AFF Panel Review: Danny Boyle

British director Danny Boyle, looking school-boyish in a rumpled sweater and tie, took the stage 20 minutes late in the Capital Ballroom at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel. But once the conversation got underway, it was as if he’d been chatting for hours--the director’s humor and intelligence shone throughout his time onstage, in a conversation somewhat haltingly moderated by film critic Christopher Kelly. In town with films both new and old—the enthusiastically-received Slumdog Millionaire and his 90s crime-caper debut, Shallow Grave—Boyle has shed the “hip nihilist” reputation gleaned from 1995’s breakout hit Trainspotting to become a fixture on the international film scene, working in genres as diverse as zombie horror (28 Days Later), sci-fi (Sunshine), children’s fantasy (Millions), and social satire (The Beach).

The conversation was marked by juicy insider details. When Kelly mentioned that, at Telluride, Roger Ebert claimed Slumdog Millionaire would win a best director Oscar, Boyle countered with a second-hand story about how Ebert became so excited during the screening that he had to be separated from another patron by security after repeatedly tapping the man on the shoulder to ask for a better view. Modest to a fault, Boyle expressed his discomfort with big-budget filmmaking: “$50 million dollars, a budget like that would pay to move my hometown 100 miles to the west or to the east. So I try to use what there is and make it as big as possible.”

There was also a textbook summation of the nature of film distribution: Slumdog fell into a strange limbo after its completion, when its studio (Warner Independent) was shut down. But enthusiastic reactions at Telluride and Toronto (where the film won the People’s Prize) encouraged a wide release through Fox Searchlight. Boyle drove home the importance of film festivals like AFF, where a film can gain momentum with audiences and thereby gain traction with financiers. “Where else is a little film guaranteed to be seen by a few hundred people? And the warmth that comes off a few hundred people—you can’t buy that,” he enthused, and it was hard to disagree with him.