Danny Boyle: Interviews

Fame? They Can Keep It

39 Fame? They Can Keep It Tom Charity/1997 From Time Out London, October 1–8, 1997, issue 1415. Reprinted with permission. “Fame? They can keep it!” . . . or so Cameron Diaz thought, on location for a quirky kidnap caper in Utah. Except this little indie movie just happened to be the eagerly awaited follow-up to Trainspotting, her costar just happened to be the next Obi-Wan Kenobi, and director Danny Boyle just happened to be the sort of nutter who’d do karaoke Sid Vicious in a redneck bar . . . Somehow we think the film’s title will prove more prophetic: A Life Less Ordinary. It can’t get any worse than this: In the last twenty-four hours, Robert has lost his job, his girlfriend, and the roof over his head. Several whiskies later, he asks Al, the barman, for the knife. Taking out a felt pen, he draws a circle on the bar. One half he marks “suicide,” and the other “revenge.” Robert spins the knife. It slops at “suicide.” Al: “Maybe you ought to make it best of three . . .” A Life Less Ordinary (deleted scene) “My God, this film really didn’t work for you at all, did it?’ winces Danny Boyle. Sitting across from the director, his producer Andrew Macdonald and the screenwriter John Hodge in Soho’s Union club, I make my excuses and stay. It’s not that I didn’t like it, exactly, it’s brash and fun, and sometimes truly adventurous. It’s just that, in the end, I didn’t laugh very much. I wasn’t moved. No, it didn’t work for me. Before the preview screening, Macdonald had got up and made a speech to the press. Something about the weight of expectations, how he knows they’re due for a kicking—how this is, after all, just another low-budget Channel 4 Film . . . But it’s a painful paradox that those 40 danny boyle: inter views who know and love film can’t watch movies innocently. Still harder to make the films you dream of . . . The latest venture from the Trainspotting team is surely the most eagerly awaited British picture in ages. (If it is British: the $12 million budget actually comes from Twentieth Century Fox and PolyGram.) After the tortuous thrills of Shallow Grave and the drug-addled controversy of its successor, A Life Less Ordinary looks like something of a stretch: a mainstream romantic comedy. Well, sort of. Ewan McGregor is Robert, an aspiring Scottish novelist working as a cleaner in America —until overnight, he loses everything. Pushed to breaking point, he haphazardly improvises the kidnapping of the boss’s daughter, Celine (Cameron Diaz). She at least, knows the ropes, having been ransomed as a child. Together, they embark on an antagonistic romance far wilder than any Robert ever imagined. There’s something else. “You have three minutes to announce your intentions, to make an indelible stamp on the audience,” Danny Boyle told Time Out back in November 1995, quoting David Lean. Shallow Grave began in a hurry, the camera careering round Edinburgh at breakneck speed. It said urban/urgent/now. Trainspotting too was a rush: meet Mark Renton, piling down Princes Street, fast and furious, a foot or two ahead of the law. Get this: A Life Less Ordinary begins in a bright, white Paradise. And Dan Hedaya is the angel Gabriel. (Can you picture Hedaya? The betrayed husband in Blood Simple? Five o’clock shadow twenty-four hours a day? The scuzziest, seediest, sleaziest character actor in Hollywood? When he slopped coffee down his bright, white cop costume just before a shot, Hedaya attempted emergency repairs with a handy sugar doughnut!) According to John Hodge, Heaven has the aspect of a U.S. police precinct, except for the all-in-white thing. Gabriel /Hedaya is concerned by the love situation on Earth (the lack of it) and so he despatches two agents, odd couple Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo. Their mission from God—you guessed it—to pair off Celine and Robert. Three minutes and three movies in, we’re getting a good idea of Boyle-Macdonald-Hodge’s intentions. To sketch out a rough and ready manifesto on their behalf: first off, most obviously, teamwork. In an industry driven by rampant egoism, this trio has always been at pains to present a united front, nurturing a collaborative group which includes cinematographer Brian Tufano, production designer Kaye Quinn, editor Masahiro Hirakubo, and actor Ewan...