Hot Dog October 2003
Rebel Rouser
by Harper Sloane

From Junkie to Jedi, from gritty drama to fluffy romcom. It seems there’s little Britian’s leading acting export can’t do! Except maybe stop singing! Ewan McGregor is a popular man. He’s more than just a ladie’s man, man’s man, and man about town…. He’s a man celebrated for successfully walking the twin path between Hollywood and domestic cinema, making him one of the most distinguished actors of his generation. Apart from his apparent achilles heel of period drama (Emma and Serpents Kiss), he’s clocked many a career-defining moment; the face of the generation-defining ‘Trainspotting’; walking in Alec Guinness’s footsteps as Obi-Wan Kenobi in ‘Star Wars’; and in ‘Moulin Rouge’ the guy who helped bring musicals into the 21st Century. Any one of these would have been the defining moment in any actor’s entire career – if they were lucky.

At a mere 32 years old, though, McGregor is just warming up. McGregor’s career really kicked off playing buzz-druggie Renton in ‘Trainspotting’, a film perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist of the time and which made the young actor an instant icon of British cinema after it’s release in 1996. While McGregor is the ever-positive zealot when describing any film he’s been involved in, ‘Trainspotting’, wildely regarded as his best role, remains this favourite acting experience and the domestic yard stick he’s judged by. As he told an audience last year at an advance public screening of ‘Young Adam’, “In terms of filmmaking at it’s best and slickest, it would be ‘Trainspotting’. It was such a well-oiled machine with a phenomenal cast, a great script and a fantastic director. I was so involved in it…it comes out of you because you’re ready.” It was the uptopian smaller scale filmmaking experience he wanted to repeat. If acting roles are considered therapy by some actors…then Ewan McGregor was ready for a reality-check dosage to off-set the tramas of singing Elton John songs to Nicole Kidman, and having an 80-year-old pensioner in Christopher Lee kick his butt in a lighsabre duel.

Describing his chatacter in ‘Young Adam’ the tormented existential outcast Joe – as his “most introverted and complicated character yet,” director David MacKenzie’s adaptation of Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi’s 1954 novel sounded just the tonic. “After the year that had been ‘Moulin Rouge’, then two weeks off and then ‘Star Wars, Episode II’ reflects McGregor, “I had been worn thin on (large scale) filmmaking. I longed to do a short little acting job, real moody stuff and make a film in Britian.” Faced with a mountain of scripts when he returned from Australia after his back to back film jaunt, and despite never having heard of MacKenzie, on the recommendation of his agent he read the ‘Young Adam’ script first, “I’m pretty easy to please, so I have to be careful about reading loads of scripts. Young Adam was the first on my list to read and I’m glad, because once I read that I didn’t read the rest.”

Surprisingly, despite the actor’s success and kudos, ‘Young Adam’ was met with unresponsive apathy from British funding bodies even with McGregor’s name attached. After finally scraping its £4 million budget together, they were then let down at the eleventh hour, when according to McGregor, “We lost 40% of the budget when one of the private investors pulled out illegally.” Eventually after constant pressure, and shrugging off the suggestion that it would only be funded as a £1 million project with no stars, the Lottery funded Film Council and Scottish Screen coughed up, and the film began shooting after a seven-month postponement. “People in Britian who are responsible for funding British Films were quite prepared for this film not to be made,” concludes McGregor, “And I find that most unbelievable and somewhat disappointing.”

It mirrored McGregor’s experience on the last project close to his heart, the James Joyce fable ‘Nora’, which also stuttered in pre-production due to withdrawn investment (later resuscitated by the now defunct actor-led production outfit Natural Nylon that McGregor left prior to it’s collapse). ‘Nora’s’ ultimate downfall though was it’s threadbare distriution. It still rattles McGregor now, “When you’re talking about distribution, you’re talking about a big problem,” he laments, “despite all the heart and soul you put into the film, if no-one’s going to distribute it, what can you do? And the laziness of distributors, ‘Well we don’t know how we’re going to sell this, so we won’t.’ and you think, ‘Well fu** off!’ obviously these people don’t live for challenge.” The chief reasons for the intital reluctance to fund ‘Young Adam’ was the belief that it wouldn’t make it’s money back, but with the film gaining momemtum from the festival circuit, McGregor says definatley; “We’re about to prove them wrong from that front.”

With the resonance of Albert Camus ‘The Outsider’ ‘Young Adam provides a fitting accompaniment to Lynne Ramsey’s ‘Morvern Callar’ in pioneering a potential Scottish Existential New Wave of cinema. Set against the stark, claustrophobic and gritty industrial Glasgow, McGregor’s Joe is a blacker character than Samantha Morton’s Morvern. Twisted with guilt, lust and ambiguous intent, his actions carry greater consequence. It’s the actor’s best performance since ‘Trainspotting’. Realising the intense nature of independent filmmaking, he refrained from his standard practice of travelling with his family for the eight-week shoot in Glasgow. “I really spent all my time on my own. I don’t normally do that kind of thing,” says McGregor. “But I thought being solitary was going to be a great help and it proved to be the case. I think it would have been a difficult film to be going home from on a daily basis. There is something fantastic about being on my own, that ended up on the screen, because more than probably any part I’ve ever played it was important just to let people in your head – without looking like you’re trying to. I didn’t just want to do my outsider guy, or my version of Steve McQueen’s outsider guy.”

The chief dynamic that channel’s Joe’s meditations, ultimatley setting the mood and direction of the film, is the sexual acts of the characters involved. It’s given the film the tag of ‘Last Tango in Glasgow’. “sex is such an essential part of the story,” confirmes the actor, “In the same way music was used in ‘Moulin Rouge’ to tell the story, we were telling the story through sex; you feel where my character and the characters are going through them having sex with each other.” While the sexual acts are at times brutal and unforgiving – ranging from titilation with custard and ketchup to the good old fashioned hand job – they’re authentic rather than being gratuitous, “We were intent on pushing the sex as far as we could into an area that was really realistic to the audience,” says McGregor, “So that it wasn’t ‘movie sex’ anymore."

"So it was sex like we all have sex, where your body doesn’t necessarily glisten with baby oil, and you don’t always come together – which in my experience is the case! Intimacy pushed it in a different direction that the audience could relate to. “We’d always try to put things in that are realistic,” continues McGregor, “Like when Ella (Swinton) stops him getting out of bed by giving him a wank. She’s stopped him by the most effective way she know’s how to stop him, and that’s by grabbing his (*&%^ – he can’t leave now.” And the custard scene? “The custard sex scene with Emily (Mortimer) was an extrodinary scene to play,” reflects the actor. “There was an enormous arc to play in the one scene; from starting in a very domestic pissed off discussion to ending up beating a woman, forcibly taking her from behind and leaving it as ambiguous to whether it’s a rape act, or a pleasure act, or what the f**k it is. Emily and I played it from start to finish in all the takes like we were on stage, because then you’re able to get lost in it.”

While not having sex a la ‘Intimacy’, there was no inhibitions in terms of needing acting foreplay. McGregor and Emily Mortimer were rehearsing sex within an-hour-and-a-half after meeting each other for the very first time. “Emily arrived, and we were introduced, and then maybe an hour later I remember going, ‘Okay I pull you up by the hips, and then kind of kneel down behind you and take you from behind.’ Whereas it would be a really weird thing to do to someone on the street,” laughs McGregor, “It’s your job as an actor.” McGregor hopes that ‘Young Adam’ will be a ‘Strong kick up the arse’ to the British industry’s over-reliance on the romantic comedy formula in recent times, in which the same way ‘Shallow Grave’ and ‘Trainspotting’ broke the monopoly of the ‘Merchant Ivory’ period of kitchen sink drama as Britian’s chief film export in the Nineties. Ewan McGregor was then the dashing D’Artagnan to the Three Musketeers of the Frigment Film director-producer-writer-team, Danny Boyle, Andrew MacDonald and John Hodge – the men behind ‘Shallow Grave’ and ‘Trainspotting’. But at the time it was felt that his position could potentially hinder his status of becoming a bona-fide movie star, ‘Whether or not Ewan McGregor ever becomes a star.’ Tom Shone reasoned in the ‘Sunday Times’ at the time, ‘The first thing he must do is quit his current role as a young mascot for the ‘Trainspotting’ gang.

With the teams first stateside excursion ‘A Life Less Ordinary’ failing to win over Hollywood, Twentieth Century Fox ultimately pressured the team to go with Leonardo DiCaprio instead of McGregor on the next project ‘The Beach’, McGregor unhappy about how it was dealt with probably feeling the subconsious sting of having also auditioned for DiCaprio’s role in Baz Lurhmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet, quit his mascot role. While the sour relationship has been well documented over the year’s, realtions have warmed up a little due to both partie’s undying mutual respect for each other. With screenplay to the ‘Trainspotting’ sequel ‘Porno’ in the pipeline, and with Boyle having first option to direct, the obvious question for McGregor is; would he be interested in re-teaming? “I haven’t read the script, because the script isn’t written yet,” answers McGregor diplomatically, “So I honestly can’t say whether I’d do a sequel or not.” A fan of Irvine Welsh’s work, and curious about the character’s evolution, he’s read the book, though “I didn’t think it was as good as the Trainspotting novel. It’s ultimately the same story of betrayed friendship, so there was nothing new in there, apart from lots of pornography. Some of the chapters of Trainspotting really moved me, and ‘Porno’ didn’t."

"But I did enjoy finding out where our characters were ten years later. I took great pleasure in that.” McGregor’s aapearance in Peyton Reed’s ‘Down With Love’ was a complete contrast to his previous foray into grass-roots Scottish cinema. “I’d just done a very dark, erotic film and then I was immeadiately playing this Cary Grant character.” While aimed as a homage to Sixties battle of the sexes Rock Hudson-Doris Day movies (with trademark hyper-real sets and rear screen projection), with as much pink as ‘Funny Face’, style as ‘Breakfast In Tiffany’s’ and as many twists and plots as ‘Charade’, it could equally be a tribute to Audrey Hepburn’s output – in short, very darling, very @*^&. “I was very familiar with all those Sixities movies,” says the actor, explaining his attraction to the film, “I thought it would be challenging to play in a comedy in a style that we don’t do anymore, because it is really a different comedic acting than a contemperary romantic comedy.”

If ‘Moulin Rouge’ expressed Ewan McGregor’s softer wide-eyed innocent side, ‘Down With Love’ extols the cocksure, caddish side of the actor’s persona. His character Catcher Block is more cheeky-chappy raconteur than Cary Grant suave, as he tries to expose Renee Zellweger’s best selling author (and threat to Sixtie’s men) Barbara Novak with humourous effect. Not happy with the film being his finest comedic turn yet, McGregor’s ego, still clearly tickled by his ‘Moulin Rouge’ experience, couldn’t resist the urge to break out into song. “We recorded a song for the end title sequence just because I thought it would be foolish not to,” laughs McGregor of the song performed in character and screened alongside the closing credits. “Seeing as Renee was in ‘Chicago’ and I was in ‘Moulin Rouge’, we had to persuade some of the producers to let us do it, which I found was really odd!”

Whether George Lucas will let him sing in the final episode of the ‘Star Wars’ prequels is another matter. Despite reservations about the process of making them, McGregor has grown into his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, noticeably adding wit to the ways of the force in the second film after his rather flat performance in the first. He insists that going into production on the completing film of the trilogy of prequels isn’t just a case of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. “I’m delighted to be in the ‘Star Wars’ films, and I’ve never regretted my decision to be in them,” he reflects, “I know I have talked about them as being technically difficult to make but they are. There’s no two ways about that, because of the nature of working in a bluescreen enviroment and acting literally in thin air. It’s not my right to say it’s right or wrong for them to work that way, there’s no right or wrong way,” he rationalises, “I thrive on working together with another actor, so I find it very difficult. Suddenly playing into the blue yonder – it’s just a bizarre situation to be in.”

But McGregor is very much looking forward to going out with a bang, and to find a way to get over his CGI blues, “I think now we’ll probably go out there and try and find a way to make the bluescreen work less tortuous, because it will be a shame not to enjoy it,” says the actor, “And it’s the last one, and I’d imagine there’ll be a lot of fighting and stuff – I always enjoy that. I like working the fights, and it’s got to end, I can imagine me and Hayden (Christensen) having one big kick-off fight.” Completing his ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, will bring McGregor’s career full circle directly back to his initial boyhood inspiration, his uncle Denis Lawson, who played X-Wing pilot Wedge Antilles in the first ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. Who would have thought that by helping destroy a couple of Death Stars, Luke Skywalker’s right hand man, would be as a result, help create today’s all singing, all shagging, fighting man of cinema – both big and small?