John Hodge took some persuading to make the film - he described the novel as having "no story" and Welsh's prose as "dialogue-driven". Again, it took 30 days to shoot. The film cost £1.6 million, financed by Channel 4 who was able to pre-sell it on the back of the success of Shallow Grave. The film went on to take £13 million worldwide and is the second highest grossing British film of all time - after Four Weddings and a Funeral. Danny Boyle thoroughly researched heroin addiction for the film - he met a lot of addicts and got them to talk to the actors and held "cookery classes" where the actors learnt how to cook up. Ewan McGregor also read all the books he could find on the subject. Ewan McGregor was the only advance casting the team made - all the other actors had to audition. Robert Carlyle expects to play the lead in a film but he accepted playing a part under McGregor so the team "knew [they] were getting thoroughbreds all the way down". The film was criticised for its "neutral attitude" to drugs but Boyle said that patronising and preaching to today's youth was pointless and …show more content…
CLIP OF TRAINSPOTTING
The team rejected Alien 4 in 1997 to make A Life Less Ordinary. Danny Boyle said of the Alien film "I don't do storyboards". He was worried he would not have the creative freedom he liked and he would become swamped in high pressure film-making. The film was bigger than their previous two - it took 50 days to shoot and had a budget of £7.5 million, financed by Twentieth Century Fox. Despite this and the fact it was a romantic comedy shot in Utah, Danny Boyle still considers it a British film, albeit partly so. He said he wanted to combine the two cultures as much as possible but the film wasn't developed in America, was made by the three of them and starred Ewan McGregor. He shot the film in America and brought it home to edit. The film uses the same surrealism that sometimes appears in Trainspotting.
CLIP OF A LIFE LESS ORDINARY
The Beach, released in 2000, was the first film made by the team that didn't star Ewan McGregor. It is a Hollywood film with a budget of £25 million financed by Twenty-first Century Fox. Before the team even approached the studio, they bought the rights to the book, adapted