Trainspotting isn't really about drugs," declares David Aukin, Channel 4's head of drama. "It's a buddy movie [although] the subject matter may have been too strong for official selection in Competition at Cannes this year."
Indeed, with its rapid-fire, spliced-up images of tourniquets tightening and needles plunging, combined with some strong language including 65 occasions when the word "cunt" is used, by producer Andrew MacDonald's reckoning, the film is definitely too strong for certain palates. That said, its performance at the UK box-office, where it has taken over US$15 million, suggests overwhelmingly that it has hit the right vein with a large section of the cinema-going public. To be precise, Trainspotting is the fourth-highest grossing UK film in British history, and is still playing.
With the opening titles barely over, heroin addict Mark Renton (Shallow Grave's Ewan McGregor), is already comparing the highs of smack to having sex. "People think it's all about desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored," he says, voice cracking in euphoria as he shoots up. "But what they forget is the pleasure of it, otherwise we wouldn't do it. Take the best orgasm you've ever had, multiply it by a thousand, and you're still nowhere near it"
Despite the copious amounts of drug use and abuse, Trainspotting is really about 'human beings', insists Macdonald. Renton is smart, cynical and lost, putting himself through a cold- turkey hell (heroin withdrawal) only to decide life was more interesting as a junkie. Good old, well-adjusted Tommy, played by Kevin McKidd (Small Faces), turns to the needle after splitting with his girlfriend, while amiable but hopeless Spud (Ewen Bremner) goes to prison, comes out and stays exactly the same. Meanwhile, suave but perverse Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) kicks the habit just to be annoying.
"It's about how people deal with the situation," MacDonald explains. "Just because they take drugs, doesn't mean they're stupid. If someone as smart as Renton chooses to take heroin, so could anyone."
Directed by Danny Boyle from a screenplay by John Hodge (Macdonald's collaborators on the film Shallow Grave), Trainspotting was brought in for just under US$2.6 million. After the enormous success of Shallow Grave, the UK's highest grossing British film in 1995, the trio were wooed by Hollywood with some major deals, but it was Aukin who not only offered them the necessary finances, but what they really wanted: control over the final cut.
"Hollywood wants to control individuals, hoping that what it likes about them will rub off on their product," maintains Macdonald. "It's a deal with the devil, and that's why it's for millions."
Trainspotting began life as a fragmented collection of short stories by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. Faced with adapting the interior monologues and harsh vernacular, Hodge used the character of Renton to form a continual narrative composed from sections of the stories, and in so doing, won this year's British Academy Award (BAFTA) for Best Screenplay. "We didn't want a Short Cuts, so we chose the strongest character, the strongest voice of this world," says Macdonald. "Renton is smart, he's Welsh, and he escapes."
Complementing Renton's narrative is the soundtrack, charting the film's progress from the late-80s to the mid-90s through the changing music scene. The film kicks off with a pounding version of Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, taking in the cream of 90s Britpop, before ending on Underworld's ambient dance rhythms. It's an impressive line-up, certainly with the home market, testifying to and capitalising on Welsh's undoubted cult status. "I wanted to write a song as soon as I read the book," says Elastica's Donna Lorraine Matthews. "It seems only rock 'n' roll books tell it like is."
Stylistically, the filmmakers drew out the surreal quality of Welsh's writing, exploring "the seductive, sensual area" of heroin, as Boyle puts it. Grown men climb into toilets searching for opium suppositories and find themselves swimming under the sea, while an Aids test becomes a glittering game show.
"Most people think being honest and truthful to the audience means social realism," says Macdonald. "But people are bored of that, and it's not the truth anyway - you choose where to point the camera and where to cut the film."
"They [the filmmakers] walk the line between what is morally acceptable and what people want to see," says Aukin. "The music and style is very calculated, but it's no good just moralising, you've got to appeal in a way audiences can respond to. Trainspotting has proved there is an audience in Britain for contemporary movies rather than just heritage [flicks]. It gives us a broader palate of options and makes us a more interesting country."
Adam Minns
Prod Co: Figment Films
Prod: Andrew Macdonald
Dir: Danny Boyle
Scr: John Hodge
Ph: Brian Tufano
Art dir: Tracey Gallacher
Prod des: Kave Quinn
Cos: Rachael Fleming
Mus: various artists
Ed: Masahiro Hirakubo
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd
Running time: 93mins
Int Sales: Polygram Film International
