An interview with Danny Boyle, director of 127 Hours

Danny Boyle is a great in conversation – thoughtful, patient and, in one-on-one situations, given to using your first name, which is always a pleasure for journalists who are tired of the increasingly anonymous promo-junket circuit. The transcript below is part of a 75-minute interview the 54-year-old director gave to me and a cluster of international press over dinner at the Union club in London's Greek Street in January 2011. Time was tight, since Boyle was busy with the National Theatre's production of his play Frankenstein, but he was able to shed some light on his experiences with last year's six-time Oscar nominee 127 Hours while hinting at his plans for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics…

When did you first hear about Aron Ralston's story?
I heard about it in 2003 and I was very intrigued by it. I remember following it up, watching the news, for what was eventually a press conference he gave a couple of weeks after he was rescued. And I remember following it because it was one of those stories that snagged, really. I mean, when you start researching these kinds of stories, you find that they happen... well, not a lot, but there are a surprising number of examples of them. Like, there was a guy in New Zealand who cut his legs off, because he was trapped in such a remote place. But he had a friend with him who helped him do it, who carried him out, and he lived. And it made me think, “Why does Aron Ralston's story stick and the New Zealand one doesn't?” It's like the Chilean miners' story. There are lots of mining stories all the time, so why did the Chilean one stick? And it was wasn't just because it was successful in the end, it had stuck already.

Why do you think that was?
I think it was something about the fact that there were a group of people down there; they had space and time – what were they gonna do with it? And you do find yourself thinking, “What would I be like? Would I be the happy one? Would I be the miserable one? The rebel? The medic? The priest? The sports fanatic? Which one would I be?” And I think that's the same with the Aron Ralston story. You think, “Would I be able to do it? Could I get through it?"

What did you think? Would you be able to cut your own arm off?
We did a lot of work on this, and we'd all do it. Virtually all of us would do it. But not all of us would survive, because Aron had a lot of luck getting out of that canyon. For start, he attempted [the amputation] so late that his blood had thickened. He says in his autobiography that he was about 15 minutes away from having a heart attack. His blood had thickened so much, because of the dehydration, that he was about to have a heart attack – a classic old-person's heart attack. So that meant that when he actually did it, he didn't bleed as much as he could have done. If he'd done it when he first attempted it, he would certainly have bled to death before he got out of there. But because it took him so long to get out of that place – that was his first bit of luck. And that's a timing thing, that's fate, it's whatever you want to call it. But the second thing is that those people that found him in the canyon, the Dutch family... That was an extraordinary coincidence. Because we've been to that place, and days and days can go by when nobody goes there, because it's just so remote. Occasionally people trek in to take pictures of the petrogylphs, and it just so happened that, that day, they were there. So there are certain factors that worked in his favour. But we did think that pretty much everyone would do it. Eventually you'd have a go. (Laughs) And you might do it very unsuccessfully, and you might die, but you'd have a go.

So when did you decide that this would make a good screenplay?
I remember very clearly. I heard about the story in 2003, and then François Ivernel, who runs Pathé, sent me Aron Ralston's book, which was published in 2006. And the book is split into alternate chapters. One set of chapters, the real-time chapters, are about his experiences in the canyon, and they alternate with these other chapters, which are much more considered chapters, where he's writing from a position of having survived. And he's talking about his life and things that he thinks are interesting. But I didn't find that interesting at all! (Laughs) I found those chapters really irritating! All I wanted to do was get back to the chapters in the canyon. And that made me think, “That's compulsion.” Because when you have that feeling in a story, where you can't stop thinking, “What's gonna happen now? What's he gonna do next?” you know it's a film. Well, I do. because those are the ones I make, where you feel completely compelled to want to get to the end. Commercial considerations don't appeal to me when I approach a movie. I just think, “What's the buzz you get off it?” And I loved that feeling about 127 Hours. Plus there was a surprise within it. Because the more I looked into it, the more I saw that it wasn't a story, really, about heroic individualism, which is how its portrayed in America.

So what is it?
It's actually a story about everybody. When he goes in there, Aron is the supreme survivor. He is the ultimate hero; he doesn't need anybody, he's completely self-reliant, he's an achiever, he's athletic, he sets himself targets. he's got everything going for him. He's turned on his back on a brilliant computer career to be in the so-called wilderness, and he's the ultimate American hero, walking in there. And none of that does him any good, because he uses all those skills for the first five days. You see him trying to do everything to get out of there. And it's only when he realises how much he needs other people, these people that he has taken for granted or taken very casually... Like his mum. (Laughs) I mean, we've all done it – you don't ring your mum, or she calls and you don't answer it because you know she'll be on the phone for 20 minutes and you've got a bus to catch! And it's only when he realises the importance of these people that he can get himself out of there. And I thought that was interesting, because it made the film be about people, not this individual. Obviously, he shows extraordinary resilience, and fortitude and application. But it's not really a story about that. It's really a story about how we're all interconnected.

Was Ralston easy to convince?
We wanted the freedom to interpret his story as we desired, and that was one of the big stumbling blocks with Aron originally. I went to see him in Holland about it in 2006, I went to meet him in Utrecht, and he didn't want to do it. He wanted to do it as a documentary, so he could keep very strict control of the narrative voice of the film. There was a fear of what Hollywood, or the movies, might do to his story. But he was still a very controlling person then. He thought he had all the answers. After the accident, he went through a brief period of celebrity, and I think that delayed his growth, really. Because when I met him again in 2009, he was much more able to trust us to tell the story. Because we said we wanted to tell it in our own way. It would be very accurate, but we wanted to be to depart from the facts occasionally, and he was nervous about that.

What kind of things did you change?
For instance, the scene where he imagines he's on a TV game show. That didn't happen. All the other video-camera messages were verbatim, but that one isn't. But we wanted the right to do that. And he said about it afterwards – and it was a great tribute to the film and to James [Franco] – “That didn't happen. But it was true.” We were very pleased when he said that. Because his mind was literally coming apart. When you go without water, the hallucinations are intense.

Why did you cast James Franco as Ralston?
Funnily enough, Pineapple Express was very important in the casting process. We needed someone who had comic ability as well as an intense ability, because you're not gonna have a comic character coming in, you're not gonna have a villain coming in. Whoever takes that role has to play all those parts, he's got to change the tone constantly to keep you refreshed. Otherwise you wouldn't watch it. So we needed somebody with that variety. I'd seen James do some serious acting, and then I saw him do Pineapple Express and I thought, “That's a really good actor there.” So we met him and a number of other guys. We met about six to eight guys, actually, and the first meeting with James wasn't very good. I don't know if you've ever met him but he appears to be stoned most of the time. You think he's asleep – he has very heavy eyelids. But he's super-bright, super-alert; he doesn't do drugs, drink, anything, it's all a front so that he can suss out what's going on. So it wasn't a very good first meeting. But the casting director said, “Don't be put off by that, he's always like that." So we met him again and he was great. And we cast him straight away.

Why do you think this an important story for today?
Well, for example, for me, the danger in, say, America is that – with the Tea Party and everything – it's becoming more and more insular. It wants to look inward, and that's not the way to go. We have to believe that we're all interconnected and all dependent on one another. So.. it's not a political film, but there is that idea, that metaphor in it. It's like Lance Armstrong, who is also seen as a big American superhero. Now, I can understand that [perception] in terms of his battle against cancer. But in terms of the Tour De France... We all know what the Tour De France is – it's teamwork. One person wins it, but there's eight guys getting up those mountains and down the other side! (Laughs) So that's my belief in why the film's important.

What attracts you to people who must make extreme choices?
I like extreme stories anyway. Even if they're realistically based, I push them as far as possible, because I like that in cinema, that's just my tastes. I don't wanna make a naturalistic film, a film of manners. That's not my kind of film; I'm much more interested in extreme, visceral experiences. I love that in cinema. I try to make everything into an action movie. It doesn't matter what the story is, I try to make it into an action movie. In the sense that the film should have a momentum and also be viscerally based. I'm not an intellectual filmmaker who wants you to treat it in a contemplative way. You can think back on it afterwards, but while you're experiencing it, I want to make it feel like you're trapped in the headlights of the film. You're frozen. I love that feeling in the cinema, when you go in and you're pinned to your seat. then you look at your watch and you're like, “That was two hours? No way!!!!!!” That's what I love in cinema. I don't want to make intellectual films. I don't think that's cinema's roots. Its roots are in huge groups of people in cities, exhausted by their daily work, going to the cinema for release, for engagement. That's the origins of cinema. It's not an intellectual thing, like a philosopher's book.

Do you remember when you first saw a film with that kind of energy?
A Clockwork Orange. It was banned* in Britain but I managed to see it before it was banned. I think I was 14 when it was released. I looked older, so I got me and my mate in to see it. That was incredible. That was a big thing for me.

With the music and editing, 127 Hours is a very rhythmic and surprisingly kinetic experience considering it's about a man who's trapped...
Very much so. People often say, “Which is the bit you enjoy the most in making films?” and it's probably the music. I love putting the music on it, and I do think like that the whole time. I think musically. I love putting pop songs in it, and I love working with a composer, like AR Rahman, who we had again on this. He's a wonderful guy to work, even though it's a very different project to Slumdog. I love it because you get the pulse of the film. I remember when we started, with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, a lot of people criticised us, because they said, “It's just like watching pop videos.” But, no, I didn't shake my head. I went, “OK! Is it? That's fine!” (Laughs) What's wrong with that? I like pop videos; the trick is to try to make a narrative from it that enables you to sustain it. The techniques are all part of our culture now. We all watch pop videos as a way of accessing music, and we want that visual stimulation. The diet of material we watch on television and in cinemas has changed. The editing tempo is much more rapid. And I love that.

After that, you did Frankenstein at the National Theatre. How did that come about?
With this friend of mine, Nick Dear, I've been working on this script for a number of years, We worked together in the theatre about 15 years ago, when we did a Thirso de Molina play – he wrote the first western manifestation of the Don Juan myth. We adapted his play for the RSC, and it did very well, it was great fun, and so we decided to have a go at doing Frankenstein next. And then we just went off doing different things. But we only cracked it quite recently, we had this idea of casting the two actors [in alternating roles], so we took it to the National Theatre and off we went.

What was so difficult to crack?
Well, the thing that we wanted to do was that we wanted to give the creature his voice back. In the novel he has a voice, but the movies have basically robbed him of that. So we wanted to give him his voice back. And then there was the matter of finding a theatrical way of adapting it, so it would work on stage.

And how did you make it work?
Victor Frankenstein is the doctor, the brilliant young doctor who animates this body, gives it life. And Victor and the creature – who has no name and is never given a name, it's a very important theme in the book that he doesn't have a name – are very much bound together. The play begins with the creature's point of view as he's born, and that's a very important starting point. And then it sees his development. I mean, it's very accurate to the novel, I'd say, but we cut a lot, because it's a ten-hour read. It's not told from Victor's point of view but Victor is a very important character in it, and by the end they become very bound to each other. That's one of the main things about the book; this brilliant young woman – she was 19 when she wrote it – was surrounded by the likes of Byron and Shelley, these brilliant men. And one of the things that she was writing about was the idea of men creating life without women. She was constantly pregnant – I think she was pregnant three times during the writing, the gestation of this novel – and the men she was writing about, Victor and the creature, were in some ways versions of Byron and Shelley, who were romantic poets but were also obsessed with science and the coming of the industrial revolution. That's what she was writing about, and she wrote it without vanity. She didn't write Elizabeth, the female character, with any vanity; she doesn't challenge the men. So it's very brilliant piece to open up for the modern era.

You're also directing the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics. Was that a proposition you had to think about or did you accept the job immediately?
I'm a big Olympics fan, so when they asked me I was delighted and I said yes straight away. I'm a big sports nut, I love the Olympics, and though it gets tarnished occasionally I still love the ideal of it. It's a wonderful thing. And it's happening about a mile from where I live, so it's a local job and there won't be many travel expenses. I can literally walk to the stadium! But the investment it will bring to the area is really important. So I'm very proud. I went into it very naively and very innocently but, that's OK, I think that's a good way to go into jobs. There's a group of us, doing it, I'm not doing it on my own, and then they provide a group of people who are very experienced at this scale of shows. And we're just working everything out together.

Were you given carte blanche to do whatever you like?
It is carte blanche, except... there's no such thing, because it's about what it's possible to do. And it has to be for everyone, you can't do it as an 18-only or a 15-only show – it's for everybody in the world. So those are the only restrictions that stop it being totally carte blanche. But it's an act of trust; they assume you'll come up with something they'll find as inspiring and appropriate as you do. But you can't worry too much about that, because that would inhibit you. You just have to think, “What would be the best thing for the show?” And then if they wanna fire you, they'll fire you! (Laughs) And that's fine. That's how you should approach everything. Now, I'm sure it won't come to that, but if they hated my ideas, they'd have to [fire me]. And that would be fine, because the whole Olympics thing is much more important than any individual.

What will you be bringing to it?
Listen, the reason I got it was because obviously Slumdog was a massive hit and had an exuberance about it that they were attracted to. But it's kind of a mixture. The scale of it is like a U2 concert, and yet it's got a very noble ideal. It's not just built around some songs. Which is partly the Olympic spirit and partly trying to reflect – the impossible job of reflecting – the culture of a country, what sums up a country.

And what sums up this country for you?
You'll have to come and see the show!

* Contrary to popular belief, A Clockwork Orange wasn't actually banned in the UK, it was withdrawn by the Kubrick estate after a series of death threats to the director...