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Danny Boyle is a British filmmaker with a reputation for gleeful genre revision. His first international release, Shallow Grave, turned trendy Scottish urbanites into money-mad killers; Trainspotting placed heroin addicts in business and philosophy; and 28 Days Later turned the zombie movie uside down by putting the live dead on speedy feet. Though Boyle's career has been built on playing with convention, the director reports that on his newest film, Sunshine, a science fiction feature in the tradition of Scott's Alien, Tarkovsky's Solaris and Kubrick's 2001, he had to play by some very strict rules.

Boyle's a hot commodity, and with good reason. It's estimated that his next many years are taken up with possible projects, including Porno, the sequel to Trainspotting. Based on the novel by Trainspotting writer Irvine Welsh, Porno is reportedly on the horizon for Boyle and cast but Boyle hopes to let his actors age a bit more before putting them up to the test a second time.

Boyle's immediate future involves two films set in wildly differing locales. Slum Dog Millionaire, about a boy in Mumbai who wins the Indian equivalent of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," appears to be next up, along with Frank Cottrell Boyce's adaptation of The Bromeliad Trilogy originally penned by popular Brit humorist Terry Pratchett.

In a recent roundtable hyping his deep space odyssey Sunshine, Danny Boyle talked about bursting his actor's "bubbles," the rules of space and space movies, his favorite film and facing the sun. He also sets us straight about the possible 28 Months Later and what he really said about Eli Roth.

Boyle on the set of Sunshine

Q: Everyone's comparing Sunshine to 2010 and 2001 but I am always looking for flavors of Apocalypse Now -- which I've heard is your favorite film. Is that film relevant here?

Danny Boyle: It's quite interesting. There is an easy sound bite to say that, thought I've never been asked that before. It (Apocalypse Now) is my favorite film and it's known as "The Heart of Darkness" Film because it's loosely based on the Joseph Conrad book. And we always said that our starting point for this film was a "Journey into the Heart of Lightness."

That's the quick answer. There are certain rhythmic similarities -- it's a journey and at the end of the journey is a fantastic, a madman who's seen the light in his own way. Structurally you could compare it to Apocalypse Now which has a similar journey as far as shape is concerned.

Q: What other films influenced Sunshine?

DB: Well, the big space movies. There are three huge, titanic, space movies which if you ever make a film like this you cannot avoid. You may want to avoid them but you cannot. I've never known a genre like it where you are dictated to by these films, 2001, Alien, and Tarkovsky's Solaris. Believe me, they hover over you the whole time and sometimes you just have to tip you hat to them -- reference them in some way. They are there and you're judged against them, not just [on] whether the film ultimately works as a film but technically. The way you depict space has been dictated by those three films and you have to get to that level. And I had no idea how intimidating that level was when I set out to make it.

There are a lot of space movies that don't get to that level, because they don't have enough money or time, or people weren't willing to make that effort but the effort involve in depicting this place is staggering. There were other influences as well like Das Boot, and Wages of Fear. There are lots of films you use as a kind of help to you but [I used] those three in particular.

Cillian Murphy straps on a space suit

Q: In the past you haven't been afraid to tweak a genre. In 28 Days Later, you turned zombies on their ear. The thing that really struck me about Sunshine was it's pace. 28 Days Later is so fast and Sunshine is not. How did you determine the pacing?

DB: I tried to cut it quick. It doesn't work. Space doesn't work that way; it's one of the rules that you learn. It just doesn't work. I remember I saw Ridley Scott interviewed back when they re-released Alien for it's 25th Anniversary, and he said, 'I don't think it would work if you released it now because the first 40 minutes is so slow.' And I have to say I disagree with him. My feeling is it wouldn't work if you re-cut Alien and sped it up for the modern attention deficit audience or whatever you like.

To create the reality of space with this sense of suspension: nothing's happening, it's endless; we're traveling at 28,000 kilometers an hour but nothing's happening. Nothing! And you have to do that! (Laughs) There are all these rules you have to follow, I've never known anything like it.

You mentioned 28 Days Later and you'd think that the zombie genre is much narrower, but I say it's a complete open field. You can do anything you like -- really -- but this [Sci-Fi] is absolutely disciplined, it's Zen, you have to be absolutely focused in an area. You have to zone into an area and you then you can achieve when you get there. It's really weird! No director goes back into space. It's the ultimate experience making one [sci-fi flick] -- maybe a modern musical…maybe making a modern day musical is tough but I've never done anything like it. I loved doing it but I fell out with a lot of people - because you have to be really tough with your crew to get there.

Q: Who was your editor and how did you work with your editor to reach that pacing?

DB: It's the same guy I worked with on 28 Days Later -- Chris Gill. The material dictates itself, the way you shoot it dictates itself, [and] we tried cutting it in a slightly different way because I was aware that the beginning is quite slow. It just doesn't work. I think it is the discipline of space. Maybe a more pop-y fantasy film you can speed up, like "Star Wars" or whatever, but this kind of film, this hard-core, eight people in a steel tube fired out into the eternity of space, basically works at this pace. You wait.

Q: How did you develop chemistry with your actors? Each one is a specific type. What did you do to bring out their best sides?

DB: There are all sorts of reasons why they came from all over the world. They're from all the corners for the world really. The first thing I did was put them in a dormitory and they were really shocked. I think, because they were expecting to be put in a place like the Ritz Carlton or whatever the equivalent is in London. I said 'No, you're going to be staying in a university dormitory by the canal in East London.' And they accepted it because they want to please early on -- actors.

What it does is it bursts their bubble, when they arrive. I know this from working on a number of other projects. Basically, actors arrive in a bubble. They have a little sealed bubble around them and it's basically [comprised of] their agents, their last film, their next film, their press agent, and their per diems...all these things, they cocoon themselves with and you have to puncture that bubble on each of them to make them be in your film.

What was great about the dormitory was it did that. It created a kind of siege mentality because they were sort of on their own. They lived in this place and they cooked for themselves and they'd come to rehearsals and have to go back there. It kind of creates a bigger bubble, which is all of them, which is, of course, what you've got in a space movie, because they're in a steel tube and hermetically sealed in. I think that helped enormously.

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