Growing up, The Beatles were largely influential in “Yesterday” director Danny Boyle‘s life, and while it was really the explosion of punk music that helped shaped him as a person, the music of The Beatles spoke to his British sensibilities. The filmmaker has a knack for subtly highlighting and exploring British culture and trends and whether intentional or not, it certainly gives Boyle an authentic ground level voice.
Our conversation with Danny Boyle, conducted by myself and my co-conspirator Brody Serravalli continues as we explore the filmmaker’s British roots, how that culture influences his work, his thoughts on the state of the British film industry, and of course, his relationship with the James Bond franchise. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Part 1 of our interview where Boyle discusses the movie-musical quality and the music of “Yesterday” (our review).
The one thing that seems to be true across all your films is that you appear to have your finger on the pulse of British culture and that culture is something that is celebrated in many of your films. Is that just something that inherently finds its way into your work or is it something that you’re consciously trying to evoke?
I think it leads your choices. Although sometimes I work away from that, I did a film about Steve Jobs that is set in San Francisco and a film set in Mumbai. So, it’s not exclusive and in fact, sometimes it’s quite important to get away from your background. But I’ve always lived in England – Manchester or London. And I have no inclination to change that.
I love New York, for instance, but I’m not an American at heart. I’m a Brit, and you can’t walk away from that – well some people do, and that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. My eldest daughter has, interestingly. All her life me and her mum used to say she’s destined to be an American, and she’s here now. She’s lived here [ New York] for seven years, and she went to college here, came over on her own – she’s an American. She’s got that kind of outlook, whereas I’m not, sadly [laughs]. I can see the attractions of it, certainly, when it comes to the film business there are some advantages to it – but I’m not. And it was one of the wonderful things about doing this script because while he works in a world that is very, very different from the world that I work in, Richard Curtis is also a writer and director who has remained at home and made films exclusively in England. He’s never made a film anywhere else. So, it was nice to join forces with him, really.
It’s interesting you say that because you have ventured outside of England before, but even with a film like “Steve Jobs,” which is set in San Francisco during an Apple product launch, there is something very theatrical and Shakespearian about the approach. It feels almost as if you’re directing a stage play, which I guess harkens back to your time in the theatre.
Yeah, I think that’s right. I think it felt very much like a stage play. And that goes back to Aaron Sorkin’s script. Although we tried to make it as cinematic as possible, we didn’t want to change its nature by rewriting it to be all about exterior shots or whatever. It was language based in the way that Shakespeare and all the great stage writers are, absolutely. Character is illustrated through performance and vocabulary as much as inherent psychology, and all those factors play a part in theatre.
We were very proud to do it that way, even if it limited its audience a bit doing it like that because it is almost like a stage play – I mean, you could probably do it as a stage play, piece of cake. I’m actually surprised no one has had a go at it on stage. But it was wonderful to have that kind of intensity of weight on the performers. That was the ingredient. It wasn’t like, “how can we make this a thrilling cinematic experience?” It was “how can we support these actors as they sort of careen through this extraordinary dialogue and the rhythm of Sorkin’s scenes?” And yeah, it’s set in three theatres, so it feels like a world I was, ironically, very familiar with – even though I don’t live in San Francisco and it’s a long way from home. It did make me feel comfortable telling that story, yeah, for sure.
And I thought the decision to shoot the first third in 16mm, the second third in 35mm, and the last third on digital was a subtle way of evoking the feeling of each time period without relying on generic hallmarks of the era to signify it.
That was fun to do. Just an amazing thing. And shooting on film is disappearing, of course. So, it would be a hard push now to get enough stock to be able to do it because the technology is kind of vanishing behind us. Again, it’s sad really. The Beatles could write a song about that, it’s quite melancholy [laughs]. It’s fast disappearing, but you’ve got to embrace the new world, which is where we are now.