Irvine’s involved, but he’s been very gracious – he’s letting us get on with it. It’s written by John Hodge, who adapted the original screenplay from Irvine’s book. ‘It’s kind of influenced in its origins by “Porno” – the idea of the friends being brought back together again. Is it based on Irvine Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting’ sequel ‘Porno’? We aim to shoot in May and June of next year, with all the same actors.’ ‘We’re off to Edinburgh to do a week’s workshop on the script, scout some locations and get Steve Jobs out of our heads. Talking of unrealised projects, ‘Trainspotting 2’ is finally happening. And then this script turned up and it turned us around.’ But we couldn’t get the music rights, so we couldn’t do it. We had actually been working a script by Frank Cottrell Boyce about David Bowie – a wonderful script, and we were hoping that would be next film. ‘Steve Jobs’ is an American film – and it’s the first you’ve shot since the Olympics. If he thinks you know what you’re doing, if the actors know what they’re doing, he’s great.’ ‘He has a reputation for being very finickity, but he wasn’t at all. What was your relationship like with Aaron Sorkin? He’s known for being exacting. I think Aaron felt it very difficult, initially, to see his way through that – how somebody could behave that way towards a little child.’ It’s a father-daughter script, and I felt that quite acutely. ‘Reading the script, the thing I found personal in it is that, in pursuing a career, you do make sacrifices – although I hope I never behaved the way Jobs did. In the first act, he refuses to acknowledge that he’s her father. How did you feel about Jobs as a father? His treatment of his daughter is unforgivable at times. But Michael was able to make sense of all that.’
On the one hand, people were devoted to Steve Jobs, on the other hand, people were deeply damaged by his seemingly irrational behaviour. But we wanted him to pursue the guy through the script. You can do that – you can do amazing things with prosthetics these days.
You didn’t want to go down the prosthetics route? He doesn’t really look like him early on – that was never the idea.’ I believe Michael becomes Steve Jobs at the end. And Jobs clearly had that discipline, that ferocious self-drive. He will not stop until he gets it, literally, right. It was also about how uncompromising he is as an actor. I didn’t see that much evidence of it, but he could turn it on. He has a charm that the guy was supposed to have as well. ‘He has an intensity that Steve Jobs clearly had. The way he depicts these people’s speed of thought, their scale of mind, is through language.’ What Aaron Sorkin does, is he gives actors something they are good at: language. You know in your heart that the actor can’t really do that, because only a fuckin’ maths genius can do that. Like an actor writing an algorithm on a window. When you make a film about a genius, they’re always difficult to portray, aren’t they? In the end, you rely on tricks no one believes. What was the appeal of making the film, if it wasn’t Jobs himself? Nowadays, every CEO, whether they’re comfortable or not, has to dress up casually, put a microphone on and walk out in front of the press to introduce the latest toothbrush.’
I had some of his products and I knew about the presentations he did. He had a vision, and, really, that’s what you do as a film director.’ He just has a taste that he wanted to impose on everyone. ‘It’s bizarre, isn’t it? Steve Jobs had no coding skills, no engineering skills to speak of. Does that strike a chord with you, as a director? In the film Steve Jobs says he’s not a musician – he plays the orchestra. Based on a forensically detailed script by Aaron Sorkin (‘ The Social Network’), it unfolds practically in real time, backstage before three major product launches – in ’84, ’88 and ’98.
The architect of this digital revolution is the subject of Boyle’s new movie ‘Steve Jobs’, an unconventional biopic starring Michael Fassbender. ‘Every time there was a breakthrough, when a computer beat a chess master, everybody would be like: “The end cometh.” But instead of the end, Apple came, shrinking technology to pocket size with the iPhone. They were intimidating,’ he says, with that lovely Radcliffe burr of his. Danny Boyle is reminiscing about the dark old days when computers were banks of walls with blinking lights and huge reels of tapes.