One of the most diverse talents in modern filmmaking, Danny Boyle has shacked up with the greedy set (Shallow Grave), run with the junkies (Trainspotting), watched paradise wither (The Beach), shown us the end (28 Days Later), and followed the journey for a new beginning (Sunshine). Yet while Boyle’s films are often impressively varied in terms of both genre and tone, they all retain a certain intensity and visual aesthetic that makes them instantly recognizable as his own.

Boyle’s latest film, Slumdog Millionaire, may be his most mainstream effort to date, yet it still retains the clever inventiveness and vital energy of his most subversive works. Slumdog Millionaire tells the tale of Jamal and Salim, two young orphans who attempt to survive on the streets of Mumbai after their mother is killed in a religious riot. In time, the brothers befriend another young orphan named Latika. Jamal falls in love with Latika and, after they are separated, decides to become a contestant on India’s most popular game show in hopes of finding her after years apart. His plan gets complicated, however, when Jamal gets further in the contest than anyone in the history of the show, and gets arrested by the authorities after being accused of cheating. Over the course of the film, Jamal recalls each question posed to him on the show, and reveals how his experiences on the streets instilled him with the knowledge to answer every one of them correctly — all the while clinging to the hope that Latika is out there, somewhere, watching and waiting.

If it sounds a bit sappy, well… at times it is. Still, few would argue the claim that Boyle has paid his nihilistic dues, and in a time when wars are raging and economies are collapsing, why not take a break from the bleakness and tell a story that’s a bit more uplifting? But make no mistake; Jamal’s journey isn’t without its fair share of despair and heartbreak. There are moments in Slumdog Millionaire that will still make more sensitive viewers take pause, as evidenced by the R rating slapped on it by the MPAA. Yet, despite that restrictive designation, Slumdog Millionaire isn’t the kind of sex-and-violence-geared R film that parents will wish to shield their children from at all costs, but rather the kind of mature R that doesn’t shy away from life’s grittier details, and is likely to encourage thoughtful discussion between teens and their parents.

But while Slumdog Millionaire may be one of the best-reviewed films of the year, it was nearly released straight-to-video in the U.S. by Warner Bros. when their independent distribution arm, Warner Independent Pictures, went bankrupt just after filming wrapped. Thankfully, that’s when Fox Searchlight recognized the potential of the film and stepped in to give it a limited, albeit proper, theatrical release.

Recently, we had the good fortune of sitting down with Boyle to discuss the making of Slumdog Millionaire. His genuine passion and enthusiasm for the film were evident from the moment he answered the first question and, as you’ll read, his experiences in India had a profound effect on his view of the world.

It was a chilly day in Detroit when Danny came to town. He had just finished breakfast, and was in good spirits when we sat down to discuss Slumdog Millionaire. The night before, he was in town at for a screening of the film, and participated in an audience Q&A afterwards.

Me: Now that you’re out touring with Slumdog Millionaire and connecting with the viewers, what aspect of the story do you find they’re connecting most with?

DB: They’re fascinated by India. The children in particular, I think. Hugely, the acting gets audiences more than anything. How well known are the actors…. Are they known at all, you know, so they’re obviously caught up in that story, really. There’s obviously stuff about India as well because it’s exotic for them to see, and different, but it’s more to do with the actors. Which is always a good sign; it always should be.

Me: Absolutely.

DB: Because you’ve got 90%, probably 95% who’ve got to watch the actors and find them believable.

Me: They’ve got to carry the movie!

DB: They’ve got to carry the movie and people have got to care about them. Because they do carry the movie, so I think it’s mostly that more than anything. Because you’re a director, people are very polite and ask the technical questions as well, but other people, I think, they think that should be the kinds of questions they should ask. The reaction has just been extraordinary so far. Certainly way beyond anything we could have hoped for.

Me: You bring up the children. You’ve dealt with plenty of experienced and well-known actors, and that wasn’t the case with many of the young actors in Slumdog Millionaire. How did you find yourself changing up your directorial style to get the performances you wanted from the kids who hadn’t ever had any experience in front of the cameras?

DB: I don’t know, you kind of, like, have to take the lead a little bit more sometimes. But there has to be a certain point where they take over from you, not just do what you say. There has to be a moment where they step into the role, and really good actors know that. They just know, even if they’re very inexperienced they just know that they’ve got to take responsibility at some point and you’ve got to leave them room to take that responsibility. And sometimes you have to help them, because they’re not as aware as somebody like Anil Kapoor, who plays the chat-show host. He’s a very experienced actor, and he knows everything there is to know about cameras and how you can interrupt the flow and get back into a moment, and things like that that they all have to learn as actors. You try and do everything more in a flow for them, so that it feels real. Whereas, when you become more technical as an actor, you learn that you can break up that flow and still get away with it, and still imply. So somebody like Anil knows that he can interrupt something and go back because he got something wrong and can pick it up again. Where they don’t really have that technical dexterity. But they’ll learn it, you know.

Me: How about the established Bollywood actors like Anil Kapoor…did you find there were any major cultural differences in approaching the work?

DB: No, but he was very nervous because it was his first role that he had done in English. He was very dependent on me and desperate not to be over the top, because you’re worried about being over the top because he realizes Bollywood acting is a bit richer than the kind of, more naturalism of Hollywood. And they do look at the Hollywood actors as being a benchmark, for the quality of acting. And so he didn’t want to make a fool of himself. And acted, no problem. I like big acting anyway, my films tend to be…quite big acting is required in them sometimes. So he was more than easy really, he was helpful because while I helped him with the English when I needed to, he helped me with the audience because all his scenes, virtually, were in the auditorium of the game show with the 200 extras there who are clapping for two weeks. And they’re all in shots at different times, so they’ve got to be on message or otherwise it’s terrible, you know, you’re shooting someone and behind someone is (make’s sleepy face) or (flails arms a bit) it’s just so distracting. He kept them motivated. Because they didn’t really speak much English.

Me: And they all knew him so well.

DB: And they adored him. The fact that he was talking to them, they loved. They never grew tired of that. He played with the audience a lot and he got plenty out of that as well for his own performance. So that was very good. I don’t know what it would be like to go out with a big star on the street, though. It must be very tricky, I think. Because obviously with Anil we were in a studio the whole time, because the show’s in the studio and Irfan Khan who’s not so much a Bollywood star, but he’s recognizable.

Me: The police inspector.

DB: Yeah, all of his scenes are set in the police station, so it’s a confined environment. They don’t do much filming with their Bollywood stars out on the street because it’s an issue of public order. It just becomes impossible to maintain public order with such crowds and devotees around. Particularly the big, big stars. But we filmed a lot on the streets because we didn’t have anyone that they would recognize. And the cameras they didn’t recognize as well, because they use quite big film cameras there. They’re used to seeing them on tripods and things like that, and I don’t really work like that. I work with smaller cameras and a more handheld style, and so it sort of confounded their expectations a bit.

Me: They might not have even realized what was going on.

DB: Sometimes they didn’t even realize we were filming, and sometimes they’d think we were filming but they’d have no idea what we were up to, really. Because you can’t pin it down by going (points to his left), “Oh, there’s the camera,” and there’s hundreds of people behind it, pointing at him, so it’s about him. I work a bit looser than that, or I try to.

Me: The last movie you made, Sunshine, was very special effects heavy. How did special effects factor into Slumdog Millionaire, if at all?

DB: We spent most of our money on taking out wires for the kids, in the train sequences, which are very dangerous. As soon as you get beside those trains with little kids you just think, “Oh what are we doing? This is terrifying!” It’s all good and well Simon writing this stuff, but you get a seven-year-old kid running on uneven ground beside a moving train and the wheel is taller than him! (cringes) So we put him on wires and the stuntmen were inside the carriages and if there was any stumble they whip them off, like fairies flying, so that there was no danger to them. So we spent most of our money painting those out. And a couple of other things…like the Taj [Mahal]. The Taj they don’t light at night now, so the opera that happened, we dropped the Taj into that. We composited a picture of the Taj and lit it so if it was at night and dropped that in and that’s our CG work on the film. So it’s quite a contrast obviously, between the precision and the workload of something like Sunshine, to go to something as loose as this, because it’s just kind of wild in a way. You’ve got to keep as wild as possible, and sometimes you’d finish scenes and you weren’t sure you finished them, but you’d go with it because you think, “Maybe there’ll be something there that gets me out of trouble,” and you’d go with it because maybe there really will be something there that gets me out of trouble. And you get back into the cutting and I’ve never known anything quite like that. I knew instantly what I was missing, so we went back and did some pickups for that.

Me: At the Taj?

DB: No, we did some different pickups at the Taj where we had to send a crew back instead of us because we got driven out at the time and I knew it wasn’t complete. (Note: Denied reentry into the Taj Mahal for reshoots, the crew of Slumdog Millionaire posed as documentary filmmakers in order to get the shots they needed.) But most of the stuff, I didn’t know it was complete, but I thought, “Let’s trust it and see what we’ve got.” You start editing it and you think, “Yeah, I’ve got more than I thought we’d ever have,” and there is a generosity about the place. That life spirit gives out all the time, if you’re in the mode for it. If you’re not criticizing it and moaning about how dirty everything is and how lazy everybody is and why don’t they turn up in the morning and things like that. They don’t set up in the morning, true, but they’ll work for you way into the night without overtime. No problem. That was the generosity at the other end; the front end you’ve got people cringing about, “Where are they? I’m here, why aren’t they here,” all that kind of stuff.

Me: But once you get rolling….

DB: It’s fantastic, yeah.

Me: I was talking about your films with a good friend recently, and she made a comment that struck me as interesting; she said that she felt like your earlier films were “dark” with flashes of light or optimism, and that you’re newer films were lighter in tone with flashes of bleakness or dark humor. Do you think that you’re getting more optimistic with age?

DB: I don’t know, actually. I’ve always argued that there’s moments of great humanity in Trainspotting. People call it, “dark” and “savagely funny” but there are moments of real tenderness, almost sentimentality in it. Like when they’re all gathered around and Tommy’s died and they all sing “Two Little Boys.” I mean that is opera, that is totally sentimental and completely mainstream kind of stuff, so it’s always there, I think. I hope that it’s not really about me. I try to be as loyal as possible to the story itself, and as it demands me to be. India itself is a big, sentimental place; it’s also a big, cruel place, as well. And you try and make sure they’re both included. [Slumdog Millionaire] is ultimately redemptive. I didn’t have to have a happy ending on it; we only took $13 million, which gives me the allowance I can make any film I want. I don’t have to have a happy ending on it like Baz Luhrmann’s had on Australia. I don’t have to do that; if you take $80 or $90 million you do. But the ending is true to the people and the experience of being there. It’s an extraordinary, life-affirming place, despite the loss of life — the butchering of people. It’s an extraordinary, redemptive, life-affirming place.

Me: I read an interview with Simon Beaufoy where he talked about the cultural presumptions he had when he arrived in India, and he saw them completely shattered. He expected it to be a sad place, and to see squalor and be upset by it, but that once he got there he felt the energy of the culture and forgot about that. Was that your experience as well?

DB: Yeah, you can tell talking to people who have not been there. They talk about the slums, and they’re expecting you to be shocked and pitiful, as though it’s some terrible news report from Africa or something. And they’re not like that at all, they’re actually incredibly organized, very community-oriented, businesslike places; people are busy, everybody’s working, there are cottage industries. Now whether that’s because they’re an active people I just don’t know. There’s nobody lazing around or dying, there isn’t that kind of poverty. They’re very proud of the fact that nobody starves in India. If you start comparing them to Africa, you’ll get in trouble there. That you cannot do, because they don’t regard themselves like that. They’re really proud, and they don’t want to be thought of as “victims” or “pitiful,” they don’t want to be seen like that, they want to get on with it themselves. And you can feel that pride in the country. The truth is that there are so many people that they have not made allowance, over the years, for infrastructure like sewers, and water. They just don’t have the infrastructure to

Photo Credit: Joel Newell

cope with that number of people, so around 50% of the population lives in slums and they don’t move out. They’ve got the infrastructure for them outside of Mumbai, they’ve built all of these flats, but nobody wants to go there because they don’t want to give up — and I can understand it as well — they don’t want to give up this sense of community and the exhilaration there is from being there. You feel like you’re at the center of life. The bustle is unbelievable. It’s just so exciting, and it’s not because there are big parties or anything like that. There’s just this sense of life everywhere, and they don’t want to leave that and go out to the suburbs to this place called New Mumbai, where these big tower blocks of flats that they built for them [are]. They don’t want that brick and mortar, they want to be there. I don’t quite know how they’re going to solve that problem because they want to tear these slums down, but they can’t because there’s a lot of votes in those slums, there are a lot of people and it’s a democracy and the politicians court those votes and those votes say, “We don’t want to move, we want to stay here.” So I don’t know what they’re going to do. Duravit, which is a massive slum of two million people, is some of the best, most valuable real estate in the world. They want that land — developers want that land. But you’ll never get rid of them and they’re stacked two or three high, the slums in there, because it’s such a popular place to live. There are sanitation problems and there are hygiene issues and when it rains it floods, but they just kind of get on with it. They expect everybody to treat them like that as well, so you have to go in with the right attitude. Which is, like Simon says, to just let go of a lot of your baggage. You just have to go because it’s pointless and detrimental. It’s detrimental because you see these people begging or being maimed, and you can see they’re being maimed, deliberately, and all you want to do is — like the tourists in the film — give them $100 or $1,000 because it makes you feel better, that you’re doing something. But, as they point out, it goes straight to a gangster, and then the gangster says, “This is working, let’s maim someone else.” And so you’re actually doing harm with your morality.

Me: You’re feeding into the cycle.

DB: What you’ve got to do is view it from their perspective, which is that you’ve got this amazingly inclusive society, and that it’s up to you to try and understand how that guy who’s been there is directly linked to Anil Kapoor, and they are bound together by destiny, by these forces that they believe in. Ironically, for such a caste-driven world, it makes for an amazingly coherent society that, for the most part, lives in peace. But there are occasional flashes of violence, and when they come they are savage. Absolutely. Everything is maximum there. Everything. When the violence comes it’s fucking appalling, and you can’t show a lot of it in a film. But for the most part, it’s calm. Despite the lack of resources, despite the overcrowding, despite the traffic — three, four hours to get anywhere in cars, you know, they still make it work.

Me: Do you find that the same elements that attracted you to a story earlier in your career still attract you today?

DB: Yeah, humor. A kind of freshness, something you haven’t seen before. You read scripts and they’re really good, but they’re just like something else and you think, “Why would you want to do that?” It’s just like I’ve seen the original and I really liked it, or I’ve seen another film last year and it was really like this, and I really liked it, and they’ve just done another one because it worked, and why would you want to do that? I always want to do something different or exciting and that’s what’s interesting about film is that it’s always moving forward like that. Or it should be. With fresh ideas, and they can be ridiculous comic ideas like Tropic Thunder. That’s funny! I love that, I thought it was an almost profound look at the entertainment business. Just in high, comic, ridiculous, over-the-top fashion, but stuff like that you think, “Great!” You should always be searching for the stuff that lets you have a fresh look at things. My favorite line of the year is, “You’re Australian, act Australian!” And Tom Cruise, when he shouted at that guy for five minutes and was like, “Find out who that guy was” and stuff like that makes you think, “That’s what this business is like!”

Me: They got it.

DB: Yeah, they got it dead on. Spot on.