Why trainspotting

However, while John Hodge starts to bash out the first draft of Trainspotting 's screenplay, producer Andrew MacDonald and director Danny Boyle are caught up in what will prove to be the only crisis of the entire project - securing the rights to Welsh's book. They don't have plans of their own to film Trainspotting , but, as soon as they sniffed that something was up, they wanted to be co-producers - and we weren't keen on that.

But, of course, we're desperate to get the rights. So I went ahead and did the first draft in a few weeks. On the other hand, if you lose too much you might as well make up your own story, because what's the point in paying for the rights?

You could buy a blank page for nothing. We decided to make up a few scenes, but I can justify them all by the fact that they're all taken in some way from the novel. For example, there's a shoplifting scene that doesn't actually happen in the book. But there are loads of references to it and it's a very visual thing, so it seemed right.

Then again, there are lots of scenes you can really go for, like the one with the opium suppositories, or the Sunday morning breakfast sequence. I mean, we haven't even met the guy Shallow Grave is released on January 6 to the predicted ecstatic response, and goes on to break house records at five London cinemas in its opening weekend, including the MGM Haymarket and Gate Cinema in Notting Hill.

Hodge completes his first draft, and moves on to further drafts, adding "progressively fewer changes each time. Hodge is still hard at work and the rights are still problematic, even more so when Channel 4, which is financing the film the first time it has covered the whole cost of a project refuses to put up a penny until the mess is sorted.

And we have the author on our side. When Irvine heard about our plans, he wrote us a brilliant letter saying we were the greatest Scotsmen since Kenny Dalglish and Alex Ferguson. Boyle remains equally optimistic. Much to everyone's relief, the rights problem is finally ironed out with the deal eventually being done for two per cent of the film's budget, and Noel Gay backing out of hands-on duties in exchange for a share of the profits and a name check on the credits. You can get carried away with people offering you money and end up making a film that's out of proportion with your kind of audience.

Jonny just walked in and he was Sick Boy straight away. He was lolling about in his chair right in front of us. Right now, all the different departments are coming onboard. First and foremost, however, is the casting. Ewan McGregor, who played Alex in Shallow Grave , is earmarked for the Renton role from the start, and is first onboard. Elsewhere, there is careful discussion with casting directors Gail Stevens and Andy Pryor, although this proves to be relatively uncomplicated.

But for some of the parts, we knew who we wanted - people like Ewen Bremner who eventually plays the part of Spud and Bobby Carlyle Begbie. Next to pop out of the woodwork is Kevin McKidd who is cast as Tommy. A relative newcomer, hogging the camera in Gilles McKinnon's Glasgow allegory Small Faces , he is described by Boyle as "like meeting one of the Beach Boys at the height of their fame - the perfect picture of innocence.

Jonny Lee Miller proves to be another who fits the part perfectly. The script's ending is still up in the air, with MacDonald, now ensconced in Glasgow, and Hodge, in London, in constant phone contact. The original finale, which allows for a kinder, more optimistic denouement, is reinstated, and the final draft of the finished text is delivered just before filming starts.

Rehearsals begin the second week in May, in a rented flat at the top of a Glasgow tower block. We try to get the leads, but you don't need all the actors for rehearsals because quite a lot of them are only doing one or two days' filming.

Also, ironically, a lot of the top film crews in Britain live here. But we're doing a couple of days in Edinburgh and also pick-ups scene-setting, dialogue-free snatches shot to pad out the action.

Meanwhile, a crew has been assembled, and consists mostly of people who worked on Shallow Grave. Led by Boyle, they are midway through a recce, hunting for suitable locations in which to film exterior scenes. The activity on this particular day involves darting around Glasgow. Having completed a trip to a crematorium in the morning, everybody reconvenes for lunch at the Brewhouse in the town centre. Coincidentally, this bar, complete with ample balcony area and quiet coves aplenty is also the next stop on the location list.

Courtrooms tend to be reluctant to let film crews in because, I don't know, Taggart misbehaved or something. Tomorrow it's off to Edinburgh to explore the possibilities of filming a shoplifting scene in John Menzies, in the city's Princes Street.

The Scottish newsagents stepped into the breach after another major retailer pulled out due to the subject matter of the scene in question. However, today, MacDonald is not feeling too well, suffering from a decidedly dicky stomach that he blames on a sausage roll of dubious origin. So he heads back to the production office, based at the disused Wills cigarette factory on the outskirts of central Glasgow, while Boyle and his cohorts suss out the bar.

While a recce, to the outsider, appears to be little more than a load of people standing around looking at their surroundings, the technicalities go a lot deeper. In the Brewhouse, for instance, the prospective location for Day 14's scene in which Begbie starts a major bar-room brawl, the initial concerns are that the lightbulbs are too bright and that an unstrategically placed spotlight could hamper filming.

With the bar already equipped with booths, Boyle and production designer Kave Quinn conclude that the bar can be refitted with a long table and bench, as well as a balsawood chair needed for the fight scene. It is also decided that around 90 extras will be needed for the scene, ten of them for the punch-up. To keep costs down, only one section of the bar will be used, filled with tables to give the impression that it is more thickly populated.

The lightbulbs will be replaced. You have to balance up the colour of the place, the temperature, and then brief the location manager about things you need. The Brewhouse, for example, is the only pub we could find with the necessary balcony. We had difficulty finding a crematorium and especially a courtroom.

Courtrooms tend to be reluctant to let film crews in because I don't know, Taggart misbehaved or something. With the bar fully examined, everybody piles into the waiting bus to make the minute trip to the next prospective location: the Volcano nightclub. The club turns out to be locked, leaving everybody to stand around for 20 minutes. Someone with a key is eventually unearthed, and once inside, Boyle explains the set-up to everybody.

And Renton manages to land Diane. It's basically a pick-up joint. This time, it's fluorescent light that is required. The club's name will be retained, but muslin and canvas drapes will be hung to curtain off the section where Tommy and Spud are having their conversation. Meanwhile, concern about dialogue being drowned out by loud music will be dealt with by recording speech as normal then adding subtitles.

All parties satisfied, the club, and its adjoining car park - for the scene where Renton and Diane first meet - are booked for filming on Tuesday, May 30, Then it's into the ladies' loos to work out co-ordinates for the sex talk between the two girlfriends.

Happily, the facilities prove to be the right size, the purple walls ideal. But again, lightbulbs are a problem. Covering them with black tape or removing them altogether seems to be the best option. A constant stream of extras moving in and out will add the finishing touch. As for interior filming, the Wills factory, currently playing host to a hive of production office activity, has more than enough room within its 15, square feet for the sets needed for the allotted three weeks of interior filming.

Not only will it double for squalid Edinburgh squats, it will also accommodate the film's more cosy, suburban aspects, and even' a couple of London sets. Exterior filming will entail a three-and-a-half day trip down south at the end of the seven-week shoot. At the moment location scouts are busily scouring London. Fiona Bell Diane's Mother. Vincent Friel Diane's Father. Danny Boyle Director. John Hodge Screenwriter. Andrew Macdonald Producer. Brian Tufano Cinematographer.

Masahiro Hirakubo Film Editor. Kave Quinn Production Designer. Tracey Gallacher Art Direction. Rachael Fleming Costume Designer. Gail Stevens Casting. Andy Pryor Casting. View All Critic Reviews Mar 13, Whenever a film tackles a controversial subject matter, you can bet your bottom dollar that someone will accuse it of glamourising or glorifying said subject. True crime stories and horror films most often come in for this kind of criticism, with moral busybodies taking graphic scenes of death and mayhem out of context and holding them up as examples of moral torpor.

But films about drugs so often get it wrong as well, introducing us to ravishingly-dressed gangsters or sensationally cool dealers and then scolding us for not booing and hissing straight away. Trainspotting courted its fair share of controversy upon its release in , with US presidential candidate Bob Dole accusing it of "moral depravity" and "glorifying drug use" - before having to admit, like so many moralisers before him, that he hadn't actually seen the film.

In the two decades since, it has become something of an integral part of British cinema, even being voted the best British film ever in a poll. Twenty-two years on, it remains one of Danny Boyle's very best efforts and second only to Requiem for a Dream in the pantheon of drug films. Part of the reason why Trainspotting drew so much controversy was its refusal to shy away from the consequences of drug-taking. Like many of the best black comedies there are moments in the film which are genuinely tough to watch, either because they are disturbing in and of themselves or because their implications are so horrifying.

But where Bad Lieutenant achieved this reaction by showing drug-taking in painfully clinical detail, Trainspotting uses Boyle's interest in the fantastical and the surreal to extrapolate our fears and give us an insight into the nightmarish effects that these substances can have on people.

This mix of reality and fantasy is appropriate given the film's lineage. Producer Andrew Macdonald is the grandson of Emeric Pressburger, one half of Powell and Pressburger, whose films regularly played with our notions of reality - think of the heaven scenes in A Matter of Life and Death, or the dance sequences in The Red Shoes. Defending the film in , he said: "We were determined to show why people took drugs There are two scenes in Trainspotting which perfectly capture Boyle's trademark approach to this like no other.

The first is the scene where Renton a career-making performance by Ewan McGregor dives into the disgusting toilet bowl to retrieve his suppositories. The character's joy and sense of wonder from the colourful fantasy is bookended by a grim and grotesque real-life setting, which is so upfront with its awfulness that we find ourselves retching with Renton in the cubicle. It's like watching Christiane F.

The other is the cold turkey scene, a deeply twisted section where we are privy to Renton's horrifying hallucinations. While the baby crawling on the ceiling has become the scene's most famous image, what's really impressive is the visceral quality of McGregor's performance and Boyle's inventive direction.

McGregor gives a full-on performance, complete with shouting, cursing and screaming, but it never feels forced or attention-seeking. Likewise Boyle shoots the hallucinations in awkward middle distance, lending them an eerie, almost Lynchian quality. The camera could just zoom in for a quick shock, but instead it taunts us, keeping the terror ever-present but just out of reach.

Trainspotting captures that horrible feeling of people wanting to leave a lifestyle and being pulled back in. Renton watches his friends being changed beyond recognition by drugs - especially Tommy, who seems the sanest of them all at the outset but slowly declines into a grim and lonely death.

However, there is little incentive for him to leave the lifestyle when the alternatives are either the dull life of his relatives or Begbie - the least druggie character is the craziest and most uncaring of the lot.

Renton spends much of the film like Michael Corleone in The Godfather: Part III: every time he thinks he's on the straight and narrow relatively speaking , elements of the past creep or barge their way back in, leaving shame and terror in their wake.

It's ironic that Trainspotting came to be associated with the Cool Britannia movement of the mid- to lates, since the film is very interested in cutting through much of the pretentious, artsy-fartsy nonsense which characterised that movement.

The scene which takes place during the Edinburgh Festival owes a great deal to the British New Wave, whose film-makers went into parts of the country overlooked by the traditional mainstream and told often uncomfortable stories. Boyle is not seduced or distracted by Edinburgh's history or architectural beauty; he keeps his eye on those at the bottom of the pile and their low tolerance for stuck-up outsiders.

Boyle's earthy approach to the setting is reflected in his visual choices. Away from the nightmarish fantasy scenes, which give Pink Floyd - The Wall a run for its money, his camera is drawn consistently to images of decay or neglect, whether it's the graffiti on the walls, the cheap lingerie worn by the transexual Begbie pulls or the physical appearance of his characters. Nevertheless, he manages to keep their humanity at the centre; he keeps coming back to close-ups, searching for whatever virtue he can find and focussing on emotion rather than making didactic commentary.

If Shallow Grave gave an intriguing glimpse of what he was capable of doing, this was the film that cemented him as one of the most essential film-makers that Britain has produced since World War II.

Trainspotting is anchored by a series of fantastic performances which still hold up to scrutiny. Alongside McGregor, the best of these is Robert Carlyle; he makes Begbie utterly terrifying by being so unpredictable in both his actions and their timing.

He hangs over the film like a demonic presence, with Renton living in fear even in the scenes when he's not present. Jonny Lee Miller, who remains underrated as an actor, is very impressive as Sick Boy, and Ewen Bremner brings a real sense of pity and sadness to Spud. Without this last element, the ending would feel somewhat contrived; with it, we understand Renton's actions as both a gesture of friendship and an act of cowardice - he leaves him the money, but doesn't take Spud with him.

Trainspotting remains essential viewing and one of the best British films of the s. Despite a number of slow sections, it remains arguably the high point of Boyle's career, as well as one of the best things Ewan McGregor has ever done.

It manages to pull off the rare trick of being a visual treat and an emotional sucker-punch, making us confront tricky subjects without mercy while allowing us to gape in awe at the screen. It is nothing other than a fantastic cinematic achievement for all concerned. Daniel M Super Reviewer. Mar 10, Danny Boyle's direction is superb.

He never pulls punches when depicting the thrill of taking drugs and the devastation they cause. Moments in the movie are simultaneously hilarious and horrific.

McGregor's Renton is both lovable and despicable. The movie itself is relatively simple; plot information is secondary to the characters it's made up of. There are some significant moments played out brilliantly by Boyle's direction. Some of it might feel random, but I think that's the point of the movie.

If you haven't heard of Trainspotting and want to see why it's regarded as a cult-classic, go find a way to watch it and enjoy. Sure, Sunshine is pretty good and Millions is underrated, but both are almost immediately concerned with premise over pulse. The stories feel contained and predictable from the moment the movies start. This is also true of his riveting debut, Shallow Grave , an inspired Hitchcock riff.

Trainspotting reflects a number of issues that must have been personal to Boyle, even as he was born in Manchester rather than Scotland. The image of London as a busy tourist destination with an increasing lack of character suggests charred, skeptical memories of his country but also alludes to a hesitancy to move to the big leagues after the promising success of Shallow Grave.

Beneath all the talk of drugs and In the Name of the Rose and lord knows what else, Trainspotting is about money or, in a more precise way, capital. Nothing about London is cool in Trainspotting, not even the music, and Renton similarly becomes quickly at ease with the world of easy comfort and mindless work.