An effortlessly versatile director, Danny Boyle has done everything from resurrecting zombies and tripping out in Thailand to shooting up with Ewan McGregor. And all in film form. “From the director of Trainspotting,” may often be read on his posters, but none can argue with the success of films like 28 Days Later and Millions, either commercially or critically.
Sunshine is his attempt at sci-fi, and despite his claims that he’d never return to the genre it seems critics and audiences will be glad he made the trip once at least.
We caught up with Boyle, one of the country’s most exciting directors, to talk CERN, Sunshine and, Starship Troopers.
RT-UK: We visited CERN recently with Dr. Brian Cox, your science advisor.
I’ve heard it’s amazing. And Brian is great. He has this deal with the Royal Society or something who basically pay him for ten years and they’ve sent him out on a mission to make science more accessible to people; to give a public face to science which isn’t an old man who’s brilliant but in another universe to ordinary people. His remit is to make the public face of science seem interesting and sexy and something that people would want to deal with. And, God, we need that. I remember science when I was at school, I just couldn’t get it at all.
RT-UK: That’s what amazed me because he talks so energetically about physics and makes it so much cooler than it ever used to be at school.
And he should do. When you think about the modern generation, people who love movies and computers and videogames and you just think, “They should be scientists.” Because they’re virtually scientists anyway; they’re within a hair’s breath of being able to do physics and yet they hate physics. Somebody like him will tip the balance; you can see why he’s been given that job. It’s worked in our favour – we got him for the movie which helped us and the actors and me, basically non-scientists, it helps us feel how you felt about science when you went to CERN, but also the science world gets to be attached to a movie, so it works in both our interests.
RT-UK: And bizarrely he’s Cillian Murphy’s doppleganger…
He so looks like him, doesn’t he? If you did a job on their hair… A make-up artist could make them look like twins with a bit of hair-cutting and shaping.
RT-UK: Cillian’s doing his job in the movie, so it’s a weird coincidence they look so alike.
And it helped because a worry you have on a realistic basis is that you think, “If we’re going to cast a man who’s meant to be the brightest man on Earth – the Michael Schumacher of physics – should he also be as good looking as Cillian is?” It’s a bit much, really. But then you meat Brian and there you go, that’s what life is like.
RT-UK: Are you a science fiction fan?
I’m not a huge Star Wars or Star Trekkie. I used to watch Star Trek as a kid when it was on telly but I never carried it into the movie. I’ve watched Star Wars because everybody has to and my son was obsessed with it, but I never felt it in my blood like some people do; like Alex and Andrew. They’re a bit younger than me, but for them it’s everything. Especially the first three. They went to see them when they were twelve years old whereas I was at university by then and I was into punk, not Star Wars.
But then I thought that apart from that genre, that fantasy genre, that section of sci-fi, the other stuff – the much harder, science-based stuff – I love. And I realised I do love it. So I am a fan. But I only really discovered that when I was starting to prepare Sunshine. I suddenly realised that I’d been to see Starship Troopers, Contact and Alien: Resurrection all in Leicester Square on their opening weekends. Now I don’t do that with most films – I’ll catch them eventually – but with those films I did. And I think that makes me a fan; I’m clearly drawn to them, you know. I’ve seen more of those on opening nights than any other genre so yeah; I think it probably does make me a fan.
RT-UK: You’ve said a lot recently that you’d never make another sci-fi film again and Sunshine is probably the hardest type of sci-fi film to make because it’s so caught up in the rules of science fiction. Is that part of reason why it was such a slog?
You don’t want to describe it as a slog because you think, “Would I go and see a film that its director had described as a slog?” [laughs] But it is tough and it’s like you say, there are so many rules that you have to obey in this corridor, there are so many pitfalls, there are so many other brilliant films that are in there. And because it’s not a fantasy one where anything goes, because it’s this type of sci-fi you’re always going to look like other films as well because they basically have similar ingredients. And, in addition to that, you have to try and create the sun. You want it to be spectacular so that it just changes people when they look at it – like it does for the characters – and you’ve got to maintain that throughout the film.
Getting up to that level that those other films have set for it; that’s the challenge. You’ve got to get on that plateau because anything just underneath it is second best and it doesn’t really work. I mean, it works, it’s fine, but it’s not where you want to be. It’s tough, really tough, and I’ve never done anything like it.
I’ve never really worked on anything where I’ve had to push as hard as I’ve had to push on this. I mean really push people; beyond what they want to do in the end. You push, and push and push. You just don’t know whether you could get back to that again. And you do look at the other directors that have done them and they basically don’t go back to it. Ridley Scott had a massive hit with Alien, but he didn’t go back. He did Blade Runner which is futuristic but it’s different, so he’s never been back, and boy he must have been invited. You can imagine every single sci-fi script is sent to him first trying to tempt him back. Kubrick never went back. And yet, as a setting place for that kind of director it’s perfect. Cameron’s going back, Avatar will be there.
RT-UK: He’s done a couple I guess.
The Abyss is a space movie, really. Certainly as far as the working conditions go.
RT-UK: When you think about Scott, Cameron and Kubrick, their sci-fi films have often either been their finest films or great personal turning points for them as directors.
It’s the ultimate test, I think. There is one other test for a director which is a musical; a modern day original musical. That is the holy grail that no-one appears to ever get near, you know. But just below that is the space movie because you are playing God. A director is playing God a bit anyway in a movie, but on this you really are, you’re absolutely creating everything and you’re dictating everything. You set all the templates for the departments so you say, “Design-wise everything has to feel reachable – like it’s within fifty years – it’s still touchable, it’s not outlandish like it is in Star Wars. It’s not thought-control.” And so you’re setting that template and then you’re in the costume department saying, “We’re not going to do the NASA white suits, we’re going to try and do something different with it.”
Each of the areas you’re setting, whereas when you make a normal film life sets the areas sometimes. When you decide to film in Central London certain things are dictated to you and you take advantage of them; they’re gifts, they’re free things you get. Passers-by are the most obvious but there are loads. God’s light and the shape of buildings and stuff. This genius filmmaker, the French filmmaker Renoir said, “You should always leave a door open on your set for life to walk in.” It’s absolutely brilliant. And that kind of film is the one kind of film you can’t do that on. You seal all the doors before you set off and all the ingredients you have to prepare. It’s bizarre like that, and it’s a big ask of how close to that plateau you can get.
RT-UK: And once it’s done I guess you can be happy to have reached that plateau and move on.
Yeah, although you never finish films. You’re always kind-of dragged away at the last moment kicking and screaming. No matter how long you’ve spent on it and no matter how sick of it you are, they still have to drag you away at the end because you’d still be tinkering otherwise! [laughs]
RT-UK: And God forbid you’d do a special edition twenty years later…
[laughs] Absolutely!
