Oscar-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire“) is maybe one of the more recognizable and varied veteran directors working today from Britain. Dipping his toes in both thought-provoking dramas and well-crafted genre pictures as he tackles a multitude of subject matter. Boyle over the years has put together a very impressive body of work that saw his career launched into the big time when the tongue-in-cheek Scottish-set junkie odyssey “Trainspotting” made both Boyle and actor Ewan McGregor stars on the international stage. While most would assume that the director would have faith in his country’s film industry, however, the director believes that Britain’s greatest contributions to the art community might not be movies.
Boyle has expressed some potentially controversial opinions on the state of the British film industry while speaking at the BFI Southbank in London recently as first revealed by The Daily Mail. He suggests that Britain isn’t the home of “great filmmakers,” but instead, that the country’s real flare for art is relegated to the theatre and crafting of pop music.
“It’s a terrible thing to say at the home of British film but I am not sure we are great filmmakers, to be absolutely honest.,” said Boyle. “As a nation, our two art forms are theatre, in a middle-class sense, and pop music because we are extraordinary at it.”
This comes after Boyle recently tackled the music of The Beatles in “Yesterday” and British punk band, The Sex Pistols, in his recent FX series “Pistol.” So, certainly, his headspace has been focused on British pop music for the last couple of years. Another project in the works is a stage dance version of the hit sci-fi action film “The Matrix” called “Free Your Mind“ for an art venue in Manchester, we’ll be curious if he enlists pop music for that as well.
