"We are a marketing dream!" says the director Danny Boyle, grinning widely and gesturing across the table to his screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, before announcing, with deliberate trailer-man cheese, "*Slumdog Millionaire!* It's *The Full Monty* meets *Trainspotting!*" He then adds, crumpling with self-deprecating laughter, "Now if only it wasn't set in India, we'd really have something here!"
If Boyle is in ebullient mood today, in a London hotel room, you can hardly blame him. His new film, *Slumdog Millionaire* — a gorgeous adrenalised love story set in contemporary Mumbai — has just been nominated for four Golden Globe awards, has already swept the US end-of-year film critics' awards, and is hotly tipped for Oscar glory. "Whether we admit it, we'd all love to benefit from the awards season," says Boyle, nodding to Beaufoy (the writer of *The Full Monty*), and to his adjacent *Slumdog* stars Freida Pinto (a former model and TV presenter) and Dev Patel (aka the oversexed adolescent Anwar from Channel 4's *Skins*series). "We talk about the film, and how good the awards are for it. But the film has no ego, and we do! Everybody dreams about stuff like this!" The film, unfolding as a series of flashbacks during an extraordinary game of India's *Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?*, stars Patel as an orphaned slum-dweller called Jamal who is driven through life, and ultimately to the *Millionaire* hot seat, by his undying love for his childhood sweetheart, Latika (Pinto). Along the way the movie erupts with race riots, breakneck chases, betrayals, murder, romance and enough musical montages to pummel the most sceptical viewer into delicious submission. It was filmed over four months in a series of wide-ranging Mumbai locations — from the Dharavi and Juhu slums to the now infamous VT (Victoria Terminus) Station, the site of last year's terrorist massacre. Naturally, releasing the film — which explicitly celebrates the spirit of this city — in the weeks after the attacks has given it a certain eerie resonance. Yet it's something from which Boyle instinctively flinches. "It's so hard because you have to be very careful not to get too involved in that," he says, suddenly serious. "What we can't do is use the event to try and redress the film." "I think I felt, on the first day of the attacks, that maybe we'd made a rather naive film about the wonders of the city," says Beaufoy. "But then I started getting e-mails from the Indian crew in Mumbai that were fervent and full of spirit. It's absolutely right to feel that the city is a place of hope and generosity." Beaufoy explains that the film began as early proof pages of an Indian novel called *Q&A* by Vikas Swarup. The novel had the same quiz show structure as Beaufoy's script, but he felt that there was something missing. "It was about a poor kid getting rich. And I didn't want to write a rags-to-riches screenplay," he says. "So I went out to Mumbai and just wandered around, listened to stories and found out what people were talking about. And I quickly realised that the big thing in India, and certainly in Bollywood, is love and romance. And if I could make it a love story then that element would override everything else. So that's why I invented you (turns to Pinto). And I think I did quite well!" The 24-year-old Pinto, a Mumbai native who was then presenting a travel show on Indian TV, said that the casting process was excruciating. "I did five auditions for Danny," she says. "And each time all he said was, 'Fantastic, I'll see you soon!' " "But I remember seeing you on a tape," says Boyle. "You were in one of the very first batches of people I looked at, and I thought, 'I bet that's her!' I had that once before, with Kelly Macdonald in *Trainspotting*." "After one of my auditions I was sure Danny had given me the 'letting you down gently' speech," says Patel. "I went home and gorged myself on the most miserable, depressing pizza of my entire life." He adds that he was keen to prove to Boyle that he wasn't just the hyper-hormonal character from *Skins*, and that his many nude YouTube montages were not a threat to his credibility. "I don't know what people are thinking, putting them up there, but they aren't interested in me naked," he explains. "They just want to see something funny, like spiders eating spiders!" "Or Mentos in Diet Coke!" says Boyle. "You drop some Mentos in a two-litre bottle of Diet Coke. It goes insane! It's the same fascination as watching Dev naked!" In early November, 2007, with cast and crew in place, the *Slumdog* shoot began. Pinto, Patel and Boyle describe the agony and the ecstacy of their months in Mumbai with wide-eyed enthusiasm. When asked if any of the city's 19 million denizens ever stepped into frame during a shot, Boyle laughs and asks, "You mean, did they ever step out of frame?" Patel describes the experience as one of complete sensory overload, but also one that was utterly transformative. "I remember after a really tricky scene opposite my screen brother Salim [Madhur Mittal] on top of this unfinished building, we were both dying for a wee," says Patel. "But there were no loos. So there, standing at the edge, looking out over all Bombay, we just unzipped and let it go. It felt so empowering." There were low points, too, he adds, but they mostly revolved around his own crises of confidence. "Sometimes I'm sitting in that *Who Wants to be a Millionaire? *chair, and I've been in it for two days solid and I'm thinking, What am I doing here?" he says. "I'm sticking out like a sore thumb! What if I put my hand here? Will that be worse?" "The kitchen scene was worse," says Pinto, recalling a knockout emotional scene in which Jamal and Latika are momentarily re-united in the kitchen of a local gangster. Boyle, unhappy with early takes, where Pinto's Latika was wearing sunglasses throughout, ordered reshoots. "I almost had a breakdown, thinking, Danny's so pissed off with me right now! I'm just not getting it!" she says. "But that shows you that actors know nothing!" sighs Boyle. "Because the first time we shot that scene, in the sunglasses, I realised that it's all in the eyes, and we can't see them. And after 12 years of doing this job I'd learnt f***ing nothing. Whereas you were brilliant in the scene you're talking about." He allows himself a little pause, and then adds, "You were terrible in all the others!" "Thanks Danny!" she says, glaring. The film was wrapped in February 2008 and, with the addition of a thumping soul-stirring score from A. R. Rahman, the producers began test-screening the film that summer. The film subsequently became a festival smash and was eventually released in America in November to a rapturous critical response. Today's foursome announce that they have nothing else planned but solid Slumdog promotion, right up to early spring. Boyle says that he is proud to support the film in any way possible, because of what it says about life, and about Mumbai. He is drawn, eventually, on the movie's poignancy in the light of the terrorist attacks. And when he contemplates the film's greatest love scene, filmed in VT station, he is genuinely moved to reflect. "The one attack that shocked me was VT station. We spent so much time there. It's a place for all people of India, and nothing to do with tourists or Westerners. You could see straight away that the real message was, 'Kill as many people as possible!' So, I'm glad that our scene in there is a love scene. I'm glad that there was irredeemable romance in that station." *Slumdog Millionaire is released nationwide on Friday* * http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5380554.ece * -- regards, Vithur
