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Oscar-nominated director discusses why he is attracted to stories that show the humanity of the characters. (2:56)
 

Full interview. (20:05)
 

Tavis: Danny Boyle is a talented filmmaker whose resume includes acclaimed films like "Trainspotting" and "28 Days Later." His latest is easily the most talked about film of the year, "Slumdog Millionaire." The movie has already won a slew of awards and is up for ten - count them, 10 - Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. Here now a scene from "Slumdog Millionaire."

[Clip]

Tavis: So I'm sitting here watching this clip with Danny Boyle and there are two things that get my attention as we're watching this clip together. In no particular order, number one, he whispers to me thanking me for picking a different clip. As a director, you notice that people keep playing the same clips?

Danny Boyle: Yeah. It's inevitable, really, yeah. So it's nice to see a different one there.

Tavis: What do you think of that clip we showed?

Boyle: It's great because it's a performance clip, you know. I mean, it's really Dev on that day when he says, "There was no message, there was no message, there was no message." He was really mad at me because we were fighting on that day about how to do it. He's only 18, but he was like - you know, he had his take on how to do it and we were battling and that was the frustration that came out in that scene.

It was really good actually. I was shocked when it happened. And if you watch it, it's slightly out of focus because nobody was expecting it, you know. But we left it in because you can't repeat those things. They just happen.

Tavis: I was about to say, as a director, there are things that happen, there are things that you see that may not be technically correct, but you know when to hold on to something.

Boyle: You get that buzz. It's incredible. You think there's the film right there. You know, you get those odd moments. So much of it's technical, sometimes uncontrolled and all that kind of stuff, but it's extraordinary working in Mumbai because it's a very difficult city to control. It's so busy and you have to let go a lot and I let go on the film a lot more than I have done on previous stuff I've done.

Tavis: Eighteen million people, it's kind of hard to hold on.

Boyle: It's like unbelievable, that amount of people. We wanted them all to be in the film and a lot of them are in the film and, thankfully, they don't have release forms there yet, so you don't have to get them all to sign (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) That's an inside Hollywood joke. You hate those release forms for everybody on the film. The other thing that occurred to me that got my attention as we were watching that clip a moment ago and you just expressed it, you know the dialog in this film. You know everybody's dialog or you just happen to know that scene? You were saying the words along with the actors.

Boyle: Yeah, you know the dialog. You've got it inside your head and you're kind of living the film in your head and that's how you can help the actors sometimes if they're a bit lost on something because you have a version of it running through your head.

But you should never give them line readings, you know. That's the worst thing. But you try and express what you're after in a scene and they have to find their way to that or, you know, they fight a bit with you. They have a different take on it. Often they're right because they're interesting actors.

They often don't look at the whole film. They often say, "Oh, I just read my part" (laughter) and you think, "How can you do that?" But, of course, it gives them an incredible perspective because their character may not know some of the other characters in the film, so it's quite good in a way that they don't know the peoples' worlds, but they know their world in an intense way.

You look at Mickey Rourke's performance in "The Wrestler" and he knows that guy from the inside, you know. When you find that kind of acting, it's mesmerizing, really special. You know, no matter what the budget is or what the circumstances you're watching it in.

Tavis: I'll come back to the movie in just a second, but since you were nominated - by the way, congratulations, Best Director nomination.

Boyle: Thank you very much.

Tavis: And all the other nine for the film. But where the Best Director nomination is concerned, I want to get to your processes if I can for a moment. You were talking a moment ago about actors and sometimes they are right because they have a sense for their own part even if they haven't read the entire script.

What's your give and take? How do you establish a relationship with the actor? When you're now an Academy-nominated director, how do you know where that zone is, where that give and take relationship should be or not be with the actors?

Boyle: I always try to make sure everybody can - no matter what they think of me or what their age - like Dev and most of the cast in this film are very young and inexperienced. But I always try and make sure they can all speak their mind, you know, about what they think. I have the right, in a way, to overrule them if necessary, but it's really important for me to know what they're thinking because so much is revealed by their focus on their parts, you know, by their take on it.

They always say - it's one of the things they teach you as a director. Actors get you out of corners. You know, when you paint yourself into a corner and there's no time left and there's no money left, they can just get you out of a corner like that because it's kind of free. Just put the camera on them and they can take you somewhere and keep you there and transform, you know, your corner into a palace, you know.

Tavis: While we're talking about your directing, what is it like to direct a film that has received so much acclaim and, by your own admission, most of these folks aren't that experienced as thespians as yet?

Boyle: Certainly the younger characters aren't. We have a couple of guys in it, like Anil Kapoor is a big star. He's a game show host. He's a big star in India, big in Bollywood. I loved working with them all, you know. It was that mixture of experience and inexperience. It's really exciting for a director, you know, because - especially young actors. They don't bring any baggage.

I think sometimes older actors are a bit frightened of how pure they are. If they know what a scene's about and they say a line, there's no thing of "Is this making me look good? Is this making me look bad? Will people like my character more or less?" None of that. There's no business stuff involved. It's just like the line, the scene.

Tavis: "This is not in my contract, Danny! This is not in my deal!" (Laughter)

Boyle: Exactly. You don't get any of that (laughter).

Tavis: To the film itself, for those who haven't seen it, what's the story? You mentioned, of course, the talk show host. Give me the quick story line for those who haven't seen it. I have some questions I want to ask you about.

Boyle: So it's about this kid from the slums of Mumbai and he goes on the biggest game show in the world, "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" in India. Its audience and the prize that they offer relative to living standards there is the biggest. It's the biggest game show in the world. He goes on it and he starts to answer the questions and he gets them all right.

The questions in India are very tough after the first couple of easy ones and everybody doubts him. Everybody thinks he's cheating. There must be a coughing or an accomplice in the audience or he must have a microchip hidden under his skin because there's no way he can answer these questions.

What you see in the film is - I mean, he's astonished they're asking because some of the adversities, some of the things that have happened to him in his life, allow him access to information, to knowledge, that they're asking about, so he starts to get all the questions right. Eventually, they take him off the show before the final $20 million question. They take him off the show and hand him over to the police to find out how he's cheating. You know, it's become a big nationwide thing.

In fact, he's got a completely other agenda for being on the show. It's nothing to do with the money, it's nothing to do with success or television or fame or glamour. The girl that he loves and has lost in the chaos of this city, all he knows is she watches this show and he figures, if he gets on it and stays in the chair for long enough, she'll see him and they can reconnect. So it's got a love story at its heart, you know.

Tavis: I was fascinated and maybe I'm reading too deep into this. But I was fascinated by how, to your point, he isn't cheating, but he's being asked questions and, just based upon his own life experiences, he's going back into his own - he's going inside to help answer these questions.

Maybe I'm too deep into this, but I was thinking what a wonderful metaphor for how to deal with the hard challenges, questions, issues life throws at us when we can go inside sometimes. The answers are there.

Boyle: Yeah, the answers are there.

Tavis: Am I in too deep?

Boyle: Nope. I got to say, Tavis, you're where you should be really because not a lot of people say that, but it's true actually because that's one of the kind of ideas in the film that's hidden in there. You know, he comes out of nowhere. He's not very educated. He doesn't have much going for him, but he's got a very, very rich life story and all the people who've gotten him there, good and bad people, have lots of answers for him and the challenges he's facing in his life.

I think that's a lesson for everybody really. You know, all our stories, no matter where we come from, have enormous value and sometimes we don't think they do, but they do, you know.

Tavis: I hope you'll indulge me on this, but I was doing some research on this. I'm always amazed by the back story. I mean, part of being for me a talk show host, the best thing, the most fun thing about talking to people like you is getting beyond the obvious stuff that everybody knows and just stuff that I just was unaware of. I had no idea that this thing almost went straight to DVD.

Boyle: I know.

Tavis: Tell me the back story. I mean, you got a movie that's the most talked-about film, got ten Academy Award nominations, and the thing almost didn't get to the theaters. It almost went straight to DVD.

Boyle: I know. It's been an extraordinary kind of fairy tale, the journey of the film itself when we seemed to have lost. Basically what happened is that Warner Bros. had closed their independent division, Warner Independents, for lots and lots of reasons, nothing to do with our film.

But it meant that we didn't have a specialist distributor because Warner has obviously released huge films like "Dark Knight" and "Matrix" and these huge movies. So we had to try and find another distributor. Warner, to give them their credit, they did the right thing in the end. They showed the film to Fox Searchlight.

I think it would have been a lot easier for them to do the wrong thing and it could have disappeared, but they showed it to Fox Searchlight who I'd worked with before and who are brilliant at releasing this kind of film that needs to be nurtured slowly to begin with. Fox Searchlight went mad for it and they asked us to get it ready very quickly so we could put in the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals where it began to get public acclaim. That's what's extraordinary about it is its word of mouth that's helped the movie.

We've had lots of wonderful critical response to it, but it's people talking to each other about it because there's lots of barriers to an audience. A third of the film is in Hindi with subtitles, exciting subtitles, but subtitles, and it's set in India. It's on the other side of the world and it doesn't have any recognizable or conventional stars in it, and yet the heart of the story really touches people, I think.

Tavis: What made you think - I was gonna come to that, so I'm glad you went there, Danny - what made you think with all those barriers, all those potential obstacles, that the thing could play and play this well?

Boyle: I didn't know, to be honest, until I saw it in front of an American audience at Telluride and then at Toronto. You realize basically it's the "Rocky" story, you know. It's rooting for a guy who has nothing, comes out of nowhere, but he's got this dream and he gets there. Against all the odds, he gets there because of his own worth, his own internal worth, what you were saying, about himself, his own story. He can get there.

I was astonished. It was like an epiphany for me seeing it in front of an American audience rooting for him. I thought, "What's that come out of?" It's the "Rocky" story because, in the end, it's not about the money, although it's very nice that he gets it - oh, I'm giving it away there.

It's about this girl. It's a love story in the end, about the girl that he's loved all his life and he wants to rescue her from the terrible situation that she's in. He manages to via hijacking the biggest game show in the world, you know (laughter).

Tavis: I'm gonna grind an ax here for just a second, but I promise I'll get off my soapbox in a moment because I want to hear your take on this. It's fascinating to me to talk to one who's nominated as Best Director for the Academy Award.

But you mentioned a word a moment ago, humanity, and I'm always blown away by how we continue to have these debates or conversations and, quite frankly, not enough of it in this town about people of color being given opportunities in this business. My sense has always been that it doesn't matter what color they are, what part of the world they live in. If you have a story that shows the humanity of the character, it can work.

Boyle: Yeah.

Tavis: It can work. They're not all gonna be nominated for ten Academy Awards, but it's about getting to the humanity of the character and that conversation, to me, ought to supercede conversations about why we don't have African Americans and why we don't have Latinos and people in India.

This made me think about that because you hit the nail on the head. What makes the picture work is the humanity and I don't know why Hollywood can't get that lesson. If you put people of color on, you show their humanity, their complexity of character, you make them multi-dimensional, it can work.

Boyle: I don't have to tell you this. You know this. The world is changing now anyway, you know. You can feel it changing. We've benefited from it enormously, you know. The communications have become so instant, you know, the internet and everything. There's so much going on in the world now. The world is a smaller place and we know it's an incredibly rich place as well.

And these stories, everybody's story, deserves to be told. As an industry and I'm part of it, that's our responsibility, to tell everybody's story, you know. They're not all gonna, you know, have the acclaim, but they all deserve to be told in a way. I think the victory of "Slumdog" in a way, its success, will hopefully ensure that that process, you know, really kicks off in some kind of way. It's a very special thing to be associated with.

The actors in the film got this award from the Screen Actors Guild the other night which was extraordinary because the Screen Actors Guild obviously has thousands and thousands of actors in America, the American film industry. They reached out and gave their award, their ensemble award, to these actors who they did not know from Adam.

They had no idea who they were. They're from another industry on the other side of the world. This is all so enormous. It was an overwhelming moment. It felt almost historic, you know, in entertainment terms. It was extraordinary and that is very typical of America, that reaching out, you know.

Tavis: How did the cast take - in their private moments with you, how did they take being celebrated in that way by this American industry?

Boyle: They were overcome. Anil Kapoor, who's a very, very sophisticated guy, he was overcome by it. You know, he was overwhelmed by the response (laughter). He forgot to say a few things and then Freida came in and said them for him.

I thought it was wonderful because he's been a wonderful ambassador for the film in India and, you know, around the world because there's a huge Indian audience around the world, in America and in the U.K., you know, and they've loved seeing themselves, you know, in their homelands because America is their homeland or the U.K. is their homeland.

Tavis: The flip side of that is, while you're absolutely right, the overwhelming majority of people in India, I'm told or at least read, are celebrating this. There is that slice and there always is of people who think that Mr. Boyle didn't do a good enough job, didn't have the requisite care and concern for the image of Mumbai, that it shows the country in abject poverty. Your response to that?

Boyle: It started a big debate about - poverty and the slums are a huge and very complex part of this incredible city. Normally, Bollywood doesn't really use the slums or uses it very little, so it started a big debate about whether Bollywood should use these stories more and it's wonderful to be part of that.

The privilege of working there, also, you have the responsibility of standing up and taking criticism and it's quite right that nobody's ever gonna capture it perfectly, but you try and get as much of the city included in there as possible, and that's what we tried to do.

Tavis: I'm always curious, again, to the back story here. What attracted you to this script when you saw it?

Boyle: Well, I was kind of - there's an odd moment with scripts sometimes and it's only happened to me twice. Once on "Trainspotting" and once on this one -

Tavis: - which I want to talk about in a moment, but go ahead.

Boyle: Well, I started reading it and I knew I was gonna make it. I've not gotten beyond ten or fifteen pages of the script, but I knew I was gonna do it. You look back on that and think, "That's crazy. It could have been terrible, the other 90 pages or whatever." But you get picked. They're like stray dogs that follow you home. They decide, "You are gonna be looking after me from now on." (Laughter) It's really odd, but it's true.

I think it was partly the universality of the story. I felt extraordinary the story and yet it was very particular because it's set in this extraordinary city, the vibrant city. Against all the odds, this city keeps going. It's overcrowded. There's great poverty there as well in the slums, but there's enormous breathtaking kind of resilience of the people, you know.

And this life force, this celebratory sense they have of life which is celebrated in Bollywood, in song and dance in Bollywood, but also in business. Business is being done everywhere at all different levels of society. It's extraordinary. I love cities like, you know - I mean, I went to New York when I was, you know, in the early 80s and Mumbai is like New York. It's a city that grabs you by the throat and says, "Welcome. You'll never be the same again."

Tavis: I was about to ask you, since you mention New York City, given the time that you spent in Mumbai, how does it compare to other locales that you've shot on location?

Boyle: It's extraordinary because, I mean, every city has extremes. But in Mumbai, I believe it's unique that the extremes are right beside each other. They sit right beside each other, so the slums are everywhere.

There's huge rich buildings, and they're surrounded by slums and nobody tries to separate these two extremes of life. It's true of all walks of life. They're both geographically, you know, things situated emotionally, you go through these extraordinary days where you see terrible things and then you see the most wonderful things as well.

We tried to get that sense in the film. The film, because of it, has many different tones. You know, it's funny, it's frighteningly sad and terrifying and then it's celebratory with the dance at the end. We didn't try and make a smooth arc across those tones. We just let them bash into one another. Thankfully, it's worked. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here, you know.

Tavis: Which raises a fascinating question for me. I don't know how you would describe it, but you have a style - I'm talking about "Trainspotting" in a moment - but you have this style. I don't how to describe it, but it's like a long music video. It's fast-paced, the energy in the way you shoot. Does that make sense? I mean, you have a style that really moves.

Boyle: I love music and its influences whether there's music there or not. I love momentum in films. I have this theory. I mean, they call it the motion picture industry for a reason, I think.

Tavis: (Laughter) I get it. Motion pictures, yeah.

Boyle: When our ancestors, silent movies, the first time, they watched locomotive trains pass across the screen and they screamed. There's something extraordinary about momentum in films and there's so much kind of real time for two hours or whatever it is. You live through the story and, if you get caught up in it, you're breathless and frightened and crying and happy.

I love that sense of momentum in films and I always try to - I don't make action movies, but I try and make every movie as like an action movie as I can. That's sort of one of my principles, you know.

Tavis: You picked the right word. That's what I was looking for. Momentum, it does have momentum. Finally, since you mentioned it and I just saw it again the other night, I don't want to color the question too much, but what do you think now when you look back? Have you seen "Trainspotting" lately?

Boyle: (Laughter).

Tavis: Have you seen it lately?

Boyle: I see bits of it (laughter) all the time, different places.

Tavis: What do you think about that? That's extraordinary.

Boyle: It's just unbelievable, kind of, you know, a launching pad. It's a brilliant book it's based on, absolutely brilliant book, and you could make ten more films with that book, you know, different kind of films, approaches to it. So you should always remember where you come from and where things come from, you know, and it came from that book. The privilege of working on it, you know, it made kind of filming it easy in a funny kind of way.

Tavis: Well, great place to end on. "Trainspotting," if you haven't seen it, you got to go check that out, first of all. But the movie I'm sure he would love for you to go see right about now (laughter) is called "Slumdog Millionaire" directed by Danny Boyle.

He is up for an Academy Award as Best Director. The film nominated for ten Academy Awards. It should be quite a night. We shall see in a matter of weeks from now for this film, "Slumdog Millionaire," that almost went straight to DVD. Who knew? Danny Boyle, glad to have you here.

Boyle: Very nice to meet you.

Tavis: It's been nice to see you.