A director less ordinary

PROBABLY Bury FC's best known fan, award-winning director and giant of the newly resurgent British film industry. And an erstwhile Radcliffian lad to boot.

It could only be Danny Boyle, who has scared you with "Shallow Grave", shocked (and tickled) you in "Trainspotting" and will have you sniffling into your popcorn with his latest romantic comedy "A Life Less Ordinary".

A Radcliffe lad through and through, Danny has kept his accent and his roots in one of the most remarkable careers in the recent history of the British motion picture industry.

It was the release of this latest picture today that brought the director and yours truly together in the Sir Francis Drake suite in the Victorian Gothic splendour of the Palace Hotel, Manchester.

His latest film is a change - compared to what he's done before and, indeed, what pretty well everyone else is doing. It is a romantic comedy with any number of twists, plus a few other subverted Hollywood genres thrown in for good measure.

It is also the first film he has made in America, and I asked him, to start with, what life was like in Hollywood for a lad from Radcliffe.

"I don't like LA at all," he said. "It is quite unpleasant to walk down the street there and see famous people wandering around being nice to each other. I have to go there occasionally, but I spend as little time there as possible.

"I much prefer cities with a bit of life to them, like New York or Manchester."

The film was shot in Utah, rather than California or other more familiar locations for Hollywood movies, and I asked Danny why he had chosen it.

"It was near enough for the actors to get there easily from LA, but far enough away so that the studio executives weren't coming there every day to keep an eye on things. We could just get on with things."

Danny is not a studio system, schmoozing and partying type, and he said his background as a "Northern lad" had helped him stay outside the system, and make the films he wanted to make.

A cinephile as a child, he used to travel from Radcliffe into Manchester to watch movies.

"I went to all the big films but I used to go to a place called the Aaben in Hulme, which was an amazing four-screen place which showed European arthouse movies," he recalled.

"I originally went to see them because they had loads of sex scenes, but it did dawn on me that there was a bit more to them than just that!"

Danny got work with a travelling theatre company, unable to break into TV or films at the time - the early 80s - because it was "wrapped up by Oxbridge types".

The British film industry was costume dramas and little else at the time - something rather removed from Danny's tastes, or oeuvre.

He went into TV after working at the famous Royal Court Upstairs in London, and had a major hit with the series "Mr Wroe's Virgins" - filmed within an hour of his home town.

"I would like to make a film around here," he said. "London is so wrapped up in itself and has this attitude that no-one from outside London is worth anything.

"That's why it's good to work in other cities - like "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" being filmed in Glasgow, and it's wonderful to see a huge success like "The Full Monty", filmed in Sheffield. They have a real vitality." Yes, doing things differently is a kind of driving force for Danny and the team, and it was the subversion of Hollywood that he enjoyed making "A LIfe Less Ordinary".

For example the female lead - played by Cameron Diaz - is the stronger of the two, with the male lead (Boyle regular Ewan McGregor) a bit of a soppy type.

"The great thing about Ewan is his vulnerability," he said. "He's not the 80s style action hero. When he hits his finger he cries, just like real people, and I think that is his attraction for the audience."

The actor is also a bona fide star, who, having worked on both of Danny's other features, can "open" a film in Britain.

"People relate to films through the stars," said Danny.

As well as keeping away from studio executives and bending gender roles, the new film sees a few genres bent as well. Run of the mill it isn't, and Danny wants it to stay that way.

"What would you say," I ask him, "if some big Hollywood executive asked you to direct the next big blockbuster, just gave you $50 million and told you to get on with it."

"I wouldn't do it," he said. "And I don't think I would be very good at it either. It is a challenge from a technical point of view, but I get more out of telling a story and showing people characters."

"A LIfe Less Ordinary" is his biggest-budget film to date, costing $12 million jointly bankrolled by British and American money.

"We wanted to use the American studios to get the stars and the distribution, but we also wanted to make our own film," he said.

"It is a lot easier to do your own thing with a small budget like ours. To have a budget of $50 million and then do your own thing would, really, be irresponsible."

The film has so far got mixed reviews (it gets a thumbs up on our cinema page, though) and I wondered if this was because it is such a big change from his previous movies.

"I could say that, but that would be like complaining about the success of "Trainspotting", which would just be ridiculous," he said.

"If it hadn't been for that success, we wouldn't have made this one."

We also chatted about America, vast size of, the next project - a novel adaptation about a Utopian beach society set in Thailand - and the wonderful rise of Bury FC up the football league, about his impressions of America and the fact that he likes living in the East End of London - despite not liking London as such.

In our short meeting he was witty, funny, clever and sharp, obviously passionate about and committed to his work. A maverick, but a talented one, and a man who knows how to use the system without ever truly becoming a part of it.

All in all, a proper Northern lad.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.