable. When they dump garbage there, the trucks make the ground shake like when there’s an earthquake; and the reason that happens is because there’s about 50 feet of compacted garbage that they are standing on. When you’re there, you’re not standing on the earth, but these huge blocks of trash.
You know, so many countries are into recycling now but India has been doing it forever, it’s how the people there survive. It’s shocking how people throw things away there and then how others will pick up what they discard throughout the day so it can be sold or traded so they can get enough to get a bowl of rice. They collect cans or plastic water bottles.
C.K.: How do you go about getting financing for your films? Is it difficult or have you been able to cash in on the success of some of your previous movies?
D.B.: Obviously, I had some films in the beginning (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting) that did very well which allowed me to do a film with a bigger budget, The Beach, that was not one of people’s favorites and did not make a lot of money. And then, 28 Days Later, which was made for a little but made a lot of money. The way these things work is that you tend to be trusted to a degree. That trust translates to about $15 million. On a project like this, that’s what I could raise without there being a star involved. Then I embrace the fact that it isn’t enough money and we use that as a sort of energy for solving problems in making the film. This makes me more creative and involved in it. Frankly, I find a lot of money difficult to handle.
C.K.: There’s scuttlebutt on the web that you might be returning to the 28 Days Later series. Any truth in that?
D.B.: Well, we have an idea. The thing about a franchise is that you have to work it out economically and see if they think it can make back the money spent on the film. To do this new one, it will have a scale larger than the previous two and it will be a challenge to pull off. It’s set in a remote area that will be hard to access. What I like about coming here is that these films have a following in the states that they don’t have at home, which makes me want to work harder to do a good film.
Slumdog Millionaire will open at Boardman’s Art Theatre on December 19.