: Amy Raphael
: Danny Boyle Authorised Edition
: Faber& Faber
: 9780571301874
: 1
: CHF 10.00
:
: Musik, Film, Theater
: English
: 528
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
In this revelatory career-length biography, produced through many hours of interviews with Danny Boyle, he talks frankly about the secrets behind the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games as well as the struggles, joys and incredible perseverance needed to direct such well-loved films as Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later and Shallow Grave. Throughout his career Danny Boyle has shown that he has an incredible knack of capturing the spirit of the times, be they the nineties drug scene, the aspirations of noughties Indian slum-dwellers or the things that make British people proud of their nation today, from the NHS to the internet. In 2012, Danny Boyle was the Artistic Director for the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games. He has been awarded an Oscar, a Golden Globe Award and two BAFTA awards for directing such influential British films as Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Slumdog Millionaire. He has worked alongside such actors as Cillian Murphy, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, Kelly Macdonald, Dev Patel and Rose Byrne. In this in-depth biography, Amy Raphael captures the optimism and determination of a driven individual in full career flight.

Amy Raphael has written for all the UK broadsheets and myriad magazines, including The Face, Esquire and the Radio Times. Her first book, Never Mind the Bollocks: Women Rewrite Rock was published in 1995 and an updated version, A Seat at the Table: Women on the Frontline of Music, was published in 2019. A Game of Two Halves: Famous Football Fans Meet Their Heroes, with forewords by both Gary Lineker and Raheem Sterling, raised money for UNCHR. She co-wrote Steve Coogan's autobiography Easily Distracted and worked with David Hare on his memoir, The Blue Touch Paper. Her second middle-grade novel, The Ship of Cloud and Stars, will be published in January 2022. Danny Boyle in Conversation with Amy Raphael was published 2013 and Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh was originally published in 2008.

‘This is for everyone who has ever looked at the stars, or gazed from atop a hill, or across the sea and wondered …’

Tim Perkins,Worlds End: The
Riders on the Storm

At just after 8 p.m. on Friday 27 July 2012, I sit in front of the television with my daughter. She is a few days shy of her eighth birthday. She is calm and composed. I am jittery, unsettled,consumed with childish anticipation. It is nearly two years since I teased Danny Boyle about rumours that he was going to direct the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. Boyle never had any doubt about accepting the job. I thought it was a bizarre, eccentric decision.

What was he thinking? Why would he want to deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the sponsors and the inevitable politics of the opening ceremony when he could just make another film, safe in the knowledge that he always enjoys director’s cut?

Slowly, however, his decision began to make sense. If he had turned it down, he would never know what he had missed out on. And why wouldn’t the most successful British director of recent years take on one of the toughest and most exciting directing jobs on the planet? Boyle relishes a challenge. He thrives when working under stress, acknowledging that film-making is ‘a kind ofmadness’. He can see the bigger picture and yet, even when proving himself human by teetering on the edge of exhaustion, doesn’t let the smallest of details go.

In recent years, Boyle has decided not to make films for more than $20 million. He enjoys the pressure of producing spectacular movies out of relatively small budgets. He did it withTrainspotting in 1996 and again withSlumdog Millionaire in 2008, so there was no reason why he couldn’t kick-start the Olympic Games with£27 million. It’s said that the Beijing opening ceremony in 2008 cost at least ten times that amount, possibly even as much as $500 million. It was spectacular, but in attempting to flex its muscles in the new world order it gave a post-communist display that ultimately felt cold and clinical. The best decision Boyle made was not to ‘better’ Beijing, but to create something different altogether: a trulyidiosyncratic ceremony.

On 12 June – an utterly miserable wet day – a press conference for the opening ceremony was held at 3 Mills Studios. Close to the Olympic Park, it was also where the control deck ofIcarus had been built forSunshine. In a cold, cavernous space, Boyle unveiled a model of the Olympic Stadium: fake grass, plastic toy animals, a village green, Glastonbury Tor, a mosh pit. Boyle, talking fast and fluent, discussed his vision of England’s green and pleasant land. He had the air of someone in control. But only just.

At the end of the press conference, I spoke briefly with him. ‘The whole thing is beyond pressure,’ he said, with a huge grin. ‘But we’re having fun mostly because the volunteers are so amazing.’

I wanted to ask what the inevitable edge to the ceremony would be; I refused to believe that he would present a bucolic andanodyne vision of Britain to the world. I wanted to ask if the thousands of nurses invited to the stadium might provoke memories of Benny Hill rather than the intended celebration of the NHS. I wanted to ask how the alchemy of film-making, when the film somehow comes together in the edit, would work with the opening ceremony. Was he hoping that, almost by magic, it would all come together on the night? As Boyle was briskly whisked away by officials, my que