Boyle 'n' Boyce At The Foyle Film Festival

The Oscar-winning director and local screenwriter open up to the Derry-Londonderry public in a warm and genial chat

By the time they take their seats in Derry-Londonderry's St. Columb's Hall, Danny Boyle and Frank Cottrell Boyce have been walking around the City Of Culture 2013 all day. It is believed that Boyce was asked for his photo more often than Boyle; either way, this duo seem tailor made for one another.

Having collaborated successfully in 2004's Millions and, more notably, the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games, the high-profile pair are delighted to spill the beans in front of a simultaneously relaxed and expectant audience. Boyle, he of Trainspotting and the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire, forms a warm and genial rapport with the crowd that spreads around the old hall and regularly inspires laughter and cheers.

"I've been in Derry(-Londonderry) many times", Boyle admits, "but the Peace Bridge has sort of passed me by!" What doesn't pass us by is his revelation that Trainspotting (watch a scene below) - in this writer's opinion, Boyle's best film and still an undoubted must watch - had its first ever public screening in Derry-Londonderry!

Allegedly, the audience was baffled, for as Boyle points out, sequels always score highest in test screenings. That, and it was deemed "a lost cause" to make a drug movie at the time, although the subsequent reviews ("Hollywood, come in please: your time is up" – Ian Nathan, EMPIRE) and box office surely quelled Boyle's fears.

The Lancashire-born director does not think that film is a reflective media, but that "its origin stems through working class culture". Hence action movies, to him, are the purest, for they "connect with the origins of film". But Boyle's 2002 zombie flick 28 Days Later went beyond that, for reasons unknown to even Boyle himself before filming.

"We thought it would be about social rage and loss of temperament”, he says. “But 9/11 transformed the film into a parable about the vulnerability of cities. Tangentially and entertainingly, it illustrates that the big cities aren't safe."

Frank Cottrell Boyce then recalls Tony Wilson, the late co-founder of Factory Records, and the inspiration he drew from both Wilson and news reports while writing his screenplay for 24 Hour Party People, in which Steve Coogan plays Wilson. Boyce says, “Wilson’s vision reeked of freedom. He said that you could either go away and make a great career for yourself, or stay at home and make it a better place.” Something that no doubt many who live in the City Of Culture 2013 would relate to.

While Boyle regrets not being able to attend the momentous Return Of Colmcille, conceived by Boyce, both men are delighted to discuss what Boyle considers his crowning achievement: the opening ceremony at London 2012. (Watch my favourite moment from said ceremony below, featuring Daniel "007" Craig and HM The Queen.)

"When devising London 2012, we thought: what is it that defines us, represents us? We're not that good at films, but we're great at music. And reproducing that kind of music (in front of everyone) is the defining representation of a nation. Everywhere has its own music."

"We could have got anyone to help us", Boyce adds, "but we kept loyal to our friends and to people we had worked with before."

But how on earth did Boyle, Boyce and their crew all raise their game for such a ceremony?

"You have to believe", says Boyle. "You have to believe that on some level, the work you do and the people you work with truly are the best there is. You take the job not because of the money, but because you believe in it. Look at Stevie Wonder and John Lennon; Wonder may have been a better musician, but Paul McCartney didn't do his best music with Wonder."

Of course, response was divisive. Giles Coren initially described the whole show as "Punk Rock Teletubbies", yet within a matter of minutes, according to Boyle, Coren believed it was the "greatest night of his life." Perhaps he acknowledged that Boyle had recognised what the event meant to people as a symbol, as a means of bringing people together.

Boyce backs Boyle up. "The footballer motivated by money ends up on the bench at Real Madrid, but the footballer who actually wants to play football ends up doing so much more." Some things are so much better for what they do than what they are; here, Boyce cites both London 2012 and David Shrigley's mechanical model at the Turner Prize.

As the Q & A begins, Boyle moves on to the intriguing topics of Millions (a "moving and fantastic" script that he only regrets not making as a musical) the sequel to Trainspotting (which he’ll consider doing with a “Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?” tone) and his upcoming seven-part series for television, Babylon.

But the very mention of Millions has piqued my interest. Boyle is a director, after all, who was compared to Hitchcock and the Coen Brothers near the start of his career, and made a name for himself with quirky, grimy, “independent” work such as Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. What on earth caused the shift in tone in his filmography that led to more "family-friendly" and middlebrow fare like Millions and Slumdog Millionaire (watch the trailer above), I ask him?

"I saw Slumdog as another version of Millions. They were both films about a boy who loved money and a boy who understood it. Also, when we made The Beach, in Thailand, we were given everything we needed, and it didn't suit me. It made us behave very imperialistically. I couldn't profit from such a set up.

"So I thought that, when we were doing Slumdog, we'd make the film with a smaller cast in Mumbai. I learned that being beholden to where you're working is more important to you than money. Trust the city and it gives you back a sea of prosperity at the end."

He parts with some valuable words of wisdom for young filmmakers: "Cinema is about fresh, new blood. It needs you more than it needs us. Work with your peers, and you will find everything you need."

Which, in turn, leads us to think. Of what Lennon & McCartney, and what Boyle & Boyce, have achieved. And who would bet against the next truly significant filmic partnership emerging from this very city?