Posts tagged danny boyle

Simon (James McAvoy), a fine art auctioneer, teams up with a criminal gang to steal a Goya painting worth millions of dollars, but after suffering a blow to the head during the heist he awakens to discover he has no memory of where he hid the painting. When physical threats and torture fail to produce answers, the gang’s leader Frank (Vincent Cassel) hires hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) to delve into the darkest recesses of Simon’s psyche. As Elizabeth begins to unravel Simon’s broken subconscious, the lines between truth, suggestion, and deceit begin to blur. ‘Trance,’ directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) and co-written by Oscar-nominated long term collaborator John Hodge (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting), is set for a March 27th release in the UK and a April 5th release in the US. My interview with Danny Boyle for ‘Trance’ can be read here, while my Rosario Dawson interview can be found here (more to come).

What do you think it is about heist movies that are so attractive to an audience?

James McAvoy: I think we all fantasize about taking what we feel like we deserve. We’ve all been wronged at some point, we’ve all been down on our luck at some point. We all feel like we’ve been wronged by life somehow, whether we’ve got a good life or not. And somehow taking something or stealing something can represent revenge, payback, something like that. In real life we wouldn’t want to do that or like that, well most of us wouldn’t (laughs), but whoever’s stealing the thing or taking the thing in stories, I think they sort of represent us the audience, taking back from fate, from what it took from us. So I think that’s why we like heist movies, because it’s like, “Yeah, I’m gonna take what’s mine.” Stick it to the man (laughs).

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Simon (James McAvoy), a fine art auctioneer, teams up with a criminal gang to steal a Goya painting worth millions of dollars, but after suffering a blow to the head during the heist he awakens to discover he has no memory of where he hid the painting. When physical threats and torture fail to produce answers, the gang’s leader Frank (Vincent Cassel) hires hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) to delve into the darkest recesses of Simon’s psyche. As Elizabeth begins to unravel Simon’s broken subconscious, the lines between truth, suggestion, and deceit begin to blur. ‘Trance,’ directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) and co-written by Oscar-nominated long term collaborator John Hodge (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting), is set for a March 27th release in the UK and a April 5th release in the US. Look out for a more in-depth interview with Rosario Dawson closer to the release of the film. My interview with Danny Boyle for the film can be read here.

Can you remember your reaction to this story when you read it? Also, what was it about ‘Trance’ that appealed to you?

Rosario Dawson: I remember reading the script and just thinking, “Oh…. wow!” (Laughs) I don’t get something like this across my desk very often, so I was very excited. I felt ready to take something like this on. And also knowing that it was a Danny Boyle movie, and that Vincent Cassell and James McAvoy and Anthony Dod Mantle were involved, all of the people that were a part of it, that was very exciting. As risky as the film was, and that clearly jumped off the page, it was exciting because it’s a journey, it’s a puzzle… it’s a number of things; it definitely wasn’t the “sure fire hit” where everyone’s going to get it, where every aspect of it will connect – because even nudity alone can throw people. So it was like, “Are we gonna bare our souls and it be completely understood?” I felt, “I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but I do know that I’ll be having this experience with some of the most clever, intelligent, talented people there are.” I was excited to rise to the challenge of trying to respect what the script can bring to an audience. And then I got it after talking to Danny, who wanted to do this project for a number of years. Now watching this film I can see why this was an incessant thing at the back of his brain that he had to get done. And if this is the movie that’s been playing in his head, I have to thank him for giving me a chance to be a part of it (laughs).

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