Profile: Danny Boyle (Part 2)

Our friend Trevor Hogg is back at FlickeringMyth with the final installment of a profile on Danny Boyle. An excerpt:

“What you do is take the power it gives you…and use it to make a film that you believe in,” explained Danny Boyle who was riding a wave of international acclaim. “The danger is that you use it on a vanity project that nobody wants to watch.” The director returned to a project he had been trying to make since 2006, a cinematic adaptation of the autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place by mountain climber Aron Ralston who was trapped underneath a boulder for five days until he resorted to a drastic measure to free himself. “[Ralston] wanted to narrate it and be interviewed like in a documentary,” stated Boyle of his initial attempt to film 127 Hours (2010). “The problem is that if you turn it into a documentary you’ll be able to control it and it will be absolutely accurate but the audience won’t feel it other than as a spectator.” Boyle wanted to turn the story into a first-person drama. “The power you get from telling stories with skilled actors is phenomenal; it’s transformational and cathartic.”

“James [Franco] wasn’t an obvious choice,” admitted Danny Boyle who originally planned to select Cillian Murphy as his leading man, “but when he read the script you could hear that he could do it. So we cast him.” To get a better sense of what Aron Ralston went through, the director and Franco watched the actual video messages created by Ralston while he was trapped; the footage had a profound affect on them. “I thought this would be a man on the edge breaking down and crying.” Boyle found himself to be greatly mistaken. “Just what was in his eyes; he was trying to be himself and yet there was this slow inexorable agenda of death going on.” Close attention was paid to recreating the moment when Raltson amputates his trapped arm, using a blunt knife and the weight of the boulder. “I remember reading the chapter and I thought — we’ve got to do it very accurately. We got to reflect the fact that it’s not instant, in reality it took him over forty minutes.” The filmmaker did not regret his casting decision. “What happens in the scene itself is that he occupies these plateaus of pain so brilliantly…that people imagine it’s the sound effects that are [putting them] on the edge — and they obviously contribute to it. But the real issue is that it’s an extraordinary performance by Franco.” The sequence made headlines in the media. “What is astonishing, we did have a few people fainting, early on, but more importantly I don’t remember anyone walking out.” Boyle is quick to point out that the reporting of the fainting incidents was not part of a studio promotional campaign. “Fox Searchlight would have loved to have had the power the studios used to have where they could kill the story. But you can’t now, there are tweeters in the room! It’s out before the paramedics even get there.”

Though James Franco (Howl) spends most of the screen time by himself, other actors in the biopic are Amber Tamblyn (The Ring), Kate Mara (Transsiberian), Sean Bott (Heber Holiday), Treat Williams (Deep Rising), Kate Burton (Stay), and Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls). “As a director, you like having a real story because that’s what makes it more powerful,” said Danny Boyle. “But it’s also hard because you know you’re dealing with someone’s life.” The director snuck Aron Raltson into the first test screening, “It was incredibly intense. When he cuts his arm off, this being America, they cheered…I looked across at Aron and the tears were pouring down his face. He said what he found hard to cope with was the weird mixture of distance, watching it on the screen, and then sudden engagement, where he gets overwhelmed with it all again.” Aron Ralston was pleased with the cinematic treatment of his story; he remarked, “The movie is so factually accurate it is as close to a documentary as you can get and still be a drama.” Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Franco does a good job of suggesting two aspects of Ralston’s character. (1) He’s a cocky, bold adventurer who trusts his skills and likes taking chances, and (2) he’s logical and bloody-minded enough to cut through his own skin and bone to save his life. One aspect gets him into his problem, and the other gets him out.” Ebert also praised the work of the movie’s film editor, “John Harris achieves the delicate task of showing an arm being cut through without ever quite showing it. For the audience the worst moment is not a sight but a sound. Most of us have never heard that sound before, but we know exactly what it is.”

“This is a film about how precious life is,” declared Danny Boyle. “And it’s only precious because of other people.” Boyle explained further, “He doesn’t survive because he is on his own; he survives because he finally realizes how important it is to get back to the people he cares about.” Made on a production budget of $18 million, 127 Hours was nominated for Best Film at the London Film Festival; it also received nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (James Franco), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Song, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Sound at the Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards. At the BAFTAs, 127 Hours was nominated for the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film, the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music, the David Lean Award for Direction, Best Actor (James Franco), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Sound; while the Academy Awards nominated it for Best Picture, Best Actor (James Franco), Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The real life drama contended at the Golden Globes for Best Actor — Drama (James Franco), Best Original Score, and Best Screenplay; at the Independent Spirit Awards it received nominations for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor (James Franco). James Franco also received a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for Outstanding Performance for a Male Actor in a Leading Role.

For Part 1 of the profile on Danny Boyle, go here