if the film had been [ __ ] which it wasn't it was very good like you know it would have been difficult to slag it off when you're actually in it yourself it's a good move by the director hi i'm marvin welsh i'm a novelist and i'm here to break down some clips from films based on my work this is a clip from trainspotting [Music] choose life choose a job choose a career choose a family choose a [ __ ] big television yeah this is quite an iconic uh opening scene and uh i always think
it's really important to have iconic opening scenes i was a big fan of the film saturday night fever he had this fantastic scene with john travolta and all all he was doing was just walking down the street in new york swinging a ton of pain to the bj's staying alive it just told you everything about that character and this tells you everything about these guys basically this this kind of um running down princess street so on the rob and it made this kind of um pretty non-descript area of edinburgh one of the most photographed basically
so yeah i chose something else and the reasons there are no reasons who needs reasons when you've got head on yeah when you got um again like lost for life which was a sort of um was a fabulous song a fabulous track by iggy pop i was so delighted when they included that in the film because i was a you know a massive vicky pop fan and i referenced the the song in uh in the book it was good for iggy as well it gave him another sort of um you know opened up things up
to another audience from it was almost like payback for me because i kind of um i was so much in terms of my own creativity and my own world view basically on promegay so it was great to sort of pay a little bit back open suppositories ideal for your purposes slow release bring it in gradually yeah i mean that um that scene's kind of interesting for me because i was in it obviously uh and playing mikey forrester you know it kind of opened my eyes to how difficult acting is because everybody thinks they can do
it when they haven't tried to do it but just acting natural is the most difficult thing to do and this was shot on film and i kind of burned a ridiculous amount of phillips stock just trying to get that right if the film had been [ __ ] which it wasn't it was very good like you know it would have been difficult to slag it off when you're actually in it yourself it's a good move by the director but under the circumstances i'll settle for anywhere the toilet was horrendous [Music] i was in glasgow at
the wolves factory when they were filming that scene glasgow surprisingly was the hottest place in europe that day it was 100 degrees the temperature just soared and everybody envied him going into this tank of cold water basically because it was so hot and it was quite funny because you had all these kind of burnt weed juice and and you had the bbc guy going isn't it a bit dangerous to stay out here more than 15 minutes at a time which is a any other way no instance take it where we can get it take it
well you can get it so it was quite uh it was quite a strange time to see to be in a place that um as you know is not renowned for being hot but absolutely stiflingly hot that day the next uh clip we have here is from trainspotting2 it was a great um recreation of that scene basically of that room from the original train spot in fulham and how they managed to find all that [ __ ] again but they did so well with it it was almost like a kind of family get together because
uh we've all kind of stayed in touch as you do you know but we've not everybody's not all been under the one place in the one place at once and we had a lot of the original crew as well as well as the actors um so it was great it just felt like a big kind of family reunion again sorry that some way to treat your old man please you shut the [ __ ] up hotel [ __ ] management you put them up to this dad it's not like that shut up bobby kind of
explosive is big but it's just such a you know i mean it's he's he's the one that they all talk about the character they all talk about he made the character his own but i didn't actually see him as that character someone's a bigger guy more physically imposing guy but um you know small knockers are always most dangerous basically in scotland i mean originally we tried to i think we were talking to chris cycles about playing playing that character i don't know what happened brother chris didn't fancy it or whether he would have been very
good actually and now we we're going to the acetate which was kind of came out after train spotting you're looking at your there's alex howden who's a great scottish comedian character actor um the animatronic baby it was quite a [ __ ] mess it was like almost like a prize of trainsplog [ __ ] stop name the punches [Applause] yeah we've got um some of the the boys involved and all that but they didn't like you know the people said oh can you wear a scarf can you have to show you and they never do
that kind of thing you know the casuals for a reason so uh that was quite strange for them but they were great sports they just [ __ ] mucked in like this is ecstasy and it's the church scene the only reason i'm allowing this dance is because we need the financial support things will not get out of hand understood you get your money in the gig father i promise you that eh hypocrite you have no spirituality the only medium between god and man is ecstasy yeah well that was a great that was a great um
performance here by billy boyd ecstasy was kind of you know what it didn't get the best reception we lost half the money basically and rob hayden decided the director decided to to gamely carry on and i kind of think that you know the film suffered a bit because for that lack of money and we and it became the marketing kind of people the producers decided that the way it was going to be cut was to be a sort of um a sub train spotting kind of pastiche basically you know like a sort of and i
think the fellow suffered from that because it was you know it did have its own original sort of um voice but uh i mean ecstasy is it's uh it was a great um start and it was fun right moving on to filth this nation brought the world television the steam engine golf whiskey penicillin and of course the deep-fried mars bar it is great being scottish yeah this was like uh you know john's idea was that he didn't want any references to train spot him at all he wanted to be his you know very much exist
in his own world and um he was kind of to the person transporting a little bit by you know going like you know like it's great being scottish as opposed to shy being scottish which was um renton speech so he kind of wanted to he wanted this film to have its own identity and it's a great uh it's a great opening sequence i think the the the great thing was mcavoy basically it was a massive coup to get him and uh i couldn't see it at first because he looks i mean james mcavoy looks very
young it doesn't look like a 40 year old divorced cop and when i went to meet him i left him with john and i went upstairs and i said to my wife i said that's never going to work he just looks too young and pristine and by the time i went back down half an hour later he just aged he just looked really nasty and seedy and sleazy and he was just you know i thought [ __ ] hell i've not even got this guy into costume and makeup yet he's just phenomenal so he just
became the character in front of her eyes basically and john was really excited and um blown away so yeah it was fabulous casting was pretty short final club is crime all i want is oblivion every cell in my body just craves it i want it i want to drink this dry i want to snort the entire rain for us to save america and i just want to draw again it was a passion project for him we really wanted to play that character and uh he would we him and i have been trying to get this
made for 10 years and they never let up for a second if you're doing independence tv productions or independent film you need something like a duke ray scott or a john beard or somebody who just gets to sort of or even you know danny boyle somebody who just has a bit between the teeth and will not let go until they've kind of got what they want from it you know uh so it's it's so it's a pleasure to to work with these guys because they're just so driven and they get the kind of um they
inspire you to to push harder thanks for watching you can get my new book the long knifes in hardback uh ebook and audio by clicking the link below
