The film is full of words: a lot of dialogue and endless voiceover. Nah, best left to John, was my thinking.ĭB: John’s work was very literary.
IW: Look, if I’d written the screenplay it would have been a lot different from the book. JH: For no good reason he trusted us and said off you go. IW: I was probably trying to ham it up a little, my best Little Lord Fauntleroy to impress these highfalutin filmmakers. Macdonald, Hodge and Boyle arranged to meet up with Welsh.ĪM: We sat and spoke for hours, drinking tea, all very pleasant and polite and a world away from the tales in Irvine’s book. Not too far from what I’d say if someone working for me suggested a film about heroin addiction! I mean, anybody sensible will tell you that it is never going to get made.ĪM: David Puttnam told me that I was an idiot to make Trainspotting and that nobody would want to watch it. We had no reason to believe that it could be a film. He delved into a more seductive and sensual area. JH: Those few days certainly weren’t inspiring in the way Irvine’s book was, which was full of energy in the darkness it had a lightness.ĭB: What Irvine did so cleverly was to ask questions about the attraction of heroin. Yet the junkies we met that weekend seemed as though all the life had been taken out of them. Saul Metzstein (location assistant): The remit from Andrew was more or less: can you set up some meetings with heroin addicts and drive us round to some of the locations in Irvine Welsh’s book? Funnily enough, sadly, drug users were not terribly hard to find at that time in Scotland.ĭB: We just said after meeting many of the addicts, ‘People won’t want to see a f-ing film about these guys.’ Irvine’s book isn’t about victims and our film wasn’t going to be. I’d hate to have him tell me bad news if he were my doctor and I was ill, because he’d tell it to you straight! He decided straightaway that Renton was our principal voice.ĭavid Aukin (then head of drama at Channel 4): Danny, John and Andrew had carte blanche to do what they wanted, as far as I was concerned.ĪM: But would the carte blanche extend to making a film about drug users? JH: When adapting a novel you have to be prepared to make sacrifices, but if you lose too much then you have to question: why are you buying the rights to a book?ĭB: John is brutal. I thought if he was to put my characters with that cinematic energy it was going to be unbeatable. Alex Garland’s 28 Days Later first draft was pretty good and Slumdog too, but reading the Trainspotting first pages was magical. I have had times when my hopes have been higher than what has been delivered but I never had that with John’s screenplay for Trainspotting. John Hodge: We wanted to make a film that wasn’t just a tribute to the book, but could stand alone as a piece of cinema.ĪM: Danny and I left John in no doubt that he had to find a way in.ĭB: I can vividly remember reading John’s 18 pages on the Tube from Tottenham Court Road to Mile End, and roaring out loud. It was about being young and optimistic and battling on and having a good time. Trainspotting was written in an environment of Thatcherism and nobody could give a f- and everybody celebrated not being working class. Irvine Welsh: I had received loads of offers to film Trainspotting as a kind of socially conscious film and I just felt that that stuff belonged in the 70s. Irvine’s book is one of the greatest ever written – but so far removed from being a film, it was all over the place. Well, in Trainspotting I found one.ĭanny Boyle: Once I started to read it, I couldn’t stop. I’m not a huge reader it can be a little tiresome as I am always looking for a film in whatever I pick up.
Enter Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, a collection of stories about Mark ‘Rent Boy’ Renton and other heroin users in Edinburgh in the 1980s.Īndrew Macdonald: I had been passed Trainspotting by a friend from Scotland. It was Christmas 1993 and after completing his first feature as producer, the black comedy Shallow Grave, Andrew Macdonald and his collaborators – first-time director Danny Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge – were seeking a subject for their follow-up. ‘LIKE NOTHING I HAD EVER READ’: IT BEGAN WITH A BOOK