A classic kids' story has to have the woods with the wolf 
Director Danny Boyle and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce have several things in common: they're both from the North West; are impossible to pigeonhole; and refuse to kiss Hollywood's derrière. They collaborate for the first time on Millions, a charming family pic about two kids who have to spend a sackload of stolen sterling before Britain converts to the Euro.
What made you both want to write/direct Millions?
Frank Cottrell Boyce: I've written lots of films, but I've never written the type of film that made me fall in love with movies for the first time. For me it was The Princess Bride; it's not an examination of anything, it's like a party, and I wanted to write a film that would be like that - that my kids and aunties and uncles could go to and not suffer through another one of Frank's scripts, you know? I wanted to make it up to people for all the suffering I've imposed over the years!
Danny Boyle: I think it was page seven of Frank's script, where the kid first uses the excuse that his mum's dead to get stuff out of people. I just thought, That's genius, I'm in! It's always good to make your mind up really early in a script. 28 Days Later, I made my mind up when I read the title! This was a good title as well. Little things like that make a big difference.
The script changed substantially from when it was first written in the early 90s to what we see on screen now...
FCB: Lewis, who's the actor who plays Anthony, came with me to a schools event the other day and shipped up with his script. When you rewrite a page of script after shooting's started, they go on different coloured paper. I saw the script and said, "God, look at that, there's only two white pages in it!" And Lewis said, "No, they're not really white, we ran out of colours and had to go back to white!" So yes, it changed completely. But it should be like that. If you go into a game with a plan and just stick rigidly to it, you're going to lose.
What interested you most about the film's plot device of Britain converting to the Euro?
DB: Firstly, it's a fanastic opportunity for criminals, and I can't believe that criminals haven't taken more advantage of it! It seems blindingly obvious that some great scam has got to be worked during a country converting. But the other thing is, there was this wonderful idea in the script about one of the boys learning to say goodbye to his mum. We're not very good at saying goodbye to things in this country. We cling onto things too much. I'm sure it's the fault of the Second World War that we hanker back to the past and the glory days, and I think that's a shame. Especially in the current climate. We are biased to America too much politically and we shouldn't be. If we could shift the balance back to Europe, that'd be a very healthy thing for us. I'm all in favour of the Euro, but it looks like it's drifting further and further away from us.
The movie comes across as a love letter to the North West...
DB: You have big questions when you're setting up something like this: when to film it, where to film it. I didn't want to film in winter, because I knew that whatever we did, it'd look like that grey scudding cloud that you get in the UK - especially around Manchester. So I thought we'd shoot it in the summer and get these blue skies. What we wanted was to shoot it in the winter on those crisp winter days when the sky's completely clear and you think, This is awesome! It's so good to be alive! But to do that technically you have to shoot in summer and pretend it's cold. Which, of course, the kids hated - they thought that having to wear woollen hats on sunny days was just stupid. They never forgave me for that!
You gave Frank a role in the film as a teacher...
DB: I always try and keep the writers in the film if I can. Some of them are too shy - Alex Garland's too shy - but you've got to try and get them in the film. You want the writer to stay involved for as long as possible, really, but there's an in-built thing sometimes in the film industry that they don't want the writer around at all. And that's insane! You try and create a family atmosphere when making a film, and the guy who's written it is a pretty important part of that family.
Your movies are in a variety of genres, but what do you see connecting your previous films?
DB: I think we both do modern stories, and even if they're set in the past there's a modern sensibility about them - which is wonderful because we are too fond of occupying the past here. I worked in the Royal Court Theatre and they always used to say, "If you want to win awards then you do Shakespeare. If you want to actually make a difference, then do new writing."
Although Millions is a family film, there's a delicious darkness to it as well. Did you have any filmic frames of reference?
FCB: It's been a long time since people made live-action family films in this country, isn't it? It's a whole area that's been vacated; we've allowed America to dominate the family film. Going back, there's things like Whistle Down The Wind, I suppose, but The Princess Bride was a real marker because it's completely satisfying whether you're an adult or a child but not in that Shrek way of having a few adult jokes thrown in that go over the kids' heads.
DB: All I thought is that the scary bits should be really scary, because when you're a kid you're really scared. Black is dark, really dark, and nobody could tell me to make it grey to make it a little more palatable. When you're frightened, you're really frightened, and I thought kids would understand that, they wouldn't want to be patronised.
FCB: It's nowhere near as dark as Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs! A classic kids' story has to have the woods with the wolf in. Otherwise there's nowhere for the light to shine.
