Dumb and dumber viewing
‘Shallow Grave’ director poised to ‘dumb down’ the American
audience
By Michael Horowitz
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
With all the talk of Hollywood dumbing down, it’s surprising to
see a British director interested in doing the same thing in his
country.
"You have to make a broad spectrum if you want to have a decent
film industry," says Danny Boyle, director of the soon to be
released Shallow Grave, a tale of friendship and body disposal.
"Not just for financial reasons, but story reasons. There’s lot of
reasons people go to the cinema, sometimes they want to see dumb
films."
Yet soon it’s revealed that Boyle has no real idea what he means
by "dumb films." Talking with The Bruin at a restaurant in Park
City, Utah, Boyle tries to cite his experience with low-brow
cinema.
"I went into Speed and had a great time."
Nice try. In America, Speed is pretty high up there on the smart
scale. Jim Carrey operates at planes far below Boyle can even
fathom.
Even so, Boyle has a point about his native film industry. If
America shoots too low on the intelligence scale, snide Britain has
been oft-accused to catering to the elite alone. When a sly
thriller like Shallow Grave is perceived as a mass-audience film on
their side of the Atlantic, it says something about the state of an
industry.
Yet Shallow Grave has garnered British raves, a sign of an
important trend. Young, dynamic Boyle, heralded as a British
Tarantino, is picking up a wave of critical support unthinkable in
the Merchant -Ivory kingdom.
"There’s definitely been a sea change in Britain," says Boyle,
"a couple of years ago, you could take it for granted that if a
film worked, in terms of the public, if the public wanted to see
it, then the press would sneer at it."
"Four Weddings (and a Funeral) has changed that," he says. "Four
Weddings had such a huge appeal, that I think it frightened the
press, I genuinely believe this, they found ‘we can’t piss on this
movie, it’s just too big!’"
Now the question is whether the picture is too smart for the
United States. The premise is certainly high concept enough. Three
roommates search for a fourth roommate and finally find their man.
The catch is that their man dies within a day of moving in and
leaves a suitcase of irresistible cash.
Writer John Hodge came up with the idea while studying music in
Edinborough. "He shared a flat there and he hated his flatmates
really badly in the way that you do," laughs Boyle. "But you stay
together, you stay loyal to each other, even though you think, ‘why
am I living with this guy? He never does the washing up!’"
"He wanted to write about the squabbling and all that," Boyle
says, "but then he thought washing up wasn’t enough, not cinematic
enough, so we came up with this."
Shallow Grave’s protagonists bond through slightly unorthodox
behavior. "They exclude outsiders, keep them away," he says. "If
they get into the flat they humiliate them, or they chop them up or
whatever."
Boyle says one great thing about this script, the first he’s
directed, was that none of the characters were victims. Even odd
side characters, who seem at first to get the short end of the
stick, are back to get even.
His next film will reflect this tilt as well. Trainspotting,
about "heroin addicts in Edinborough in the ’80s," has no prolonged
needle scenes or cliche suffering associated with addiction.
Boyle’s looking to show the upside of drugs.
"All the people you expect to be victims in that kind of
landscape refuse to be," he says. "It won’t be a depressing, grim
film  cause we’ve all seen that. We don’t need another. We
know that already!"
"There are quite a lot of people in Britain especially (those)
who are using drugs in a kind of recreational way, not following
the usual pattern of dependency and destruction."
Boyle detests the way certain lifestyles are rejected in Britain
and intends to show a flipside of the story conventionally
portrayed.
"We still keep up this pretense that (drugs) are all evil,
they’re all terrible, they’ll just destroy your children," he says.
"One minute they’ll be smoking a joint, the next they’ll be heroin
addicts and dead. That’s a truth obviously, we know that, but
there’s another side of it as well."
The film, which is incidentally titled after an insult, is not
meant for a huge audience. Yet Boyle has figured out a simple
system for gauging film finance that Hollywood may want to look
into.
"I think the trick is to look at your budget," he explains.
"Make sure the budget you have you can earn the money back to pay
for it. Trainspotting won’t have a very big appeal, so we’ll make
it for a very low budget."
Conversely, his next film after that will be a mid-range
American romantic comedy. He’ll have about $8 million to throw
around in that case.
Yet his first film still hasn’t opened in America. Boyle doesn’t
seem too stressed. With a twisted grin he warns Bruins about
Shallow Grave: "If you go see this film with your flatmates, that’s
fine. But if one of your flatmates goes back to see it a second
time on his own … start to worry."