The Rewatchables - ‘Trainspotting’ With Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald choose life after rewatching the 1996 British black comedy-drama ‘Trainspotting’ starring Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, and Robert Carlyle. Directed by Danny Boyle. Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The dodgiest scam in a lifetime of dodgy scams. You? Not a much of luggage. Choose good health and the career. Choose your friends. Choose your future. Choose life. Oh, what's up, everybody?

It's Chris Ryan, and I'm joined by my watch co-host and my best friend, Andy Greenwald to talk about train spotting a movie that I have to admit, we have been pushing for like a bunch of K Street lobbyists for the majority of 2021 because it's the 25th anniversary of train spotting. It came out in February in the UK in 1996, and then it came out in the summer in 96 in the States. And it was a formative movie, not only for people of me and Andy's generation, but very formative for me and Andy's friendship. And so I'm really happy to be doing this podcast with him today. What's up, man? You're quite right, Chris. This movie means so much to me

that I'm just absolutely thrilled that we finally get this opportunity. It's quite great, isn't it? As you can see, I'm here with Austin Powers. There's no reason it took this long, if I'm being honest with you. Right? Okay. Do you want me to do this for the whole pod? I will. I bloody will. All right. Do you see me? This movie meant everything to me. I am like almost overwhelmed because usually I'm the accents guy on the rewatchables. We've never had the opportunity to do a Scottish accent on this podcast. This is like if Alan Iverson was on a team with somebody who's like, actually I like dribbling. Yeah, you're right. Speaking of 96, Alan Iverson, train spotting and us, that's what people remember from the year. So I had met Andy a couple of

weeks prior to train spotting's release. It's true. He had been, he was friends with a friend of mine from high school. They were at Brown University together. This is the summer after our freshman year of college. And we were all home in Philadelphia after our freshman year. And I met Andy through this lovely woman and we had hung out a little bit, but maybe just once, right? I think we just like, I went by where you worked at Borders Books, right? Yep. And we had a sort of very, in the way that when dogs meet in a park and they kind of sniff each other. That's right. I saw that you were wearing a pavement shirt and I was probably wearing like an Apples and Stereo a shirt. We were like, oh, yeah, you like that record? Yeah, it's cool. Yes. So we had, I was like,

this is cool. Like, I don't know a lot of people who like the same kind of music as I, that I do, and it would be, it would be fun to hang out with different folks over the course of this summer. And so I was like, filed that away. He's talking about me like, like, like a fling, like sisterhood of the traveling pants. No, but you know how it is when you're like meeting people, you're making new friends. And, you know, so a couple weeks went by. I don't think I'd see you again, but like, I can't remember if I called or we, we talked on the phone at all. But I knew, like, it was Philadelphia. It was the summer. People were out and about. Like, there's only a couple of places really back then to, like, rock in Philadelphia and walk

around, walk a strip. And it was, you know, July of 96. And it seemed like a perfect time in my life to start pushing the realms of my, uh, of my tolerance for psychedelic drugs. So a friend of mine from high school and I, this is a true story. Um, we decided to do mushrooms this, this evening. It was July 30th. I know, because as you will, you will find out that this was also the same night that Tribe Call Quest's Beats, Rhymes, and Life had been released. So I remember, at least in my mind, when that was. I'm going to stop you briefly. Just to fact check a little bit. By the way, Danny Boyle's train spotting. Great film. Earlier that day, so I think it was not the 30th. I think it was Monday, July 29th, and here's why. I was at

repo records in Brynmark, great record store, where we bought a lot of, uh, we, it turned out we both liked to shop for several indie rock releases. And my then girlfriend was visiting from Atlanta, Georgia. From camp, yeah. From camp. She was, she was Canadian, so, uh, and we were at repo records. We ran into you. Oh, that's right. We ran into you earlier in the day. Okay. And then there was a conversation about later. And I think that what you said was that you and a friend were going to go see the Danny Boyle film train spotting. You didn't say the Danny Boyle film. Shallow Grave had been out. Great movie. Yeah. But I think there was some conversation about like, oh, that sounds like fun. But we definitely did not make plans because we didn't have cell phone. So there was no way we could have triangulated.

It was like maybe see you later. So yes, Shallow Grave had come out. Danny Boyle's debut feature film, which also starred Ewan McGregor, who would start and McGregor, who would start in. transpotting. And it was like a kind of cult sensation. Like if you went and saw it, you loved it, but not very many people saw. It's like this kind of really twisted Hitchcockian black comedy, sorry, Christopher Eccleston and you and McGregor and Carrie Cox, right? Saw it with my parents. Saw it with parents. Great family watch. Good idea. So the transponding is out in the States and it starts, you know, it had been a thing that we, I think we're really anticipating because Andy and I were both like kind of minor anglophiles that would blossom into like full on like obsessives

about British music and British culture at the time. And obviously transpotting is a product of Scotland, but was an offshoot of that whole like Cool Britannia feeling at the time. So I was really looking forward to transpotting when it was coming out. I decided or we decided that that day, me and my friend from high school, that we were going to do mushrooms. I had not done mushrooms before. So it didn't really know what to expect. Think about like five, six clock. We ate them. I can tell this story now. I think the statute of limitations has passed. And, you know, we started to walk around the city because you figure why not. Let's go see the sites. And I remember shortly before hitting the area where train spotting was playing at the

Ritz, looking up at the moon and thinking that that is the death star. And that that is a really cool wrinkle in my life that Star Wars is happening in front of me. And, you know, obviously in the greatest Hunter Thompson-esque way, the drugs kicked in. And I was really feeling it. So me and my friend are walking through Philadelphia is a lot of energy in the streets

at that time. And who do I come upon as we arrive? I think what is the Ritz on like 3rd Street as we're walking up 3rd Street, but Andy Greenwald and his then girlfriend. And that was a shock to me

because I was tripping my balls off at the time. So I didn't quite anticipate running into anyone that I knew. Now, a couple things. I was doing what all gentlemen did when they had girlfriends visiting from out of town. I was taking her to a midnight release party for a tribe called Quest CD. So Mr. Romantic over here. We were traversing South Philadelphia to get there and stumbled upon a block that was weirdly quiet.

Because as you said, it was a popping off. It was an evening in the summertime. And then I noticed that there were three police officers crouching by the bushes. Yeah. And we were told to maybe not walk on Fourth Street, but to walk on Third Street because there was an active police investigation on that street. And that was when we ran in to young Padawan, eyes like Thai fighters, Chris Ryan. Now, the biggest memory of this in my mind, you held it together. Respect to you, you know, you really like head on a swivel.

Cool under fire. They always say that. Yes, in the foxhole. but what was amazing, and I think this actually does serve as a segue for the behavior of similarly aged people in the film train spotting, is that you were with your friend John, who's a bigger guy, really sweet guy, nice guy, but he was physically a bigger guy. And he was not as friendly. I think that may have been the first time I'd met him. We were both in altered states, but yeah, John's a love guy. And he wandered off, I think, to just see if he also could bring Luke's X-wing out of the swamp over by the parking garage. he needed to go into the indoor parking garage above the Ritz. He wandered off. And what you did was

you just turned to me conspiratorially, leaned in, I think thinking that my girlfriend wouldn't hear, and you said, sorry about him, he's on drugs. Thus proving that people on drugs can be unpredictable, some slightly entertaining, but also not very loyal. Yeah, fluid state of loyalty. We can sort of wrap up there's reverie there. But I was just, I wanted to tell this story, both of how Andy and I met, not only to show that this is a movie that's played a huge part in our lives, but it was also like something that I think at the time in 96, and this movie has stayed with me, was very much like a symbol of a cultural moment that I thought we could talk about. You know, before we started the podcast, Craig was actually asking me whether or not, because of train spotting and because of

a fight club a couple years later, whether there was just something nihilistic in the air about like fuck society, fuck my responsibilities to this world, fuck me getting into the rat race, fuck like, basically like the

sort of inversion of the choose life, which is obviously a very sarcastic monologue that Mark Renton gives at the beginning of this movie is about like

shrugging off all of the expectations of modern life and choosing something in the case of Fight Club, obviously bare-knuckle boxing and violence, but in the case of transpotting, an absolutely destructive choice to choose

heroin. And, you know, at the time, obviously I had no experience with heroin, but like, I felt seduced by the nihilism, I think, around there. And I also felt very seduced by the lifestyle that wasn't necessarily present in the movie, but was present around the movie. Yes. I think to that point, there is a case to be made, but I think it could only be made in hindsight, that the 90s were such a relatively stable decade, certainly for those people living, in America when the economy was expanding, wars were not within our shores. Like, in retrospect, it seems like a very benign time. President's just playing the sacks.

It's just everything's going great. Yeah. So you can look back and say that there was a rebelling against a kind of enwee that had settled into the Western world. And you could look at these movies as exemplars of that. As a 19-year-old coming to this movie, what really is a really, resonated with me then, and what I think has allowed the movie to stay as absolutely peerless as it is, is because it's not really a movie about drugs or about Scotland.

It's really a movie about being exactly that age. It is a movie about youth. It is a movie about having limitless potential in some ways, but absolutely no idea what to do with it, about how crushing your options seem about boredom, which is something that as a 44-year-old I long for, it would be great to feel bored. But that was a thing, right? And I think to your second point, this movie has, to quote,

another great bard of the 90s, Stephen Malcolmus, this movie had style for miles and miles. And the marketing and the way it really hit the vein, pun intended of where the culture was going. As you said, we were reading Melody Maker and NME and we were desperate to buy import CDs and hear all these new bands and these new sounds like trip hop and stuff that was coming from the UK and then to see something that was just effortlessly cool

where there's these banner advertisements for a movie with a name that doesn't make sense to us. And characters that we don't know in states of absolutely like the coolest looking people you could imagine, or at least the most interesting-looking people you could imagine. We'll talk about this later on, but the movie had a $1.5 million pound budget and an 800,000 pound marketing budget, and you can tell.

And to hear the movie coming, literally, in terms of the soundtrack, as well as the kind of like what was then a very, I mean, there was no such thing as viral marketing, but it was an effective marketing campaign, to feel it coming, to feel like you were about to feel the culture shift, and you could be a part of it finally after years of, you know,

maybe being a little bit too young or still being in high school as we were. And then you see these posters or these characters with cool names like Sick Boy, and they are shot as if they are James Bond. We never heard of them. But they are our versions of these heroes. The photo shoots for the poster are probably more glamorous than the movie, way more glamorous than the movie itself. And so there was something thrilling.

And I think it's probably, you know, I don't know if this is how we planned it. Certainly it's not how Craig planned it. But the fact that we have so much to talk about before we even talk about the movie is accurate because it was a phenomenon. We knew it was a phenomenon in the UK early in the year. We're talking about a night when we could have seen it, seen it. Spoiler, we didn't see it that night. But by the time we saw it, it felt like catching the ski lift to the top of a triple black diamond.

Like it was moving and we wanted to be a part of it. Yeah. So, I mean, it also feels like a vestige of like the kind of monocultural era of popular culture, where the thing, the text, whether it was the movie or the book or whatever, but like the things that really either crossed over into huge mainstream success, like say like purple rain, or something that had like an incredible hold on people in a subcultural way, like say, train spotting and to some extent like reservoir dogs, which I think eventually crossed into the mainstream, but like it initially felt like a real underground punk rock thing. You know, it's not just the text. It's the

soundtrack and the poster and the novel it was based on and then going through all these sort of basically like obsessions with Scottish new Scottish fiction because like Andy and I were both burgeoning kind of I don't know writers is like the right thing to say but I think we both had like ideas that we wanted to be writers at some point in our lives and we're reading pretty voraciously at the time and there was this whole movement of younger Scottish writers at the time period Irvine Welsh being sort of preeminent among them or at least the most popular but you Alan Warner and James Cullen. And like, it was a really incredible scene over there that then translated into this movie

that felt like it could only have been made by Danny Boyle, who seemed like prodigiously gifted. And when you watch this movie, even now, it's like, it's a kind of unfathomable that this movie cost the lunch budget of a day on Avengers and is still extraordinary. It's still so fresh. It's still so energetic and kinetic. and then you add in the music, which both was an encyclopedia of cool with Iggy Pop and Brian Eno and Lou Reed. And then basically the greatest hits of that 18-month stretch with primal scream underworld and, you know, like blur and more contemporary artists. Sleeper.

And Sleeper. Yeah. And Pulp. Yeah. So you had this. It wasn't just a movie. It was a movement. Absolutely.

And one that sent us both off, I think, on. or down any number of rabbit holes in terms of our music fandom, in terms of the books that we read, in terms of what we wanted to see and what we expected to see from movies. And I'll say this at the beginning. Like, I'm so happy to rewatch it. I'm so because it totally holds up. And you really feel how fleeting and effervescent and random and magical it is

for so many things to come together at once, not just to have tapped into a cultural moment. moment, not just to have a director suddenly realizing what he's capable of and feeling like fully empowered to do so, but then also a star who, you know, you watch this movie and you're like, oh, Ewan McGregor is going to be the, the generational movie star that we were promised. Kind of funny to think about that, I mean, while he's had a phenomenal career and we love him, he would then later fall out with Danny Boyle when Danny Boyle chose to work with the person who probably did become the generational movie star for my first.

generation, DeCaprio on the beach. So, Ewe and McGregor was supposed to be in the beach, which, speaking of seminal texts, like the Alex Gardner novel, The Beach was like a really big deal. And then it was Danny Boyle. The guy made transpotting is going to make the beach. And you're just like, holy shit. And then he chooses to work with Leonardo DiCaprio. And I think that they, I don't know, McGregor and Boyle had basically fell out for almost 20 years. Yeah, until they made T2 transpotting, the sequel to Transpotting, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, at some point. Let's just go through some of the people involved in this movie really quickly. So we mentioned Boyle

who broke out with Shallow Grave with film nerds and people who went to art house movie theaters and people who read movie magazines. I think everybody recognized that was a pretty significant talent. And then the sophomore album is the one that takes him into the stratosphere and that's transpotting. I don't think anybody

was really ready for that. But you knew that you had like a filmmaker who was going to be a mainstay and that he had a certain, I've seen him described as purely cinematic. Like the energy he brings to storytelling is the kind of thing that it's like at once like, you know, he serves the story particularly well because he is, and maybe adds a level of energy to it or an energy, at a level of

comedic flare to it or drama to it that maybe wouldn't have been there just in the screenplay or just in the material. Without question. And we should say that he brought his team that he worked with for his first few movies along with him. So he's working with Andrew McDonald, who had produced Sheldograve and with John Hodge, screenwriter. And I think it's worth noting that the novel, Irving Welch's novel, had been published in 1993 and was kind of culty. Both of us went on to read it and other books by him. It is not an

easy read, mainly because, like the other writers you mentioned, James Kelman Chief among them, he writes in Scottish dialect, which, you know, unless you're hearing it in your head can be a challenge. I think it's a challenge when you're watching train spotting. It can be as well. And also there is just, you know, I don't know if people have read different people, people's experiences may be different. But for us in the 90s, in the ages that we were, the places that his fiction went were gnarly to the extreme.

Yeah. But of course, when you're young, you're like, great, this is extremity is where it's at. Also in like a kind of, I guess for lack of a better turn youth culture of the time, whether it was like going out to raves or, you know, going to see bands and doing drugs. It felt true. Illicit. Yeah. And it felt true to his experience because he was relatively young and he had been living this

life and had been on the dole on heroin in Edinburgh in the 80s. And so he wrote this book. And what was so great about this combination of talents for Welsh, it was two things. It was, I mean, obviously, Shell O'Grave was a sensation. It was like the first UK movie to make its money back in the UK in a while because the film industry there had been in a major slump. So already that was goal. Hodge and McDonald, like Irvine Wilsch, are Scottish.

Shallow grave was a Scottish film. Danny Boyle is not Scottish. He's from Manchester, I believe, but certainly could pass and walk the walk and talk to talk. I think the other thing that really set them apart was instantly they assured Welsh that what they wanted to do wasn't what the other people who had been sniffing around the property wanted to do, which was they read the book and they were like,

oh, this is a cautionary tale. Yeah. This is basketball diaries or something. I think Welsh called it. said people wanted to do po-faced social realism. Right. And the book itself is not an easy adaptation. It's basically a collection of occasionally interlocking vignettes, which, by the way, the movie is too, ultimately. And so pulling out a narrative would be hard for any team. But the worst possible thing you could do would be to pull out a redemption narrative where someone

gets away from this world completely and looks down on it and whatever. And they were made it very clear that that's not what they wanted to do. And so you combine this book whose basic attitude is in the UK Parlin's two fingers up. With this director whose attitude about how you're supposed to make movies is two fingers up all the way up because there are no rules and it was the perfect combination

at the perfect moment. The actors involved in the story, it's one of those kind of once-in-a-generation movies where the five, four or five unknowns who are in the ensemble all go on to have 20-year careers, 25-year careers after the fact, So obviously McGregor would go on to be in a life less ordinary, but then would kind of get sucked up into the world of Star Wars playing Obi-Wan.

Kenobi is a role that he is still playing to this day in a new Disney plus series that will come out probably next year. You have Johnny Lee Miller, who it was British or was English and then adopted a Scottish accent for the movie. And he obviously... Much like I did on this podcast. Right, exactly. And then he was like he's on like a CBS show now or was. I mean, he's got, he's had a very, like, he's had a very long successful career, mostly on TV here. You and Brebner, who, uh, actually originated the role of written in a stage production of train spotting,

plays Spud, and he's in Black Hawk Down. He's, he's just in, like, he's that guy and a lot, he plays, uh, he's been a great character actor for decades. And then, of course, Kelly McDonald, who plays Diane in the movie, was a 19-year-old waitress who answered a flyer and got the role of Diane, um, and wound up having a great acting career after that. And is one of my favorite, favorite actresses. Chris, as a giant Gray's anatomy fan, this Kevin McKitt erasure will not stand. So no, I was going to mention that even down to Tommy, you know, we've got Kevin McKidd who's Dr. Owen on Grey's Anatomy. And I completely forgot Robert Carlyle, who obviously Begby in a lot of ways is the role he's always going to be associated with. But he was also in the full Monty. You know,

he's been in really big things other than this. Yeah. And still, I mean, he's another one of those like great actors who disappeared into a corner of American TV that I didn't notice for a while, but he was on once upon a time on ABC for like nine years. He's a beloved character actor and, you know, obviously played the living S out of this part. So we have a lot of stuff to get through in terms of the categories. We've talked about Boyle. We've talked about the cast. I wanted to bounce one thing off of you as we, as you rewatched it. And I guess I was curious, I don't know if you watched it recently before we did this pod. But one of the things that, um, really jumps out at me is that while it is a no-holds-barred warts-and-all view of drug abuse,

it brought up the kind of like the same kind of debate you can have about war movies, where it's like there's this apocryphal maybe France-Wa-Refo quote about like, it's impossible to make an anti-war movie because if you basically, the idea of being like once you commit something to film and inject it with that energy, it becomes somehow seductive or romantic. And that even watching train spotting, which is, probably the greatest anti-drug commercial you could ever see, there is an element of romance to that lifestyle.

If maybe not the lifestyle, or maybe not specifically like shooting heroin, the mindset of some of the characters. And I think that that's kind of, you know, affected greatly by the fact that Iggy Pop is really good. And if you put Lust for Life over someone reading the phone book, you're going to be like, I want to read the fucking phone book. Yeah.

I mean, it was, for me, the most interesting thing about the rewatch is the morality that comes into play later in life. I don't remember watching this movie and feeling any type of way in particular about the drug use. I never thought it made it look cool or fun because the darkness and the places the movie goes to the drug use doesn't ever leave you feeling like it's something. It would be a good choice. I mean, there is a character who says in the beginning. getting, I'll never do that. He does it. Doesn't go great. You know what I mean? Also, why I will never own a cat. So I don't remember coming into it with any of that baggage. What I remember feeling was just so viscerally thrilled that there was a movie about trying to do something and that being with people

and getting into situations felt like the goal of life. Now, I wouldn't do well in some of the Begby-led situations. But that aspect of it is really what popped off. Now, watching it later, my concern was now that, you know, and people who listen to the watch know this, like, I have, I struggle watching movies with children in peril. There is no bigger child in peril film in the Western canon, perhaps, than train spotting. And yet, I had, I shouldn't say, had no trouble watching. I mean, it hits harder, it hits different, it's more upsetting and appalling in the darkness of where the movie goes, stayed with me more, the arc of it,

you know, as opposed to feeling like I felt at the time, which was just super jazz because it's going, it's going, it's going, it's dark for a second, hey, underworld's playing. Yes. Now I felt the sort of the moral arc of it in a different way. But what I felt more than anything else was still that point, which is this movie, at no point is making it seem cool. It's just showing us desperation in all its forms

in a way that at times can feel entertaining and enthralling, and most of the time feels quite worrisome and disturbing. It's fascinating to watch this in conjunction with Transpotting 2, and I don't want to make this into a Transpotting 2 conversation. So maybe Andy and I will actually chat a little bit about that on the watch at some point soon. But I think Transpotting True tries to reckon with the things that happen in this movie and the almost unemotional or amoral way in which the characters approach certain things. And I think that for the first movie, you're really supposed to understand that the only thing that these people care about really is heroin. and that heroin wipes the slate.

Every time you take a shot and every time you need a shot, you are essentially wiping away this whiteboard of feelings, of memories, of guilt, of anything. And T2 is essentially these guys, after 20 years of scar tissue, trying to reckon with whether or not they still feel anything, or whether or not they feel anything about that specific period where in the present in that moment,

they may be felt nothing at all. Well, I think the other important thing about the world is the lack of judgment in, in the film, in the storytelling, and in the point of view. The way the film is not just shot and cast and acted, but also the way the production design highlights it, the world, the real world, looks absolutely soul-killing.

It's absolutely deadening. And not just the color palette or like when Spud has the interview for a job that he doesn't want where he's going to have to sit in front of a palm tree. In a word, pleasure. And other people's pleasure is that Renton's parents, or any of the parents, all seem absolutely fucking clueless about anything and are not expressing emotion or love or whatever.

They're also drinking and smoking cigarettes and living some sort of... ...socially acceptable drugs like value. Yeah, of course, right. So there is no modeling for better behavior. There is no person who comes in the third act, you know, like the kindly drug counselor and it's like, it's okay to stop hating yourself.

Like, no, the movie is a series of vignettes of emotionally stunted people who are also on drugs moving, not necessarily forward, but just kind of just kind of moving, right? Yeah. And so when you think about scenes that potentially could have hit different 20 or 30 years later or ought to hit different with 20 or 30 years of hindsight as they might in the sequel, like showing up, I mean, Renton kills his friend, right? Like, yes, he's an adult and Tommy is an adult and makes his own choices, but he sets in motion

a series of catastrophic dominoes when he steals the sex table. Oh, and then pushes him off the cliff. Yeah. And then shows up at his funeral and it's just like, tell me the gnarly details of it before I go to London. That is amoral. It is upsetting and disturbing. Yeah, right.

At what point was he in touch with any aspect of himself to be like, ho ho now? He's not. So I think it's one of those things where, honestly, the best anecdote is that in 1996 in the presidential race, Bob Dole briefly tried to make this an issue and be like, this is movies like train spotting or ruining our youth with their glorification of heroin use. And someone was like,

Senator Dole, have you seen the film? And he was like, no. I mean, that's not what this movie is. And it is a, it is a triumph that lasts because it never tried to pretend to be something other than what it, what it is.

Our guy, Raj, before we get into the categories, Roger Ebert said, Strange the cult following of train spotting. Strange, the cult following, trade and spotting has generated in the UK as a book, a play, and a movie. It uses a colorful vocabulary. It contains a lot of energy. It elevates its miserable heroes to the status of

icons in their own eyes, that is. And it does evoke the Edinburgh drug landscape with a conviction that seems born of close observation. But what else does it do? Does it lead anywhere? Say anything? Not really. That's the point. Three stars. Raj. Raj. I mean, oh, movies have to say something now? Not in this podcast. We'll take a quick break and then we'll get into the categories. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound tersephatide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet

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So which one are you trying first? Find two good creamers at your local retailer in the creamer aisle. All right, Andy. Most rewatchable scene, this movie very, I think, knowingly follows the Goodfellas model where the first 45 minutes are,

while some horrifying things happen within those 45 minutes, including the worst toilet in all of Scotland. It's pretty thrilling. It's a pretty, energetic, pretty, like, exciting, uh, I dare I say seductive 45 minutes of comedy, of great music, of people making incredibly funny cracks at one another. And so for that first 45 minutes, there's,

I think the most rewatchable scenes are very weighted into that area. And then like Goodfellas, there is a turn. And then the last half of the movie is quite dark, quite upsetting, quite vivid, and quite anxiety producing. So the most rewatchable scenes I have are mostly from that first half, but that isn't to say that I don't love the second half. It's just that it's harder to sort of define like, oh, my favorite, I wouldn't say the most rewatchable scene is the baby crawling on the ceiling

while Mark is detoxing, for instance. No, in fact, that's the most never watch again scene. I mean, this movie is the record. It is the music that's in it, in that it draws you in, and it's so fucking exciting when Lus for Life kicks in. And that's true, as you were saying, no matter where you are listening to that song, to have the pictures match the music and draw you in.

I mean, it's almost, and I know you've got some pulled out, and we'll talk about them, but there's no question that it's in the first, whatever the scene we choose is is in the first 40 minutes, and I could just rewatch those first 40 minutes over and over and over again. And I feel like just as we're talking generally about that first part, just shout out the editor, Masahiro, Hirocubo, who is an English editor who had worked with Danny Boyle at the BBC,

when Danny Boyle was just like a house TV. director who then came with him, quit his job to work on Shallow Grave and on this. And I was watching an interview with him and he was just, you know, he's in London while they're shooting in Glasgow and getting this footage and being like, oh my God, another great scene. Oh my God, another great scene, but also being like narratively this movie doesn't exist. Yeah. So we're going to have to make it. And so one of the things that I love about that opening scene in and of itself is it is not just that it's relentless and thrilling and kinetic. It's that it is entirely created out of whole cloth between Danny Boyle and the editor and the, uh, and, and, and, and hereacubo, right?

Like, they've, they just had this stuff and they made it feel like, I know I'm mixing my syringe movies here, but it does feel like the amphetamine shot, uh, adrenaline shot to the heart in Pulp Fiction, which was also 96. Uh, yeah, that's right. Right. I believe so. No, Pulp Fiction was earlier, right? 94.

94, yeah. So, um, thank you, Craig. Uh, anyway, that being said, so my first rewatchable scene is the choose life monologue. which I, you know, as I get older, I sort of notice different parts of that monologue and different little elements of those scenes. But like my favorite part, I think, is ultimately the end with Renton kind of lying prone on the ground. And he just says the last, the last line of that whole monologue is like, I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? But I'm no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got head on?

If you needed to know what Renton's character is about, and if you were like, well, how could he do this to Tommy and how could he run out on these guys at the end of the movie? It's like, that's why. Because this is the, his brain chemistry, whether it's been rewired or whether he was always a kind of a little bit of a psycho, like this is how he thinks, you know, it's, this is who he really is. So the Choose Life monologue, which basically goes through their five-aside soccer match and, you know, Johnny Lee Miller's first bond monologue about, you know, Sean Conry and diamonds are forever. Talk about economy.

I mean, we're going to talk about this throughout this podcast. I mean, the movie's only like 93 minutes, right? But like introducing the characters the way it does, like giving each of them this little moment to shine. But just the way they are all, the way they are in the soccer match.

Like the way they are behaving. That's telling us everything. And it's just so, it's just so efficient and thrilling. Yeah. I mean, Begby tackling a guy, Spud playing goalie and just kind of being like, my bad, my bad. It's just amazing.

Like, that pretty much leads into, you know, there's a lot of comedy, I think, to the first effort to relinquish junk. I don't know that I often go back to the toilet scene, but like that whole meeting Irvine Welsh's Mikey Forrester character, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point, I like, I like the first trying to get off junk scene. Yeah, I mean, just, again, like the filmmaking and the visual rhythm and comedy that Danny Boyle can get out of that scene with the monologue, the voiceover, the stacker. up of the cans, all the things that he's going to need, and he's hammered himself in there,

leading to, but first, what I really need. And that he, you see the wreckage of the barricade that he's made on the floor. Right. I would also nominate Spud's job interview. Mr. Murphy, what exactly attracts you to the leisure industry? And what pleasure? It's like my pleasure and other people's pleasure. Do you see yourself as having any weaknesses? Oh, yes, because like, I'm a bit of a perfectionist, Yes. See, for me, it's got to be the best or there's nothing at all. Like, things get a bit dodgy. I just cannot not be bothered. You know, his speed riddled. A touch of speed. Because the whole idea of that scene is that like you have to be interested enough in getting the job that it doesn't, you're not going to violate like your parole, but not so good that you actually wind up having to work. Not parole. The dull. Right. Because like this was something that was very, very fascinating because for us as American.

in the 90s because you'd slowly figure out from fiction, from movies that the UK had a much more generous unemployment system than we did. That essentially underwrote a lot of creative endeavors. Which later, exactly, speaking of our love of Scotland, like finding out that bands that we loved, like for example, like Bell and Sebastian, their whole thing, like they were unemployed, but they got money from the dole to do a course at a university that led them to form a band, and then the school subsidized the recording of an album, which led to a 30-year career.

Like, there were good outcomes like that, and then there were less good outcomes, like Spud's job interview. But this was all culturally fascinating and quite different. Yeah. I would also nominate, well, this is actually the dark horse for me for the most rewatchable scene is Begby's story and Tommy's version of the story.

It's incredible. Both because of Carlisle and McKidd, who are extraordinary in that scene, but just this is, if you're wondering like, okay, show me the two-minute game film, the highlight reel of how good Danny Boyle is, is the freeze frames. Now cutting away to, you know, rent and stealing Tommy's porno while Tommy's telling him the story, cut back to, you know, Begby's version of it, Kevin, Tommy's version of it, and then ending with them sort of looking down on this, from this balcony at a pub,

at this mayhem that Begby has created. You got glassed and no cunt leaves here to we find out what cunt did it. Who the fuck are you? Someone glassed this wee lassie. I had that in my section too because, again, it's like no one was ever going to mistake Irvine Welsh's train spotting from Madam Bovary, right? It was not a heavy novel that someone was going to approach and say, we have to do this justice and do it respectfully. But it was never that. But there is a energy and a.

elasticity that Danny Boyle and his collaborators brought to it that is absolutely in that scene. Like, what's the best version of it? Because as you said, if you're thinking about it, it is either expositional bricklaying. We're going to introduce this character and now we're going to learn a little bit about the true story. But in the end, it's just fighting, right? Yeah. So what he does, right, is he, there's a freeze frame on the glass, which goes into a flash

forward with Tommy, which goes into his flashback of what they're talking about before restoring to the present moment, which is just a punch up in a bar. And it takes a moment that when you describe it isn't much and turns it into everything. And you could watch it again and again and again. And I feel like this was in watching some interviews with cast members and crew members about this movie to prepare for this podcast. Almost all of them were like, this movie's not about anything. You need 10 words to describe it. It's really about the experience of watching it.

Because that's the thing is that the momentum of the filmmaking hides the fact that there is no plot. Like the end of the movie with this like this heist and you know or not the heist but this big deal that's going to make them well is like that comes in in the last like 15 minutes of the movie up until then it's basically guys on and off of drugs for this entire thing. I would also say later in the film when Begby shows up in London. I always really love that when he's like knocks the pot of noodles away and is always making him go buy cigarettes. I really like that kind of Mark's past coming to catch up with him. him. I think we settled in in no time at all. And the final one would just be the Skag deal with Keith Allen. Yeah, I don't have anything different. For me, the whole just opening rush bleeds into one. I think the entire nightclub sex business montage.

Yeah. Yeah, is just such, again, it's just thrilling filmmaking, and it's really, really, really funny. and one of the few parts of the movie, and we'll get to this probably in what's age the worst, that actually gives some narrative balance gender-wise. But I don't argue with any of your takes. I just kind of feel like the most rewatchable thing is the movie, because the most re-watchable scene is the moment you press play.

Yeah, I will probably go... Choose Life is amazing, but I'm actually going to say that's what wage the best next. So I'm going to go beg be story, Tommy's version, as the best most rewatchable scene, because I actually have like just fired that up on YouTube from time to time. So what's age the best? Obviously, I just said to choose life speech.

This was one of those things that I think people knew even though if they hadn't seen the movie. Like the idea that there was this monologue that was not unlike the first rule of fight club sort of line that became pretty well known. Even if people weren't like, yeah, I'm a huge Scottish fiction guy. You know, I love more of a color. I think that, you know, and this leads into the other What's Age of the Best, which is the poster, which Andy and I also talked about. But the poster, and there was even a poster, I think, that had the monologue on it or some version of the monologue that was essentially in every college dorm room that I visited between 1997 and 1999. Yeah, I mean, so much of the 90s were about the collision between artists or public figures expressing rebellious, idiosyncratic rage against the machine. viewpoints and the machine working as fast as it could at the time to co-op them and rebrand them

and sell them back to you. The commodification of dissent. Yeah, right. Exactly. That's one of the most famous examples as is, I mean, I think around this same time, either my freshman or sophomore year of college is when Coke introduced OK Cola, which was just, you know, with Daniel Cloud's illustrations. It was just cherry flavored soda that was, you know, branded to not impress people.

Right. And so every so often, it kind of works, right? Like, if you watch the movie and you become a fan of it, Mark Retton is no one's idea of a countercultural visionary or leader, but it did tap into something that people were thinking and seeing and feeling about the world, which is everything is cookie cutter and this doesn't make sense. Yeah, and I think that the flourishes of surreality really help, which I would also add is one of my things that have aged the best is sometimes you can be watching a film you know like i think

some terry gilliam stuff for to like for instance is is you kind of are watching and you're like this is a little bit like cheesy or corny when when it kind of like leaves earth's orbit and starts to become really like magical realist but i actually think that some of those flourishes in this movie the toilet and the overdose specifically wind up providing like almost like a little bit of a pressure valve. Like, it releases some pressure in the movie where you're like, I just saw a baby die. Like, I need to have, like, something that kind of washes that away in a way, in a way, psychologically, or even just, like, censorily while I'm watching. And so the Boyle's ability to infuse this movie with things that are impossible, like Renton falling through these trap doors or swimming in a

toilet to get opium suppositories. That also seems to evage the best to me. I think the humor has aged the best. I think it's what you're speaking to. I mean, the movie is fucking funny, and it's funny in a very, very Scottish way. I, fun fact, did an exchange program to Glasgow, Scotland in 1992. First memory is being picked up by the wonderful host family, the Moors, being driven.

And it was like, it was summertime. So they, like, picked me up at like 8.30, and it was bright sunlight until like 11. And that was super weird. And being driven to their home, you know, they're welcoming me into their home. It couldn't have been nicer. And I remember sitting in the back seat with four family members around me, and I could not understand a single word that they said.

Like, not a word. Yeah. I got better at that. But the bigger point being that Scottish people are among the funniest people you will ever encounter in the world with the most, with the darkest, most world-weary, most cynical, wonderful lack of ego, sense of humor you can find. And they, I mean, it is a culture that is almost designed just to take the piss. And so that feeling that cuts through this movie absolutely takes the edge off of certain moments that he's that climbing into a toilet full of literal human shit turns into like a beautiful Jacques Cousteau underwater montage.

And they made this for a million and a half pounds. I don't know how they did that. But also the humor makes when the movie does hit you while it's hugging you makes it hit harder, I think, and I think that that tone has aged so well because it's just so specific and so confident. You could say that this movie is very universal in the sense that it kind of captures a sort of late teen, early 20s nihilism very well. But the specific Scottishness of it is also aged the best. And I would say that's encapsulated in Renton's its shite being Scottish speech that he gives when they're out like in the meadows there. And Tommy's like, doesn't this make you feel proud to be Scottish? Doesn't it make you proud to be Scottish?

It's shy being Scottish! With the lowest of the law! The scum of the fucking earth! The most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shot into civilisation. Some people hate the English. I don't. They're just wankers. We, in the other hand, are colonised by wankers.

Can't even find a decent culture to be colonised by. We're ruled by a few assholes. assholes. It's a shite stay of affairs to be in, Tommy, and all the fresh air in the world won't make any fucking difference. I should say that when I visited, that's one of the best moments in most quotable parts of the whole movie, for sure. On this exchange trip in 1992, you know, some might say this is still the case, you might say this, but certainly in 1992, Chris, I had no understanding of soccer or world soccer or what any of it meant. Yeah. Euros were going on, and I remember going over to my host family with friends or family and other kids on the exchange and their families

came and gathered at this house to watch a match in the Euros. I'd never heard of the Euros. And everyone was so, so, so dialed in. They were so locked in. They were screaming and shouting and cheering. And I was like, is Scotland winning? Like, no man, Scotland's not playing. We didn't qualify. And I was like, well, who are you cheering for? And they were, I don't, I'm going to get this wrong, but they were like, the Netherlands. And I was like, why? And they were like, because they're playing fucking England. Yeah. So that was very, very well-observed and rang very true.

All these things are great. I think I do have a what's age the best, though, may be pretty definitive, and that's the soundtrack. We talked a little bit about, you know, what it was like when you're 17, 18, 19, and you get something like this. This was a golden age for movie soundtracks. we had, you know, Pulp Fiction, obviously, Dazed and Confused, was a really informative soundtrack. Judgment Night, weirdly, kind of a big deal. Judgment night. It was shaped a lot of people's ideas

about whether it was like, okay, to listen to both cool rock and cool rap at the same time, which, believe it or not, was sort of a controversial. Controversial at the time. But the train spotting thing, like, it just hit exactly the moment. It needed to hit for me and for Andy. Like, we were both getting really into not only contemporary music, but the history of music and it kind of curated the most perfectly cool experience, I think you and I could imagine at that point, both in terms of the historical, like the Lou Reedaggy Pop element, but also this night life scene, this idea of going out and dancing all night to club music, which I don't think either of us really ever experienced full stop, much less like got to

experience when we were that age. But in fiction writing classes, we both wrote a lot of stories about that. Absolutely. Absolutely. But, like, you know, obviously this soundtrack and this movie is bookended by two of probably the most, you know, notable or recognizable needle drops. Lus for Life opens this movie. It's the first thing you hear is the drums from Lest for Life. And then the movie closes with Underworld's Born Slippy, which is this cacophonist techno anthem that is incomprehensible to anybody from outside of the UK islands and has yet become like this, this battle cry for something for catharsis and ecstasy. Or logger.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that it's hard. When you talk to younger music fans, I think the thing that is hardest to communicate was that the best and worst thing simultaneously about being a young music obsessive in the era where we were was the attempt was triangulating yourself, like geolocating yourself. You could like something and everything that you liked would open a door to something else. And that was fun. You know, it was like tumbling down a set of stairs like, oh,

This is the person, the people who like R.E.M. also sometimes like the Smiths. Oh, well, the Smiths came up. What's this? What's, what's this record label? Who's Seymour Stein? Who did he sign? What does that mean? And you sort of, and that would be fun. It would be exploration. And it was self-defining. And, and definitely the source, the place where Chris and I spent any disposable money that we had. But the larger curation was often very hard to do, right? The idea that I love this now. And this is the current version. or iteration or successor or a descendant of something that happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. And what's good then is good now, and they're speaking to each other still. And what you just described is what this soundtrack did, right? The bands of the moment, which in the UK were really a pulp and blur. And apparently, fun story, they asked Oasis to contribute, but Nolan Liam saw the title, thought it was literally about hobbyists who watched trains and said, fuck off.

But it, so it had those bands on the soundtrack, but it also had the slightly just prior generation, primal scream who were reinventing themselves into something kind of new and fascinating. You understood then that these people, that these bands listen to, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, and they were always cool, and anyone who told you otherwise was wrong. And then to your point, though, it opened up to the future. I mean, in the movie Renton says music was changed.

changing or whatever. And it's not just the Underworld song, the bedrock song that is not on streaming for what you dream of that's in the club. First of all, all time banger. Second of all, that felt so thrilling and exciting and like what was going to be coming next in early adulthood or whatever where you could just celebrate and party and it was connected. You could like both of those things just to circle back to that point. You and I both had experiences around this time where we would meet someone else who liked guided by voices and they'd be like, great, we could talk about guided by voices. And then you'd be like, and also Biggie.

And they'd be like, why would you like that? And also decontextualized and recontextualized a lot of those songs. Like, Perfect Day. I like Solo Lou Reed. I'm probably a little bit closer to Sick Boy's estimation of Solo Lou Reed compared to Velvet Underground. But, you know, Perfect Day has now gone on to be used in countless movies and usually in movie trailers.

I always think of Diane. the Kelly MacDonald character singing temptation by New Order while he's, while Mark's detoxing from heroin and that song taking on this almost like weird otherworldly quality because she's just like singing at a cappella to him while he's freaking out. Like that, that, that this, the way that they use music in this movie beyond even like the curation of the soundtrack, but the interpolation of the songs in the film, I think is really, really powerful. And I think it's probably in some ways what's aged the best. I agree with you. I think that it's probably also worth noting from what I've heard. I mean, this is anecdotal, but that Danny Boyle was

pretty instrumental in the songs. Like, he knew what songs he wanted, and his taste is all over it. So, kudos to him. But also, I think that that shows. I mean, this was not, although a lot of these bands were hugely popular, this was not market tested. You know what I mean? Like, this was what he heard in his head that soundtracked, the movie that didn't exist yet, and that he wanted to make. And it still, it still holds, it still holds together. So I'll probably say soundtrack was, what age the best, but I will say that still to this day in my life, if I ever go to a gathering and the men and women naturally separate into separate groups, I always think of, what are you talking about? Football. What are you talking about? Shopping. I have taught my daughters that.

That's my most quotable line. You jump the gun. Like, what are you talking about? Football. Like, that is absolutely what all parties are like and what it's always funny to me. Last thing. we can revisit this when we do the re-re-watchables and we do the 50th anniversary of this movie or whatever. But I do think that it's worth noting that Renton's view of gender fluidity has aged very well, where he says at the club 1,000 years from now, there won't be any guys, there won't be any girls, just wankers. And it sounds all right to me. I don't think he's wrong.

What's age the worst? I have the big three. This might be the greatest big three in the history of what age is the worst for movies. Dead babies, feces, and drug withdrawal. Oh, there's a big four. There's a Mount Rushmore, buddy. What's the fourth? Underage sex.

That's right. I mean, they don't say it in the movie, but in the book, Diane is 14. Yeah. So that hasn't aged super great, but I'm absolutely with you on the rest of it. I don't think in 1996 it was like, this is chill. No, and even Renton's not super chill about it, but I do think like when she's just like, I will blackmail you in order for you to sleep with me again. Yes. Okay. That does get it. I mean, like, I think the thing that it has going for it is like they reckon with that a little bit, even if it's still sort of true.

The thing that I've always just tried to wrap my head around is her parents know, right? Like, her parents are just cool of it. And he says, oh, do you die in's flatmates? Yeah. He's like, well, that's a new one. I know we're going to talk about how great Ewan McGregor is in the movie. This is a very low-key moment. But when he goes to the table and sits with him, them and just immediately acts like they're just boring, you know, flatmates and just starts buttering toast that isn't his. It's one of the best, one of the best parts of his performance in the movie. I do want to circle back to what you said. Not a big visual representations of shit guy. Like that's just not my move. Apologies to White Lotus finale fans. Like just never, never a big fan. And I guess one of the things that that I had forgotten about was that we have

not one, but two of the most intense cinematic depictions of feces ever. Yeah. Which, fun fact, apparently, they used melted chocolate. Well, thank God for that. Yeah. The prop master was not method. So what stage? I'm going to go, those three are my What Stage is the worst.

Do you have any other ones? This is, you know, this is very 2021 looking back on it. And I think that, you know, I haven't watched the sequel. I look forward to doing it. I liked the women in the group. Gail and Lizzie and Diane. Yeah, I mean, it would have been cool to have more of them in it. I think there's more of them probably in the book as well.

There wasn't room for it and also it was the 90s, so it wasn't going to be their movie. Right. That's true. So the sort of single gender POV of the movie itself, yeah. Let's get into casting what ifs because I've only really got two. obviously I mentioned you and Bremer was played Renton in the play version in the theatrical version of the movie or of the screenplay. Christopher Eccleston, who had appeared in Shallow Grave and would go on to be Doctor Who and has had a very story career,

was originally up for Begby or was originally supposed to play Begby. And he was the person that I think Danny Boyle saw in his mind when he read the character of Begby. But, you know, it's not only a what if just in terms of, you know, would it have been an interesting, more interesting, movie or a less interesting movie with him in that role. It's just fascinating what if in terms of Christopher Eccleston's career and also Robert Carlyle's career. I have one more. Does this mean that Christopher Eccleston is on once upon a time, you know, if he does this role? Quite possibly. I will add an interesting wrinkle to you that I discovered in my research. So Carlisle had auditioned for Shallow Grave for the Ewan McGregor role. And what?

I think even before they had met or discovered Ewan McGregor, Carlisle at least had the impression that he was one of the finalists for the role. He came in with two other actors to meet with Danny Boyle after having passed the first audition. And he sat with Danny Boyle and he'd read the scene. And Danny Boyle said, that's great. Would you consider changing your accent a bit and making the character less working class? And Robert Carlyle looked at Danny Boyle and said, actually, I would mind.

And he was like, excuse me? And he's like, that's just not how I see the character. And he goes, so you're sure about that? And he was like, yes, I'm sure. And there was a pause. He said, okay, well, great. Well, thank you then. And Carlisle, in retrospect, was like, I can't believe I just blew this chance to be in a movie.

I really screwed up. Fast forward two years. He gets a call. He'd heard about transpotting. And not only had heard about it, he had also played Renton in a Glasgow reading of the play. He had done it. I mean, it was such a phenomenon in the theater world, whatever that counts for. that he had also spent time with that character and knew the world.

He got the call from Danny Boyle, and he thought he was taking the piss. He thought he was being called in to be, like, just dunked on for what he had done last time. And instead, Danny Boyle sat down from him and said, what part would you like to play? And he said, I should tell you, Ewan's playing Renton. Right. And so apparently, Carlyle said, how about Sick Boy? And Boyle said, because he thought it was similar. And he didn't, and he assumed that there was no way he was going to play Begby, because Begby, as in the book,

is described more like Eccleston, which is at the very least a tall person. Taller guy. Yeah, bigger guy. A taller guy. But Boyle was like, I don't know. Have you considered Begby? And he's like, I don't know. And he thought about it for a week.

And he came back in and he said, I still don't think. He's like, I just don't see it. You know, I'm small because Robert Carlyle is a short man. And apparently this is Robert Carlyle's quote. Robert Carly said this. Danny Boyle looked at him and said, with absolute certainty. But Robert, small psychos are the best. And he was right.

That's great. That is amazing. Okay, so the Dion Waiters Award for doing the most with the least amount of time. I have to, I have Keith Allen as the drug dealer. He gets one scene. The guy who makes the buy at the end of the movies, obviously. Playing the same part he played in shallow grave. Yeah, right. Setting it in the same universe. Right. And he is Lily Allen's father in real life, obviously. And Alfie Allen's father. Right. kind of a polymath, like, comedian, sort of actor, musician, too, right? Yeah. He's great in that one scene where it's been great haggling

with you guys. What does he say? He says gentlemen a lot. Yeah, it says gentlemen a lot. And then the other one is Peter Mullen, who's Mother's Superior. Come on! Chris! This was, for me, the biggest rewatchable thing. I never knew that was Peter Mullen. Because when I saw the movie multiple, multiple times

in the late 90s and early 2000s, that was just that was Peter I didn't know Peter Mullen was yeah fast forward 20 years and after

top of the lake after Ozark after underground railroad after quarry it's Peter fucking Mullen right there

yeah and so when he shows up three minutes into the movie I was off my head I was so excited he has one of my

he's so great especially when you can use his real accent he owns it he's phenomenal from the south all the time he does

his scene with Renton when Renton comes in and he's like, he's going to get a shot and they're like, oh, like, would the sir be dining with us tonight? And he's just like, no, I'll just go straight to the intravenous hard drug use. He says, would you perhaps like some garlic bread?

Yes, right. Would sir care for a starter? Some garlic bread, perhaps? No, thank you. I'll proceed directly to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please. That whole scene is incredible because this is, I think this is epitome of Dionne Waiter. a category that I definitely don't email you for clarification on before we do every episode of the rewatchables.

In that, that whole sequence, when post-court hearing current methadone, Renton goes to get his one shot, and he has that whole thing and the overdose, Mullen whole thing is that he does this every day. And so his performance is so confident. He's not calling attention to himself, but he's playing along with Renton and then Renton overdoses. And he's like, okay, well, now I'm going to have to drag him down the stairs and put cash in his pocket and slap his cheek and wish him well and be on his way. It's just he totally owns the scene by doing very little. Have you noticed, Chris, in your research, that they clearly did shoot a scene that is in the book

that gives a little bit more Swanee than we get in the movie. There's footage, like an oft-used Danny Boyle on the set of the movie picture, which is Danny Boyle framing a shot where Ewan McGregor, where Renton is visiting Mother Superior in the hospital because Mother Superior has had his leg amputated. which is something that happens in the book due to drug use. And then he's like, I actually make more money pretending I served in the Falklands than I do selling heroin. So they shot that scene. And I don't know, maybe it's on DVDs or something, but that was interesting to see.

That's a great, great dig. The only other thing I had for Deon Waiters was Irvine Welsh, just Mikey Forrester. Oh, I have him in a different category. We'll be getting to him in a moment. This episode is brought to you by Viori. Look, I'm not a big, let's hype up workout clothes guy, but Viori, I got to say, total game changer. I've been wearing a lot. If you see me power walking around Los Angeles,

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Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Pick up fees may apply. So Apex Mountain. In a way, I think that even though I would count this as among the best work that a lot of these people did, I wouldn't say it was necessarily their Apex Mountain. Boyle obviously has won Oscars. He's made Hollywood Blockbusters.

He made 28 days later. And Steve Jobs and Slumdog Millionaire and 127 hours. McGregor, I guess you could say this sets him up. I mean, he's the star of this movie. he's essentially like the Malcolm McDowell of his generation. And I think this obviously gets him the role in some ways in Star Wars. But I would allow McGregor, but McGregor's had so many peaks and valleys of his career since then. Johnny Lee Miller, I'd probably say this is his Apex Mountain.

You and Bremont, I would probably say this is his Apex Mountain. Not Kelly McDonald, who went on to do a lot of really great things. I have a question, though. It's a little meta. Does Sick Boy invent Apex Mountain? Is his unifying theory of having it and losing it, essentially the first appearance of Apex Mountain, even if not by name, but maybe by concept? I love what you're saying. And I do think it's worth, I know, look, I don't come on this podcast enough to suggest changing the rules or anything. But there could be a category that comes up occasionally, the sick boy inflection point or the sick boy come down, where is this the movie where the dissent begins from greatness to, fineness? Or is the sick boy come down moment the in the name of the rose where it's just

like someone who's already down the other side of Apex Mountain suddenly hits a bump that lifts them back up again? Right. So that's what they're talking about, Sean Connery and in the name of the Rose as like this one thing that he does on the way down in his career that's worthwhile. And you and McGregor's like, well, what about the untouchables? And he's just like, I don't rate that at all. The way Ewan McGregor says, Academy Award. It reminds me the way my father used to say, cheese steak. It's like you put the emphasis on the wrong word and I've never stopped thinking about. What does he say? He's like, that means fuck all. That's all. It's all. It's, it's, that whole thing. Yeah. That's great.

So it's basically this idea of at one, you know, at one time you've got it and then you lose it and it's gone forever. All walks of life's George Best, the famous footballer, for example, had it, lost it, David Bowie, Lou Reed and Renton's like some of his solo stuff's not bad. No, it's not bad, but it's not great either. And in your heart, you kind of know, although it sounds all right, it's actually shite, which it is, that is basically the description of Apex Mountain, I think. I think I only have two nominees. I don't know if you had more for this category. One is Robert Carlyle, I mean, who's had a phenomenal career who I would love to see act in anything,

but he is on fire. He's incredible in T2, though, I would just say. I mean, that's the Apex Mountain. I was just mentioning that he's very, very good in T2. I think he's always good in everything, but just in terms of right care, right moment. I mean, it's pretty undeniable what he brings to this movie. This is probably breaking the rules because it should be an actor, but, and we already talked about it a little bit, but I didn't actually say what I believe, which is that born Slippy and Trane Spotting is the

greatest needle drop of all time. Oh, amazing. It's an apex mountain for needle drops? For needle drops. God damn it. Nothing has ever made me feel in a movie musically the way this song makes me feel when it came in. I'd never heard it before, you know, and it's it's not just, when the drums hit, it's how pre-nistalgic and melancholic those keys are leading up to them and the washes of sound. And it feels like escape, but escape into purgatory and you don't know what's coming and

you can't control what's coming. And then that crazy smile he gives. But rewatching it again, I do think the brilliant thing about it. And this may be Danny Boyle. It may be Masahiro, Hirocubo. Because Danny Boyle sent him the track and was like, I want this at the end of the movie. Right. But it was, I think, Hira Kubo, who started it when he did.

And it starts not when Renton... In my memory, the music is just playing when Renton decides to steal... But when he steals the money. It's not. It starts when he decides to steal it. And that moment is when Begby humiliates him after the fight and says, get me a fucking cigarette. And put it in his mouth. He puts a cigarette in his mouth.

He lights it and the first keys hit. And you're like, now we're going a different direction. And I get chills thinking about it. Yeah. That's Apex Mountain for me. Yeah, I mean, the way that they use music to illustrate certain emotional moments, like, you know, whether it's like playing Mile End by Pulp when he's in London and sort of enjoying his life. And that kind of does capture this sort of cosmopolitan London life at the time. It's pretty like, it's really, really subtle.

Sometimes it adds a different emotional texture to the scenes. Yeah, like, you could make an argument that like born slippy, Leila and Goodfellas. I mean, there's, I'm sure people will. That's the other strong contender. I didn't want to pretend that wasn't part of it. But yeah, that's a great. Apex Mountain. Let's go with that. Let's go with Boren Slippy as Apex Mountain for needle drops. Wow. I can't believe I got you on my team. That would this would never happen if Bill was here, but I appreciate it. For Joey Pants, I have James Cosmo as Renton's dad. He is basically James Cosmo in every movie. There's any Scottish people, including Braveheart. He's also in His Dark Materials. And then I had, Highlander, too. Yeah, he gets after it. And then I also had Shirley Henderson, who is an actress I'm not exactly like super familiar with. I think she's in the Harry Potter movies.

I love Shirley Henderson. I will show up and show out for Shirley Henderson, one of the most underrated and underappreciated screen actors of our time. Scottish actress who has a small part in this movie. She's in Happy Valley, too, right? Yes, she was in Happy Valley on TV. She's always working, but she's in this movie, she's the one who has one of the more quotable lines.

Sex, but casual sex. She's stripping him down. but she is a favorite of two of my favorite directors who aren't super famous on this side of the ocean, but Mike Lee, she's incredible in one of his best movies, Topsie Turvey, and she just owns in Michael Winterbottom movies. There's a movie he made called Wonderland at the end of the 90s that she's the star of. Highly recommend and 24-hour party people. Yeah.

She's incredible in that. And to your point, yes, I know this now. If we'd done this podcast a year ago, I couldn't have known it, but she is moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter movies. Chris, just so you know, contextually, that is a ghost that lives in a woman's toilet.

Okay. Well, I mean, like she was in good company in trinspotting then. Exactly. A lot of action in toilets. The Vincent Hanna Give Me All You Got Overacting Award.

I guess that you could go, you know, for Begby. I mean, just because he's screaming for the entire movie. I don't mean that in a bad way there. But, you know, the,

this last, you know, this we last got classed, you know, just really, just getting after it. The only nominee, I mean, the movie's so well-acted, and it's also doesn't have a huge cast, so it's kind of hard to grab someone.

Unfairly, I think the only real nominee is Irvine Welsh himself, which is, now let me say, let me just be clear. Because he's not really good at acting. But he's probably the best actor of any author who's ever had his works translated or adapted. I mean, he's phenomenal if you judge him by other authors. It's just that there's a couple moments. He sells the part of the drug dealer with the opium. He sells it, not just the drugs, but like, I buy it. It's that every, of the two scenes that Irvine Welsh is in as Mikey, he's in the opium suppository scene,

and then later he's in the, I don't know how I ended up with all this scagg, please take it off my hand scene. The camera lingers on him for one extra moment when I feel like Irvine Welsh just gives the camera a look like, I can't believe I'm here either. And that's what pushes it over the edge to me. But no disrespect, better than any other author would be in that role. Yeah, he's really, it's quite a moment when he shows up, uh, And for the most part, I don't think people know it's him. You know what I mean?

Like, I don't think Irvine Welsh was like, he was famous, but he wasn't famous in America. And he didn't break the movie. You know what I mean? Like, it's not, he doesn't take you out of it. So it's not really super fair to bag on him. Half-ass internet research. We've mentioned a bunch of this. The movie is set in Edinburgh, but it's largely shot in Glasgow.

Kelly McDonald, I mentioned was a Scottish waitress when she responded to a flyer. The most interesting thing, I love the fact that Boyle showed the cast Goodfell. is a clockwork orange, the Exorcist, and the Hustler to get ready for the movie, to get the mindset of these sort of young, rebellious anti-society movies. But the most interesting thing I came across in my research was Robert Carlyle gave Begby a backstory that he was a closeted gay man. And that that's why he has the reaction that he has when he picks up the girl in the in the club who winds up being a man and that he had like all this stuff banging around his head and that this was what sort of drove this guy to the edge a lot yes and that he mentioned it

to Danny Boyle who felt that was who supported that backstory vision of the character and it's interesting to hear carlyle talk about it because the moment that did it for him there are a lot of details and obviously just like the the absolutely burning but somehow closeted rage inside of him that keeps reaching out. But specifically the moment you're talking about, where he picks up a woman who is either transgender or we don't really know. But what he does in that moment is almost unbegby-like. Begby does not take out his punishment on the person in the car with him.

What he does is kick the wall and then almost truly murder his friend for trying to take the piss at him. I thought that was an interesting thing, too. one last piece of Carlisle research, because I clearly did a lot. When he was asked, he said that the movies that he was told to watch in preparation were, yes, the hustler, yes, the Exorcist, but also the Lost Boys. Oh, interesting. Which was interesting about, I guess, I mean, trying to capture, like, young people living dangerous lives. There's some vampiric aspects of transpotting. I have a couple other bits of internet research, because I clearly did some.

Please hit me up. Did you know that there are minor changes between the UK version, which was a sensation from the minute it was released and made tons and tons of money, and the American version? Yeah, I mean, I know the sex scene got changed, right? The sex scene got changed. Well, the biggest one, and this is so Jack Valenti's MPA in the 90s, like the needle going in, like lingering on injection shots, they had to take out a few milliseconds there because if you had actually, the reasoning, I guess, is if you see the needle go in, it'll

make you want to do it more, which is actually the opposite to be true. The sex scene was different in that E. McGrager's full Monty was much more on display in the UK version, which does lead to a nitpick, because not to make this completely a

knit dick, but he is naked with Diane in the bedroom and then goes in the hall and removes a condom that was not on him. Right. Yes. So that's an interesting use of condoms. I would just also like to congratulate you because you're the first person

to successfully iterate on nitpicks since Quentin Tarantino called it Nikki Pitts. Thank you. Well, what I do is I come in to what Quentin has done and then I iterate and disrupt. But the last thing, and I feel like

Craig will want to hear this, is that the American version, they ADR'd the Scottish accents for the first 10 to 20 minutes of the movie. Did they actually? They did. They did. To the point actors when asked, like, they did like an anniversary screening and the actors like downloaded a copy, they were mad because they downloaded the American version because there really was a

concern that if no one understands anything at the beginning of the movie, they're not going to stick around for the end of the movie. So they, so, uh, Ewan McGregor and at least one other actor ADR'd some of that opening stuff. Some of the opening monologue. Yeah. Wow. And some of the first lines that they say, yeah. Um, so we get into recasting couch. It's hard for me to imagine. I wasn't familiar enough with Scottish or frankly English actors of the mid-90s to say like, well, this person obviously should have gotten that role. So we can move on from recasting couch. I would also, did you have... I had nothing.

I'm so relieved that you had nothing. With picking nits, this was kind of tough because this movie doesn't really have a plot, right? So it's hard to just be like, are we sure they would have done this? I guess you could get into whether or not you find the very end. compelling. Like whether or not you find this scag deal that they pull off and this 16,000 pounds, which I always like loved the fact that it was just 16,000 pounds, which I know is a lot of money, but is also not like a $1 million kind of fake amount of money that would obviously cause like a manhunt and extreme violence. And yeah, so I just always, I didn't really, the only thing I was

like, kind of like, how did Renton get spud the bus locker key if he, needed it for his passport? Well, I think he relocked it and then mailed it to him. Oh, okay. Because he had his passport from... Her Majesty's post office came through. You got to love it. I had a couple small ones here.

One, I don't know if you felt this way. And again, this is, this is not a genuine nitpick, but the way AIDS suddenly shows up as a thing in the movie, like 50 minutes in, when suddenly after like his fifth go-round, His parents are like, we should find out if you have HIV or not. Right. And Tommy does. My sense is that they were paying, you know, that felt right dramatically and emotionally and true to the book and the world that it was depicting. The book has so much more space to have highs and lows of squalor and context for what caused a heroin.

I don't want to say heroin revolution, but an enormous uptick in heroin usage. and what the devastating effects on the community where I feel like that's more in the book. So that almost comes out of nowhere in the movie in a way that I noticed this time. I would say that sick boy got much shorter shrift than I realized in the movie. He's kind of the star of T2.

I'm very interested in hearing that because if you look at the movie in retrospect, the first one, his arc that we don't notice, that we almost have narrated to us, is emotionally very interested. and compelling. He is the baby's dad that he's now become so not just disillusioned and high, but he's now completely nihilistic because of it. And he's pimping. I mean, like all those details of who he actually is and he's become is kind of falls under this way of Renton's story

and his escape at the end. So good to hear. You mentioned that back story. I think it's worth noting in case people are just so that they've never really gotten into Irvine Welsh, but are now like thinking of going off the deep end with it. There's transpotting. was his first novel, Sensation. That's the book we see on the screen. He did a sequel to train spotting called Pornow, which is set about 10 years after the train spotting story. He also did a book called Skag Boys, which is about Renton and Sick Boy right as they're getting into heroin. So it's kind of a prequel. And I think he did another sequel to train spotting. Am I right? Well, I think he's continued to explore the universe. Like even before we recorded, I sent you

that there's a, he's written. There's a Begby novel. Yeah. There's a Begby novel that also is a detective novel, and maybe there's a sequel to that. So he's been exploring it. And I think it's also worth saying that the movie was a sensation.

Immediately people were like, do a sequel, and they were all like, no, we can't have them look the same. We would have to really take our time. Welsh rights the sequel. He saves this group, Boyle, McDonald, and Hodge, the rights. But they're not ready.

Ewan McGregor and Danny Boyle fall out. Ultimately, they feel like the plot of porno isn't the right one for them to do. It's not going to happen. McGregor and Boyle make up. And then they come together for the sequel that I think we'll talk about on the watch, but is kind of an amalgamation

of Welsh's novels, plural, and the experiences and point of view and perspective and goals of the creative team of this movie. Yeah, and also, I think, reckons with, there's something very interesting about the fact that in that movie,

I don't think it's really hidden. It's like, Johnny Lee Miller's had a very good career. He didn't have you and McGregor's career, you know? And that is kind of, that subtext is almost on the surface in the movie itself, you know, where they're just kind of like, you left. And we were kind of left here to sort of sift through what you left behind. Last two nets before we move on.

One, far be it for me to question Scotland Yard, Begby's vigilante status seems a little murky because he's just like, I'm on the run, but let's go back to Scotland to do a drug deal. and then let's take the bus back. But he couldn't leave the apartment. So, you know, some questions. The biggest one for me... This is before an age of state surveillance and a lot of tracking of your, like,

not a lot of people use their credit cards all the time then. So it's just more of a paper economy. The scene in the Bourne movie where Patty Considine is trying to traverse the train station, this is not that. Yes. Biggest unanswered question for me about the movie, and I hope...

Actually, don't tell me, don't confirm or deny this on our podcast. But either I want this to be resolved and addressed in T2 or I want it to be like the Russian and the Pine Barrens episode of The Sopranos in as much that it just haunts us forever. But in the final drug deal with Keith Allen, as you mentioned, part of the drug deal is they bring in a junkie guy kid to try it. He goes into the bathroom to test it. Only Keith Allen comes out. They do the drug deal.

And then they all, then they leave and they all celebrate. the young gentleman on the nod never is spoken of again and does not emerge from that bathroom that's my biggest unanswered question about the movie what's up with that guy I don't know I'm surprised he didn't mean we're talking about the sick IP of the train spotting verse

let's get this guy a novel yeah so let's get into the best quote we've said a lot of them I always loved the streets are awashed with drugs you can have for unhappiness and pain and we took them all fuck it we would have injected vitamin C if they had only made it illegal Vitamin. Vitamin C.

Do you have a favorite quote besides Choose Life or any of the ones that we've sort of already done like shopping and football? And shopping. But also, the thing about the way this movie played for us in our like our fandom and our psyches, it literally is just I hear the way they said things. Like I don't write that at all. Or like the Academy Award.

Like all the, like just a certain ways that Ewan McGregor and Johnny Lee Miller or Robert Carlyle spoke. I just, they ring in my head 25 years later. Could this be remade as a 10 episode Netflix series? No. I mean, well, look, yes, in the sense that it's vibe and vignettes and anecdotal, and there's clearly a whole world in the druggie subculture of Scotland in the early 90s. But what makes the movie special is that it is a firecracker, that it is a, it's, you know, as our friend Sean Fantasy might say, it's pure cinema. And it's not, it's 93 minutes. It's shorter than some television episodes are now. And it feels that way. Like, you. you kind of basically get two sides of a record in this movie. And there's a real, like, it's a real testament to the economy of the screenwriting, but it's like there are some stories that are so intense.

They need to only be two hours. Also, it is a really, really, really, really strong argument for limited budgets. I'm sure Danny Boyle doesn't feel that way. But the movie feels DIY and handmade and tactile, specifically thinking about the overdose scene when he sinks into the carpet and then that POV carries with us. or even the way that he goes into the toilet in that scene. I mean, yeah, does the scary baby ultimately, is it less scary because it doesn't look real?

By the way, thank you that it doesn't look real. Sure, but I'm glad we didn't have Peter Jackson just being like, I think I've got the most realistic dead baby. A million percent, yes. Watching it now, it felt, it felt, it felt charming, honestly, how just tactile and approachable and just lived in the movie felt. Like, these are real, locations and these are real clothes and part of the thing about a Netflix series, God bless them,

they got huge budgets. And I think something would go wrong. Do you have any unanswerable questions? I think we hit a lot of them in nitpicks. Only two quick ones. I do wonder what would have happened if the sequel had been made earlier, you know? If it had just been 10 years? Yeah. Would it have been more, I mean, it made its money back and I think people seem to enjoy it. I said to you off fair, I cannot believe that I never even engaged with the sequel to one of my all-time favorite movies, and then I realized it came out within the sort of two-month halo amnesia effect of having a baby. So it's as if it didn't happen to me. But I do wonder if it would have tapped into a different cultural zeitgeist if it had come out earlier.

Other one is, what would Kevin McKidd's career be like if he hadn't gone on vacation the day that they shot the promo photos? Because he's the only one that didn't get one. He's not in the... He was on vacation? he was on vacation. They shot all of those images in one day in a studio in London and he was on vacation.

So that's why he's not in any of them. And obviously he's had a fine career, but what he's had a different career? I've seen that guy in Studio City getting burgers. He seems like he's chilling. He seems like he's doing great. I hope it was a good vacation. Yeah, me too.

Let's get with who won the movie. So this is tough because I don't even know if we've really done McGregor justice throughout this podcast. If I'm thinking about it, I don't know that we really Yes, we have not.

talked about how well he captured that moment in terms of the dead-eyed, wild-eyed, sort of, but still weirdly, like, there's a soul somewhere deep down in there, but I'm not sure if there is persona and attitude of this character, Renton. I think he also was able to be incredibly funny and incredibly, I guess, sexy, it's worth saying, like he was sort of a heartthrob at the time. and I think he still is to some people and yeah, I think that his ability as a leading man

to kind of still make this movie feel relatable even if it was about really unrelatable behavior for most people was pretty amazing. So I think you have to give him a lot of credit but for me personally, I just think on rewatch it's Boyle. I just think it's Boyle's vision of the movie

and his ability to kind of creatively unlock certain doors that I don't think many other filmmakers could have thought of. I don't think you're wrong. I just want to piggyback and say, Ewe McGregor in this movie in 1996 was revelatory. And still is watching it. I mean, he is, if the movie is about heroin,

he is cocaine. He is so ecstatic in every frame, even when he's nodding off or screaming under the covers, right? Like, he is so 360 degrees just alive and compelling and charismatic and funny and cool and everybody wanted to be him or sleep with him or cast him or just hang out with him in a way that is harder and harder to come by in our surveillance state celebrity age and that's still thrilling to watch he's just awesome i agree with you about danny boyle i have uh three other nominees and maybe we could just end on one of them since we're basically there.

One, the soundtrack, you could make the case one movie for the movie. Similarly, the marketing team, Bravo. Everything they did was brilliant. Love marketing. Including the color choice, you know, just... The orange and gray, yeah. The orange and gray. I mean, it was, it's still not just visually arresting.

It's visually appealing. It's also like what I think of when I, if you ever see those colors together, you're like, oh, transacting. Yes. And not just for us, it's not just... The font. Yeah. Yes, it's not in the way that like on the British UK poster, which was the one to have in your dorm room, by the way, the rating, which was 18, is right underneath the G, like it's right there. They're like, there's no question that you need to be a little bit older to watch this movie. But just thinking about those color scheme and this font, like hanging in virgin megastores all around the world. You know what I mean? It's just was everywhere. But honestly, Chris, and I feel like maybe this is where we want to end it just with our, so we don't, we don't ruin our high.

you know who won the movie? Mushrooms. People who were 19 and 1996 won the movie. Yeah. Because we, they threw a fastball and shout out to your Little League career. We had the pitch frame perfectly to catch it right over the middle of the plate. It's something that I think that you and I are not the right people to answer this question, but I wonder whether or not people who are 19 get a movie like this anymore.

You know, whether there's like a generational defining movie for people or whether that stuff has moved into different kinds of platforms. I'm sure there's a very, very compelling TikTok that they enjoy. I think that's great. That's right. But to... It's people doing like hand gestures to Sally Rooney books on TikTok. That's what they're generation. It is. Because to your point, to be 19 and 1996 in this movie comes out, you don't just get one night at the cinema or one night on mushrooms near a cinema, as you were. You get a all you can eat pass to the sizzler buffet of a whole new. culture. And it was thrilling. And so my memory of this movie, it's not just that night with you.

It's seeing it in the theater in the summer. It's seeing it back at college in the fall with other friends. It's listening to the soundtrack. It's talking about it. It's then being like, oh, there's reading the novels and all of his books and reading, you know, convincing myself that James Kelman's how late it was, how late made a lot of sense to me, even though it didn't have punctuation. And anyone named Bob was spelled B-O-A-B, Bob. So it was just a roadmap for the next few months or years of life. And we won. That was awesome. Yeah, we won. How about that? Andy, I, you know, met you 25 years ago. I can't believe we're doing a podcast, which we wouldn't understood what that meant. But we got to talk about that moment and we got to talk about this movie

that means so much to us. So thanks so much for doing this with me. Thank you. And thank you for to Craig for not giving us a sick boy speech about where we are, Chris and I in our respective trip down the mountain. The rewatchables is produced by Craig Holbeck. We will be back next week. Thanks for joining us.