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Hal MacDermot [Film Festival 11.16.08] movie news interview

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After a sold out showing of his new and highly acclaimed film, Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle made an appearance for a lengthy Q&A session moderated by USA today film critic Scott Bowles. The following is a transcript of that session, exhaustively put together by our very own Cyberhal who was lucky enough to be in attendance.

Danny Boyle: This is amazing, at last the paying public, it's good to see you!

*Laughter and applause.*

Scott Bowles: Danny, they said you knew you wanted to do Trainspotting after having reading the first page, can you talk about this one?

DB: Well I really didn't want to make a film about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but when they said the script was written by Simon Beaufort, who wrote this amazing film called The Full Monty, I knew I just had to read it, I can't just say no, I'd have to read it and then say not, but then by about page 15 I was lost and I knew. But the first time you read something, it's the most important time for a Director, because what you take from it there you have to hold on to it, because later you're just too close to the material. You have to remember what you thought, it's the closest the Director ever gets to what the audience experiences.


SB: It's Dev's first film and Freida's first appearance in front of a camera. What the hell were you thinking?

DB: Freida I saw on a tape, she had a transformational beauty about her, and I kept coming back to her, but you have to be careful that you're not just personally falling in love, though, we're all just human. And Dev, he's the only one who's not from Bollywood, he's actually from London, but the problem is that in Bollywood if you're 18 or so and trying to get in the business, you have to look buff, I mean built, so they're in the gym about 8 hours a day, because they have to get their shirts off , in the dance, in the rainfall. My daughter said, you should see this guy whose in Skins, a thing on British TV. The biggest problem was the Mum, she came everywhere, we just had to get rid of her and we did in the end, I mean not permanently…

SB: What was it like to be in India and make a film?

DB: you are like an invading army. You know film crews, they are like, where's the pool, where's my per diem, oh we have to make a film as well, oh okay, it's just … with the Beach we had hundreds of people. So this time, we took about 10. In India it's easier because they make 1000 movies a year. It's different there, the city doesn't let you have the control that a Director usually has. You just have to go with that and take the gifts it will give you.

SB: Can you talk about how you handled coming into a poor country and making a movie?

DB: There was a traffic lights outside our hotel, and there was a guy there who'd had his hands chopped off at sometime in his life to make him a better beggar really, and the moral horror you feel at that point is just terrifying, and all you want to do is give him money, but of course everyone is telling you that the money is going straight to gangsters because they run that street corner, so you have to go in there and not take your morality in with you, you have to accept the contradictions, and that things are different and extraordinary. The most amazing poverty and the most amazing joy of life and the two are bound together. It's like they say you can leave India but it will never leave you… I'm not a hippy, I was a punk, but the hippies were absolutely right, it's the mental approach that matters.

SB: Can you talk about the creative decision to use those subtitles?**

DB: There's a lot of English spoken in Mumbai, but with the 7 year olds it was just terrible, and the casting director suggested we translate it into Hindi if you want it to work and as soon as we did, the whole thing just came alive, you could have kids come in from the slums, it was different… so I had to ring Warner Bros and tell them a third of the film was going to be in Hindi with subtitles and there was this terrible silence on the other end of the phone, and then I said it would be even more exciting because of the subtitles and they just put the phone down. So we had to come up with a decent way of doing them, so we just basically coloured them in, you know like a kid.

Audience: How long production took and how much was it?

DB: We shot for 3 months and prepped for 5 months, and we shot for about $13 million dollars, which is about what I can raise without having a major star attached and loads of execs.

DB: Not really. Any scene that involves the police you have to submit, and quite accurately, so we did and I've still got the letter they wrote back, they said the torture scene was fine provided that no one above the rank of Inspector was involved. I tried to come back with a resemblance of what I really found there. It's a huge open hearted place, a melodramatic place, it's hard to find a place that loves movies more than America, but those people really do love movies.

Audience: How did you get the rights to use Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

DB: There were so many things that happened that were like destiny. The company that made the film, Celador Films, they originally made up this game show, and they sold it for loads of money years ago, but they kept the rights to make a feature film… I learned to keep calm and wait for things to turn out for the best, it makes you even more of a hippy when you think about it?

Audience: How about the music?

DB: A.R. Rahman, it's impossible to describe how famous he is in India, he's like a cross between John Williams, and Michael Jackson and Britney Spears all in one and then you know what it's like to walk down the street with him, it's just extraordinary. Music in India is changing, there's a lot of R and B , and hip hop, and euro disco, it's mixing with the classic tradition, its' not smooth, it's fusion, it comes in Bang Bang, it refreshes the film, it has an identity of it's own. It has a song by MIA in it, paper planes, she's from Sri Lanka, she actually sang on a couple of his tracks.

SB: There's another sell out crowd outside the door, so I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you Danny Boyle!

*Loud Applause.*

Be sure to read my Cyberhal's review of Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire here.


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Weyland (3 years ago) Reply

I am a big fan of SUNSHINE! Incredibly cool movie that wished had never ended.


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