Salon.com MobileHow do you keep them from turning into the next child-actor tragedy later in life?
Film is a bit pernicious sometimes. It can flatter people and then drop them. I didn't want that happening to these kids. They're very vulnerable at this age to the glamour of the world. I remember at the Toronto Film Festival we had this hugely successful screening, and you'd see the kids getting a tiny glimpse of this vain world, and you've got a responsibility to protect them from things like that. There are obviously good things to be had in this life of movies, but it can be really cruel to you as well.
What was it like before "28 Days Later," when you were coming off perceived failure with "The Beach"?
I had a really tough time of it. I was wounded after "The Beach." I'd really had enough of making a movie on that kind of scale. I went back to Manchester and made a couple of very small TV films with digital technology. And it was out of that, and the relationship I developed with the cameraman, that "28 Days Later" grew. The lesson to me was that you have to keep learning. You can't blindfold yourself and say, "No, I was right all the time and they're all wrong." You learn what you're good at and what you're not so good at, and how to harness the best of what you do.
Are you a true convert to digital filmmaking then?
I love digital, but I think your story needs to have a reason to use it.
You've also moved away from big stars like Ewan McGregor and Leonardo DiCaprio.
It wasn't so much them -- they are both great guys -- as the scale of making a film like "The Beach." When you have that kind of money involved, all the departments have to know everything in advance. That doesn't suit me. What I'm good at, or at least I think I am, is making it up on the day. You set certain parameters with people, but the rest you're kind of doing it on the hoof. And that's a wonderful feeling, the energy you get from it.
So what if "Millions" made a lot of money and you were offered another big-budget project?
Yeah [laughing], the little man on my right shoulder says, "Yeah, you shouldn't do it." But there's a little man on my other shoulder as well saying the opposite. Because I love big movies as well. There is something about film going all around the world showing on huge screens: It's an international language that we all celebrate together. You see a big movie like "Gladiator" and you want to make that. One voice is saying, "Do it! Do it!" And the other one is saying, "You'd fuck it up!" So it's a constant battle, really.
And it's not as if your style is stripped down. Your movies have a lot of visual sophistication.
I always try to be ambitious, not in terms of budgets but in terms of being imaginative. I don't want to make documentary-type, socially realistic films. I want them to be bigger than life. That's what the screen is about.
What about your next film?
It's called "Sunshine," and it's about the sun. It's written by Alex Garland. There's a mission called Icarus 2 that is taking a bomb to the sun to try and reignite a section of it. The bomb is the size of Vancouver and it's been built in space. There's been an earlier mission, Icarus 1, which has failed. And what's happened to it is a mystery. There's a religious element to the film -- the sun is God, really.
It sounds expensive -- so much for not getting sucked into big-budget films, eh?
Well, we're trying to keep the price down, so it's nowhere near "The Beach" level. It's going to be somewhere between 20 and 25 million pounds (about $40 million). It also is probably going to have an ensemble cast without any really big stars. But it's hard to make it under budget because the dollar is so weak. There are all these bribes to go to Moscow or New Zealand or Toronto, because it's way cheaper, but we want to make the film in England and it's very expensive to do that right now.
Ewan McGregor was unknown when he began working with you, and now he's Obi-Wan Kenobi -- a real star. What are the chances of you working together again?
We fell out a bit over "The Beach" [McGregor was reportedly miffed that Boyle chose DiCaprio as his lead] but I've seen him a couple of times since then just to say hello. And there is a plan, a very long-term plan, to do a sequel to "Trainspotting."
You don't seem like the kind of director who'd make a sequel.
It's not an easy, cash-in sequel. It's to try and take those characters and look at them when they're about 40, when they're losing their hair and they've got all these decisions facing them about what they've done with their lives. But we don't want to shoot it until those guys really look like their best years are behind them. I think it will take another 10 years still before they're sufficiently middle age. I want to look at these guys who've abused themselves so much and how they deal with the crisis of getting old.
How did you get interested in film originally?
When I was a kid I used to go to this cinema in Manchester called the Aaben that showed these really weird films from Europe, partially because they had a lot of nudity, but also I loved the films -- at least at the time. I've looked at some of them since and they're rubbish. But that's definitely where I got the bug. I couldn't get into the British film industry because it was very fenced off at the time, very clubby. And it still remains that way, I'm afraid. Our music industry on this little island has produced the most amazing bands, but our films are rubbish compared to music.
Why is that?
Basically working-class kids join bands. You don't need money and you can just do it. The film industry isn't like that, but it needs to be. But it turned out well for me. I went into theater, because it was a lot more open. And theater gives you a lot of experience working with actors. A lot of film directors don't like actors. They think they're impenetrable and stupid. But I love actors, and I think that's become a strength for me.
