Al

Prior to this my favourite film was Oliver (1968). (Sad but true)

Every (new) film I have seen since then was just a waste of a couple of hours of my life - honestly.

Then I saw Trainspotting and I was totally captivated for the duration. I don't take drugs, I hardly empathise with anyone or anything in the film. Its just that I thought it a fantastic film - the humour, the acting, the music, the script - everything.

Sorry if this all sounds a little amateurish - but there you have it.

(Great web site BTW)

Jaxs

I can only agree, the depths the addicts sink too is graphically described in the toilet scene. The narration of the story line, the contrast between the characters, the violent. the cracfty all potrayed with an excellent script.

Rgds

Jaxs

DB7

Why I'm mad about...Trainspotting

The best British film of the 1990s still leaves Ed Potton reeling.

British cinema in the 1990s was dominated by stolid bodice rippers and the diffident stutterings of Richard Curtis. Aside, that is, from Trainspotting, a serendipitous moment when script, cast, photography, music and marketing conspired to create a movie that left audiences reeling as though from a headbutt.
With a cover proclaiming it to be the “best book ever written by man or woman�, Irvine Welsh’s tale of skagaddled Edinburgh youth was an immediate cult hit on its publication in 1993. Movie sharks circled hungrily, but when John Hodge first considered adapting the novel, he was struck by its unsuitability for the screen. Although rammed to the gills with vivid personalities and white-knuckle incident, it had no plot.

Hodge and Danny Boyle, his savvy Mancunian director, originally flirted with Robert Altman-style overlapping stories. Ultimately, though, they had the audacity to fashion a linear narrative with Mark Renton, the novel’s most articulate commentator, as its anti-hero, and cast a star of their previous hit, Shallow Grave. Ewan McGregor could spike veins, insert suppositories and remove condoms with a sexy nonchalance, but could also act as a foil for his more lurid associates: the amoral Sick Boy, the psychopathic Begbie and the luckless Spud.

Sex, drugs and popular culture provided the outlet for their working-class frustrations, but Boyle’s biggest achievement was making us feel that we were experiencing the peaks and troughs of that trusted troika. He made innovative use of British and American pop songs, whose rights were secured partly thanks to David Bowie’s vocal admiration for the script. Each track subtly signposted the film’s 1980s-to-1990s chronology: Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life accompanied Renton’s opening anti-consumerist call-to-arms, while his climactic about-turn was set to Damon Albarn’s Closet Romantic.

Aided by this fearsome musical arsenal, and no doubt inspired by Quentin Tarantino, Boyle switched with breathtaking speed from macabre humour to sickening tragedy to full-blown fantasy without once losing his footing. Indeed, test audiences’ only complaint was that the film was over too quickly: a 90-minute blitzkrieg of scenes that are as flab-free as McGregor’s torso became after two months’ abstinence from beer and fried food.

Trainspotting failed to launch an avalanche of ground-breaking Brit flicks, while Boyle’s bubble deflated with his misjudged follow-up, A Life Less Ordinary. But for a few brief months, Britain � or more precisely, Scotland � could boast the world’s hippest, brashest and most exciting movie

michael dangero

There is nothing sad about that fact. "Oliver!" was my favourite film until I saw "Sid and Nancy" and the same reasons you have for "Trainspotting" (which ranks up there in the Top 10, Top 5 British) I still have for S&N -- even after nearly 17 years. So good on ya!

\"For me it\'s a full-time job.\"
Jack Carter

Freddy

Oliver was and still is one of my favourite movies, just thinking of Ron Moody makes me smile. He even got a standing ovation in the press viewing after "Be Back Soon"
Favourite films are like our friends and partners, they may not be perfect but we love them anyway.
regards
Freddy

The world wags on.

red squirrel

Has anyone read Irvine Welsh's follow-up 'Porno'? If so, do you think that it'd make a great film, with the same four actors playing Renton, Begbie, Spud and Sick Boy?

I do and I'd love to see it made into a film. It would mean Mssrs McGregor and Carlyle going back to the roles that made them the megastars that they are today.

Wetherby Pond

Plenty of people do, including Robert Carlyle and Danny Boyle.

Unfortunately, Boyle and Ewan McGregor are apparently still not speaking to each other following the row over The Beach (for which Boyle cast Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead instead of McGregor) - so until that's resolved, Porno is staying on the bookshelf.

DB7

Best left alone methinks, unless Danny Boyle is in desperate need of a project I can't see it happening, and to be honest I'm not sure I'd want to.

DB7

Must-have movies: Trainspotting (1996)

Marc Lee reviews a classic that every film-lover will want to own

Danny Boyle's adrenaline rush of a movie is an extraordinary achievement: a story of squalid, low-life drug addiction that is realistic, responsible and - apart from one almost unbearably painful moment involving a baby - very, very funny.

At its heart are a bunch of idiots who display all the selfishness, deviousness, disloyalty and unreliability of smack-heads who can see no further than their next hit; yet at least two of them - Renton (Ewan McGregor) and Spud (Ewen Bremner) - are, ultimately, likeable characters. We come to care what happens to them.

Only the short-fused psychopath Begbie (incidentally, the only non-user in the gang) is without redeeming qualities. But then Robert Carlyle's thrilling ferocity in the role makes it one of the most memorable performances in recent British cinema.

The film opens with a thundering, heart-stopping flourish as the lads career down Edinburgh's Princes Street pursued by security guards after a botched shoplifting expedition. Iggy Pop's Lust For Life roars furiously on the soundtrack, Renton recites - in voice-over - his sneering "choose life, choose a job, choose a big f***ing television" speech, and we're thrust immediately into a turbulent, troubled and terrifying world.

The grim realities of life as an addict are explored unflinchingly, although we're often invited to laugh at the gang's antics: Renton's difficulties getting a hit via a suppository and his subsequent visit to "the worst toilet in Scotland" are a triumph of surreal visual invention. Later, a desperate trip to his supplier is shot with comparable verve as he drops frog-like into the room, and then sinks dreamily through the carpet as the effects of the heroin take hold.

When tragedy finally catches up with the gang, the mood of the film changes. Renton escapes to London and a job as an estate agent, only to be followed by his mates who want him to fund a drug deal. Happily, it all ends badly for Begbie; for Renton and Spud, the future might just offer some hope.

The script, by John Hodge from Irvine Welsh's 1993 novel, sparkles throughout; the photography is relentlessly urgent; and the performances are uniformly impressive (it's McGregor's best film; and Kelly Macdonald makes an unforgettable big-screen debut as a very naughty schoolgirl). Behaviour as sad, stupid and self-destructive as this really shouldn't be so much fun to watch.

Jennie_Kermode

The thing that thrilled me about 'Trainspotting' when I first went to see it was that it felt like a film about real people living real lives. I was sick of Hollywood blockbusters which bid for my sympathy with characters who only ever had one problem at a time, and that usually one which could have been solved in five minutes by anyone with half a brain (don't invite the creepy guy to move in; hang up the phone; close the curtains at night; be honest about that affair; etc.) - otherwise they lived slick, cushioned lives where money was never a worry and nobody ever got ill. 'Trainspotting' was about poverty, social exclusion, and the camaraderie which goes with it and gets people through; it was about people I might easily have known inhabiting a familiar world. It was immensely refreshing.

As someone who has taken plenty of drugs (though I've never been an addict, and I don't really do much these days - I've enough hassle dealing with the side effects of prescription medication), I have to say that the drug-related scenes were spot on - especially Spud's speed-addled job interview. My friends and I were delighted to see a director finally get it right, and to see people being honest about drug-related issues. My American girlfriend (the one who revealed to me that the scene involving the first day of the Edinburgh festival had been cut from the US version) said that, given the state of drug education over there (which all follows the line that ignorance equals abstinence), it was the first time she'd seen anyone admit that drugs can be fun whilst acknowledging that they can also do enormous personal and social damage. Normally it's the state on one side and pushers (or, since they're not really all that common, more often wide-eyed teenaged drug evangelists) on the other, with any hope of a balanced viewpoint absent from the outset. Even here, it's really hard for most young people to get information about what different drugs are and how they can reduce the risks if they've decided to take them anyway. This is part of what glamourises drug use; 'Trainspotting' did a lot to break down that alluring mystique.

Few films which take on big social issues like this do it with as much energy as 'Trainspotting'. It appealed because it was honest, a long awaited shout in the stifling silence, but also because of its vivacity and charm. This was nicely undercut by the character of Begbie, the sort of familiar day to day psychopath who's worth a thousand of the usual repressed Hollywood Englishmen when it comes to actually being scary. Begbie's power came from the fact that one could bump into the likes of him any day of the week. The awkward social position in which he placed Renton was beautifully observed, like so many of the film's little vignettes.

Jennie

red squirrel

I thought I started this thread?! 'Tis a great shame that Boyle and McGregor are not on speaking terms to make Porno. *Not* having done drugs, but having lived - or 'stayed' as they say - in Edinburgh, to me Begbie was by far the most credible character, right down to the Pringle sweater and white socks. His speech was more working-class than that of Renton or Sick Boy, ken. In fact Edinburgh is full of Begbies, Jambos as well as Hibees.

Wetherby Pond

I felt that way about the book and Harry Gibson's stage adaptation, both of which I'd read/seen before I saw the film on its opening weekend... and I was a trifle disappointed, to tell you the truth.

I think part of the problem was that the film generally failed to duplicate the extraordinary linguistic versatility and multiple viewpoints of the novel - which Gibson's version thrived on: he staged it as a series of monologues, so we not only got Renton's point of view but also that of all the other major characters. By focusing on Renton alone, the film certainly had more narrative coherence, but on balance I think it lost more than it gained: the female characters in particular were reduced to little more than ciphers.

But had I seen it without all that earlier preparation, I would probably have felt very differently: I can certainly appreciate the film's impact, and would agree that it was largely deserved.

vuittion

This has to be one of the greatest all time british films.

I never get tired of watching it.

thirdlady

Trainspotting is great movie although the subject matter of the movie is something we all hear about everyday, "Drugs" I found it good Ewan McGregor was good at his part.


the girl that plays diane is married to dougie payne of scottish band Travis.

A.S.Carroll
"Happiness isn't sold in bottles you have to achieve it in your own lifetime!"

DB7

How John Hodge wrote the Trainspotting screenplay
Interview by Tim Teeman

John Hodge was born in 1964. He won a Bafta and was nominated for an Oscar for his Trainspotting (1996) script. His screenplays include Shallow Grave (1994) and The Beach (2001).

Shallow Grave was my first screenplay, Trainspotting my second. Andrew Macdonald [the producer] gave me Irvine Welsh’s book. It was very good, but it was hard to think how it could be a film. There’s no story, it’s a collection of anecdotes and short stories. The challenge was to make it a narrative without imposing too much structure.

Renton (Ewan McGregor) was the main voice, and I realised he would be the guide. I chose my favourite bits of the book, wrote down in what order they might appear, then that expanded into a script. My advice would be to write a few scenes that you find easy to visualise, really quickly. Keep moving. Don’t get it right, get it down. Don’t labour over scenes or get bogged down.

The first draft took five months, the second six weeks. I went to a few rehearsals but didn’t hang around on set. You have to let the director have control. It wasn’t without its arguments, but Trainspotting worked well because everyone was working in the same direction. Dennis Potter, I think, once said an actor in Gorky Park had been an “oar out of the water”, meaning disruptive – there was none of that.

My favourite scene is the one that has become famous, where Renton disappears down the toilet. I was just looking for an interesting way to finish a scene and Danny [Boyle, the director], Andrew [Macdonald] and I didn’t want to make the stock, pious, po-faced drama about drugs. This wasn’t going to be a preaching film. The humour of the characters was going to be surprising. It generated strong reactions.

Success does bring pressure but it also leads on to the next job. I didn’t do a screenwriting course. I trained and qualified, but never practised as a doctor. To get into screenwriting you need to be lucky and persevering. A good writing course will help you only if you have a talent. Once you’re in, there are a few genius screenwriters, there are a few who are terrible and the rest of us, the 95 per cent, who make the effort to deliver. I’m working on Young Stalin. A biographical subject is new for me.

It’s not a great job if you’re an egotistical artist. Occasionally, I wonder if I should be a doctor and I’ve worked on things that haven’t worked out – The Beach was well done, though it had a lot of people pulling it in different directions – but you do what you’re paid to do.