Who2 Editorial Blog

Notes and Commentary from the Editors

Friday, January 02, 2009

Danny Boyle on Slumdog Millionaire

"The way you make the best decisions is not when you get to the end of the script. At the end of the script it's a terrible place to decide, because then all the other questions come in like: who can we cast? What's with the money? Who can we do the deal with?

Where you want to commit is when you're about fifteen pages in and you just know you're going to make this film. You're just on board, so by the time you're finished you're part of it anyway."

Director Danny Boyle, from a lengthy chat with AintItCoolNews.

(Warning: Some naughty language.)

It's a swell film, and more intense than you'd expect from a story built around Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. Though we should have expected intensity from the director of Trainspotting.

And Boyle is a great interview. Here's another example, talking with The Onion's AV Club and explaining: Why are the cops torturing that guy?

"[When] you talk to the local people on the crew, they'll say, 'Yeah, if you're from a certain class, and you are arrested for anything other than a traffic offense, you've got a chance you're going to get knocked about a bit.' The scene, the way I directed it, it's slightly comic, but of course it's resonant in the West, at the moment especially. In America, nobody laughs. It's taken very, very seriously, as though I'm trying to make a point about torturing, whereas, in fact, it was a reaction, like everything in the film, to India and what goes on there."

Labels: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire