Danny Boyle & Brian Cox Interview
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Danny: I'm Danny, the director, and Brian is the science advisor on the film. We did this thing in London where Brian did a speech introducing the film and it was really interesting. So we thought we would try and bring Brian along as many times as we can to things like this and we're going to Japan together to promote the film. Because if any of you are difficult about the science of the film... [laughter] None of you dare say "that wouldn't happen" because Brian...
Q: How did you two meet each other?
Danny: When did we first meet?
Brian: Well I think...Andrew tells me that you saw me on The Horizon, the BBC documentary and thought that at least I was young enough that I looked like I'd survive the space launch [laughter] because that's one of the things about the film isn't it, that that's our second best system in the world.
Danny: Because you're always looking, especially with a film like this, you're always trying to create as interesting a process as possible for everybody. Not just the actors but on this whole crew, designer and everybody. You want to feed them as much information as possible. So we were looking out for an expert and you seemed to fit the bill.
Q: About the film being scientific:
Danny: One of the things about it was that it was clearly meant to happen within our reach. The phrase we all use is that its more NASA than Star Wars so its within reach, its within things that you seem to comprehend or understand. Even if in reality standing next to the sun was killing those in the end is not very plausible but yeah, that was always the idea. Realism was our basis and we tried to make the space as real for the actors and real for the audience so they'd recognize it as being more NASA than Star Wars.
Q: Was the script finished and then you came on and had a look at it or was it more like it wasn't quite finished and...
Danny: We did 27 drafts of it, or 30 drafts, so its never finished really. At some point Brian would have read it and then Alex would absorb things that Brian said…
Brian: We had a lot of conversations but actually the thing that I noticed was that the first draft that I got was nothing really jarring in it because I think Alex is a science fan as well as a science fiction fan. So he tried very hard and he reads very widely the science... I suppose he interacted with you on the scripts. Someone asked me was there anything you got changed and the only one I could think of was that the bomb used to be the mass of the moon and I said to Alex "you know this is the mass of the moon. That means you've got to take the moon to the sun. Imagine how big the rockets are going to be" So he changed I think to the mass of Manhattan. But it was only tiny things.
Danny: No, its quite interesting. There's always ideas in films that you have at the beginning and then there's other ideas that come as you make the film and it seems to me that one of the things its about is what I call the necessary or arrogance of science that believes that it can change something of that magnitude. You know, the sun is so extraordinarily large and beyond our comprehension in terms of because we're so small and yet science says no I can change that. And that's our destiny as human beings that we put all our eggs in the science basket or almost all of them. Fundamentalism is trying to rewrite that a little bit and that's where we're going and we're going there with science really. I mean the bomb, even if its ignoring him standing against the sun it is a nuclear bomb that he's talking about basically, which is science's most extraordinary, awesome and terrible invention. Isn't it? If you think about what they've invented there...that thing, that power and what it can do. But also how amazing and brilliant it is as well to harness the power of the sun. So yeah, it felt to me having finished the film that's really what the film was about more than anything, I thought.
Q: Is that why you also wanted to make it sort of supernatural?
Danny: Well when we go somewhere as extreme as standing straight by the sun, you've got to...I think you're allowed to...the idea was that we would be as extreme as possible. And that's where this character Pinbacker comes from...someone who's changed by the light. Because the film is also about light and darkness really. Its all part of psyche, light, and he's a character who's been exposed so much to the light he's twisted and distorted by it physically and mentally into something I wouldn't recognize. You know he's someone that I don't sympathize with or recognize really as being humane or full of humanity so we threw him in there as a climax to the film.
Q: I'm from Italy and I want to know if you are Green.
Danny: It's very interesting, because the Green Party will have a very interesting relationship with scientists because science is one of the reasons that we're in trouble on this planet and is also our way out of it as well. It's not just a behavioral change we have to initiate, the way we behave and treat our planet, also science is going to have to come up with some solutions which will allow us to keep power and energy as part of our lifestyle and yet it costs less to the planet that we occupy. Science is the only thing that's going to be able to come up with that, with a solution to it.
Q: Did you see An Inconvenient Truth?
Danny: Yes.
Q: Did you like?
Danny: Very much. I was expecting to be a bit bored by it, but it was wonderful. And he was so charismatic...where was that charisma when he was running for President? He was like a movie star suddenly, he was like transformed. I thought he was great.
Brian: One of the things I like about Sunshine is I think its unique in my memory that its a film where nature is the thing that's threatening us. Which I think is really interesting. And science is the only hope, the last hope, to go and fix it. Which is probably true, I mean we actually live in a very dangerous universe. We don't think we do. There's a tendency with the Green Group that if we don't mess with the planet, then we'll be ok. But actually it's not true, and the sun is going to die at some point. There's things flying from outer space from all over the place. If we don't learn first of all how the universe works and second how it is that we could build an Icarus mission to go and fix it then we will be finished off by something. That's absolutely true.
Q: When?
Brian: Well, that's the question, isn't it?
Q: Ok, so what is the thing about the supernatural aspect of the film?
Brian: I don't think there is a supernatural aspect. I mean one of the things I like is that its open to interpretation at the end. But my interpretation is that Danny's had this guy that represented everything that isn't scientific to me... you know he's one of those people that are mad.
Danny: I think anybody, he told me that just studying the sun a little bit it blows your mind here on Earth. So the idea that you would go out there and come face to face with it or draw nearer to it must mean that the change that comes in you with the extraordinary...how you cope with it. Pinbacker is a character who has gone one way and the other characters all go the other way. The captain sees something in it but is prepared to...he sees the danger really but he's prepared to sacrifice himself and the other characters see something in it. He does become spiritual, supernatural if you call it, because you can't help but be. You're also confronting something defining our psyche, all our cultures on this planet, all our predecessors worshipped it and its absence at night is fear, darkness, cold, danger and then when it returns, we're safe again. So all that is locked into our common psyches and then to be able to go near it, you know, as these people are feeling pressure on their minds, it is extraordinary and that's when Pinbacker comes over. He's twisted and there are twisted results of it, really.
Q: What is your favorite sci-fi movie?
Danny: Solaris. The original Solaris. I read that book its based on as well. Its an extraordinary book... the 60s! The 60s were...I don't know if it was the drugs or just the reaction to coming out of the war and you know eventually and freedom... but just the stuff they were thinking! Because the book just blows your mind. I love that movie.
Q: Are you a big Andrei Tarkovsky fan?
Danny: Yes, I've seen all of his movies.
Q: I don't know if you're planning on working on another film like this...
Danny: Science? Not at the moment, but I'd certainly love to get Brian back involved if it was appropriate again.
Q: One of the things that I liked about the movie was that you don't tell people what to think. It's very open to interpretation. Have you found through audience reaction that people, depending on where they're coming from, how they think that it really ends? If they're a religious person do they see God in that? If they're a scientific person do they see something different?
Danny: We haven't had a flood of reaction yet because it's not really been out there very much but I think it's certainly true that people will read it different ways. I come from a very spiritual upbringing, I was very religiously, very strictly brought up until I was like 16 and you can't jettison that...all that stays with you. Even though on a rational level you abandon it and you move on, it's still there. It's still part of your makeup. So I think...I always felt it was a very, I was always overwhelmed by the ending. I imagine part of that is a religious experience as well, even for me who superficially I'm an atheist. I still think emotionally, when I was doing it with Cillian, it felt religious to me. You know the way I would explain it to him. Because I would have to try to explain what it was going to be like because it wasn't there and he had to act it. You do explain it in religious terms so it'll be...yeah that is people's representative of God, the sun, because its the most tangible thing that somebody that believes in God can witness or feel everyday more than just grace you know it's something tangible that they
Q: What about Satan? Because of the fire and brimstone!
Brian: I loved that scene, actually, at the end because, I think that they captured...one of the things when you're a scientist, a thinking scientist, you ponder these questions. (unintelligible) which is trying to recreate the conditions that are present in the universe less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. When you're faced with that every day you have emotional reactions so that's why you do it. I mean humans don't do things unless we're emotionally connected to it so that's why you go and explore. But your reaction to nature...and Einstein used to use the word God a lot...God is the correct word for the reaction that thinking scientists have for nature. But I think Cillian gets that at the end. I think at the ending of the film when the sun is there, the Big Bang is there and he freezes and he's sandwiched and he plays it right. That's one of my favorites bits of the film.
Danny: It's interesting that scientists who work at your place, I heard them describe this particle accelerator, this particle they're looking for, they nicknamed it God Particle.
Q: (unintelligible)
Danny: The idea is that it gives us less, its a new idea because of that particle, if you'd like to call it the God's Particle, [it] looks like in this universe God's a mathematician, Einstein used to say that, that's just what it looks like. But that just means you've been seeing without necessarily believing... you don't have to believe in a supernatural being to be spiritual. I think that's what's going on at the end of Sunshine.
Q: [Something about the sun dying, and would they try to save it given the choice]
Danny: It's a choice, really. There are some people who would argue that we're in the trouble we're in now because we've interfered with nature. There's a lot of people that argue that. We're in exactly that problem now, the planet, because we have interfered too much with nature. We've overpopulated the Earth because of our obsession with cities and urban development and we've covered the Earth in concrete. My friend thinks one of the reasons the planet is reacting against us is because we've covered it in concrete. It's like not letting it breathe. It's like covering you with plastic, you can't breathe, your skin will suffer. He believes that. I don't believe it, I think that eventual, although we have been attached to God for millennia, our eventual redemption lies in ourselves and through science which is just a way of describing something that isn't related to faith and God. There's a lot of faith involved in science because there's lots of things they can't prove but have to believe in order to make things work. It just depends on who you are really...the film isn't descriptive, it doesn't say you have to...because I think it is ambiguous at the end. I think when he looks at the end Cillian sees something that is spiritual.
Brian: The thing is that we have nature as well. I mean, I don't like this separation between the Sun...leave it alone and let it do what it's doing. We're part of it. There's a famous quote, I can't remember who it's by, but he said that a physicist is an axioms way of understanding about axioms. Which is exactly right. That's all I am really...a load of axioms. It would be a wonderful thing in the universe is that something like ...I was going to say me but that's a bit egotistical...something like us evolved in the first place. But we are as much a part of the universe as the sun is.
Q: Maybe because we separated from that idea that we are in trouble right now, because we don't think of humans as nature.
Danny: Yeah, and its right for us to go fix it, in my opinion, if it breaks lets try and fix it. That's what makes us human.
Q: Do you remain optimistic, in light of your films' subject matter?
Danny: I do. I try to, even though they're a bit dark sometimes, I try to make you come out just buzzing off the film really. And it's to do with, it's ironic even more that this film is about the sun is that I like the films to be about energy, to have this kind of feeling off them that you feel energized by ideas or action. It's quite difficult to explain... but not every film achieves it I don't think but I try to have that. I certainly feel like the end of this film , that you feel that surge of life at the end.
Q: Which is better in hopeless situations: Science, or religion?
Danny: I'm a believer in science...
Q: Are you Catholic? (Guess who: the Italian woman, again!)
Danny: I was brought up a Catholic, I come from a very Catholic background. But I'm a believer in science and in experimentation. So, which role will religion take? I'm sure it will still be an important part of it. I think there is a big struggle coming on for the West with fundamentalism which is a fairly obvious thing to say.
Q: Did you see the documentary by James Cameron?
Danny: Yes, I saw it... about Jesus having a son. Yeah, his bones are there, they didn't go up to Heaven. Yes, I can imagine what... my mother is dead, thank goodness because she would have been horrified to hear that. She would not have been able to take that.
Q: I'm curious to know about some of the visual choices that you made in the film, especially towards the end. Was there a lot of agonizing over how the end of the film should look, maybe for science fiction fans and people who just love movies and are interested in the scientific aspects of it?
Danny: Yeah, you want to make it as exciting as possible, you're absolutely right. I mean in the end, although we have Brian and science, you dump science because people did science in school and they were bored then, they don't come to the movie to watch good science. They come to watch exciting, thrilling drama and we use science as much as possible in it. The reason for the freeze frames and things like that is that they were to accelerate to such speed...the idea is that they're going so fast by the boosters that fire but also by the gravity of the sun, the pull of the sun, that it accelerates so fast that time and space become a bit unreliable really. That's very difficult to portray. We make a gesture towards that through some freeze frames and some elongation, some shape-shifting, but yeah that's what we were trying to do with that.
Q: Who is your favorite sci-fi author?
Danny: I like Phillip K. Dick, personally.
[end]
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Staci Layne Wilson reporting