DANNY BOYLE
“I’VE LEARNED HOW MUCH I OWE TO THE SENSIBILITY OF PUNK.”
When Total Film catches up with Danny Boyle via Zoom one Monday in April, he’s at home in Mile End having just completed his work on miniseries Pistol, which charts the incendiary rise of the Sex Pistols in the ’70s. “You’re never quite finished, ” he says at the top of our conversation. “But we finished, officially, on Friday afternoon.” Directing all six episodes was no small task. “It’s like mixing three films, one after another after another. I mean, my ears are still ringing. I’m a bit numb, really.”
It’s not surprising that it’s still reverberating around his head. Entering the band through the viewpoint of guitarist Steve Jones, Pistol also encompasses the broader punk scene, featuring icons like Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood alongside band members Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. (Model and actor Pamela ‘Jordan’ Rooke, portrayed by Maisie Williams in the show, died the night before our interview. “She was an amazing woman, ” Boyle reflects.)
The filmmaking of the show reflects the anarchic spirit the band championed. “You want it to be bred with chaos in its DNA, ” Boyle explains. “And I hope we achieved that.” Punk also seems to be infused in Boyle’s DNA. While he confesses to being more of a fan of the Clash, he calls the Pistols “the detonation device point... the Year Zero of everything beginning again.” He felt the impact of that “atomic force” on his own life. “Everybody moans about things [in] the ’80s, whatever. But it’s never been anything like the ’70s again, believe me. Fucking hell. It was a terrible time! It was so boring.”
Boring isn’t a word to be found anywhere near Boyle’s orbit. A working-class lad from Lancashire, his professional life post-university began directing plays before he started as a producer on BBC TV in Northern Ireland, becoming a director on a handful of shows. His film career launched with a ferocious intensity with the one-two punch of low-budget debut Shallow Grave and the generation-defining Trainspotting, the first two of many collaborations with writer John Hodge, producer Andrew Macdonald, and actor Ewan McGregor (with whom Boyle would later fall out for years, before reuniting for T2 Trainspotting).
it wasn’t all plain sailing – Boyle has no illusions about – but it’s impossible not to admire his to to the Oscar-hoovering and prestige drama . Along the way there’s been sci-fi (), survival drama ( musical romcom () and more, including a return to the stage with But perhaps ‘Isles Of Wonder’, his opening ceremony for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, will be his defining contribution to British culture.
