Joined, Hiply

Actor Ewan McGregor and director Danny Boyle, the De Niro/Scorsese of the new British cinema, don’t consider each other close friends, but you’d never know it.

Sitting in an endless hotel suite high over Manhattan, they rhapsodize about the hotel’s beds, tap their cigarette ashes into beer caps and reminisce about the previous night’s bowling in Greenwich Village.

This is not to say that they--along with their partners, producer Andrew MacDonald and screenwriter John Hodge--are warm and fuzzy. After all, their first film together, “Shallow Grave” (1994), featured three Scottish yuppies who dismember a dead roommate in order to keep his suitcase full of cash. Their second film, the celebrated “Trainspotting” (1996), starred McGregor as a mordant junkie whose quest for a fix knows no bounds, not even the filthiest toilet in Scotland.

Even their most recent film, “A Life Less Ordinary,” which is supposed to be a romantic comedy, is more surreal than sunny. In the film, which opens Friday, McGregor plays a Scottish loser who kidnaps an American heiress (played by Cameron Diaz) who turns out to be much more interested in extorting her father’s money than he is. In addition, a pair of angels (Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo) is dispatched from on high to make sure this odd couple ends up in each other’s arms.

McGregor, who’s 26 and shares some of his on-screen characters’ attitude, has done more than half a dozen projects between these movies, including “The Pillow Book,” “Emma,” “Nightwatch,” “Brassed Off,” a guest appearance on “ER” and the role of the young Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’ “Star Wars” prequel, due in May 1999.

Meanwhile, Boyle, who’s 41 and has what can only be described as a childlike enthusiasm, is readying another one, called “The Beach,” about second-generation flower children in Southeast Asia, which may again star McGregor.

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Question: They’re selling “A Life Less Ordinary” as “From the makers of ‘Trainspotting,’ ” but it isn’t like “Trainspotting” at all.

McGregor: No, but it is the makers of “Trainspotting,” you know what I mean? I find that really interesting, what we’ve chosen to do, from “Shallow Grave,” which certainly in Britain was a success but better still was a surprise success. There was a real atmosphere of “Who the [expletive] are these people?” To do “Trainspotting” was probably the riskiest thing to pull off next. And then after the success of “Trainspotting,” perhaps the riskiest thing you could do is an American romantic comedy.

Boyle: We tried to stop them using “Trainspotting.” In Britain we basically did. It’s a bit of a false economy because it happens anyway because everybody mentions it. But we wanted to market the film on Ewan and Cameron because it’s meant to be a romantic comedy or romantic adventure. You don’t go and see the director of a romantic comedy or the filmmakers of a romantic comedy. You go because you want to see these two actors have a romance in some kind of story. I think there will be disappointment for people who are looking for something supercool, very edgy, all that.

McGregor: Very strong similarity between my character in this and the character in “Trainspotting.” Renton in love in America kind of thing, isn’t it?

Q: I like how that was not remarked on. What is this Scottish guy doing here?

Boyle: Do you know how many Brits live in Los Angeles? There are 500,000 British people in Los Angeles alone.

McGregor: That was the lovely thing about it, because after the disappointment of my American accent not being good enough for the team, making [the character] Scottish, it was not to be remarked upon. He’s there because he’s there.

Q: Was that something that you initially tried to do, make him American?

Boyle: The guy was Scottish originally, because originally the film was set in France and Scotland. And we couldn’t make it work, so John [Hodge] moved it to America, which is very sensible and loosened it up completely. And then we did think, “Should it be an American?”

McGregor: A funny thing happened, because I was doing “Nightwatch” in L.A. at the time. I arranged for them to see five or six scenes from “Nightwatch,” where I was playing an American. I knew that they were watching the scenes, so I expected a call in the next couple of hours. At this point I didn’t know if I had the part or not, and I kind of felt that it rested on my American accent.

And the call didn’t come that night or the next day, and it was about two days later Andrew [MacDonald] called. “How are you doing?” “Fine, how are you? What do you think?” He said, “Well, we just know you too well.” And my heart went blumph.

And then I went, “OK, well, thanks, Andrew, thanks.” And he said, “Oh, no, we still want you to do it, but maybe you should just be Scottish.” I didn’t know whether to be pissed off that my American accent wasn’t up to much or to be pleased to be in it still.

Boyle: We did a couple of test screenings, which were really interesting to sit in on. One of the things that Americans take from it is they seemed to like the idea that he looks like a loser, which is a very powerful symbol in America--provided he’s not a real loser, of course.

Q: This is from the makers of “Trainspotting,” so you’re not sure.

Boyle: He might plummet into some kind of addiction.

McGregor: When they weretalking about it right to begin with, John was saying it’s just classic romantic comedy. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. And it didn’t sway from that.

Boyle: Fox [the studio] were on about that they’ve got to kiss every 10 minutes.

McGregor: More kisses, got to kiss more.

Boyle: We tried to make something more mainstream, but when you watch “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” you realize that’s mainstream. When you look at a mainstream film, it’s full of close-ups. That’s what it’s built on. The scene is established and then you get the close-ups, and you realize we haven’t done that. That’s what the studio means by kissing every 10 minutes. It’s just a funny way of expressing that what they really mean is you need more close-ups.

McGregor: Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss. That would be awful for me.

Boyle: They’re paying to see Julia [Roberts], so they want to see Julia, they don’t want to see her back.

McGregor: I’d like to see her back, wouldn’t you?

Q: Actually, there’s no sex in this movie.

McGregor: There’s lots of sex if you look deep enough, baby. It’s all in their eyes. We rehearsed a lot of sex scenes. We just decided not to do them.

Boyle: The dance at the karaoke is the sex scene. This is supposed to be some kind of romance. We can’t do a sex scene, because you’d have to have tissues and condoms and things. It just didn’t seem right for this particular kind of film, so we thought we’ll have this dance instead, which is a very old-fashioned way. That’s the way they used to do it in the old days, isn’t it?

McGregor: Also the scene after the karaoke night where she--I’ve never seen anything quite so sexy as Cameron Diaz not wearing any trousers walking down the staircase. That’s about as much sex as you could want in a movie, I would have thought.

Boyle: They were very good, Fox, to be honest. It is a very small budget for them [$12 million], so we asked them to leave us the freedom to make it the way we wanted to make it, and they were really honorable about that. [Fox president of production] Tom Rothman especially and the guy who looked after us, [vice president of production] Peter Rice. I mean, they kept saying they should kiss more often.

And originally the girl in the bank that she [Diaz] puts the gun to, that was originally a 7-year-old. And they said, “Listen, we won’t interfere. If you want it to be a 7-year-old, it can be, but they will just stream out of the cinema at that moment if you insist on it being a 7-year-old.” So we went for a 14-, 15-year-old. And they gave us some wonderful notes.

Before we started, Tom Rothman said the thing to be aware of is to make sure it’s not a tourist film. That it doesn’t just become a landscape film or a criticism of America. He said a lot of people come here and make tourist films. They don’t think they’re doing it but inevitably do it because it’s such a wonderful or strange thing to experience America.

Q: This is your follow-up to “Trainspotting,” whereas Ewan has done a lot of movies since then. You have different life cycles.

McGregor: This is the really interesting thing about it. “Shallow Grave” was my first movie. Danny and Andrew and John are working on it for the next year, year and a half, during which time I’ve made three movies or so. And then we do the next one, and it’s the same process.

I consider myself very much part of the team because I desperately want to be, but it doesn’t include the build-up or post-production. So just like a whore I go from one to the next. But I love that. That’s always the way I’ve seen my work in terms of playing different parts and working with different kinds of directors.

I’ve spoken to George Lucas about this at some length. And he said, “You have a luxury because you’re a British actor. You can go on stage, you can go on television, you can do film.” If you’re a Hollywood star, if you’re an actor my age in L.A., you don’t have any luxury with that. It’s unforgiving. You won’t be accepted if you fail. Your agents won’t let you do an independent movie for scale if they’ve got you up to $3 million a picture. They’ll say, “I’ve worked my ass off to get you $3 million a picture, you’re not going to turn around and do scale.”

And I said to him, I wouldn’t let anybody have that control of me. I make my decisions in terms of what I do.

Q: Do you consider yourself [Danny’s] alter ego, like De Niro and Scorsese?

McGregor: I’m not sure what that means. I’m sure De Niro isn’t his alter ego. It’s just that they work well together. I don’t think it necessarily has to go any deeper than that.

Working for Danny is the best. I’m at my happiest and do my best work. What Danny does is absolutely let you do your job, which is what most other directors I’ve worked with seem to forget. You get that thing: “You start over here and you come down here and you say this line here and then you go over there and say it here.” And I always think, “Well, how the [expletive] do you know that that’s what I’m going to do? I don’t know that that’s what I’m going to do.”

Q: How did you guys meet?

McGregor: It’s really disappointing. We met in a casting, like any other job. I was hauled in amongst hundreds of others and then got the job through the normal casting procedure.

Boyle: It was just an audition for “Shallow Grave.” We try to keep people and build up a pool.

McGregor: John didn’t think I was right to play “Trainspotting.” I only found this out recently. But he’s willing to say I’ve proved him wrong. It’s never been the case that I’m in the next one, not before casting. They’re terribly loyal as a team to me and I to them, but the loyalty would stop if I’m not right to play a part, and that’s the way it should be. So it’s not a foregone conclusion that I will be in them all--but I better be.

Boyle: John does write for Ewan, really. When you read it, maybe it’s just our programming now, but you can’t help but hear Ewan’s voice saying those lines.

Q: But you don’t know whether he’ll be in “The Beach” yet?

Boyle: No, but the way we do it is we optioned this book and John’s about to write it and we asked Ewan to read it. [The McGregor part would be that of a young traveler who goes to Thailand, and meets another traveler who has a map to a remote island, where a supposedly idyllic commune is located.] We didn’t say the part is definitely yours. We just asked him to read it, because that’s how we work. And that’s a kind of commitment on our part, yeah.

Q: Ewan may be so big after “Star Wars” that he won’t do your movies anymore.

McGregor: No, I was very prepared, because at one point “Star Wars” may well have been going on at the same time as “The Beach,” and I wouldn’t have done “Star Wars” if that was the case, if they’d offered me this. And that was completely clear in my mind.

Q: You’re kidding.

McGregor: No, absolutely not. Because “Star Wars” was great fun to do and a very different thing for me, but it’s not ultimately what I’m about in terms of an actor in films and stuff. So it was nice that they didn’t meet.

Q: Danny was quoted as saying that Hollywood likes to pick people off one at a time. Did they do that with you?

McGregor: It’s different for me because I get offered things anyway in between, so I can’t be picked off because I’m not going to go away. If I want to do a film in Hollywood, I’ll do it, but I’ll come back. And if it coincided with one of their movies, then I wouldn’t do it.

Boyle: For us it happened after “Shallow Grave.” You have to admire Hollywood. Hollywood is really fast, much faster than in Britain. If they see anything that’s half decent, they come in immediately and offer people jobs. But they don’t like to think of you as a unit, which is what we were. It was me initially, and then it was John, but it was always separate.

Now they don’t bother. They’re bored. It’s really sad. We don’t get sent anything. You know, they’re very practical. They’ve got the message that we try to generate our own stuff.

Q: Some foreign actors and directors say that if they make it big abroad, they become big at home. Does that work in Britain?

Boyle: The perversity of Britain is that success abroad is not necessarily looked upon favorably at home. Another thing coming here and working is we talk about failure the whole time. You always say things like, “This is terrible, isn’t it?” You can’t say that in front of an American crew because they believe you. Because everybody wants to talk about the positive things, you have to reprogram yourself a bit.

McGregor: They’re hard enough on people who are successful in Britain, you know?

Boyle: Absolutely. I think it’s very healthy, of course, but then I’m British, so I would.

Q: Is that something you worry about with this film?

Boyle: Yeah, you’ll get a bit of a kick in your bones.

McGregor: It’ll be interesting to see. It could be the one where it turns. You don’t know. Everyone wanted to hate “Trainspotting,” and a lot of people tried to attack it before they’d seen it. And then it was so popular they just couldn’t do it. This might be the one. It’s No. 3 as well. It’s either very lucky or very I-don’t-know.