Episode 662 - Danny Boyle
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucksicles?
Marc:I am Mark Marin.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:I'm in my garage.
Marc:I'm at the cat ranch.
Marc:I got some, I get emails.
Marc:I get things, you know, now that I've started to occasionally reach out to those of you listening and situations that I might not be familiar with at the front of wars in laboratories and
Marc:in the air but i got this is one what do you call it a subterranean what the fucker subject line dispatch from the underground mark i work in the iron mountain facility in boyars pa 50 miles north of pittsburgh which is 220 feet underground
Marc:Andrew.
Marc:Andrew.
Marc:underground the man every day sitting there with all the unique secrets and stuff that needs to be hidden away and stored properly 220 feet underground thank you for listening thank you for listening wherever you are i appreciate it today on the show director uh danny boyle
Marc:Who is the real deal, people?
Marc:I mean, this dude, I was excited to talk to him.
Marc:He's done some amazing movies, man.
Marc:Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours.
Marc:We talk a lot about the new Steve Jobs movie, which I liked.
Marc:I liked the new Steve Jobs movie.
Marc:I would go see it if I were you.
Marc:I know some people were saying, well, it's not his real life, but this movie has got such a frenetic pace.
Marc:It's so amazingly acted.
Marc:And when Aaron Sorkin clicks, it clicks, man.
Marc:There is a pace of dialogue between Winslet and Fassbender that is almost reminiscent of movies from the 40s.
Marc:And so clever and so quick.
Marc:And when Sorkin shit works, it really fucking works.
Marc:And I didn't give a shit if this was the real Steve Jobs or a mythical Steve Jobs because the real Steve Jobs is kind of mythical anyways.
Marc:I don't know a lot about him.
Marc:I don't know a lot about Apple, but this was really about...
Marc:You know, the transition in technologies and the sort of the business of of him being pushed out Apple and then doing his own whatever doesn't even matter.
Marc:The back the back story.
Marc:It's just the dialogue pace of this movie and the way Danny directed it and the way it was acted just seemed to be fucking beautiful symbiosis in terms of of movie making.
Marc:And, you know, and I'm not you know, I'm not a pushover.
Marc:I just was very compelled.
Marc:I was compelled and excited at the way it all worked.
Marc:It just had that pace of dialogue, like from Kate Hepburn and Cary Grant or something.
Marc:Well, that's what I saw.
Marc:What do I know?
Marc:But I thought it was a great movie, and I've liked a lot of Danny Boyle's movies.
Marc:Oh, I wanted to pay a little lip service to my buddy Bob Forrest.
Marc:You might know him.
Marc:as Dr. Drew's sidekick in the rehabs.
Marc:But he was also the front man for a band called Thelonious Monster.
Marc:And he's also put out this amazing album, a folk album called Survival Songs.
Marc:And the reason I'm saying this is that I recorded a WTF with him and that's coming up.
Marc:And it was really one of the, it was a great one.
Marc:There's a couple of songs on that album.
Marc:The Serial Song primarily is one of the best songs about drug addiction that I've ever fucking heard.
Marc:And we had a nice long chat, but that's coming up.
Marc:The WTF episode is coming up, but I wanted to let everyone in L.A.
Marc:know that Bob's going to be performing at Origami Vinyl on Sunset Boulevard this Saturday, December 12th at 7 p.m.
Marc:But if you just know him as the guy who's in rehab with Drew, you're missing something because he's somewhat of a...
Marc:He's a very self-aware dude, a very sober dude.
Marc:And the folk songs are pretty heartfelt and deep.
Marc:And I'm telling you, man, the serial song on Bob Forrest's new record, Survival Songs, is, I think, one of the best drug addiction songs that I have ever heard.
Marc:And I mean, and that's not nothing.
Marc:And I look forward to a WTF with me and Bob coming up.
Marc:I've been watching a lot of movies.
Marc:I'm getting a lot of screeners.
Marc:Is today perhaps the day that I do some quick movie reviews because of the screeners I've seen?
Marc:Between us, I went to a screening of Anomalisa.
Marc:This is the new Charlie Kaufman movie.
Marc:It's all done in stop action animation by the guy he co-directed it with.
Marc:The guy's name's Duke.
Marc:He did Moral Oral, does a lot of the Dino and Dan Harmon stuff.
Marc:I'm sure you've seen his work before, but it's a Charlie Kaufman script.
Marc:And it's fucking soul shattering and so simple.
Marc:It's bleak poetry at its best.
Marc:It's a grown up movie done in this stop action animation.
Marc:But the depth of the emotion and the character in this animated piece, this film by Charlie and Duke.
Marc:I feel like I should know that guy's last name.
Marc:Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman.
Marc:Obviously, Calvin's genius.
Marc:He did adaptation.
Marc:He did Synecdoche, New York, his big opus that he directed.
Marc:He did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, being John Malkovich.
Marc:He's a he's a brilliant writer.
Marc:And this movie did not disappoint on any level.
Marc:It's dark.
Marc:It's intense.
Marc:It's relatable and it's mind blowing.
Marc:And I want so much for Charlie Kaufman to come talk to me.
Marc:And I asked him, I asked him right up to his face.
Marc:I said, do you want to come talk to me on WTF?
Marc:I said, I can't do it too personal.
Marc:I said, it doesn't have to be personal, man.
Marc:I'm a big fan of your work.
Marc:Let's do it, man.
Marc:Let's talk about the movie.
Marc:Let's talk about your other movies.
Marc:Let's talk about writing.
Marc:Let's talk about comedy.
Marc:He wrote with Louie and the guys and Smigel and Dino on that Dana Carvey project.
Marc:I mean,
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:You know, sometimes this show gets a reputation that I just sit here and make people cry, which has only happened a few times.
Marc:Now I seem to be the one that's crying, but it's a beautiful movie.
Marc:I would see that when it comes out.
Marc:I don't know if it's a family film or an upbeat Christmas movie, but it's certainly a movie if you're a grown up that can handle.
Marc:being a grown-up in all its complicated manifestations, I would definitely see this film.
Marc:Also, I saw Sicario.
Marc:Is that the name of it?
Marc:I thought that Benicio del Toro was going to assassinate me through my screen.
Marc:That's how fucking great a performance it was.
Marc:and uh emily blunt amazing um josh brolin amazing all the supporting cast amazing and it's a story about mexican drug cartels and it's fucking leveling man it's it's spectacular i mean and i'm again not a pushover not paid to do this good movie trying to be honest uh what else what else what else what else did i watch i feel like there's more oh what the hell was that western i watched with uh with michael fassbender slow west
Marc:That's what I saw on the plane.
Marc:I liked it.
Marc:It's hard to do a nice Western, but I thought that was kind of an interesting angle and a pretty good Western.
Marc:You know, let's talk to a film director.
Marc:Let's go now to my conversation with Danny Boyle, the director of the Steve Jobs movie, Swim Dog Millionaire, 127 Hours, 28 Days Later.
Marc:A lot of great films, and it was a great talk.
Marc:I'm very excited you're here.
Marc:Oh, so you had the president here?
Marc:The president sat right there, and he left his cup right here, and I put a glass dome over it because that's the kind of idiot I am.
Marc:Oh, my God, look at it.
Marc:Is that serious?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, it's like he had a cup, and he just left it here.
Marc:I imagine, I don't know if he was that self-aware, but you never know with politicians.
Marc:How self-aware are they?
Marc:In his mind, he's like, I'm going to leave Marin the cup.
Marc:but i didn't know what else to do with it i there's sort of a brilliant idea isn't it yeah it's a little like uh it's a little much but i'm like i what am i i gotta do something so uh yeah he was uh he was in here but tell me like what do you know steve mcqueen well no i mean i've met him a couple of times i i did some kind of not promotion work i did some support work for 12 years of slave when they were on the kind of academy trail last year you know i introduced a couple of screenings and did a q a with him and
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So I've just said hello to him and stuff like that.
Guest:But I like his films a lot.
Marc:But that Hunger movie was referred to me by Lynn Shelton.
Marc:She's an independent filmmaker out of Seattle.
Marc:And she said, I got to see that.
Marc:And I just was devastated by it.
Marc:But it's interesting that you're able to focus in on it being it's about the body.
Marc:And it's about the sacrifice and the real meaning of that type of protest and the depth of it.
Guest:But for, you know, because he's British, and to be able to turn, because the subject is intractable.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it is impossible to deal with.
Marc:Historically, you can't just do like, it's hard to do one of those movies that would encapsulate the entire struggle.
Guest:Because it separates people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He made a film that you can all approach as human beings.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which is impossible in Northern Ireland.
Guest:It was impossible.
Guest:And I was astonished at his film, yeah.
Guest:And I loved 12 Years a Slave.
Guest:I thought it was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:that's another thing though too a very specific focus on the body because there is that that one scene where you know the devastating whipping yes and and then you know it really brings home the human element and pain and torture and damage of of of a person yeah wow and suffering yeah i mean just when he was hung outside all day and and the way he shot that it's just
Guest:Anyway, he is an uncompromising artist, truly.
Guest:And Michael is as well, which is one of the reasons that we cast him as Jobs, actually, because I thought we need that, because otherwise we'll get lost in, is he nice, is he not nice?
Guest:You need an actor who's absolutely not going to do any of that.
Guest:He's just going to uncompromise.
Guest:And Michael's like that.
Guest:He just, he zones in laser-like on what the truth is, and he just goes after that, and he doesn't give a fuck what anybody thinks or says.
Guest:It's like that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Now, you'd never worked with him before.
Guest:I had never.
Guest:No, I tried to cast him in a couple of movies.
Guest:Which ones?
Guest:I'd met him, and I tried to get him in Trance, which is this film I did before.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the producer I worked with, Christian, he was in a film he did.
Marc:When you deal with a guy, because in my mind, as an American or as a film person, people like Fassbender, they just come out of nowhere.
Marc:You're like, where was this guy?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he was around.
Guest:Oh, yeah, he was.
Guest:Where did he come from originally?
Guest:Well, he's born in Germany.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But brought up in Ireland.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he's a proper European.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who actually avoided Britain.
Guest:Of course, I mean, I know this probably won't interest you.
Guest:No, it's true.
Guest:But it's very interesting, of course, what he comes out of.
Guest:And I've worked with a lot of Celtic actors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Irish and Scottish actors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's something about them.
Guest:Because they're not in the main body or belly of Britain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're kind of...
Guest:Around the edges and islands had a tortured history with Britain of oppression.
Guest:You get these extraordinary actors come out of it, I think.
Guest:And I've worked with a bunch of them.
Guest:And they give you something very, very special I don't think you get with the British actors personally.
Guest:Something connected to the ground.
Guest:Maybe it is that.
Guest:The smell, the greens, the working people.
Guest:I don't know what it is.
Guest:There's something there, though.
Guest:I mean, it's interesting because he was in the Tarantino movie.
Guest:That's where people probably don't remember him from it in Glorious Bastards.
Guest:And he had the touch of the Cary Grant in him there.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Which people don't know about it because he's a very funny man.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:He's intense, so people don't think he's funny.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He's a very witty man.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Him and Winslet together.
Guest:You get him and Kate Winslet together, it's funny.
Marc:Well, that was the interesting thing that I noticed when I went and saw the movie.
Marc:What I couldn't get out of my head when I left...
Marc:you know, I'm familiar with Sorkin's writing, and it's very specific.
Marc:It's not necessarily how people talk, but there's a lyricism to it, there's a rhythm to it, and there's a truth to it.
Marc:And if the actor is a good enough actor, you don't think about the fact that no one loads this much information into a sentence.
Guest:Oh, nobody can speak.
Marc:like that's right but you know where they did speak like that is in like the philadelphia story is in those movies from the 40s so like the thing that you talk about and the banter like the thing i walked away with like it is a lot like the pace of those films from the 40s where where it was just back and forth very witty very clever and and because the actors were so focused it was beautiful and it's also one a big problem with doing films like this is how do you depict
Guest:like geniuses.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Very, very, very bright people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who actually socially are not that adept often.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:It comes with it.
Guest:And of course he does it through language.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He does it.
Guest:And not like vocabulary.
Guest:It's not like...
Guest:They never say anything that's particularly sensationally, you know, elaborate.
Guest:But the eloquence with which they speak and the speed of mind, the speed of thought is a way that you actually realize you're in the presence of people like Wozniak, who's a genius.
Guest:But how you depict him and you just do it through speed of thought.
Guest:And he does it through rhythm, Sorkin.
Guest:And that connects it with human beings because it feels like we talk like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or we wish we did.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's recognizable.
Guest:It's not in the stratosphere of something that we can't relate to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's using something we all know, like language, as a way of depicting stuff we probably don't know about, like algorithms and physics and all the stuff they actually do these people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And they sort of like just pay a little bit of lip service to that.
Marc:Occasional mentions of stuff.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you were aware of that.
Marc:How did the relationship with Sorkin begin around this movie and you?
Guest:It was, they had a director, David Fincher, who did Social Network, which Sorkin also wrote.
Guest:It was an amazing film, actually, about the Facebook thing.
Guest:But they fell out.
Guest:I don't know what happened to them.
Guest:They all, anyway.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One of those things?
Guest:Yeah, one of those Hollywood things.
Marc:Somebody got mad at something.
Guest:I'm very lucky I don't live in Hollywood so I get to hear about stuff like this but I never really get to fully understand it so I keep a kind of naivety about stuff like that anyway so they sent me the script Scott Rudin who they call the mean guy who does great stuff that's
Guest:That's what they call him in his office.
Guest:That's not my description of him.
Guest:Anyway, he sent it and he said, do you want to do it?
Guest:And I read it and I was amazed.
Guest:I got that thing you get sometimes where you think, this is so bold.
Guest:What about it?
Marc:What resonated with you immediately?
Guest:It's so unexpected, a way of dealing with him.
Guest:But it's not trying to capture everything.
Guest:It's just going, no, just look at these three little bits because it's obviously set before the launches of three different products.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But just the 40 minutes real time before he goes on stage.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then you never really see him on stage because it kind of denies you that because you've got that on YouTube anyway.
Guest:It's all there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I love that about it.
Guest:And then...
Guest:There was the father-daughter thing in it, which I actually found very moving because it's difficult stuff, some of it.
Guest:But, you know, I've got two daughters.
Guest:And when you can relate to something like that, just instinctively, you just go, well, that's sort of mine as well.
Guest:You know, you kind of begin ownership of it.
Marc:Everybody feels that.
Marc:You know, if you have parents or you have children, you know, everyone has a somewhat strained relationship with a parent.
Yeah.
Guest:And boy, is that like that on this.
Guest:And I've made sacrifices in bringing them up, pursuing a career and stuff.
Guest:Your kids.
Guest:Yeah, I hope not as bad as is depicted with him, some of the stuff.
Guest:But it's there, yeah, I do.
Marc:But it's interesting because you're dealing with it right out of the gate, and I didn't realize that is the way it's broken down.
Marc:It's broken down into three parts, all of them the 40 minutes before a presentation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess I was so caught up in the pace of it, I didn't even really think of the location of things.
Marc:With some flashbacks to the garage to younger people, you have to throw the garage, and garages are important, as I know.
Marc:But right out of the gate, it's hard to like him.
Marc:You understand historically that he's a genius, and I'm not even sure that we're dealing with... Was it a concern of yours to get the truth?
Guest:of uh of what happened or the truth of the character how do you where are you sitting with that how do you it's like a real problem with real people and with biopics in general yeah because that you if you're going to do fact stuff just facts they're completely contradictory it depends who you talk to you know you know that it's like you can't rely on you think well i thought that was true right somebody else says no that's not that's not what happened at all right so what you trust is actually something different
Guest:Which doesn't stand up in a court of law, I have to say.
Guest:But you trust your own bullshit detector.
Guest:You read something, you think, I think that feels truthful.
Guest:I believe that.
Guest:And then you pass it through a series of other filters, which are your actors and your colleagues, the people you work with, you trust.
Guest:And they also do the same thing.
Guest:And you arrive, you hope at something, and again, it's not, you know, it can't stand up.
Guest:I know, like facts supposedly can, but I trust it almost more in a way, that you feel, and I believed it, and I thought that will, and I've kept, and it's had a very checkered history, we've had lots of problems on it, but I kept faith in that the whole time, that feeling of, no, I think that feels, that is an artist, Sorkin, actually...
Guest:Trying to reach for a man about whom he knows some things and he's intuiting other stuff.
Guest:And then there are the rules of drama which follow their own course about stuff that emerges when you put characters together.
Guest:But you read it and you go, I believe that.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:And it is because I think if it wasn't, the lawyers at Apple would have us over a barrel, you know?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:So when you say...
Marc:We're dealing with the human truth, because what you said at the beginning, when you have a banter between Winslet and Fassbender, that the characters were very well defined and very quickly.
Marc:And I guess you have to be very aware with that, because these are pretty complex characters who are not emotionally conversational.
Right.
Marc:Yeah, that's a good point.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And and but it's it has to be there somewhere.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And part of that dynamic between them is is as they both get older, you know, Winslet becomes, you know, more insistent that that Steve is possible is capable of emotionally connecting.
Guest:Yes, she is.
Guest:And she's also, she's begun to realize that she has allowed him too much.
Guest:Right, she's carrying the burden.
Guest:Yeah, she's actually allowed him to behave like that.
Guest:And she says herself, she's complicit in the way that he has behaved towards his daughter, his first daughter, and that he has to make that right, because all the success in the world, and he is about to hit staggering success with the launch of the iMac, which is the third one you see, and he's about to break through.
Guest:to everywhere.
Guest:And change the world, make the dent in the universe he talks about.
Guest:And she says, that's no good unless you have made peace with actually those who love you in a way that is more important than all the product people love you.
Marc:Well, it's kind of brilliant and risky that you hung the resolution of your movie on a fairly intimate moment that could have... How many times did you have to... I don't want to spoil anything for anybody...
Marc:But, you know, you get this whole arc of history and a guy that changed the world with his technology and his persistence and his genius for design and marketing and just salesmanship.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But the whole balance of the film emotionally is really hanging on those last two scenes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And the last scene is not even spoken.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that's...
Guest:That's the wonderful thing about stepping behind the structure.
Guest:You step behind the scenes of three product launches.
Guest:Because in a way, you're saying, because we're behind the screen, anything could happen.
Guest:And we make our own.
Guest:I'm sure those scenes didn't actually take place, factually.
Guest:With the clock ticking.
Guest:Yeah, but they feel true.
Marc:Yeah, he's very good at devices.
Marc:I think that Sorkin, with his experience with writing television, is very good at pacing and also good at adding a level of menace.
Marc:And even if we always start on time, that there's a pacing thing.
Guest:People keep saying that about we can't start late.
Guest:We're a computer company.
Guest:We can't start late.
Guest:What time is it?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Stuff like that.
Guest:Yeah, he's very good at that mechanism.
Guest:Did you get along with him?
Guest:Sorkin?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I did, actually.
Guest:He's got a very tricky reputation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, as being a stickler for no changes and stuff like that.
Marc:I heard they gave that to him.
Marc:Did they give that to them?
Marc:How do you mean give it to him?
Marc:Well, I mean, he was able to do this movie with fairly autonomy.
Guest:no i mean it was like i mean i a director gets final cut if you're lucky not that it means that much ultimately it's a bit of an illusion that thing but but um but i have that i'm lucky enough to have but as a writer but as a writer you wouldn't get that he may have got that on his tv series but you wouldn't get that on a movie but he no one fucked with the script it was just you guys you know he did because he changed it well he did
Guest:Yeah, because we would discuss changes with him when he'd do them.
Guest:And then when the actors come on board, he's incredibly flexible.
Guest:When he knows they've got the rhythm of it and he can hear them, they know it's wrong.
Guest:He's a theatre person.
Guest:He's a collaborator.
Guest:He'd love to make changes.
Marc:So he was on set the whole time?
Guest:Yeah, we had him there the whole time.
Guest:Was that your choice?
Guest:Yeah, well, I like writers being around.
Guest:I mean, most of them don't want to in the end because it is pretty boring.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even if you love your work as much as Aaron loves his own work, it still can be very, very tedious, the amount of repetition and stuff like that.
Guest:But no, he was around the whole time, and I loved having him around, yeah.
Marc:Well, it's interesting that you talk about theater because you come from theater, right?
Marc:Originally, yeah.
Marc:And it's also interesting in this movie, the other ones aren't quite that, but I want to talk about the other movies and styles in a second, but a lot of these took place in theaters.
Marc:Yes, it did.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I'm sure that's why Rudin, Rudin, who knows I'm a kind of originally a theatre guy.
Guest:And I did a play in London called Frankenstein, which was a bit of a hit.
Guest:And I'm sure Rudin thought, oh, you know, the whole theatre thing, he'll be suitable and stuff like that.
Guest:But I'm a big, I got into theatre, I actually was a cinema lover, but I couldn't, where I come from in Britain, there was no way you could get into cinema.
Guest:I mean, you just couldn't.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:I come from Manchester, which is an industrial town in the northwest of England.
Guest:And I come from a working class background.
Guest:And I don't really, there's no real route in.
Guest:I mean, there's lots of people.
Guest:But you're Irish, right?
Guest:Yeah, originally Irish.
Guest:Yeah, the family's all Irish.
Guest:But Ridley Scott?
Guest:But Ridley Scott is from a working class background in the northeast of England.
Guest:And he got in.
Guest:So there are ways you can do it, but it doesn't look like you can.
Guest:And so I went into the theater.
Marc:It's interesting you bring up Ridley Scott, because there is something you guys have in common, that you're incredibly proficient, amazing directors, but you can really adapt to material.
Marc:Like some directors, they're like, it's my point of view, and then the material will run through my vision.
Marc:But it seems that you guys are open enough and confident enough to take on material and then suit the direction to the material.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Well, thank you.
Guest:Does that make sense to you?
Guest:Yeah, it does, actually.
Guest:I love telling different stories if I can, and the terror is that they're all the same.
Guest:You think they're all different, and you want them to be different.
Guest:And I see somebody comes up to you and says, it's the same film as last time, really, isn't it?
Guest:And they point out certain features, and you go...
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's when you go, that's my style.
Guest:A guy's got style.
Guest:I suppose.
Guest:But you're worried about, because you make a big thing about, oh, come and see my films.
Guest:They'll all be different.
Guest:You'll have a surprise.
Guest:You know, they'll all feel very different.
Guest:And of course, in reality, they don't because you're just forging just one story all the time, unfortunately.
Guest:Anyway.
Marc:But is it one story?
Marc:I mean, it seems that you've made some fairly diverse films, and you seem to be heavy on the denouement and the catharsis, and usually it's not going to end badly.
Guest:I like it.
Guest:Raymond Chandler said, in every work of art, there must be a quality of redemption.
Guest:And I believe that.
Guest:I think there is a redemptive, it is a redemptive experience cinema, the journey that you go on.
Guest:And that if you can engineer it without it being a, if you can let it emerge from the story without it being fake, it's an important ingredient in it.
Guest:That journey, that lift you get as you come out of the cinema.
Guest:I like that, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's a type of cinema, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because like in theater, that's certainly not always the case.
Guest:No, no, by no means.
Guest:It's almost, I mean, musical theater and stuff like that is a key ingredient in.
Guest:But regular theater, no, you're right.
Guest:Dramatic theater, no, often not.
Guest:In fact, quite the opposite often.
Marc:Yeah, a lot of times you walk out of the theater going like, oh, that was bleak.
Guest:I'm really bad about myself.
Guest:No, I know it's true.
Yeah.
Marc:So you're growing up in Manchester.
Marc:What kind of family?
Marc:You have a big family?
Guest:I've got two sisters.
Guest:I've got a twin.
Guest:I'm a twin.
Guest:And I come from a very Catholic family.
Guest:That's a big factor in my upbringing.
Guest:It was a very Catholic upbringing.
Marc:A factor in the way that you bought it because you had to and then eventually you pushed back?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my mom, God bless her, she wanted me to be a priest more than anything in the world.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Why do they want that?
Marc:I don't understand.
Marc:Have you thought it through?
Marc:Like, why would a mother say like this is because they think you're going to be safe?
Guest:What is it?
Guest:I suppose it's kind of it sanctifies you in her eyes.
Guest:It would sanctify her son who she loved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To have him sanctified in her eyes would also, you know.
Marc:Despite whatever happiness he might want to have in his life, it's more important to be sanctified.
Guest:But it's also service.
Guest:There was a goodness in it as well.
Guest:Her view of the Catholic Church was that it was a good thing that served the community.
Guest:It's had a very, very checkered history, which I'm glad my mom wasn't really aware of before she passed away.
Marc:Apparently, a lot of people were not aware of it.
Guest:Most people.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:And it's weird.
Guest:There are a number of film directors, very famous ones.
Guest:Martin Scorsese is one, who were going to be priests as well, I believe.
Guest:But were you really going to do it?
Guest:Yeah, until 14, yeah.
Guest:I was going to go to the seminary, which is where you... And then I was educated by a priest.
Guest:I was at a school run by priests, a Salesian school.
Guest:And this one priest said to me, I don't think you're cut out for it, you know.
Guest:I'd wait a bit.
Guest:Why do you think he said that?
Guest:Because I think he saw that...
Guest:girls picasso yeah all these things were on the horizon and i was going to just be like you know after that picasso of all things well you know art sure yeah yeah yeah cigarettes and all the stuff you know the good stuff the temptation all the seven deadlies all the stuff is out there i think he thought he's probably one for that rather than um seems like you're gonna have a different struggle a different uh
Guest:A different fight ahead of you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's very interesting because being a priest is like directing because you ponce around really telling everybody what to do and think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is basically what priests do.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And you're kind of like, and it is like a congregation making a film.
Guest:It's a lot of people who put their faith in you for a while.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then they often lose it quite quickly.
Guest:Could take years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they follow you for a bit into the wilderness or whatever.
Marc:Unlike a movie, if everyone walked out of a service feeling like it was a theatrical production, I don't know that the church would last that long.
Marc:But they went the other way.
Marc:I mean, that story that you're talking about, redemptive, redemption, that is what...
Marc:Catholicism is supposed to be about in a way.
Guest:Yeah, but long term, it's a lot of suffering.
Guest:You've got to wait a long time for that.
Marc:And you've got to really suspend your disbelief for the payoff.
Marc:Judgment Day, yeah.
Marc:It's kind of got to be anywhere out there.
Marc:Yeah, that's not a big ticket seller.
Marc:Just wait.
Marc:It could be a thousand years.
Marc:It could be a hundred.
Marc:But did you find that when you were in the church, I mean, I don't know what size church you were in as a kid, but like when I traveled through Italy and some of Europe, I mean, those churches were designed to blow peasants' brains out.
Marc:They were designed to sort of like, oh, my God.
Guest:Oh, yeah, and all those things.
Guest:I mean, Spain and Italy, those things are built by generations of families.
Guest:And brilliant artists.
Guest:Yeah, but you would spend, like your grandfather and your father and your children would work on the same...
Guest:Edifice, you're building it over hundreds of years.
Guest:I mean, they were extraordinary.
Guest:No, I didn't come from anything like that.
Guest:We had a brick built and a fairly functional church.
Guest:But, you know, I was expected to be there every day, which I was.
Guest:And I was an altar boy, you know, serving on the altar and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:And I used to have to wake the priest up.
Guest:So I'd go down for seven o'clock mass.
Guest:And he wouldn't be up, you know, because he was a drinker.
Guest:I realise all this stuff in retrospect.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I'd have to ring the bell and get him up in order to do the service.
Guest:And he'd come out and he'd have slippers on under his cassock.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was kneeling down.
Guest:I could see at eye level he had his slippers still on.
Marc:He'd go back to bed in a couple of hours.
Marc:Yeah, he probably did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Take a few confessions, hit the sack.
Marc:So when did you start to get involved with theater or arts in general?
Guest:I used to do, at school, I used to do the assemblies.
Guest:Every week there'd be a morning assembly on the Monday and there'd be bits of kind of
Guest:I guess they were kind of like displays.
Guest:And I used to do bits of drama for them.
Guest:And I'd organize them.
Guest:I didn't realize that was directing, basically.
Guest:You organize people.
Guest:Do you do this?
Guest:You do that?
Guest:And we used to do these skits about the Catholic Church, actually.
Marc:Saturical skits?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And see what we could get away with.
Guest:Because, you know, we were seeing how far you could push it before you got dragged into the headmaster's office about what you were doing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So I used to do that.
Guest:And then I had a brilliant English teacher.
Guest:You know, it's the usual thing who just, you know, introduces you to Shakespeare and, you know.
Marc:What was it?
Marc:What was the one thing that made you go like, oh, my God?
Guest:Oh, I think with him, it was actually funny enough.
Guest:It was that I went to an all boys school taught by priests.
Guest:This guy was a secular guy.
Guest:But he taught us Jane Austen.
Guest:and one of the worst jane austen novels which is called north anger abbey it's just a terrible novel yeah and he's got 30 16 year old lads there yeah and he's persuading you of the genius of jane austen and he persuaded me and i remember thinking at the time this is i look around my mates and i thought he is this guy is amazing because he's somehow bringing everybody to bringing everybody together on this and i
Guest:Anyway, it's a lovely ending, this story.
Guest:There's a bit of redemption in this story because he encouraged me to do drama and I went to college and did drama.
Guest:And then I had a few successes in the theatre and I directed eventually at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Guest:And he'd retired by then and I wrote to him and I said, do you want to come and see a production I've done?
Guest:I'm one of your pupils from long, long ago and I've done a production at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Guest:And he came down and watched it.
Guest:And I've done some dodgy productions, but this one was a really good one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This one worked.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Really worked.
Guest:And he came along and he was so proud.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And it was really nice, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he died about a year later, passed away about a year later.
Guest:So I was really proud I did that because he was like...
Guest:He kind of changed my life.
Guest:And it was nice to actually show him that, you know, because he loved the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Guest:And to have one of his pupils directing on the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford was pretty good.
Guest:So it was a pretty good day.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:And he came backstage.
Guest:Yeah, he did all the stuff, you know, all the stuff you do.
Guest:So it was lovely.
Guest:Yeah, it was really nice.
Guest:That's a beautiful story.
Guest:So you went to college for theatre?
Guest:No, I went to a regular, like we call them universities, and I went to not a prestigious one at all, one in North Wales, Bangor in North Wales, which is kind of like attached to England on the side of England.
Guest:It's a country on the side of England.
Guest:I went there and did a lot of drama and English and lots of acting.
Guest:I did acting at first, and then I started to realise what directing was, and I started to do plays with other students.
Guest:How were you as an actor?
Guest:Loud.
Guest:Loud.
Guest:Which is all you needed to be really at that time, really loud and confident, overconfident, because I have not many skills other than the volume.
Guest:And I began to direct and I began to tell people what to do, which you get addicted to.
Guest:It's a terrible trait in directors.
Marc:Yeah, there's a certain real confidence in leadership that has to, I guess, eventually occur, depending on what kind of director you are.
Marc:I guess it must take a bit of time to learn how to be diplomatic and respectful and still get what you want done.
Guest:Yeah, it involves cunning that you have to have a certain amount of low animal cunning.
Guest:to get what you want when you can't go about it just with brutalism alone.
Guest:You have to use other techniques to get there.
Marc:I guess some directors, as they get more respected and deliver enough money-making products, can become pretty brutal.
Guest:They can.
Guest:That's a character trait amongst some directors, it is.
Guest:I don't share that.
Guest:But it was interesting doing the jobs because he clearly had that.
Guest:There was an element of that in him.
Guest:As he tried to change the world, he did it through...
Guest:slashing and burning everything in his path and refusing to acknowledge the past, which you see in the film on a personal level with his daughter and obviously on a product level with his resistance to Woz and Woz wants him to acknowledge the Apple II and that he's standing on the shoulders of giants.
Guest:But his only focus is the future and trying to change the mindset about computers.
Marc:So all right.
Marc:So where do you go right after college?
Marc:You start working in theater and television or what?
Guest:I went to I got a job in theater.
Guest:I wrote away to a theater company who toured Britain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Quite a political company called Joint Stock Theater Company.
Guest:And I asked if they had a job and I got a job as a driver.
Guest:And theatre promotes internally.
Guest:If you get on well, you can become almost an apprentice to what you want to be within the system itself because it's all then about, you know, you just move on to job to job.
Marc:That's a classic Shakespearean sort of model.
Marc:Everyone's involved.
Marc:The collaboration begins driving.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Driving, yeah, driving the truck, sweeping the stage, making the tea, all that kind of stuff.
Guest:And then, yeah, and then you work your way up, and I became an assistant director, and then you get to do your own show eventually at some point.
Guest:So I did a few shows like that.
Guest:Shakespeare?
Guest:I've never done a Shakespeare.
Guest:Never?
Guest:It's the only one I've never done.
Guest:Ever?
Guest:I've done Ibsen, Ben Johnson, all those guys, but never done a Shakespeare, no.
Guest:Why?
Why?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Never really been offered one.
Guest:Never kind of had the absolute confidence to do one.
Guest:It is like a benchmark for a theatre director.
Guest:It's like, can you do it?
Guest:You know?
Guest:So, no, I've never done one yet.
Guest:But watch this space.
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:I might get offered one.
Guest:Like a chance.
Guest:Do you still direct theatre?
Guest:I do do occasionally, yeah.
Guest:I directed, I was just mentioning, we did the show Frankenstein in the National Theatre in London, which was with Benedict Cumberbatch in, who people know about now, and Johnny Lee Miller.
Guest:And they swapped the parts of Frankenstein and the Creature every night.
Guest:They kind of switched parts.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Which was very cool, yeah.
Marc:Was it stripped down?
Marc:Was it more of a... No, it was big production.
Marc:I mean, it was like sparse, but big.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So was there makeup with the monster?
Marc:Yeah, there were stitches and stuff like that.
Guest:But it was interesting because it was actually the first time, as far as we could find, that the story had ever been told from the creature's point of view.
Guest:So it's like Grendel.
Guest:Which is weird, isn't it?
Guest:You never kind of... It's such an extraordinary character in our mythology now, in our cultural mythology, and yet it had never been shown from his perspective.
Guest:Yeah, the sensitivity of the...
Guest:And also somebody being born into adulthood.
Guest:Because that's weird.
Guest:It was like a birth, but an adult is being born.
Guest:So that was a fantastic process for the stage to illustrate that story on the stage.
Guest:Oh, that's interesting.
Marc:And it was well received.
Guest:It was good, yeah.
Guest:It was a bit of a hit.
Marc:And then when do you start working with cameras?
Guest:So I went to Northern Ireland.
Guest:I couldn't get a job.
Guest:What year?
Guest:So 75.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I... Was it gnarly?
Guest:No, not 75.
Guest:85.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:85 to 89 I was there.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:It wasn't the worst time there, but there was tension, serious tension.
Guest:It's an amazing place, Northern Ireland, because the BBC... I got a job with the BBC making television drama with them there.
Guest:And the people... Oh, the loveliest people.
Marc:I love Ireland.
Marc:I was just there.
Marc:I don't, you know, I'm a Jew from Eastern European background, but I go to Ireland.
Marc:There's like part of me is like, I think I'm home.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:How is that possible?
Guest:Well, it's good.
Guest:It's why they produce such great writers.
Guest:People talk, they tell you stories, the sense of chat, the crack, as they call it.
Guest:It's just such an important part of my life.
Guest:The landscape is just beautiful.
Guest:It's very beautiful, yeah.
Guest:Anyway, but there was this terrible...
Guest:And I must admit, when I left, I thought, I don't think they'll ever change that.
Guest:I can't see how it will ever get resolved, the differences.
Guest:And astonishingly, because it's rare to say this about politicians, they did.
Guest:They changed.
Guest:And they found an accommodation with each other.
Guest:And there are still some problems, but the landscape has changed.
Guest:It's unrecognizable now.
Guest:And they've managed to establish some harmony amongst the communities, which is astonishing.
Guest:But I learned camera stuff there, yeah.
Marc:And you worked for the BBC in Northern Ireland doing TV dramas.
Marc:TV dramas, one-hour TV dramas.
Marc:And working with Irish actors.
Marc:Yeah, lots of Irish actors, yeah.
Marc:Maybe that's where it all began, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, that's probably right, actually, it did, yeah.
Marc:And there was something about their, I guess it's probably their humanity, really.
Marc:Because, like, you know, when you talk, the way you're talking about Fassbinder, does he pronounce it Fassbinder or Fassbinder?
Marc:Fassbender.
Marc:Fassbender.
Marc:So because it's interesting.
Marc:He's German.
Marc:He grew up in Ireland.
Marc:But there's one of the things with actors, I think, with very well trained actors is that sometimes there's there's not a lot of interior life.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Occasionally.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that's not necessarily a negative thing.
Marc:I mean, their talent is their talent.
Marc:I mean, there's obviously talent.
Marc:And some of them are more characters than others.
Marc:But I think what we're trying to pinpoint before is that in Ireland, just by nature of being a citizen of that place, there's an inner life in a way.
Guest:And a poetry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're ordinary poets.
Guest:They always say that.
Guest:A slight darkness to the soul.
Guest:Yeah, which will come with a poetry, but they're ordinary poets.
Guest:They feel like they're not... It's not a class structure, society.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They feel like ordinary people, and yet they're poets as well at the same time.
Guest:They've always had that, and I love that about them.
Guest:Whereas you often... To find that kind of romantic in a British actor, it's often in the closet, and you have to kind of...
Guest:Bring it out, encourage it out.
Guest:It's always there with the Celtic actors, I think.
Guest:It's right up front.
Guest:Yeah, you get it with them.
Guest:I mean, if you work with them well, and it's why when they often, it's not true with Michael, but often when they leave their accent behind, they sacrifice a lot because it's wrapped in with the accent.
Marc:I think what you're talking about really hits on it is that when there's a class structure that, you know, in England, certainly that you do have some of that organic kind of, it's a unique human connection of conversation that happens in the lower classes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And then once you start moving up, there's that sort of stiff upper lip of shit.
Marc:It's more careful.
Guest:Yeah, much more careful.
Guest:It's much more careful because you worry about the impression you make.
Guest:We're saying the wrong thing.
Guest:All that kind of stuff.
Guest:Losing power.
Guest:All that stuff kicks in, yeah.
Guest:And we're riddled with it in Britain and in England, especially, and still.
Guest:Whereas Scotland, which has just elected its own party to virtually dominate the Scottish Nationalist Party, which is campaigning for independence.
Guest:It's an extraordinary, will be a seismic moment if it happens, you know, where the United Kingdom, as it's called, is wrenched apart.
Guest:Scotland has not taken part.
Guest:Scotland has begun their own conversation about their future, which is very exciting to witness.
Guest:It's very worrying for England because we'll be a much smaller place without the Scots.
Guest:And we cling hold of a bit of Ireland, Northern Ireland.
Guest:But Ireland remains a huge... I mean, so many people are...
Guest:So many people are Irish in Britain anyway.
Guest:I mean, working class areas because the immigration into Britain from Ireland was enormous.
Guest:And my parents came, you know, in the 50s and, you know, and many, many, many, many.
Marc:To make a better life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I noticed one thing about Ireland.
Guest:There's not a lot of immigrants coming in.
Guest:Well, it's kind of reversed, I believe.
Guest:It's actually, it has changed because it's actually, yeah, it's reimagined itself in a more almost metropolitan way.
Guest:Dublin's quite, Dublin's more metropolitan now.
Guest:And they encouraged artists to come to.
Guest:So there has been a, it has gone back the other way a little bit.
Marc:But are they mostly expats or people that have familial connection to Ireland?
Marc:I mean, I didn't get the sense that there's a lot of people from other countries, you know, sort of flocking.
Marc:There's still sort of an Irishman.
Marc:Yeah, people with cultural heritage there, yeah.
Marc:Oh, Dublin's great.
Marc:I stayed at a beautiful hotel.
Marc:It was the nicest hotel I stayed in my entire trip.
Marc:Fantastic.
Marc:That was great.
Marc:So you start making movies.
Marc:What inspired you to make you know that you could make movies?
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:It's arrogance, really, isn't it?
Guest:I guess.
Marc:But like, well, who are your guys?
Marc:Who are your directors that you were like this?
Marc:You know, this seems possible to me and this is what I want to do.
Guest:Well, I used to go to this.
Guest:Obviously, I was like 16, 17, and I was in search as you always are of sex, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anywhere you can still.
Guest:That doesn't stop.
Guest:It doesn't stop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I used to go to the cinema because there was some on offer there.
Guest:And I looked older than 16.
Guest:Because in Britain, to get into an ex-film or an adult film, you had to be 18.
Guest:And I looked older than my mates.
Guest:So I used to buy the tickets and we'd all sneak in.
Guest:But I used to go to this art cinema in Manchester called the Eben Cinema.
Guest:Thank God for those art cinemas.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And they used to show all these incomprehensible films that I really didn't understand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they often had lashings of sex in them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:like what the italian movies oh yeah a lot of movies french movies a spanish movie nada i remember seeing oh yeah yeah kind of there were lots of them anyway but what i've learned subsequently anyway i did love them as well there was something about them that i that i uh there was something very very special about them um um
Guest:What's he called?
Guest:El Topo.
Guest:Yeah, El Topo.
Guest:Yeah, El Topo.
Guest:I remember seeing that there.
Guest:But I've subsequently learned from his biography, I think, that Morrissey from the Smiths was also there at exactly the same time.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Because I'm exactly the same age as him.
Guest:And he was obviously on the same sad trajectory of looking for something that wasn't there in your life.
Marc:And we found it in the Abe and Cinema.
Marc:The dark searchers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The poets.
Guest:Anyway, so I did that.
Guest:And then, oh, the big thing was I saw Clockwork Orange.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Before it was banned, because it was banned in Britain.
Marc:Well, that's interesting, Clockwork Orange, because it seems to me that if I think about it just impulsively now, that that sort of informs Trainspotting a little bit.
Marc:Big time.
Marc:Stylistically.
Guest:Oh, big time, yeah.
Guest:It was a huge kind of like... I mean, we copied large sections of his film.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And the way you borrow as homage, as anything, whatever.
Guest:But mostly in the cutting and the humour, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes, it had that kind of sense of that black humour.
Guest:So...
Guest:That was a big factor, seeing that.
Guest:And then, as I said, I went into theatre, but I always wanted to do cinema.
Guest:And I continued that relationship with cinema.
Guest:And through the Northern Ireland process, I began to learn how to use a camera at the BBC there.
Guest:And then eventually I got a movie called Shallow Grave.
Guest:These guys had written the script and they were looking for a director.
Guest:And they'd had a couple of conversations with people which they hadn't enjoyed.
Guest:And I went in and I told the truth.
Guest:which is, I said, you've stolen large sections of Blood Simple and simply changed the background.
Guest:And the writers sort of nodded, yes, that was true.
Guest:And I said, I think we should do more stealing from other places.
Guest:No, we phoned an affinity of the fact that we were going to make something for the new energy in cinema that there was, in independent cinema, which was both original but delicious as well.
Guest:What year was that?
Guest:That was like... 94.
Guest:Yeah, we got 94, yeah.
Marc:So, OK, so the Coens had started to make their first couple of movies and the new independent cinema was sort of happening in America.
Marc:A lot of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was delicious because it was because it was interesting and it was also accessible and attractive and had a witness and a scurrilousness that was like delicious, like I say.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And what what was your relationship with Irving Welsh in Trainspotting?
Marc:How did that come about?
Guest:Well, we made this film, Shallow Grey, which did quite well.
Guest:It was a big hit in France.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:The French love films where friends fall out with each other and start killing each other.
Guest:They love films about, you know, a bunch of friends disintegrating.
Marc:This is pre-redemption.
Marc:Yes, there wasn't much redemption.
Guest:in that there was a bit of happiness but it was entirely selfish um but then we we read this book train spotting right which was a cult book around scotland at the time yeah not many copies of it around and we said oh really oh yeah it was a very small book huh um it's a very difficult book to read wonderful book brutal it's like joyce it's like you know it's like finnegan's wake or with but with heroin it's just like and it's a masterpiece i think
Guest:Anyway, we said we're going to make this as our next film, and they said we were crazy.
Guest:Because we'd had this hit, it had done very well, and everybody wanted us to make another one, as they do.
Guest:But we wanted to use the advantage we'd got from that success to make something that appeared very uncommercial.
Guest:Because drug movies basically don't really attract an audience.
Guest:But we wanted to make a film that actually...
Guest:showed partly the truth of it which is that people don't take drugs because they're stupid they take drugs because actually they supply something in their lives that is necessary and often uh enjoyable they're addicted and they and they get addicted yeah or certain ones of them do yeah um anyway so it was a fascinating process setting that up yeah
Marc:yeah and and the comedy of it i mean the balance of the the empathy necessary to humanize you know what it really is you know desperate drug addicts at times yeah uh you know is is tricky because they are the most because they're so at the whim of this of their of their needs there there is a humanity to it oh god yeah they're desperate yeah yeah and you said they'll do anything they're naked in front of you always yeah like like and and you relate to that in front of them because you think god thank god but for the grace of god that might be me
Guest:Yeah, right.
Marc:But to sort of engage it with humor and the pathos necessary to not romanticize it is not easy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But very quickly it became like, you know, this is hilarious.
Marc:These people are troubled and there's a slapstick to it.
Marc:But you don't walk out of there thinking like, I got to do some dope.
Guest:I know.
Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And we had that struggle early on.
Guest:There were a lot of critics said we were encouraging the use of, you know, everybody wants to shit the bed and let a kid die.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:So it was it.
Guest:So it had a kind of it had an internal.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:You know, some of some of the films you make, they have an energy in themselves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's almost beyond everybody else.
Marc:But I think you're very good at letting that happen.
Marc:That, you know, identifying that and let the film be defined by that instead of fighting that and having a structure that like we can't, you know, I have to control this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, there's a great.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:Bertolucci said you should always leave a door open on your set for real life to come in because you can get too occupied with the whole edifice of it.
Guest:And he always said you should make sure.
Guest:And that was very much the feel of.
Guest:of Trainspotting is that we would allow it in.
Guest:I don't mean literally like mumblecore realism or something like that, but that you would allow in the ridiculousness of real life to burst through sometimes.
Marc:Yeah, and I think it does a lot.
Marc:And I think that the amazing thing about your career is after Trainspotting, you do a peculiar movie with Life Less Ordinary, which is completely like, what's happening with this guy?
Marc:Is he still searching for his voice?
Guest:So that's an example.
Guest:When you...
Guest:So what I learned on that movie, so we were very pleased with ourselves.
Guest:We thought the film was very Coen-esque, you know.
Guest:Oh, right, right.
Guest:And anytime you do anything that's-esque, you're in trouble.
Guest:Because the audiences aren't stupid.
Guest:They go, well, this is Coen-esque.
Guest:I'll go and watch the original rather than this one.
Guest:You know, I'll go and watch the original, guys.
Guest:It's like Hitchcockian or Coen-esque.
Guest:People, the critics saw that?
Guest:Well, it wasn't a very popular film.
Guest:Nobody went to see it.
Guest:Although, no, and this is true.
Guest:There's a rule, and it's probably something that you hang on to, like a life jacket when you're droning, that when you have a movie that's a big hit, there's always one territory that it doesn't work in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Conversely, this is the life jacket bit.
Guest:When you have a disaster, there's always one territory where it appears to work for some reason.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Lifeless Ordinary was number one in Belgium for three weeks, which is amazing.
Guest:Fantastic.
Guest:Why do you think that was?
Guest:Because it was a disaster everywhere else.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think they just had a thing for Cameron Diaz, actually.
Guest:That's the truth of it.
Marc:And so you found sort of like Ewan McGregor was a good leading man for you for a couple of movies.
Marc:Oh, he was, yeah.
Marc:Wonderful guy.
Marc:He's a lovely, lovely man.
Marc:And then you go and then you do The Beach with DiCaprio, which was, there's big expectations on that movie.
Marc:Yeah, we got a bit of a kicking on that movie.
Marc:You know, you just get a kicking.
Guest:And now and again, it's quite good.
Guest:It's quite good for you.
Guest:Learn a lot.
Guest:You know, you learn a lot.
Guest:Otherwise, you're condemned to repeat your mistakes.
Marc:But you're allowed to keep working.
Marc:Yes, I know.
Marc:Somehow.
Marc:But that's a real testament to your talent.
Marc:I think that because you did such a diversity of films so efficiently that they're like, you know, this guy Boyle will come around.
Marc:I'm just more persistent.
Marc:I can put up with more shit than most people.
Guest:You just got to keep going.
Guest:That's that Irish thing.
Guest:A lot of it is persistence.
Guest:Seriously, you just got to keep going sometimes.
Yeah.
Marc:So the first, you know, after Trainspotting, 28 Days Later was the big hit.
Marc:Yes, that did very well, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I went to see it and I'm not even a zombie guy.
Guest:No, I wasn't a zombie guy either.
Guest:How did you become a zombie guy?
Guest:Because the writer was, Alex Garland, he knew everything about the zombies.
Guest:You know, he was absolutely an aficionado.
Guest:He just...
Guest:And I couldn't be bothered, really.
Guest:I tried to watch some of them and I didn't get it, really.
Guest:But we had this idea and we wanted to make them in a different way.
Guest:And we set out to make a film that in a funny kind of way wasn't about zombies.
Guest:And we refused to call them zombies.
Guest:What were they called?
Marc:What did you call them?
Guest:The Infected.
Marc:Yeah, The Infected, right.
Guest:It seems a very small difference, but it was an important one to me.
Guest:And it doesn't matter what you think, the world then takes over.
Guest:And that happens with movies.
Guest:The world grabs your movie and they decide what it's about, weirdly.
Guest:And they've decided, right, this is the beginning of the renaissance of the zombies.
Guest:I think it was.
Marc:Of the Walking Dead.
Marc:And suddenly it was everywhere after that.
Marc:You did that to us.
Marc:It's your fault.
Marc:It brought them back.
Marc:But what was the humanity that you saw in that?
Marc:That was not a redemptive movie necessarily either.
Guest:No, it was about a family, really.
Guest:A weird mixture of family.
Guest:These four people brought together who traveled around Britain trying to save themselves.
Guest:So it was a kind of... That for me was... There was a wonderful bit in it.
Guest:We had a great couple of Irish actors, again.
Guest:Cillian Murphy played the lead.
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:And a guy called Brendan Gleeson is one of the great...
Guest:great elderly actors.
Guest:He's not that elderly.
Guest:He's in his 60s now, I think.
Guest:Or late 50s.
Guest:And he, yeah, he was the redemptiveness for me.
Guest:Because he gets infected and he makes sure he saves his daughter.
Guest:Even though he's infected, he sacrifices himself.
Guest:So there were moments of redemption in it.
Marc:So you saw that as a theater person and as a guy who loves a good story, that the human element has to sort of transcend somehow.
Guest:Always.
Guest:You've got to do that.
Guest:You've got to find the humanity in it.
Guest:And you're always looking.
Guest:Yeah, you're always looking for that because, you know, in the two hour journey of a film, you can do so much with style and cleverness and all that.
Guest:But if the heart is not there, it's very, very tough.
Marc:But I also like the difference.
Marc:I think there is a difference because in your films and certainly as you grow as an artist that that redemption doesn't necessarily mean a perfectly happy ending.
Marc:No, not necessarily.
Marc:There's a possibility.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:There's something that makes you feel... Right.
Guest:That you can make you feel good about yourself, really.
Marc:Yeah, and even in Swumdog, the menace of that movie.
Marc:And I think that's a great testament, in my mind, to how you evolved as a director, being able to find the humanity.
Marc:And you seem to have a tremendous respect for writers' visions, which I think is...
Marc:amazing but that you know stylistically you're not going to sort of just pigeonhole yourself and then when you look at swim dog millionaire you start to think like not only is are you collaborative as a director but but you know you were willing to incorporate and I imagine employ many people from from Indian cinema to sort of get that feeling of Bollywood and to really make that work on dance numbers and everything else it might it was almost like it must have been the most profound collaboration you've had
Guest:oh it was amazing because we we we'd made we'd made a foreign film before we'd been to thailand to make the beach yeah and we'd taken hundreds of crew from the uk and it's a bit it's as a model for making films it doesn't work that anymore it's almost like a past era like a colonialism in a way right just to go in like this is the location the price is right yeah right we'll give you all this
Guest:money and stuff like Apocalypse Now yeah it's kind of and what we decided to do with Slumdog and it's a lot easier to do with Slumdog because it has got a huge industry Bollywood is a huge industry there we took hardly anybody there were eight of us went and we everybody else was from Indian cinema the actors the crew and it was wonderful and you have to allow yourself to
Guest:To give yourself over to this city.
Guest:You can't control this city.
Guest:It's one of the world's craziest, craziest.
Guest:Again, you have to let the life happen.
Guest:Yeah, and it just comes in.
Guest:I mean, you can try and hold it back.
Guest:Why would you?
Guest:Like some crazy guy, but you're not going to succeed.
Marc:Yeah, and it's like...
Marc:For me, I've gone through periods in my life where I was more cynical and more dark and I would not indulge the happy ending.
Marc:I felt like that's lying.
Marc:But as you get older, you're sort of like, well, the heart needs to be fed a little bit.
Marc:It does.
Marc:And if it's not being fed out in the world, maybe that's part of what movies are for, like you're saying.
Guest:And I hate it when it's cheap.
Guest:And I remain cynical about when it's cheap and too easy, like that, because it should be earned.
Guest:And when it's earned, then it really is something for everyone when it's earned.
Marc:And you couldn't help but end on a dance number, right?
Marc:Well, it was like...
Guest:You just had to have it.
Guest:We hadn't had a rigged dance number in the film.
Guest:And if you're in India and you go to Indian cinema, everybody experiences everything through the dance.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, it's just like pop music here.
Guest:It's part of your expression.
Guest:It's just how you think in your brain is you think in dance, you know, there.
Guest:They just do.
Guest:Everybody relates like that.
Guest:And the kids, we auditioned in the kids and they show you dance moves.
Guest:Oh, you had to do it.
Guest:You know, and so you've got to do it.
Marc:Yeah, and you did it for the credits, basically.
Marc:Yes, we put it for the credits.
Marc:You've got to honor the nation.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So you go from there to, like, this is another weird choice.
Marc:It's like, now we've got a guy stuck in the rock.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Aaron Ralston, 127 Hours.
Marc:What drew you to that project after something as grand as Slumdog Millionaire?
Guest:It was the change, really, because it was on such a massive scale working in Mumbai to suddenly be trapped in a box with this guy.
Guest:Do you like the challenge of it?
Guest:Oh, God, yeah, because it is a big challenge.
Guest:Especially the way we wanted to tell the story, which is hardly to leave the canyon until he does, to literally be immersed in the experience with him.
Guest:Was that your idea?
Guest:That was the idea, yeah.
Marc:Your idea to shoot it that way?
Guest:Yes, it was.
Marc:As opposed to sort of maybe go to the panicky family or to sort of.
Guest:Yeah, his book is, the book that it's based on is in alternating chapters between the family at home and worrying about him and stuff like that.
Guest:And we decided to exclude all that and just focus on the experience in the canyon itself.
Guest:So that when he got released from it, you would be, you would get some understanding of why.
Guest:I always thought that you'll never really understand.
Guest:If it's conventional, you'll never really understand the experience of how you can go and chop it off.
Guest:It's still hard to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I think if you were there for six days with him, you'd think just, I wanted people to think, do it, just do it.
Guest:Just do it.
Guest:How do you step back?
Guest:And there's an amazing moment.
Guest:Franco is incredible in that film.
Guest:There's an amazing moment where he does cut his arm off and he steps back.
Guest:And the acting Franco does at that moment where he steps away from something he's been chained to for six days and about to die.
Guest:And so he's released part of, let a part of himself go in order to be released from it.
Guest:It's a brilliant bit of acting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was, it's a, it's a hard movie.
Marc:Yeah, it is.
Guest:People find it tough to watch.
Yeah.
Guest:So I remember going, I was really thrilled.
Guest:So we were promoting it and they decided to do, ironically, given the subject of our recent film, they decided to do a screening of it at the Pixar.
Guest:So I went up there and I was so thrilled to be arriving at Pixar because I loved their movies.
Guest:It was just like unbelievable.
Guest:So we drove up and I turned up for a Q&A after the film.
Guest:So the film was showing.
Guest:So I turned up like 10 minutes before the end.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:and i saw them outside and one particular woman i saw her wake up and she went she looked at me and said oh hello she was fine she went back in she just went back into the cinema she just reached a point where she just kind of just lost consciousness for a bit and then she was fine
Marc:Well, there are those people that can't see certain things.
Marc:Yeah, so they block it out.
Marc:And that's what happens.
Marc:And usually they tend to avoid those things, but obviously it's a testament to the power of the movie.
Marc:Like, this is my problem.
Marc:I got to go finish the film and see if I can not do it again.
Marc:So the Jobs movie, in your mind...
Marc:I tell you, that third act is pretty amazing.
Marc:Isn't it?
Marc:Well, yeah, because it's genuine.
Marc:You can like the guy's ambition and his persistence, but as a human being, he's almost contemptible.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:There's a certain... He's difficult to like, isn't he?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there were people who were devoted to him, but by the evidence, once you present it, and certainly in Michael's performance, which is uncompromising, it's difficult within the realms of cinema to find him likable as such.
Guest:But then he begins to become a part.
Guest:He begins to be pulled apart, and you begin to find...
Guest:he begins to be you know it's it is shakespearean it's like he has a flaw and fortunately he he arrives at a place where he can acknowledge it and he can hold his hand up i wonder if that happened in real life does anyone know i think you can as much as we know i think you can see that he did mellow yeah and and he had it's not our concern in this film he obviously had a family he had three children and uh and a very successful and and uh marriage and
Guest:And so he clearly did mellow.
Guest:And from what we do know is that Lisa was, although her relationship with him was still volatile, she became part of that family and they were reconciled.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, because that scene on the roof, when you talk about flawed, again, I don't want to spoil the movie for anybody.
Marc:You know, the whole movie, you know, outside of all this...
Marc:Changing the world and the images of Lennon and Einstein and and the sort of his knowledge of the power of what he was about to do or what he was destined to do.
Marc:It all pales.
Marc:You know, nothing was going to resolve the story like that thing on the roof in the moment with her backstage.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And he's got a kind of.
Marc:And it's unspoken in a way.
Marc:He says one thing about it.
Guest:You got it.
Guest:You got it.
Guest:That was the idea.
Guest:Because Sorkin is obviously all dialogue.
Guest:And the whole thing is just a tidal wave of incredible dialogue.
Guest:But then it's all stripped back because there's nothing more for him to say.
Guest:Well, whose decision was that?
Guest:That was our decision, really.
Guest:We moved towards that with... You had a discussion about it.
Guest:Yeah, we wanted it to become more stripped back as the film went on.
Guest:It becomes more and more stripped back, and eventually you're left with... I mean, he does say one thing, which is when he holds his hand up effectively to acknowledge that despite all the amazing products that he's made, which are perfect, as we know, in many ways, he is himself poorly made.
Guest:So...
Guest:And that's a beautiful moment.
Marc:And this is similar, like, in theme to the Facebook movie, isn't it?
Marc:The lineage.
Marc:You can see the lineage.
Marc:About communication, emotion, distance.
Guest:These people who make these things that enable the world to communicate instantly and perfectly with each other are themselves poorly made.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And what were some of the biggest problems you had to overcome in making this film about Steve Jobs?
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:We lost the studio.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, we had a – because it was the time of the whole Sony hack, you know?
Guest:Right, right, sure.
Guest:And Seth Rogen's battle with the North Koreans.
Guest:And he was – and all that was going on.
Guest:And so it was very, very complicated.
Guest:And we've not –
Guest:it's not been easy because there's been a lot of forces prefer you not to make the film really because he's he belongs to a very powerful company yeah you know which has which has control issues about keeping the control of the of the image and the story of him and the myth of him but it's really important to tell these stories because governments are frightened of these companies now you know they're so powerful so quickly
Guest:I see it in Britain.
Guest:Uber, which was only launched in 2009, is already worth $50 billion.
Guest:And it comes into Britain and the government's like this.
Guest:We don't know what to do.
Guest:They're upsetting the local industry, but we don't know what to do.
Guest:We don't want to resist progress and such prosperity.
Guest:And so if governments are like that and the law we know is manipulable, depending on how rich you are,
Guest:Therefore, artists should write about these guys.
Guest:And so for Sorkin to write about these two guys so closely together like that is an important element.
Guest:And Sorkin is one of your national writers, I think.
Guest:He really is.
Guest:And he should address these big, big guys.
Guest:And in a way, what he's doing is it's not scurrilous.
Guest:It's not defaming people.
Guest:It's actually bringing them back down to earth.
Guest:And actually, they become part of us again.
Guest:You know, because they do have a floor like we all have.
Marc:I think that's true.
Marc:And we've got stuff to work on.
Marc:And I can certainly appreciate that.
Marc:And so through all the problems, you and Sorkin remained, you know, solid and united.
Guest:Yeah, we did.
Guest:Yeah, we kind of kept it very simple.
Guest:There's part of you have to be almost naive in your belief.
Guest:If you get too sophisticated, you can...
Guest:It won't happen.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You kind of remain almost childish in a belief that it can happen.
Guest:And if we keep going, it'll work.
Guest:And you do keep going like that.
Marc:And Apple, did they lay down preconditions or what eventually led them to say like, okay, we're okay with it?
Guest:I don't think they ever did.
Guest:That's the honest truth of it.
Guest:And I thought Seth was great.
Guest:Wasn't he?
Guest:You know, it was a good role for him.
Guest:Oh, he is.
Guest:Tell me something about Seth.
Guest:So he's playing a guy called Steve Wozniak who is an engineering genius.
Guest:It's an overused word, genius, especially when you're promoting films.
Guest:But he is an engineering genius, okay?
Guest:And he believes, he says to Jobs, you can be decent and gifted at the same time.
Guest:And we've got this actor who's known as a comedian, and he's a comedy genius, Seth Rogen.
Guest:He's also, like Wozniak, he's a decent man as well.
Guest:He really is a decent man.
Guest:And so when he says that, in this performance, you get that sense of a genius there, someone very special, albeit in a slightly different area of the drama world, but who's also a decent person, and he's decent and gifted at the same time.
Guest:And when he says that to him, it really...
Guest:Begins to pull apart jobs, I think.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He begins to see some of his, you know, deficiencies.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That relationship and the little thing that they say to each other.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sorkin's very good at these repetitions of things that really ground characters and interactions.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also the guy who plays, well, obviously Winslet's amazing.
Marc:And the guy from A Serious Man who played.
Marc:Stillbound.
Marc:Michael Stillbound.
Marc:Really great.
Marc:Another, you know, just all heart.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:What a performance.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Really astounding.
Guest:Just astonishing that.
Guest:yeah there's some great acting in it you know and it's a great it's a great story as well and it's non-stop and it's you you go from the kind of like this he's a punk at the beginning almost like tearing apart everything that stands in his way and then he goes through this second part that's a guile and cunning oh jeff daniels says what's his name uh and he has that scene with john scully yeah john scully daniels is like so great he's such a like he's not underrated but he's it's always good to see him in films yes it is and what's the new project you're working on
Guest:Trainspotting 2.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're all back?
Guest:The ones that lived?
Guest:They will be.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:Well, if we can get James Cameron to agree, it's called T2.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Come on.
Guest:No, seriously.
Guest:We're doing it.
Guest:It's 20 years later.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And they're still together.
Guest:And we've got this amazing script by the original writer, John Hodge, who did the original screenplay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And, yeah, we're going to do that next.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.
Marc:I know you've got to get going.
Marc:And thanks for coming by.
Guest:Mark, thank you.
Guest:It was lovely.
Marc:Did we pack some stuff into that?
Marc:I believe we did.
Marc:Good conversation.
Marc:Good guy.
Marc:Good movie.
Marc:And I don't have to say that.
Marc:I'd go see it again.
Marc:I'm going to probably have to see it again.
Marc:Because the girl didn't see it.
Marc:So...
Marc:What do we got?
Marc:What do we got?
Marc:Oh yeah, the music remix of my riffage on today's show was done by Paul Buck.
Marc:Check him out at facebook.com slash paulbuckmusic.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com for all your WTF pod needs.
Marc:Here's a little heads up.
Marc:More of Brian Jones' WTF hand-thrown mugs are on sale this Monday, December 14th at 12 noon.
Marc:Eastern, 9 a.m.
Marc:Pacific.
Marc:Make sure you go to BrianRJones.com at that time if you want one.
Marc:Oh, the holidays are upon us.
Marc:They're upon us.
Marc:Can I play some fucking music?
Guest:guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives!
Boomer lives!
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.
.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.