Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting Skagboys

Full transcript: Irvine Welsh on London Real

8:24 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My co-host today is James The Colossus Thompson, who is a heavyweight mixed martial arts fighter who will beat your ass if he gets angry. James has been part of the Cage Rage organization, the Elite Extreme Combat, and of course, the Pride Fighting Championship in Japan. Ultra. Ultra. You tell no lines.

8:52 You have your own blog, which is Colossal Concerns, your own YouTube channel called Colossal Collective. He’s got a great video on internet trolls on his YouTube channel. He’s hugging the internet troll at one point. It’s hilarious. Yeah, you have to see it. It’s good. I really like that.

9:08 So thank you so much for being here, James. As you can tell, Irvine, I bring in, I literally bring in the big guns when we have important guests. So that’s why he’s here. Fabulous. And our guest today is Mr. Irvine Welsh, who is a Scottish novelist, playwright and a director.

9:25 You might have heard of this tiny book he wrote maybe 20 years ago now called Trainspotting, which was made into a movie directed by Danny Boyle. And recently you’ve published Skag Boys, which I believe is a prequel to that story. I’m really looking forward to reading that book. Welcome to London. Thank you. Back to my old stomping ground again.

9:48 Yeah. I’ve been here for years and years and I miss it. I’ve lived in Chicago now for three years and I’ve lived in Dublin for six years before that. So it’s practically a decade out here. I like coming back.

10:01 Yeah, I was just thinking when you arrived from the States, I mean, and I got a bunch of questions for you, but what is your relationship with London? Because you probably have so many memories that, you know, the punk years and you were down here. Were you doing real estate development in London? Yeah, I mean, I came down here. I left, I came, I basically came down here when I left my mom’s place when I was 17.

10:21 It was the first time I stayed down for two years and basically just couched off and kind of find about for a couple of years and had a really good time. That’s like 70s, 75, 76, something like that. Yeah, maybe a wee bit later, 77, 78. And I came back down. I was back up for a year and then back down again.

10:40 And it’s just been like a yo-yo, you know, back up between London and Edinburgh. I think that I probably might have spent more time on that bus between the two, you know, spent in either London or Edinburgh. I probably spent more time in like Grantham or Middlesbrough or something like that. And why back and forth? I mean, was it just like too much big city life? I need to get back to my roots.

11:01 I think it is like, and it’s probably the reason why I’ve moved around for so much, to never stay around in one place enough to piss everybody off. You’re actually happy when you come back. You’re away and you think you can’t, you go back and everybody’s going, oh, how are you doing? Good to see you. Long time no see.

11:21 And then after about two or three weeks, you see them beginning to change. Give it to him. So it was always kind of doing these kind of short bursts in one place and then back up to the other. And I kind of thought that would be the pattern in my life. And then I decided I moved to Amsterdam for a couple of years, which was kind of fun as well.

11:43 And then over to the States to San Francisco and then back to London again, basically. Back to Scotland again and then over to Chicago and then back to London again. And then Dublin for six years, which is the longest I’ve kind of spent in one place. Any reason for Dublin? I don’t know. I got to that point like my wife, she was working over there at UCD and she was going to be there for three years.

12:20 And I got to that point where I thought I wanted to stay in one place. I didn’t want to move again. And she wanted to go back to Chicago. That’s her hometown. So I thought, well, give it another shot out there.

12:33 And you’ve been there now for many years. I’ve been there for three years. Three years with the Yanks. All right. I want to talk about the Yanks more later.

12:39 But I want to just address the thing that I know everyone wants me to ask you. And I prepare for people by getting a bunch of facts about them. And I know a bunch of facts about you. And then I woke up this morning and I was just like, you know what? I felt a certain way when I saw the movie Trainspotting.

12:52 And I remember it so vividly. And I think I was in Chicago at the time. And I’m just this American kid watching these guys and girls from Leith, which I didn’t know where that was someplace outside of Edinburgh. And it just resonated with me so much and obviously the rest of the world. And I remember somebody saying something about the movie.

13:12 Oh yeah, that’s a movie about heroin. And I was like, no, it’s not a movie about heroin. It’s about these young people growing up and struggling with their life. And that’s my opinion. And I was just wondering if you could say why the book and the movie, why did it resonate so much with the world?

13:28 I think it’s really to do with the characters. I mean, because everywhere I used to go to in the book, you know, if I went to Moscow or to Cape Town, wherever it was, people would say to me, you know, we’ve got a sick boy. We’ve got a bag of beans. We’ve got a spud. Everybody just knows these guys because they are kind of archetypes in a way.

13:47 You’ve got the kind of, you’ve got the nutter, you’ve got the funny merchant, you’ve got the kind of the lovable loser and you’ve got the kind of cynical kind of intellectual. And everybody’s got one of them and they’re kind of group and there are a bunch of young guys going out sort of on the town. Everyone can relate to that kind of characters. That’s what I was wondering myself. Did you have a group of people or are your characters a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a kind of hybrid?

14:15 Yeah, I mean, it’s weird what you think in terms of where they actually come from when you start to write them. It’s a really strange place. I’ve not to, you know, to my own satisfaction, I’ve not really been able to put my finger on exactly what it is. Right. Because a lot of mates back home, they’ll say like, you know, oh, I know who the sick boy is, I know who this guy is.

14:38 And most of the time they’re wrong, really, you know? And it’s like, I mean, every single nutter at Edinburgh thinks they’re big, you know? So people will grab a hand and go, that’s me here. But not all of it, it’s not what I said. But the worst ones are the guys who actually don’t see it and then they’ll say, there are people like that, eh?

14:59 Scary. So it’s like, it’s like these, it’s that kind of thing, but you don’t really know, you still don’t know where it comes from. You can maybe see something somebody said or something somebody’s done and all that that kind of finds its way into a book and sort of resonates. But I think the actual construction of the character, every single one of these characters, I think we’ve all got these different sort of levels of personality and why they choose to sort of over-utilise or under-utilise them.

15:28 And I think that they’re all, you know, they’re all some way, in some ways a kind of part of me, some kind of extension of me. And I think every character you write, and it doesn’t matter about the age or the gender or the ethnic background or whatever, you know, I think they’re all sort of part of you in some way. Yeah, different extensions. I think they have to be to work on the page. Do you find the characters kind of write themselves in a kind of strange way?

15:56 Yeah, I mean, it’s like the kind of gatecrash into other stories because the thing is it’s, when I wrote Porno as a sequel to Trainspot, I didn’t intend it to be a sequel. And the original guy who was the main character in it was this, was this character. And I realised when I got halfway through the book that it was just sick boy would come back into it. And because, you know, I never would see that. Every single character you’ve written is just the same as sick boy.

16:24 So I’m making them sick boy, you know. And it’s like kind of, you’ve got a kind of theme or something that you want to explore in a book or some kind of story that you want to get to. And often it’s like, these are the best tools for that particular job, you know. So I think this is the best way I can do that. And it was like the Skag Boys was like, this is the best way I can write about the 80s is to use these characters that were pretty much wrecked by the 80s.

16:50 So that’s the way I can kind of explore sort of to my own satisfaction what went on at that time. And Skag Boys was written as part of Trainspotting and you took it out, is that true? Yeah. Because you wanted to start the story when everyone was well in the thick of it. Well, that’s the minute.

17:08 It’s like when you, I don’t really, when I started writing I didn’t really know how to write a book, you know. And some people say that’s not a good change that much. But it’s that thing you don’t, you know, you say, how did I write this? And you just find out, you know, by trial and error. And to me, the most sensible things to do would just be to start off with these characters and put them together and find out who they were in their background.

17:32 I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing. And I had all this, you know, I had about kind of 300,000 words, which is, the record of a novel should be about 100,000 words. Okay. And I’ve got about three times this for a first novel. So what I did was I just chopped out the middle bit and it didn’t, you know, just put you right into their world.

17:50 And I tacked on this heist ending so I could finish it up and that was trainspotting. Okay. I had these two big chunks at either side, you know. Right, right, right. There’s other stuff I could cannibalize and use as different stories.

18:03 But the first part of it, I had to kind of, I just had it lying around for a while. And when I decided I was going to write about the 80s, I thought I want to write more about all their family stuff and how they, you know, not so much what happened to them. Because you know what happened to them. They became, you know, they became drug addicts or whatever. But why it happened and what was going on in their family background and in the communities of a living and all that sort of stuff.

18:26 So, I mean, trainspotting was about what happened, but Skag Boys was about how did it happen. So, you know, asking the kind of different question. And it was, you know, I had this big pile of material there that I could start off with. So, you know, it was great to have that to go back into the book, you know. And obviously, I mean, it changed as I rewrote it and all that.

18:47 But a lot of it kind of, a lot of it was there as it was, you know. Did you know that you were working on such an epic work like when you were doing it? How old were you when you published trainspotting? Well, it was strange because when I started writing trainspotting, I was 28 when I started writing it. And I was writing about being 25.

19:07 And to me, the difference between being 28 and 25 seemed like a million miles. It seemed like, you know, a completely different life, completely different state of mind. And it just seemed to be such a gulf, you know. And then when I started writing Skag Boys, I was 50 and I had gone back to it and I had this, I was writing about guys that were about younger, they were 21. And I thought, this is just right off the scale.

19:32 But in some ways, it’s a weird thing because I felt it was easier to write about guys that were 21 being 50 than it was to write about guys. Because if you just live through something, you don’t have a chance to reflect back on it, it becomes a bit further away from you. So it’s kind of pulled more into focus now, I think. And when you finished trainspotting, so you started at 28, did it take many, many years until you published it? No, it was, and this is, you know, every time I say this, every other kind of writer just kind of hates me because it’s like, it was the first thing I wrote seriously, I sat down and wrote, and I finished it pretty quickly.

20:13 And it got published by the first publisher I sent it off to. You know, that’s really rare. And I just, and I thought this was, you know, I thought this was what happened to everybody. The white walls, yeah. And you see, you meet people at literature festivals and they say, no, I’ve been struggling for, I struggled for 20 years until I got my first novel published.

20:34 And I was like, you know, and to me that’s like kind of, these are real writers because to be able to keep on without that kind of encouragement, I don’t know if I would have had the perseverance to do that. Yeah, that’s hard, isn’t it? Very hard, yeah. For those guys to keep doing it and keep getting those knockbacks. And sometimes it’s like, you know, you get somebody else who’s maybe published a couple of novels that have disappeared and then they’ll publish one that just goes absolutely crazy.

21:03 You know, it’s like, it’s just, you know, it’s almost like when it’s your time for that kind of thing is and it can, you know, you’re obviously better having that with your first novel because it opens a lot of doors for subsequent stuff. But, I mean, there’s so many writers who’ve just kind of really flourished kind of later on, basically, you know, so. Yeah. Did it hurt you in any way, do you think, that your very first book was so big? No, no, it was great for me because if you’re a writer, the thing that you really want to do as a writer is to have money so you can just have the time to write.

21:36 You know, it’s like, you have that cash, you don’t have to worry about red bills, you can just get on with doing it. Whereas, I think that, it also was kind of at an age where I was just beginning to sort of, to grow into my own skin. If it had happened five or even ten years before, I would have gone right off the rails and I wouldn’t have kind of got back into the work. But, I realised by then, this is what I wanted to do. So, I was able to kind of focus kind of, you know, just on doing the work rather than sort of getting kind of sidetracked with all the stuff that goes along with it.

22:09 When you say that you realised that’s what you wanted to do, when you were moving around all these other places, would you constantly write just out of interest or? I did when I was like, when I was kind of wrecked in a bit of a mess, it was like the, I started to keep this diary, which was like, was the one thing that I could compulsively do. Right. And I realised that, looking back, that a lot of it was kind of, it was nonsense, it was all like kind of self-aggrandise and stuff and kind of, you know, putting all the people down and self-justification, you know.

22:42 But it kind of, it was interesting that I just kept, it was driven to do that, you know. And I think that basically, that kind of showed, but I looked back and that kind of stuff, and it showed me that I was able to write a lot, and just physically kind of write stuff out over a long period of time. And I think that when I actually focused on writing the book, that was when I was off, I kind of knew, that was like my launch pad into that, basically. When you were, when you actually thought, like, this is what I’m going to do, write a book.

23:13 Yeah. I focused all your attention. Yeah, and I thought, you know, I’m messing around with this kind of sort of diary stuff, and I’ve got all these wee stories and snapshots in there. Why don’t I just sit down and write this as a proper book? Yeah.

23:26 Of course. Yeah, and by then it’s like, when you finish up, when you spend that much time and that much effort doing a book, it’s a huge chunk out your life. You know, you either think, well, I’ve done this, I’ve kind of scratched this itch, and I can just kick back now, or you think, this is what I’m here to do, basically, you know, so it’s, that was a sort of, that kind of period when I started writing the first book was a kind of big turning point for me, I think.

23:54 And it soon became, the book became big, and then it soon became a very popular play, right, in Edinburgh. Yeah. And then, obviously, the movie happened that Danny directed. How involved were you in each one of those processes? It’s kind of strange because, you know, somebody wants to make your book into a play or make it into a film.

24:18 It’s kind of very flattering, but I knew nothing about the worlds of theatre and film at the time, so I was kind of, I wanted to let them get on with it, but the guy who, Ian Brown, who did the play at the Citizen’s Theatre, the Traverse Theatre, but he was from the Traverse, but he did it at the Citizen’s, or maybe it was other way around. I kind of remember, but he wanted me to be involved, so I came along to the rehearsals and, you know, the actors, the guy that had done the adaptation for it, used a lot, just used a lot of text, basically, out of the book. And it was good because I got friendly with a couple of the, I got friendly with all the actors, but Ian Bremner and Susan Widler were two kind of Edinburgh-based, kind of just based in Edinburgh actors, and they found their way into the film through that connection.

25:14 And the film was like, you know, Tony Andrew and John that done Shallow Grave, and it was this big independent hit. That was his first film? That was his first movie, yeah. And it did very well, right? And it did, you know, it became, he became the, well, it became that trio together, became the people that everybody wanted to work with in film in the UK, and…

25:35 Is that like a director, producer, writer? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it’s like, they wanted me to be involved in it, and I thought, well, I don’t want to, there was such a good energy between the three of them, I just didn’t think that I’d have anything to offer other than sort of nuisance factor. So I basically let them go on with it, and it was, I was glad that I did. I think that every time you get involved in an adaptation of a book, you really have to be able to stand back and let people kind of see it as a movie script.

26:07 It was so different, it was such different animals. If you’ve written as a book, it’s very hard to kind of, to see it as a book. You know, it sometimes needs another pair of eyes. That must be hard to kind of, I suppose everyone’s different, but to kind of let your baby go off, and people have so many different visions or so many different takes. So did you actually write the screenplay?

26:30 No, I didn’t. I gave it, you know, John Hodge, he wrote, you did Shallow Grave. He just had all the ideas to adapt it that seemed to be kind of much more logical than any of mine’s would have been. And I was obsessed. I was writing this book called Margo’s Tort Nightmares for that time, and I was just totally obsessed with that.

26:49 It was pouring all my energy into that, and I just wouldn’t have had anything to give to it. But, yeah, I mean, they just did such a fantastic job because they saw it as a piece of cinema. You know, the writer usually sees it as a book that has to be adapted, and has to be compromised in some way. You can’t see it in that way. And it took me a long time to get into that frame of mind.

27:11 It took me, like, 15 years working in television and film to actually get into that mindset whereby it has to be torn apart physically. It just has to be ripped open. But you also have to remember that, you know, the book’s still going to be there. It’s still the same book. That still exists as an entity.

27:30 You know, you’re not destroying that entity. You’re just, like, you’re just kind of ripping it up to use parts of it. Parts, it depends who gets hold of it. Because you get the, like, Hollywood types who all want to justify their job. Like, you hear some horror stories, don’t you?

27:43 Well, in some ways, James, it’s a kind of win-win situation for the writer, because if they make a real mess of it, you can say, oh, fuck to my beautiful book. You know, why did he do this to me, you know? And just disassociate yourself from it. But if it’s great, you can say, oh, well, I gave them this great source material, and they were laughing, how could they have failed, you know? So it just really depends on, you know, the sort of, depends on the relationship you have with them.

28:14 And the guy who did filth, John Baird, it was a similar type of thing. I mean, he had this tremendous enthusiasm and energy for it. And he used to kind of email me back and forth about all these scenarios and how he thought the screenplay should be. And I just kind of said to him, oh, you know, you’re the guy who did this. Yeah, that’s your movie coming out with James McAvoy in October.

28:39 Yeah. And that’s an adaptation from one of your books, filth. Yeah. Right. Yeah, you know, it’s interesting.

28:44 We had John Ronson here, and he did The Men Who Stare at Goats. And he said, I was on set for two days. He’s like, the first day, everyone was nice to me, and the second day, I realized I had no place on this set. Because, you know, it’s out of my hands, you know? He said even the screenwriter wasn’t on set.

28:59 He’s like, once you give it to the director. Yeah, the director, I mean, it’s a weird thing. I mean, there’s basically any film. There’s kind of three authors of it. You know, there’s the writer.

29:09 Well, four, if it’s a writer, the screenwriter are different. You know, the writer, the screenwriter who adopts it, there’s a director. And then there’s the editor. I mean, the editor is a real, is it the fourth writer, the third or fourth writer, because they make so many decisions about how the thing looks, because there’s so much material. Well, they’re deciding what’s going to be shown at the end of the dance floor.

29:29 They’re deciding what’s going to be used in terms of the material, but they’re also deciding the whole pace and mood of it and how it’ll look and how it’ll fit and the energy. And obviously, with the director as well, but I mean, editing is such a kind of weird, mysterious process. I mean, there’s no real book about how to be an editor, basically. And I think because of that, it’s not a lot of people really understand it, you know? It’s all just about storytelling and pacing.

29:59 But the editor, you know, what I’ve seen in the kind of like the four adaptations have been involved with my own stuff and the other movies that I’ve kind of been involved with in TV stuff, it’s like I’ve just kind of my whole view about editors has changed. I mean, I just thought, originally thought they were the guys that the director told them what to do. They just, you know, conceived the director’s vision, but they come to it with so many ideas as well about the story.

30:29 Wow, that’s interesting. When you saw the first screening of Trains Body, what were your thoughts, honestly? Oh, it was… What happened was I took a lot of friends like… guys like Jeff Barrett from Heavenly Records and Paolo Hewitt, guys with Primal Scream, Andrew Innes, Bobby Gillespie, all these guys that have been really big into the book and were really into the whole, you know, kind of sort of London cognoscente, sort of rock and roll guys, which apart from an audience in Scotland would be the most critical audience that it could get, you know?

31:05 And I think at first when they sort of, you know, because everybody’s got their own view of what the actors will look like, when you see these different characters visualise, you know, they’re going, ah, no, that’s not big for you. That’s not, you know, that’s because they’ve got their own visualisation of it. And then about ten minutes in, you just feel the energy in the room start to change, and everybody, I just bought right into this, and they were totally engrossed in it, and they came out all, oh, it’s amazing, you know, it’s like…

31:31 So we just had a great kind of feel about it, you know, a really sort of strong, positive kind of feeling about it, the idea that it was really going to do well. Did you know who the actors were, the decisions, did you know what Danny was doing in the background? Yeah, well, I mean, I knew… I mean, I knew Bobby and I knew Eun, and from, you know, the other stuff that they’d done, and I knew Eun Bremner and Susan Fudler from the play. Right.

32:01 And yeah, I mean, just the casting, I mean, Danny also is, you know, the biggest part of directing is casting, you know, if you get the cast, if you get the film cast properly, it just cuts down the number of ways you can fuck up. Like, you know, if it’s not cast properly, you’re really kind of firefighting, you’re trying to pull something, you’re trying to make an actor believe, and you’re trying to make the audience believe that this person really is this character, and they don’t quite believe it themselves. So you need somebody who’s really completely immersed in that part and can really pull it off.

32:37 So it’s such an important thing, you know. But yeah, it had that kind of energy, and it had that, I was saying that, you know, they brought that kind of visual energy, and Danny brings that kind of visual stylization to it that shallow grave had, and why it had the plus kind of add-on that I brought was basically the characters, you know, put into that kind of scenario. And the energy in the book was just completely kind of co-terminous with their energy as filmmakers, so it just really worked dovetail perfectly.

33:12 Wow, that’s such a special moment. Yeah, I remember hearing it was about drugs, hearing it was kind of glorifying, and I always remember watching the short work, the injecting, the hurrying into the vein, and, you know, dirty, dirty. And everyone just went, ugh! Like the whole audience, and I thought, how’s that glorifying anything? That’s not glorifying, isn’t it?

33:39 And then, you know, obviously the dying baby, I thought that’s not glorifying it, that’s how it is. Well, it’s a weird thing, because when all that started out, there was so much criticism about this, and then now you look at the way that all the health education stuff in Britain about kind of drugs education, it’s exactly like a miniature transport. It shows all the big highs and why people get involved, and it shows the lows and what happens to them when they get immersed in it.

34:06 So I think it was kind of successful in that way, you know, and the interesting thing is, it’s like it’s not everybody kind of loves transport, it’s becoming this kind of heritage thing, but a lot of people really hated it at the time, you know, and the same thing’s going to happen both. It’s going to be a small kind of number of people that really hate it on a kind of visceral level, but, you know, that can happen with transport, too. You know, Irvine, you write about such dark stuff, somebody on YouTube asked this question for you, but you don’t seem like a dark guy.

34:41 I think it’s because, I think it’s like, I don’t know, I mean, I kind of feel that I’m not really, I feel that I’m kind of quite a light sort of happy-go-lucky type of guy, but I think in some ways you have to be, to look at kind of darker stuff, you know, you have to kind of be able to put it in a place, you know, if you were living like that with all that stuff in your head all the time, I don’t think it would do you any good. So, and I mean, it’s like, it’s weird because, I remember I was, when I lived in Dublin, this pal, she teaches at University College, and she used to get all the guys for the jail to come in and do this class and all that, you know, and these guys, they wrote the most beautiful poetry about kind of flowers and sort of hills and head and dancing, and she goes, I want to see stuff about, you know, what your life, and I get that, and they were just horrified at the idea that he would write that, you know, and kind of writing from them is like, in some ways, an escape from the darkness, basically.

35:40 So, I think that when I was in a dark place in my life, I just wouldn’t have had the mental kind of strength or stamina to be able to do that, or desire, really, you know. To be consistent enough to actually string something together like as big as a box. Just to get away from it a wee bit, James, and give yourself that distance and that bit of perspective, you know. And to be able to laugh at that a bit, you know, you’ve got all your own kind of vanities and foibles and the most stupid thing in the world, and you’ve got to laugh at them.

36:06 Yeah. I mean, one of the big characters in Trains Body is heroin, and I know you talked about, like, from the miner’s strike to, like, the social housing in Leith and then the heroin that arrived on the market. And obviously, you had intimate knowledge of that, and I was just wondering what your relationship was with drugs at the time or with your friends that did drugs. Yeah, I mean, I think the weird thing I always found about heroin for me was a very guilty thing, because it was something that wasn’t in the culture at the time.

36:36 I mean, you know, when I went through a period when I went back down here to London, and, you know, I’d got myself sort of straightened out, and when I came back up, it was everywhere. And all these guys who used to laugh at me and say, what are you doing? You know, what are you doing on that sky again? Come for a pint, you’re daft and all that, you know. And then when I got back, so many of these guys who got involved in all this, because there was nothing else, you know, everything, I just kind of crumbled, basically.

37:03 And to me, it was like something that was… I can’t really blame it on anything or anybody else. It was basically my own stupidity and my own… Not really having the… You know, I think when you’re younger, you don’t really have the emotional vocabulary to express things that are going on with you, you know.

37:24 And that kind of fun… I mean, I had kind of family issues with bereavement and family issues with kind of relationship breakdown and stuff like that. And you just think, well, here I am with a bunch of guys that are shooting smart, and they seem to be fine, everything’s great, and they’re just sitting there, kind of staring at walls and all that, but they don’t seem to be in any kind of pain, or I’m still in pain, you know. So, in one level, that’s very appealing to kind of get into that, but…

37:54 To tune out. All these things, all these kind of short-term pains of kind of like, you know, bereavement, relationship breakdown, employment loss, all that kind of stuff goes. But if you’ve got a smart cabinet, that’s still there to deal with. Yeah, and it does, you know. The whole thing is intensified when you’re trying to get along with your life.

38:15 And what I kind of found with me was that there was nothing really kind of fueling or driving it beyond that. It was just something that I got into in quite a kind of basic, an ignorant way. I mean, the whole thing back then, there was no kind of health education or there was no knowledge about drugs. I mean, I remember… I mean, my mum and dad used to say to me, I hope you’re not smoking dope.

38:42 I hope you’re not smoking cannabis, so here’s a lot of that, you know, happening around out there in the streets and kind of out of your scooter. I’ve never seen cannabis. I never even knew what that was. I mean, I had kind of… I think I maybe smoked cannabis but once before I’d taken heroin and I’d probably drank a million pints of Guinness or something like that.

39:06 So I mean, it’s like, you know, a million cups of tea. So they were more likely to have led to cannabis. Yeah, the whole gateway thing up and you put that perfectly. Was it an underground scene at that point, the heroin scene, and the parents really didn’t know what was going on? Yeah, I don’t know again, very that many people knew.

39:27 And it was like, there was a bunch of guys round about leaf who were involved in that. And I don’t know what the… what the whole kind of background to that was. I always thought it was something to do with the port and all that, you know, something to do with a kind of port culture. But I don’t know what it was.

39:44 But also in Edinburgh, there’s like the complication that Edinburgh produced all the pharmaceutical heroin for all the UK. It still does. There’s the factory in Gorgay that makes all this stuff. And it sort of comes right back to the Scottish Enlightenment and medicine and the university and the industrial revolution. It’s all still made there.

40:09 I think that there was such a ready supply in it because I think a lot of guys that worked there were just taken out because there was no security in those days, nobody really saw it as being… It’s like an idea that you work in a paracetamol factory and you’re going home with bags of paracetamol and you ask it or anything or something like that. Wow. So that’s why it was so big and elite. That’s why I think it became so big there, yeah.

40:31 I never heard of that before. Because it was pharmaceutical, I mean, I’m kind of talking about the purity of the drug. By the time you got it, was it pharmaceutical or was it sort of caught on… I think originally when it hit the streets of Edinburgh, it was very, very pure because nobody knew anything about cutting it. There was no real criminal infrastructure to do that at the time.

40:55 Nobody had any knowledge of it, if they had of. And then it’s like… I think obviously what happened was that the local supplier, obviously the breaches of security had been stopped by the plant. And that’s been all the massive imputation of cheap Pakistani heroin into not just Edinburgh, but all the UK. And I remember kind of, you know, these guys that I knew back at Poland, they were kind of pulling out wraps of heroin.

41:24 And I was thinking, what’s all this weird brown stuff? Why are you taking it out? Start off white. We used to call it China white and we believed it was from China. It was from Gorgi.

41:36 Was there something cool about doing it when no one else knew what you guys were doing? I think there was part of that as well. I mean, it was like that thing that growing up, you know, and sort of like kind of Bowie and sort of Lou Reed and all that kind of music. There was a sort of… There was a kind of cachet about doing lots of drugs and sort of kind of hanging out in this little kind of cult of kind of sort of wasted bad boys that nobody really knew what you were up to.

42:01 And it was quite mysterious and enigmatic and all that sort of stuff. But I think there’s… And then again, it was before the… This was before all the HIV connection was made, too. So it wasn’t seen as…

42:17 And because the stuff was relatively pure then, there wasn’t the kind of… There wasn’t so much of the danger of overdose. I mean, that would come kind of later on, too. Okay. And when you saw that movie for the first time and you saw you and McGregor up there, Robert Carlisle, Kelly McDonald, Johnny Lee Miller, did you know that these were going to be kind of superstars?

42:38 I mean, these guys are all still around today. Kelly’s on boardwalk, Empire. Yeah. But they’ve all done well. I mean, Bobby was probably the most well-known actor at the time.

42:48 Okay. But… Excuse me. But I remember seeing you in something… I think it was…

43:00 It was one of the Dennis Potter things. And he was just a very young guy. Okay. And him and Dougie Henshaw and all the great Scottish actors were in this… And they were both playing cockneys in this Dennis Potter thing, but they were both very good.

43:16 And I remember seeing a feature on them in this… It was one of the Scottish local newspapers, and it had these things about these two guys, two actors to watch. And I thought, they probably are, because they can utterly convince me that they were cockneys, basically, you know? Yeah. And their point is, kind of, cockney-squaddies.

43:37 And it was… So, kind of, you know, they’ve both done really well. I mean, Dougie wasn’t in trainspotting, but… Yeah, and obviously, I mean, Kelly was just… She was just a young girl.

43:49 She was really young, right? 17 and 18. Yeah, and they kind of… They leaf-flitted around all the nightclubs in Glasgow to get her into it, you know? She hadn’t really done anything like that before.

44:00 Really? I mean, she’s probably, you know, one of the most accomplished actors around, you know? Yeah. She’s, like, kind of, somebody that everybody wants to work with. She’s just, like, a natural talent, you know?

44:10 Yeah. And we were just really lucky to find her. Yeah, and like you said, if you hire those great actors, then the director doesn’t have to be worried about all this stuff. You know Ewan’s going to show up and be that guy and lose the weight and be skinny, and you know… They’re going to perform.

44:24 I mean, it looks like the thing when you… When you see him, he was like this… He had all his long hair and all that. It’s this kind of good-looking guy with long hair and they just cut it off and lost all his weight, you know? And that’s, like, kind of…

44:37 That’s quite a bold statement to make for a young actor because you think you’re getting all his attention from shallow grave. You know, you could be doing these big costume dramas, you know, they sell to America and Britain, and you get massively paid for them. But he really went into it, you know? He went into it with that kind of total dedication. That’s fantastic.

44:55 What a lucky moment that was for all that to happen. But, yeah, it was a lot of controversy when it came out. I remember Bob Dole was running for president in 96 and he was saying bad things about the movie, although he claimed he never saw it. And it was… You must have gotten a lot of heat.

45:08 I love Bob Dole, you know? He basically came to get me. Now he gave me an American presence. And so far, there’s never been any other American presidential candidate who’s done that for me, you know? It’s a God-centered writer, you know?

45:26 Some major politician, particularly the one that’s not even read the book, starts just kind of… or seen the film, starts slagging it off. It’s just… Perfect. So you were telling us earlier how it was really a viral phenomenon.

45:38 Like, at first, the Scots saw Trainspotting and they loved it because it was representing them and they watched it and watched it, and then it spread slowly to the UK and then the world. Is that what happened? Yeah, I mean, I think pretty quickly in terms of the movie because it’s like anything that you’ve got… I mean, if you look at… I mean, it’s similar to Ireland.

45:58 If you live in a small country and something comes out that’s from your place, you really take a big ownership of it. And I noticed when I was in Ireland, In Bruges was out, you know, everybody in Dublin just went to see the movie again and again and again, you know? And that kind of basically kind of distorted figures at the box office for that sales territory. And kind of Trainspotting was the way, you know, it kind of bumped it up and everybody said, oh, this is a cool movie to go and see.

46:26 So it has that kind of cascade effect. I think you have to kind of… It’s quite strange in a way that somebody can start off in a place that’s seen as quite a small place, a small country, and just kind of extend out from there. I think that’s the way these things operate, you know? There’s another film that did that when it was Ireland.

46:46 That film, Once. Yeah. I haven’t seen that. Yeah, it’s… The Guy from the Frame is kind of playing the guitar and it’s a kind of romance story, but everybody seemed to see that film in Dublin, you know, time after time again, and it gives it that kind of profile.

47:03 So, yeah, I mean, that phenomenon, I think, is always working. Did you like In Bruges? I enjoyed In Bruges, yeah. I thought that Colin Farrell was magnificent. I mean, he really made that movie by kind of acting out of a straitjacket, because you can’t have somebody kind of shooting a kid and then being a sympathetic character, and in a comedy as well, you know?

47:29 But he managed to pull that off, and it’s incredible. Some of the acting gymnastics that he does in that movie are absolutely amazing. And this is a guy that, like you said, is a leading man in his spare time, and yet he stuck himself into this role, you know, where he’s anything but. That movie, it’s just original screenplay, and yeah, it’s fantastic to watch. Go ahead.

47:51 So, I asked four questions on Facebook, and one guy was asking, he seemed to have must have seen an interview or got the impression that you thought Farrell was your weakest work. He wanted to know why that was, if it is, and he thought it was one of his strongest pieces. I was probably being really contrary in interviews, because, see, what happens when you do press is that you maybe do about 10 interviews in a day, and, you know, if somebody says, somebody says, you know, kind of like, what’s your strongest book, you know, and you’ll say something like, oh, filth, definitely, you know, what do you think of Trainsport as a movie?

48:30 Oh, they did a great job, you know. And by the end of the day, you keep on, you know, responding the same way to the same questions. You think, I’m just going to, I’m going to fuck around with somebody, you know, and you just get fed up by saying to your own voices, nah, they messed up my book, you know. It’s like, sometimes, it’s like, that’s why I like doing this kind of thing, because irony doesn’t always work in print, you know, you can make a fool yourself, kind of trying to be smart, and the journalist just writes it dead, so I think that, and you do want to mix it up a wee bit, you know.

49:03 But yeah, I’ve always been proud of filth, always thought it was a really kind of strong book. You were just trying to entertain yourself, actually. I think so, yeah. Just fucking move people. I hope you’re not just, maybe…

49:16 It’s hard to do in a podcast, it’s hard to do in kind of, in video, than it is to do in print. Yeah, no, I guess that’s probably true. You know, obviously, you live in the States now, I don’t want to hear about what you think of America, you know, but obviously, we have all this, this oxy-condone, all of these own, you know, opiates now that are so big in Florida and the rest of the States, in a weird, maybe similar way, as what you saw happening in Leith, say, 20 years ago.

49:40 And do you have thoughts on it? Have you ever thought about writing anything about it? It’s kind of, I mean, America’s a really strange place to live right now, because it’s, there’s so many, it’s so, it’s, for the first time, I think it’s, what they say about America now is that, like, this generation of Americans are going to be the first generation that will be poorer than appearance, which is quite a psychological kind of blow for a nation that’s kind of used to having this kind of sense of progression and entitlement and so on.

50:09 How American dreams. And I think it’s, I think it’s also, it’s really divided the country. I think it feels, even more so than Britain, it feels very divided. Divided amongst kind of economic groups, but also divided amongst generations. You know, it just seems to be very old versus new.

50:28 Yeah. And it’s really kind of, you know, such an interesting place to be, you know, I’m kind of enjoying being there. And it’s like the whole thing about the rise of electronic dance music there has been strange as well, you know, and it’s like you’ve got all the, with that you’ve got all the kind of cocktails of these drugs, like, you know, not just MDMA, but you’re talking about things like bath salts and kind of the massive crystal meth kind of thing that’s got going on there.

50:56 So it just seems to be a really, really strange and interesting place to be at the moment. I always find it strange how, like over in America, like we don’t have a meth problem. I don’t know why we don’t. Yeah. You can make meth.

51:13 I’m not quite sure how to do it. Yeah. I’ll try a bit later. But, you know, I wonder why that is. It’s always kind of struck me as being strange as well, you know, a kind of sort of cheap, really kind of powerful crazy drug that seems to be kind of very British.

51:31 It seems to be like high street kind of madness. It’s got Scotland all over it, aren’t it? I don’t know. I’m disappointed in people. I know.

51:40 It’s got Scotland all over it. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know why. I mean, it just, it just seems to have been, you know, when I first encountered it was, it was in San Francisco and it was like, it was that thing. It was like, it was a gay thing, but it was also a lot of young women, a lot of yuppie women that were into it.

52:02 It was quite a strange thing. And now it’s like, now so much of it has come about with people working long hours and long shifts. It’s like kind of truck drivers, nurses and all that. You know, they just want to keep going. They just have to keep going.

52:16 It’s funny how those drugs, they cross classes. They can do it really quick. You might have even seen it in Scotland, but you get something like crack. Okay. It’s the ghetto drug.

52:26 It’s this drug. And then all of a sudden, like the bankers are smoking. Yeah. The bankers are into it. Yeah.

52:32 It leaps some weird leap like that. Like you said, with meth, it starts helping. And it’s always this way, you know, it’s like, what I noticed in Miami is that they’ve basically built a new kind of crack pipe, which is like, takes all the kinds of sting out of the meth, you know, allegedly like, but it takes all the kind of badness and the suitiness of the throat and all that stuff. So it’s like, it’s become almost a kind of lush thing for the kind of, the sort of yuppie classes now.

52:55 They can sit and you know, it’s like, it’s actually quite nice, but she’s so good at it. Right, right, right. Is that all this kind of… Right, right, right. What’s that?

53:03 What’s that? What is the weirdest thing about living in Chicago? I think the weirdest thing for me is like, as you know James, I’ve got obsessed with Twitter in the last year and I’ve just got really into it in a big way. I think it’s because it keeps me in touch with the whole sensibility buck over here in the UK. People just see things in a different way and the humor is different and it’s like, what happens is that, if you get too obsessed with it though, you actually go back into the UK timeline.

53:35 So I’m thinking like, what am I doing at 6 o’clock? I should be sitting down at my tea. I’m arguing with all these trolls in the half cup because it’s 12 o’clock at night at midnight and they’re all staggering and they end up at the base and all that. So it’s like you do get into this kind of strange timeline. You’ll get up 6 o’clock in the morning to watch your football and all that and you’ll start tweeting and everybody’s like kind of, they’re all at the game or something like that.

54:00 So it’s a kind of, it’s a strange thing and it’s like, in some ways it makes it easier to be there. It makes you kind of less homesick but in other ways it’s probably, in the long run, maybe making you more homesick because it’s less inclined to adjust to real life. It’s a hard lot to balance isn’t it? How do Americans get on with your accent because we mind they have a hard time and stuff. Yeah, they don’t understand me.

54:25 You think, I mean, I’m the only kind of guy, I’m the only guy who can say to somebody that, my wife doesn’t understand me and it’s not a chatter play, it’s just a purely dirty thing. But I mean they think everything and they go, you’re Irish, you’re Australian, you’re English, you know. So it’s, you know, maybe one or two people who’ve been there will pick it up straight away but very, very rare. The way they butcher the English language, so. What?

54:53 No, come on Brian, come on Brian, I’m sorry, it’s just a little bit, but I’m sorry, I love Americans, but. I have a British passport so fuck you. No, no, no, mate, you’re one of us. You can slug the Americans off with us. You’re inviting the Americans.

55:06 Yeah, yeah, go ahead. No, but you know, obviously you’re one of us. I know this, I mean it’s like, but I’m doing this book now that comes out in April and the two characters are American and they’re both women and I’ve written it in first person. But it never struck me as how many, how many kind of words are different, you know. It’s like, you know, like over there, you know, the worktops in the kitchen, they don’t have a word for worktops.

55:32 We call them countertops. Nobody was, if you say, they’re just going to work to the worktop there. Nobody would know what you meant. What word was that? The what top?

55:39 The worktop. Worktop, oh they don’t have that so they don’t have that. Yeah, absolutely, so either of you knew what it was or not. So you really have to, do you change your language and stuff? Yeah, I sound, I’m going to say I sound quite posh there but it’s just, you know, I’ve been in Edinburgh for a week so that’s all gone now but it’s like when I, the way it follows is like in the taxi you just change as soon as you get from the airport to the taxi and you kind of, you lose that sort of, I don’t think there’s so much that I try to speak different but I just try to speak slower so that people understand what I’m saying.

56:20 Okay, so you’re writing this latest book that comes out in April. Will you write an version for Americans to consume in American English? No, it’s all in American English. Okay. This has been a difficult thing.

56:31 So I rely on you to tell me how it’s working out. Well I mean most people, if you haven’t read Trainspotting, it’s written as in like a phonetic way of the way they speak in Scotland, right? It’s also, I mean it’s like people think because you know, you’re Scottish it’s easier but it’s not because it’s the way the word’s on the page you’re written. You’re not used to seeing words on a page like that. So everybody, when they get into it, I think they have to for the first few pages almost say it out loud.

56:59 It doesn’t matter whether you’re Scottish or Italian or Australian, I think you have to do the same things. And you decided that’s the way you were going to write it. Well, when I started off doing Trainspotting I tried to write it in kind of I tried to write it in some kind of standard English and it seemed to be so pretentious because the characters just weren’t coming into my head in that way. I was just losing so much of the power of it, I felt, you know. Yeah, and that is a big power of Trainspotting.

57:28 These are truthful it is, isn’t it? So now I see that you need to keep the characters. Yeah and just that kind of the language is such a it’s a weird thing because it’s the Scottish thing to take from that kind of oral sort of Celtic oral storytelling tradition that so much of it is performative. You know, people don’t just tell a story they perform it when they’re going you want to pop it everybody’s up and down they’re doing all this kind of stuff and it’s like if you lose if you just go to standard English you completely lose all that side of it.

57:59 It’s really part of the culture, I remember when I visited Edinburgh for the first time and I had never heard anyone say, you know I and you know it’s so loud and everything I mean I know culture and it also defines you from the English doesn’t it? It’s like we’re not like English we have our own thing and if you’re American listening to this right now could you describe the relationship between the Scottish and the English? I think it’s like the relationship between the Scottish and the English I think is a really good one I think it’s between Scots and other Scots I mean every friend that I have that’s English that I brought up to Scotland they always say why is it you guys love visitors because they do they make a big fuss from those visitors but you just hate each other why is it you hate each other?

58:43 I don’t know really I think it’s without getting kind of too political about it I think it’s to do with this kind of status of Scotland being not quite a nation and I think it’s part of that kind of growing up thing I think once if it does become independent I think that would be a kind of stepping stone towards kind of growing up and being a bit a bit more kind of happy in our own skin and I’ve noticed that with the younger generation it’s not like that at all it’s been that post kind of house kind of rave generation so a whole different attitude Yeah you are the history of your nation you carry it around with you me as an American I carry around that history it’s kind of into your psyche You don’t go much into it though if you’re American have you? A couple hours You’ve been skimping a couple hundred years but I’m most fondly like my grandparents were farmers and ranchers and like there’s this mentality in America that if you work hard enough you can get something because he was always like go west and plant something and you can build something so I think that whole optimism, entrepreneurial spirit just comes from almost the geographic layout of America and just having the option to keep moving keep going and keep trying whereas for hundreds of years in England and Scotland I’m sorry that piece of land is owned by that clan and that’s owned by that guy so fuck you you got to do this so it’s just a weird thing Are you for Scottish independence?

1:00:06 Yeah I mean I think that’s the way it’s kind of going I mean it seems to me that I don’t know what’s going to happen next year I think it’s maybe a bit kind of too soon at the referendum but I think that I just feel that the union of Scotland and England is kind of seems to be in a kind of secular decline I think people are more people are more proud to be English rather than British now people are more proud to be Scottish rather than British I think it’s just that way it’s almost like they’ve got to find their own kind of destiny really it’s almost like a post-imperial thing there’s no empire now there’s no industry all the things that kind of bound Scotland and England together there’s no welfare state so it’s like all these things that kind of held us together in the two world wars and the speed of code of all that have kind of gone so I think they’re kind of starting almost like reverting back to their original identities basically I like how we’ve told them like Andy Mohr if he wins the US Open he’s British if he loses he’s Scottish keep it like that that’s just how it works I like it that way do you know what I mean?

1:01:18 He suits me like that I thought you’d make like that You know James is a writer and you were aspiring to write a book and you just said that you wrote from the first person point of an American woman and how do you do something like that or how do you even advise people of how they can become that character it seems very hard it’s kind of weird but a lot of people do that kind of thing they have this idea for a character that’s kind of nothing like them and I think that for me I had to kind of I had to write quite close to my comfort zone before I could move out a little bit but it’s funny it’s like so much of it the characters always find it so much of it is kind of superficial like gender and social class and nationality it’s like the it’s the kind of spirit and essence of the character of the human being that really comes out hopefully when you try and write and you try and do that and then after that once you’ve got the character down you’re basically just trying to authenticate it with details it’s just a lot of research and listening to people giving it to Americans to read basically and saying what do you think of this what’s working what’s not and just doing as much of that as you possibly can Could you have written this book if you hadn’t lived in Chicago in the last three years?

1:02:40 Probably not I don’t think I would have had the desire to do it because it’s set in Miami and it’s more Miami in Chicago that inspires me to write I love living in Chicago but I feel that it’s an old kind of city and I feel that it’s kind of it’s kind of postified in terms of all the cultural relationships people that I’ve got there’s the guys I’ve got drinking with the guys I’ve got the boxing with the guys I’ve got the cinemas with and all that and it’s like there’s a different crowd but everybody has a place and they know where everything is whereas Miami it’s just such a kind of mixed up town everybody comes in there and I thought well I’ve got a kind of place here I mean my kind of view of it is probably as good as any other incomeers but not like that in Chicago I mean there’s so many good writers that are so much steeped there’s so much steeped in the traditions of Chicago it would be impossible for me to kind of catch up with that but not in Miami there’s no real traditions in Miami everything is just new everything is just kind of up for grabs Miami’s insane That’s what I thought you were I thought that’s where you lived in Miami you were there for some point No I’ve got a place in Miami as well Chicago’s awfully cold so I lived in Chicago Pretty much like Scotland Yeah I lived in Chicago for two years You want to trade up in your weather?

1:04:03 Yeah I can imagine you’d be there I worked for a bank in Chicago for two years and I love Chicago and I love the people in Chicago but if I would have told you one city that everyone lives in I would have been like not Chicago because it’s not what you’d say a dynamic city there are these kind of relationships that you know this is the way it’s been for a long time and this is the way it’s been and this is the way it’s been and it’s kind of Midwest and for the Midwest it’s one of the best cities for the Midwest but it’s not exactly dynamic is that the right word? Yeah I mean I think it’s I think it’s changed a lot in the last even in the last three years since I’ve been there and I think that it’s probably changed a lot at the expense to a lot of the other towns in the Midwest like Detroit and Minneapolis and Cincinnati Milwaukee because it’s become more of a regional capital you know you tend to get a lot of people flooding from these towns in Chicago now whereas in Chicago the only place you want to go if you want to kind of make it whatever that is means like you know you go to New York or LA but so many people originally come to Chicago What is your writing process?

1:05:08 How do you write? I try I kind of I usually work on lots of different things at once and then I get to a critical mass with something I think this is the thing I’ve got to go with and that’s the kind of horrible bit you know the rest is just procrastination and fun you know you’re building something up I think I’ve really got to make this actually happen it’s got to be it’s got to be a book it’s got to be a screenplay I’ve got to actually I kind of just pawns around with it anyway I’ve got to turn it into that you know and that’s the horrible part because that’s when it becomes like real work you just go you know you just so then the regime becomes completely different it’s not about just getting up and doodling away and having fun and all that it’s about just thinking about you know mapping off the days and the weeks and the months and all that and saying this is my deadline I’m going to set and this is how I’m going to do that and getting up and getting up in the wall and saying this is the first start this is the second this is the third this is all my little charts and diagrams and kind of going back I see you do do that like it on a military operation yeah yeah no it is it’s a crime watch it must be it must be it is real especially with the characters it’s like a police it’s like a police operating room do you have like pictures of the characters or descriptions of the characters yeah I do have pictures of descriptions I mean I do

1:06:26 Not so much pictures but I do drawings I can do little sketches of people you know if I imagine the person to look like really to bring them to literally to bring them to life bring them to life and I make up a tape for every one of them I make up a playlist what they’re going to listen to and hover that on when I’m writing the character wow that’s pretty interesting well I think you make them to me it’s like you make them more real you know and it’s I think the thing about the thing about writing is it’s such a kind of weird thing because you’re spending all this time in a room with people that don’t exist I mean that’s a great definition of insanity isn’t it it’s a perfect working definition of insanity and I think that you know the only evidence you’ve got that exists are these kind of little things you’ve written about them on the walls of the drawings of them the kind of the tapes you’ve made about them I think to make them really real and to make them come to life on the page you have to go into that kind of detail really under the microscope yeah really get into it I think people that discerning reader they know when something’s real and like when they see the movie they know that there’s reality in those characters and that’s what they buy into and I think the consuming public is a lot more intelligent than most people give credit I think yeah yeah it’s interesting because it’s kind of like you see the kind of Hollywood blockbusters

1:07:45 Where you have your hero and the villain and they get the girl and you know a lot of people are just being fed this and did they watch it because that’s the only thing they got to watch and then something like that they’ve got to make it back on the first weekend I mean so it’s saturation its publicity is kind of saturation PR saturation to make sure all that money the studio spent comes back on that weekend because as soon as the word the mouth kicks in and people go like oh sorry it’s not great that’s the film dead it’s like the second week it’s gone the box office is gone I think it’s happened with so many movies I watch a trailer for a movie and I’ll be like I don’t need to fucking see it I know what happens there’s no surprises you know the thing that the studio is obviously and it’s kind of unwritten sort of unspoken law is that the studio movies the trailer has always got to be better than the movie it’s always got to be better than the movie yeah wow yeah you’re in America now and television is creating some amazing things in America and I just wonder what your thoughts are on that kind of a series things whether it be Boardwalk Empire or Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones and would you ever do something?

1:09:06 Yeah I’ve been trying to get my snout into that particular trope for years and I’ve kind of been working on two different projects one based in Appalachians and the other one based in Miami again so I’ve just been working with different partners and kind of TV people to try and get things like that on the go so you get that to a point you get your kind of your basis your kind of meat and potatoes if you will and then you’ll go out with your contacts different people what do you think of this at and then see if you can flush it out see if anyone’s buying yeah basically that’s it you know you just get working with some producers that you really like and usually to and to get any kind of project on the go you’ve got to get it’s like nobody’s going to it’s one of these things nobody’s going to take one person seriously but if you’ve got like if you’ve got a decent writer a decent producer a decent director and maybe a couple of actors that you know are interested in it not so much with TV you don’t so much package up with actors with TV but maybe more of a a decent production company that’s got a track record with TV or a showrunner that’s got that kind of profile then you’ve got a much more of a shout of getting people interested especially with a backlog of work like you have too that you know yeah well hopefully yeah hopefully fingers crossed there I bet people think it’s Irvine Welsh can snap his fingers and get somebody made but I’m sure you find it

1:10:33 Difficult to make any projects no no it’s almost I mean it’s like kind of it’s just really really difficult to do and you have to notice I mean people are people who are entering all the people want from the writer is quality they’re not interested in who you are they’re interested in the script if you can’t deliver a script then if the script’s the only average and a lot of the scripts I have done have been average you know and it’s never going to work out every time but I think that but if you have a if you have a decent script then you have a decent producer then you have kind of a decent director you have that kind of you almost have that kind of series of building blocks that you put in place but it’s still as hard I mean it’s hard in a lot of ways I mean I’ve got an agent out in Hollywood now and I’ve got a manager out there and that’s been really helpful and it’s been good to actually get into that that whole thing of being more serious about it rather than just kind of doing a script on spec and sending it into some studio so yeah that’s been very helpful but I don’t think there’s I don’t think there’s any writer in the world who can get something made like that to be part of a package Sorry to round a bit so once you’ve written it you’re also putting together people Maybe you kind of you have an idea you write something you contact people you think would be interested to work with you or sell a way around they might come to you

1:12:06 And say like I’ve got this great idea how do you fancy being attached as a writer and come and produce it with us and sometimes I mean my agency that I’m rep by CAA they only just represent writers they do producers, actors as well so they often come out and have an idea and try and package people together that’s what they do basically they’re talent brokers So it really helps having an agent When I first went up to Trainspot and everybody wanted to meet me and work with me and it was like and because I never had an agent a literary agent I thought I don’t need a film agent so I would go there and just this Daflade basically We want to walk this is fantastic stuff Who’s your agent? Ah, I’ve not got one I don’t need one This guy is it Send the village idiot back to this village in Scotland that you came from So this time now I do it incredibly different it’s a whole different approach I’ve got the agent the manager and all that and we try and look at any if I do a book we’ll look at what the crossover potential for adaptation is for the big screen of TV it’s all done in a kind of systematic way and if there is none we’ll just move on to the next thing or we’ll do the original thing What would you say this might be a quite convoluted question but what’s the big difference between writing a book and a screenplay?

1:13:39 What would you say? I know that’s a big question I think with a screenplay you’re always much more conscious of structure It’s a three act structure It’s more about because you’re thinking about in pictures about telling the story in pictures It’s more about an official sense of how it’s going to look and how one scene is going to unfold into the next and how you can tell You have to tell a story in a screenplay with much fewer characters and fewer scenes You’re looking at how you can make that still punching dynamic enough to give as much detail about the characters as you can Yeah, roll the characters while getting the story out Whereas the book itself I think with screenwriting for me anyway it starts off more about process and then you try and build in the content whereas books all it’s all about content You’re just writing away there and you think I’ve got to actually write this thing as a book How do I fix this mess?

1:14:40 How do I knock it into some sort of semblance of order? It’s a completely different It’s the same thing but Completely but Yeah, completely different Ah, it’s interesting You talked about getting feedback on your writing I think on this book this American book you were talking about Who do you use for feedback? Is it your wife? Is it your agent? It’s friends And how do you Do you do that?

1:15:04 Usually in the first instance it’s the murderer and I mean that’s I’ve had the same guys we’ve met her for 20 years and it’s kind of probably the longest relationship either of us have had basically So it’s kind of it’s kind of strange but Yeah, and he’s the guy that I would kind of trust to give me the the kind of the broad brush about is the story of working on the characters working and the rest is like the kind of details and you start going to people that maybe I mean I tend to write the thing and then research it afterwards so you know so I’ll go you know I’ll say that you know I’ll write something and I don’t want to I don’t want to research something if it’s not gonna be good so I want to see the story let the story work first then I’ll go back and I’ll start researching some of the details to make it kind of fly a bit more Right, right, right to see if you have to change it Yeah, yeah I mean there’s no point in doing extra what you don’t have to do Yeah, yeah, no, no I’ll say that What do you think of Hollywood?

1:16:05 So I mean I just see it as a kind of I mean it’s a factory town I mean like Newcastle was all about coal it’s all about film yeah it’s about making movies and TV programs and what they do I don’t you know it’s like I think sometimes it’s like you know it’s like anything like that that has that kind of position of dominance in an industry it gets very kind of self-reverential and all that sort of stuff but I think I mean I always say that I mean you know when I worked for the council with Edinburgh I met more pompous egotistical people there I never did a Hollywood like you know Really? Yeah, I know That is funny What advice do you give to writers like James or like the 20 year old that’s listening to this right now and they’re like I want to be a writer what do you tell them or how do they start?

1:16:53 I always say that you know the first thing is it’s like kind of enjoying spending time on your own you know I mean I’m a bit of a party animal like going out and meeting people and socializing but I also need to get away from that completely and spend a bit of time almost like a meditative thing by myself and I think that I meet me and when I’ve taught creative writing of courses and universities and stuff and you meet a lot of people who just want to be writers but they can’t spend any time on their own they go crazy you know so it’s just knowing yourself to that extent can you spend time on your own do you enjoy spending time on your own and not a lot of people omit because it’s quite sad I don’t want to admit to being a lonely bastard who just likes to spend or an antisocial kind of weird way like spending time on their own so yeah I mean that’s the that’s the first thing but the other thing is it’s like it’s just to remember that writing is rewriting you know you’re not trying to write the perfect sentence or the perfect paragraph or the perfect chapter you’re kind of constantly rewriting and so the first thing you do is you get the whole story down begin the middle and end you just get it down and even so it’s just some rough kind of road plan and then you redraft it and it’s not for anybody else to see the first few drafts are for your eyes only you know until you get until you get comfortable that you’ve kind of sorted everything out

1:18:11 And it’s amazing how many people get hung up on spelling and grammar and all that stuff leave that to last you can sort that out once you get the story down and people should remember that the train spotting started off as 300,000 words right it started off as this huge thing and you just chopped it down it’s good to know how to cut things down I’ve never quite learned that to my own satisfaction yeah okay yeah I’ve heard writing is rewriting who’s your favourite author? That kind of change I mean I’m kind of like it’s funny because I really like books rather than writers I mean I kind of like you know some writers you know you you really like them for a bit and then you get fed up and you go back to them again and all that and it’s like I mean I was really I watched the Tenderous Night the great Gatsby film because of a big Scott Fitzgerald fan and I just wanted to see how they had redone this movie and how, you know and it was like I was sitting in that cinema for 20 minutes and I was really enjoying it and after that I wanted to get to the book I thought I’m sitting in the cinema where I could be back home sitting in bed reading that book you know so I really wanted to get back to that like you know because I think that that’s one thing I think a good movie should do I think it should remind you of a book but this you know but also you want to watch it yeah but yeah I didn’t want to stick around and watch the movie I wanted to get back to the book

1:19:34 Interesting Did you like Gatsby? Yeah I did I mean I thought it was well done but there was a lot of depth and all that that I kind of I felt was missing from the film that was in the book Do you think sorry do you think that’s why series have become so popular like if you were if you were thinking about TV series I don’t know early 2000 it was kind of like not quite moving material chuck it on TV and now it’s just coming to you know there’s so many good series what you could reel off do you think that’s because they get more time to cultivate the characters you know yeah yeah I mean I think it’s like it’s because what’s happening now with it’s just the big TVs that people have got in their house big high def plasma screens and all that it’s like the production values for TV for quality TV has to be so much higher right so they’re spending like people like HBO Showtime and you know sort of Redbox and Netflix and all you know loads and loads of money on these shows you know Game of Thrones production values are so high so like there must be a couple million in episodes yeah easily easily and because of that though you’ve got it’s much because the production values are so high it’s much more attractive to quality actors and basically TV used to be where people washed up they couldn’t do movies anymore yeah but now it’s it’s not like that at all and and it’s just you know it’s been a game changer it’s like the Sopranos basically changed the whole the whole history of TV

1:21:12 You know and you know so you’ve got but TV also appeals to writers and now you’re getting the best writers going into TV because it’s a writer’s medium as you say you can play the long ball game with these characters you can just develop them over a large piece of time so it’s like working it’s like working in a novel but on screen yeah that must be very fascinating for you as an art form as opposed to the movie the movie seems such an antiquated industry like you said it’s all about that weekend and if something else like what if there’s a Boston shooting that weekend I mean like little things could screw up your movie premiere and that’s the one thing you’ve been working on for a year and that’s your show yeah well I mean especially with a studio film I think if you’ve got a strong independent movie you tend to you tend to make the business by people going back to see it again okay okay now recently you and McGregor and Danny Boyle were talking about porno which I think was your sequel to Trainspotting and about making that and I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that yeah well it’s been you know it’s been talked about for such a long time but it’s kind of now everybody’s kind of back on the same page with it you know it seems to me that you know everybody wants to do it now and they’re just ready to do it and we’ve got a kind of we’ve got some kind of time frame so it’s you know it’s just about getting screenplay as you know as strong as it can be

1:22:36 And you know going from there apparently you’ve got a kind of you’ve got to make sure that it’s a screenplay that the actors can be really invested in they can be really proud of and that that Danny really wants to shoot so that’s the biggest challenge now is not so much the kind of the world of people to do it because everybody’s now seems to be on the same page but to give them something to do that’s really going to excite them and you’ll have nothing to do with that I don’t know I mean it’s like we’re still kind of talking about it I mean John’s had a script for a while that’s it’s very good but it’s kind of I think it needs to be kind of updated a little bit and I think the book I mean the book was about it’s basically about internet pornography and ten years ago that was interesting but now it’s really past day if I did the whole 50 Shades thing and it’s like it’s no longer the kind of phenomenon so I think we’re probably going to have to find another way into the same kind of story about these characters development and how they come back together okay well what’s that one project that you want to do before you die you know what’s that big thing oh there’s millions of them really?

1:23:44 There’s millions of them I’ve got a folder that keeps getting bigger and bigger and I mean I’d like to the thing I think that you’re always looking for the next thing as a writer is the thing that if you’re not excited about the next thing you’re doing you shouldn’t really be doing it you’ve got to be kind of emotionally intense about the next thing that’s happening for you and do writers have to live first? I mean are you always out there do you push yourself sometimes you’re like I’m a writer I’ve got to go do things and push my envelope sometimes I mean not so much now but I think when I was younger and I get it through doing a lot of the teaching as well I don’t do that so much now but I notice when you’re when you’re teaching young kids it’s like technically they’re very good they’re spelling they’re grammar they’re kind of use of words and imagery and all that is good but in the States so many stories are kind of I remember when we were back at high school it all starts off with that light kind of thing and it’s you know you kind of it’s like they just you can’t really see when they’re going to the university to pay their fees and all that you shouldn’t do that you should just take off around the bottle or get a job but the older ones that are in kind of late 20s early 30s I think that’s when they start to get a bit interesting because I’ve loved a bit of life but also just that bit old enough to kind of look back on it and start to process it too It’s that

1:25:13 Reflectory period which you mentioned earlier Was that right? That reflectory period which you mentioned earlier Yeah, yeah you’ve got to get to that point I think before I mean there’s some great you get guys like British and Ellis who wrote less than zero That’s amazing Yeah, it’s ridiculous But most of us can’t most of us have got to have that period of you know I mean everybody wants to write that kind of novel when they’re younger they want to write a campus novel they want to write a high school novel but you need I think most writers would need that period of reflection from it When you’re in it or if you are experienced in it it’s kind of hard to know It’s very hard to stand back from it I’m going to ask you a very London Real question If you could make a phone call to the 20 year old Irvine Welsh and give him a bit of advice as opposed to keep doing what you’re doing but what would you tell him?

1:26:05 I mean it’s related to that I’d just say hang in there because it’s like nothing good or bad lasts forever so you’ve just got to tough out the bad times until the good times come round again and just enjoy the good times probably you can because sure enough it’s going to shoot in the post for everybody that’s just the way life is but I think at that age you don’t really have any perspective about that you know you think if something bad happens you say is it my life’s over I’ll be doing that Yeah so I think that’s the thing just perseverance basically Okay that’s really good advice really good advice I appreciate the time today it’s just you know obviously do you get sick of being associated with train spotting or is it always just an honour to ask questions about that or do you always want to talk about the next work?

1:26:51 You kind of see writing such a weird thing because you can only talk about the things you’ve done if you talk about the things that you’re doing you can’t really it doesn’t really work it might be a TV thing that never gets made it might be a movie that never gets made it might be a book that never gets published or it might radically have to change before it’s publishable so there’s all these things so you have to talk about stuff that you’ve done basically and movies are such a powerful medium if a movie becomes successful like train spotting has and like Folt is going to be that it kind of makes it very difficult for you know because you want to people want to talk about that it’s like but you have to see it as a kind of calling card rather than an albatross around your neck you have to remember that it might be your one millionth time but it’s the first time for them so you have to go with it I was thinking about that today I was like he probably doesn’t want to talk about train spotting the whole time but it was I was going to rewatch it but I can see it in my mind I can see rent and I can see all these scenes happening and so yeah it’s such a powerful medium and it’s something that I think moved a lot of people around the world The thing is too you’ve got so many good things it’s not like you’ve got train spotting and that’s kind of like you’ve got so many good decent stuff one of my favourites you mentioned it earlier so you said

1:28:13 Malibu Stop that book I thought was absolutely brilliant Oh well thanks buddy yeah but the thing is though that you know film is such a strong medium and you pull in a different audience you’ve got a kind of book audience which is a kind of a more core audience in a way but the movies are just such a strong thing you know if a film really works like you know that it just does open up to all different kinds of audiences a different sort of a different kind of level of audience but yeah I mean it’s like everybody that everybody’s been into all the books they always they always mention Philth and Marabu’s Tort Nightmares the two and maybe sometimes Blue are the ones that get all the the kind of kudos really yeah Okay and for you Skag Boys is out what’s the best way for them to get that?

1:29:08 Oh go to Tesco’s or Waterston’s or one of these places and just shoplift it from there Okay, fantastic and Philth is coming out in October he’s got James McAvoy he’s brilliant isn’t he? He’s fantastic he’s it’s the role of a lifetime from Wow he’s a young guy he might do more I’m sure he will do great stuff again he’s done great stuff already but he’s absolutely amazing in this Fantastic he’s just great I love watching him I do do in your books I’m just thinking what you’re saying about film being so powerful and plus it’s usually about an hour and a half people are people are in some ways it’s quite sad like a busy and in a way kind of losing just taking the time to read a book I feel like it’s going a little bit that way and with audio books are any of your books on yeah we’ve got a few I mean they put scag boys and Trainspotting on audio but you’re not doing the audio I’m not I did the first one for Trainspotting with this mate Tom Byrne he was a guy that did Philth on stage did a one man show and he’s in the he’s in the hole of Trainspotting on a bridge which is loads it’s about 10 CDs or something like that and he’s done all the scag boys on a bridge as well oh fantastic so it’s so hopefully he’ll do more from him because he’s really good and I mean it’s great to have something like that on if people are driving in the car you can pick up a book without having to I’m a big fan of audio books I mean there’s so much now really it must have changed somewhat

1:30:41 When you think about with the kind of audio books but then with the whole self publishing the self publishing the e-books and all that you know that’s what a game changer and what you know myself writing you know I’ve got my blogs can get that out there and then from that I’ve got a collection of my experiences and then I always thought that you have to go and get a publisher I mean I don’t know anything but I get a publisher and self publishing was for people who want to do something with it but the more I look into it it’s becoming big now and it’s all you know what happens it’s like when people self publish and it gets to a kind of certain level publishers just come in and pick it up after that and they give it the market and distribution stuff I mean you can’t take further on that for having a chance to publish it because I was looking up different packages what they help you with and they’re really good and I mean you get it it’s like having your cake and eating it and you can self publish it and if it works if it finds a big audience you know somebody’s going to step in and push it and throw it out there so yeah well you can pick his brain more later about that if they want to follow you on Twitter you’re at Welsh Irvine right?

1:31:56 Yeah Welsh Irvine W-E-L-S-H Irvine we’ll put that up on the screen it’s been a huge pleasure we’ve been looking forward to this for months thank you boys it’s actually thank you sir it’s actually because of the colossus that you’re here because I think you guys were tweeting back and forth after we published his show a few months ago yeah and then I was like wow fantastic yeah so we’ve been looking forward to this everyone’s been excited and yeah thanks for the insight we really got some thank you guys kind of running the seats I really enjoyed it thank you very much if you want to follow this big lump of meat it’s at J Colossus I like this you like that? I like that big lump of meat it might change up on it it’s a big lump of meat it’s a biography type yeah big lump big lump your blog is ColossalConcerns.com I love it I tweeted out one of your blog posts your videos are at Colossal Collective that’s the YouTube channel that’s right I love it you got to watch the internet troll video it’s good it’s brilliant acting and good film work too yeah no it was a good film he was good he’s good just the cutaways and the little things they really make it pop as they would say in Hollywood so that’s it if you’re listening to us on iTunes please subscribe if you want to see all of our faces in good looking or not you can come see us on YouTube don’t look at me I wasn’t I wasn’t YouTube channel London Real TV and we’re on Twitter we’re on Facebook if you want to get in touch with me

1:33:18 Send me an email info at LondonReal.tv tell me we’re good tell me we suck it’s okay it’s alright either way so that’s it thanks so much guys all the best to you Erwin and that’s it until then it’s about the journey guys latest please cool for space you change the outer verse you change the inner verse so he’s talking about just airplanes airplanes have the capacity to help us transcend time space and distance when you’re on an airplane you get to cross oceans of sky and so one of his meditations is this wonderful thing that he says he’s talking about being in flight right he says there is not much talk about that