BOP Interview: Danny Boyle
By Ryan Mazie
November 4, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
127 Hours tells the true story of outdoorsman extraordinaire Aron Ralston (James Franco), whose arm gets pinned under a rock in a hiking accident. Aron is stuck for the titular, painstaking amount of time with a little bit of water, a camera, and a dull pocketknife. The last item comes in handy for the film’s most jarring scene, which has received attention due to reports of fainting from the audiences. Sitting down at the Ritz Carlton in Boston for a roundtable interview, Boyle talks about the chilling aforementioned scene, audience reactions, life after Slumdog, and the answer to the million dollar question: Is James Franco really as stoned as he looks?
When did you first hear about Aron’s story and when did it strike you as being theatrical?
Danny Boyle: I live in London and heard about it when it first came out. It’s one of those stories that snag you. Obviously, it’s on a different scale. The Chilean miners at the moment, everyone is fascinated by them. I felt that way about Aron's story. I heard about him getting pulled out, and then I heard the press conference he gave when he came out of the hospital. Then, I read his book in 2006. I’ve tried to make the film twice before. I tried to make it then. I asked him and he didn’t want to. He wanted to make a documentary where I wanted to make it a first-person immersive experience. I always thought that it would be an amazing film.
I think it is because, when you are in the cinema, you are in a black box as well. It’s not like television. You are in a black box, all of you together, and you are trapped as well. I mean, you can walk out, but if you are enjoying it, you are committed to it. In fact, you paid money to go into that black box as well so you are unlikely to leave it unless it’s shit (laughs). It’s true, isn’t? You pay twelve bucks or whatever it is, you are committed to seeing it through. And I thought if you can get that right, that experience of living in that confined space with him, it would be something the audience could share. So I loved that idea about it.
Most importantly, the only way you will ever be able tolerate watching this man cut his arm off - and doing it properly, it takes him 40 minutes - is if you are invested in it. If you want him to do it. If you want to help him in a way and you want him to get out of there, because you want to get out of the black box as well. I said to the studio while we were setting it up that’s the only way you will ever tolerate it. And I think, aside from the few people who fainted, most people go, “Yeah! You can get out of there. You can overcome it.” I think that’s the essence of this story, that connection.
When people have fainted and walked out, do you feel that the arm cutting scene is accomplishing its purpose, in a way?
I understand, it is very intense, but for most people, it’s an experience they go through. It’s not like a horror movie where you're thinking, “Oh great, here it comes. Let’s see his arm get cut off. Right.
A lot of your films feel like fairytales, and now you do one of the grittiest and most real films you could ever imagine. So how did you come to direct it?
You try and seek out, consciously and subconsciously, different stuff really. I never wanted to be a director who specialized in one thing and just do that. Studios like to do that. If you have a hit thriller, they want you to do another thriller straight away, because they can sell it. But I never wanted to do that. If I was lucky enough to have a hit, I always wanted to do something different. I think the danger with success and familiarity is that you become complacent. You go, “I know I can do this.” And whenever I felt like that, I’ve always made mistakes. Whereas when you feel a bit naked, when you are not quite sure how to shoot it, I think you discover it as you go along and it feels more organic to the story you are trying to tell.
When we started this, I didn’t really know how to do it. I knew the circumstances I wanted to stay within, which was create a real canyon, with no moving walls. It was absolutely limited, really reductive circumstances, only one actor throughout it, really. And then you find out how you are going to shoot it. We did these long, long takes. We didn’t do it bit by bit like a normal film. We were like, “James's task today is to move this rock.”
Really? The editing seemed so snappy. How long was a take?
James would do a 22 minute take trying to move the rock. We’d shoot it all and you’d cut it down, using 90 seconds of it. But the 90 seconds you get is James at his absolute ultimate of trying to move that fucking rock. It’s not like faking it, pretending to hurl himself at it. He actually was hurling himself at it. I thought with something this intense, if you ever thought we were faking it, it would just disappear. It was unusual editing. The rock is boring since it doesn’t do much so James just had to lose himself.
Speaking of choosing that one actor, why did you decide on James Franco?
I was very interested in him to begin with. Unusual for lead actors, his work has real variety. Because if you think of the contrast between the comic performance of say, Pineapple Express, and then a serious film like City by the Sea or Spider-Man even or Milk, it is quite unusual for a lead actor to have that range. I thought that would be important, because there is no villain coming into the story. There is no comic character. James has to do all that characterization himself. That literally ended up with him playing multiple characters, like in the scene of him playing the talk show host. Because the film is static, the danger is that it becomes inert. And the only way it won’t become inert is if he can create contrast. So you feel movement.
Then we met him in New York and he was kinda half asleep. He has this stoned persona. Everyone thinks he is stoned the whole time. He’s not. He’s actually sharp as a knife, but he has a façade he hides behind. His problem, if he’s got one, is that he is hyperactive. He’s the opposite. He never sleeps. He just reads books all the time. He does all these college courses and exhibitions. He’s just doing too much stuff. We met him in LA and he read a bit of the script for us and he was amazing. So I knew James was the one.
Did Aron collaborate at all on the script?
Yeah, we showed him each draft of the scripts and told him he was always welcome on the set, but I also said to him – very clearly – that this was going to be our version of his story. What I didn’t want was him being there the whole time overshadowing James, like saying, “Actually I did this. It the other shoelace I tied.” I said, we will be faithful and truthful, and by the time it’s finished, it will feel emotionally truthful. But I want James to go through it as well. The circumstances will be exactly what you went through, but I want James to go through it, rather than James copying you. We agreed that at the end of the film we would hand him back the story, which is why he appears at the end. Aron will be telling it the rest of his life. We won’t be; we will have moved on.
This is the first time you have a screenwriting credit; was this something you always wanted to do?
I like working on screenplays with the writers, but I’m not a writer. I asked Simon Beaufoy to write it. Simon is a climber, an outdoors guy; I haven’t hiked in 33 years. But he couldn’t see what I was talking about in the beginning. He said, “I think you’ve got to do a couple of drafts yourself and then I’ll see if I can come and help.” So I did and it was torture. It was great when I handed it all back to him, because then I could go back to my day job, really, which is criticizing screenplays (laughs). I do that better.
What made you want to reunite with a majority of the Slumdog Millionaire production team?
The problem with success, especially on the scale we had with Slumdog is that everybody kind of says “Yes” all the time. “You’re brilliant. Yes, yes, yes.” And it’s no good for you at all. One of the ways you go against that is you work with the same people or people you’ve known before and trust – who are not frightened to say things to you. That’s a big help. Also, you cut corners, because you understand each other. You can push each other quite hard really. So it was good like that. I try to work with a team. I am very much a team player. It’s important that the team feels equal. Obviously, you are the leader in the end, but I want them to be able to freely express themselves. You gain huge benefits from that.
Why did you decide to have two directors of photography on the film?
That was because of a theory of mine that was proved completely rubbish. I was obsessed with creating contrast, because there is just one character. So I had what I thought was a brilliant idea was to have two cinematographers and they would be different. Especially because one of them is from Northern Europe, Anthony Dod Mantle, and the other one is Latin American, from Ecuador, Enrique Chediak. I thought they are bound to be different. One would be black-and-white, the other in color. Didn’t work at all. You can’t tell the difference between their work at all. What I hadn’t realized was, that more important than anything I was setting up was their relationship with James, and their reaction to how he moved. That’s what the cinematography is in the film.
I thought one would have a fall out with James and there would be one who he’d like, so it would be good cop, bad cop. None of that. They both had a very good relationship with him. There was an advantage to it, because I didn’t want to stop when I was filming, so we were able to shoot seven days a week. They could work split shifts so I could keep going and not stop filming. James had to have a day off legally, but he didn’t really, because he’d go to New York to show his face at these university courses, and then he’d fly back overnight to be with us. He was as obsessed with the filming as I was. We had a couple days off for Easter and that was all. If you keep going like that, it will have an energy that eventually will come across in the texture of the film was my theory.
Water seems to be a recurring theme in the film.
We thought in the beginning that we wanted to make it as pleasurable as possible, because this is his character, taking all pleasures for granted. So you have everything in the beginning. You have music, you have movement, you have energy, you have girls with water dripping off their bodies. It is delicious. Everything is delicious. And then it stops and he doesn’t have any of those things now. Except that he has a bit of them on the videotape. To torture himself with. That he could have gone with them. And the water is everywhere except not quite in his reach anymore. So that’s the whole idea of it, really. I thought, you’ve got to make the beginning as pleasurable as possible, because virtually the rest of the film you are gonna suffer like he suffered. The pleasure he took in himself was enormous and like all of us, we take it for granted until things like this happen.
I thought the soundtrack was unbelievable. Can you talk about how you found the music and how that played into telling the movie?
It was again, as I said earlier, contrasting. I knew we were going to have to find different angles. If you did a smooth soundtrack that just confirmed the tone, it would be terrible. You’d have to break it up and be jagged really. I don’t like films that settle. I feel that they should be constantly surprising and challenging rather than toned, because I’d just fall asleep personally.
As an audience, we all have a collective memory of songs, and they all mean things to us, and sometimes you use them and they confirm that meaning and you are like, “Yeah,” and other times you go, “Oh!” You see it more ironically.
Is this story more about man or nature?
A lot of people say this story is of extraordinary self, individual courage, and self-sufficiency. I don’t think it’s true at all, and I never did. Right from when I first read the book, I thought that Aron was an incredible individualist. He is completely self-sufficient. He runs marathons in the desert, he goes on his own, he likes beating everybody else. He’s that typical example of the complete heroic individual – me.
And Nature stops him – BANG (punches table). Nature says, “Okay, unique individual. Get out of this now." And he can’t. All his power. All that strength he’s got. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t really drink. He’s at the absolute pinnacle. But nothing. Can’t do anything. It’s only when he learns where he belongs in a chain, which is parenthood, that he also learns that he’s been careless about people’s affection for him. He hasn’t returned phone calls. That girl who loved him, he treats her just casually. He now realizes that there is something much bigger than supreme individualism. There is a commonality that bonds us all together that is amazing and much more powerful than spiritually, personally. It’s something I deeply believe and try to convey in the film. That he literally swims back to people at the end.