Director Danny Boyle And "Slumdog Millionaire" Win Big At The Academy Awards!

By Brad Balfour

Part Two of Brad Balfour's interview with director Danny Boyle, who won the Academy Award for Achievement in Directing. His movie 'Slumdog Millionaire' was chosen as Best Picture by the Academy.

Director Danny Boyle is one of those filmmakers (much like iconic director Martin Scorsese) who makes movies that generate a buzz - just because his name is attached to it - regardless of its stellar cast.

Ever since the 52-year-old Boyle made "Trainspotting," a story of a group of shambling Scottish drug addicts, his kinetic, crazy-quilt visual style combined with an ever-twisting storyline has a defined a sort of contemporary filmcraft.

That approach was employed with subsequent films like his hyper zombie thriller, "28 Days Later," the sweet-hearted "Millions" and the dark apocalyptic sci-fi tale, "Sunshine."

Now with "Slumdog Millionaire," Boyle has not only has applied his signature visual and storytelling attack to a classic rags-to-riches teen tale but has located it in one of the most crazy-qulit locations of all time, the Indian mega-city of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay).

And at a time when grappling with the clash between local culture and the new globalism is a necessity, a film like "Slumdog Millionaire" comes in handy as an aid to understanding a 21st century world.

Born in Radcliffe, Lancashire (now Greater Manchester) into a working-class Irish Catholic family. Boyle's mother was from Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, and his father was from an Irish family living in England.

Boyle once seriously contemplated priesthood and attended religious school as a teenager but was discouraged by a priest from joining the clergy.

Boyle later said that he didn't know if the priest was trying to save him or the priesthood. Maybe he noticed Boyle's crazy style early on - a style first applied to the theater and then filmmaking.

With the help of a full Indian crew, Boyle tells the tale of slumdog teen Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) who becomes a contestant on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire?" - something he does in an effort to find his true love, Latika, who is both a high class whore and an ardent fan of the show.

Q: You used M.I.A.'s song "Paper Planes" during that train sequence; it was heard everywhere this summer.
Danny Boyle (DB): I know. I came back from work one day, I'd been editing, and my daughter said, "You should see this trailer." She's 17 - she spends most of her time on Japanese websites downloading illegal copies of "The Office." "You should see this," she said. "It's really good. It's a really good use of 'Paper Planes.'" I thought, oh no; but it's a great trailer.
We've got a lovely remix of it, too. I met [singer M.I.A.], because originally she's from London; she's Sri Lankan [by heritage]. She lives here [in New York City] now. I called her in to see the film, because I like the musicians to see the film. And she liked the film a lot. She's a very smart girl - she gave me a couple of really good notes, which you don't get from people - really good notes. Then I phoned her up to do the rest of the music, and she's a big fan of [soundtrack composer A. R.] Rahman's. When she was a kid she worshipped him.

Q: Did you make changes based on her notes?
DB: Yes I did. We were chatting and she said, "Do you want me to say a couple of things?" because she was very complimentary. She said, "We don't really know how he got on the show. How did he get on the actual show?" And I hadn't really answered that question.
Often times you get very bad notes from people. Someone who sits there, who's from another world completely - this hip-hop, cool New Yorker she is now - she's really smart.

Q: Were there specific films - either Bollywood ones or just films about India - that you looked at before or during production?
DB: Not so much on this film. I don't know why.

Q: Do you do it on other films?
DB: Yes, definitely. Usually, when we have these conversations, I'll mention the kind of films.

Q: Did you do a lot of historical research?
DB: Yeah. The main book I read, the only book you need to read, is [Suketu Mehta's] "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found." I read that all the time, and part of the time I thought I was adapting that, and not "Q and A" by Vikas Swarup, the book we were actually meant to be adapting.
I'm a bit worried about [author] Vikas Swarup seeing it. He's seeing it soon. I'm a bit worried about a) him not liking it, b) him suing us [laughs]. So my main research was, I guess, that.
But when I got there, there were three films that I had never heard of that I did watch that did influence the film in some way. One's called "Satya," and it's as good a film I've seen. It stars and is written by our police constable, the guy who tortures [Jamal]. He's called Saurabh Shukla. He's an amazing writer, and a terrific character actor.
There's another film called "Company," a film about gangsters in Bombay. And another film called "Black Friday" which is about bombings in Mumbai, made by a young guy called Anurag Kashyap, a fantastic film made with very little money, but is a really good film. They were like inspirations while we were making this film. It's good to know that it's not all Bollywood musicals. It's not [only] the kind of standard stuff that they do.

Q: What was it about novice actor Dev Patel that made him Jamal?
DB: I met all these guys in Mumbai, and the casting was done in Mumbai. I met loads of them, and they're really talented young guys there. But if you want to get in the movies in Bollywood and you're 18 or 20, you've got to be able to get a shirt off.
They stand under waterfalls in Switzerland and they do these song and dance moves, and they've got to be ripped. And they're all like beefcake, and you know when guys can't put their arms down cause they have all this muscle mass? They're 18; they're only just beyond kids--and their heads are really small. They haven't put any weight on their heads. So you've got these tiny little heads and big bodies; that was just wrong for the film.
Jamal's an underdog; he's supposed to be a guy who apparently has nothing. So, my daughter said, "You should see this guy in 'Skins'."
It's this [television] program we have in the UK; it's quite a racy program. I watched it, and he played a fairly small comic part in it, but he was very good, I thought. He was great, very serious in the craft.And he had that... well we didn't always agree about stuff. We fought a couple of times, which is good, because, honestly, I have a bit of a reputation. And he was prepared to say, "No, I don't think that's right. I don't think I should do it like that."
When you get that, it's good. If they just do what you tell them, it's kind of one dimensional in a way. They've got to take it over themselves--that's a lead actor. He's got that. He's stubborn. That's good; that's what he had.
And Jamal's like that: nothing's going to stop him, whatever it is...
That scene when he jumps in the s***, that's his character. His dream is to have Bachan's autograph and nothing will stand in his way. He's a bit like that.

Q: Was it important to have that connection between the three different actors [who play Jamal at the ages of 8, 12 and 18]?
DB: Yeah. It's tricky because if you find one person, you might not find someone else that look like each other. Mostly you just hope the audience will just go with it. That they'll just accept. It's great to have some kind of connection between them. We had to all together in rehearsal--I tried to get them to copy each other's mannerisms. I wanted it to feel coherent.

Q: How did you find the children in the movie; were they from the slums?
DB: The performances weren't difficult because they're all really good actors. The kids there love acting. They say, "Do you want the look? [laughs]" Once you get them to understand the world that they're in, they're terrific. They don't feel a separation between themselves, and film. It's like here--film is a natural part of life. It is in India as well. Everybody's been to the cinema, and all the time. Even seven-year-olds have seen lots of stuff. Finding them was really down to Loveleen [Tandan, the co-director in India].
Initially the film was written completely in English. When we got there, and saw the seven year olds who spoke English, it didn't work because they're not that deft with English at seven and eight. They get better when they get into their teens, and it wasn't really working, so [Loveleen] said, "We should really do it in Hindi."
I thought, what is Warner Brothers going to say? She translated it.
She adapted it, because you can't literally translate it. As soon as we did it, it suddenly came alive. It felt so real. So I rang Warner Brothers, and said, "We're going to do the first bit in Hindi with English subtitles."

Q: They dumped the movie.
DB: That was for different [reasons].

Q: So what happened with Warner Brothers?
DB: When they closed Warner Independent, we were just one of a number of films that [were in limbo]--we were shot; we were edited; we were very far down the line when we heard [about that]. And you just thought that's going to be it.
We won't get theatrical release. In the melee, there are so many casualties in the process, we'll wind up on DVD, especially because we don't have a star in it. It's got no platform, no profile, nothing. I remember thinking about what I learned in India, and I thought, "it'll be okay. Just go with it, we'll see."
And then things began to happen. We got to make shuffling noises at Telluride and Toronto [film festivals]. Suddenly the studio goes, "What? What was that shuffle noise"
Then you get a couple of journalists sniffing around it. John Hall at the LA Times was sniffing around it. And that makes the studio go, "What? What?" And then, to give Warner credit, they showed it to Fox Searchlight, which they shouldn't have done technically because if you're going to show it, you should show it to all the buyers.
But they showed it to him because they thought if anyone could release this film - a third of which is in Hindi [laughs] - it would be him. And he picked it up and ran with it, and here we are.

Q: What led you to put this Bollywood ending on it?
DB: If you've lived and worked there for eight months, if you live and work in Bombay, you can't leave without a dance [laughs]. You can't.
It would be like making a film about America without a motorcar. You just can't do it. It would be wrong. It would be so fake.
The key thing was whether we should put it inside the film linked to a question, or whether we put it at the end of the film, as it is. So we decided to put it at the end of the film to celebrate [Jamal and Latika's] love. It's not actually a sendup of Bollywood. It's genuine, absolutely genuine. Their love of movies, and love of dancing, and their love of song is something to be absolutely celebrated, even though we may not be able to watch some of the films.

Q: Did you have any trouble with ratings [for "Slumdog Millionaire"] here?
DB: Yes, it's an R. They said it was because of the intensity. There's nothing we can do about it.

Q: Is there a message you want people to get out of this? I know after "Millions," kids were inspired to raise money to build wells in Africa. Is there something you want people to do after this or take inspiration from it?
DB: I think when you elect Barack Obama, the world's going to become a bigger place again. That's all you get from doing something like that. You're not there to teach anybody anything; you're there to learn about yourself.
These people that live in slums are extraordinary - so generous, so resourceful. I want it so it will be something that they'll like, really. I hope they get to see it on a pirate copy somewhere [laughs].

Q: Will we ever see your much-missed "Alien Love Triangle" come out?
DB: It's sort of beginning to become a bit more visible. They showed it at this little cinema in Wales, in the UK - the smallest cinema in the UK - they have twelve seats.
It was an old railway carriage, and this guy converted it thirty years ago into a cinema.
He was retiring it, and closing it. He asked if we could show it as its final film, and they did. They showed it.
Kenneth Branagh, who's in it, went along - I was in India - to present the film. I think that's a sign, that hopefully, it will appear somewhere soon.

Q: Is there anything else in the pipeline?
DB: Nothing at all. I tend to work on one thing only at a time. It drives my agent mad.