After the international acclaim - and rich box-office pickings - which greeted Shallow Grave, Danny Boyle found himself inundated with lucrative offers to direct both in Britain and Hollywood. Nevertheless, he decided to stay with Andrew Macdonald and John Hedge, the producer and writer of that film, to tackle a screen adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s highly controversial cult novel, Trainspotting. “It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” says Danny, “Once you’ve had anything like a hit in the movie business it’s so easy to get lost. All these people are scuttling around trying to get you to make things, suggesting things and offering deals. The pressure of what to do next is horrible. By doing Trainspotting we managed to side-step all those problems because we just loved the project - I think the book is a modern mastcrpicce - and were happy to get the chance to do it on a small budget without any stars.”
Danny began in the theatre first with the Joint Stock Theatre Company and then with the Royal Court Theatre, where he was deputy director between 1985 and 1987, and artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre upstairs from 1982 until 1985. His productions during this period included Howard Brenton’s Victory and The Genius and Edward Bond’s Saved, which won the Time Out Award (the major award for London’s fringe theatres). Boyle has also directed five productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Danny started working in television in the late 1980’s as a producer at BBC Northern Ireland, where he produced, amongst other TV films, Alan Clark’s controversial Elephant. As a director Danny’s TV work includes Arise and Go Now, Not Even God Is Wise Enough, For The Greater Good, The Hen House, The Delorean Tapes, The Night Watch, Scout and episodes of Inspector Morse. Directly before working on Shallow Grave he made the acclaimed series Mr Wroe’s Virgins for BBC 2, on which the editor Masahiro Hirabuko and director of photography Brian Tufano also worked.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Danny’s work on both Shallow Grave and Trainspotting has been his eagerness to use sets, and create stylised backgrounds for his characters to exist in. He puts it down to his theatrical training: “One of the biggest problems British films seem to have is in creating a sense of scale. One of the ways that you can overcome that is by creating your own version of the world - not using the real world. That’s what we did on Shallow Grave when we built the enormous set where 90% of the action took place, and we wanted to do the same thing with Trainspotting. That way you have nobody to blame but yourself if things don’t work out the way you want them visually, you are given your own world where you are God and you can do whatever you want, It’s the most childish and liberating thing that you can do. In fact, I wish that more , of Trainspotting had- been done on a set. ”
Festival de Cannes
