Trainspotting Sequel: Danny Boyle and Ewan McGregor Reteam for ‘Porno’

March 11, 2013

By Christine Spines

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Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting © Miramax Home Entertainment

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“Trainspotting” wasn’t so much released into theaters in 1996 as it was injected straight into moviegoers’ psyches, sending them spiraling into an ecstatic alternate reality full of sex, sewage, and Scottish slang. Over the ensuing decades, director Danny Boyle has hinted at the possibility of a sequel to the film that established him (and the film’s lead actor Ewan McGregor) as indelibly original creative talents. But it wasn’t until yesterday, during an appearance at 2013’s SXSW film and media confab, that Boyle confirmed that he had recruited McGregor and the rest of the gang to reunite for film to be “loosely” based on Irvine Welsh’s follow-up novel, Porno.

Boyle may be distancing himself from the source material at least partially because it was critically savaged by reviewers who found it sensationalist and without substance. The novel picks up with Trainspotting’s quartet of junkies after nine years have passed and each of them has kicked his heroin habit. But the grandiose dreams and compulsive behavior that go along with any addiction continue to transfix the Scottish lowlifes to varying degrees. Enter their get-rich-quick scheme to become porn-trepreneurs, using the local pub as an after hours shooting location and base of operations. Things go as badly as might be expected, sending each of them spiraling into self-destructive, rage, depression or some combination of the three.

The problem here may be that Welsh wrote this novel a decade too soon, before the porn industry collapsed and the widespread availability of free internet porn became the toxic addictive substance of our time. Welsh seems to have missed an opportunity to draw a telling contrast between his characters’ gleeful escape into heroin and the more grim and pathetic attempt to feed that same transgressive urge with something arguably more insidious and inescapable.

The hope here is that Boyle and his frequent collaborator, screenwriter John Hodge, will use Welsh’s book as a springboard to explore the extreme highs and lows and ultimately soul corroding effects of porn and sex addiction, in ways that have since become clear in films like Steve McQueen’s “Shame” and articles like this one. This does not need to be an exercise in bleakness. We fully hope and expect the filmmakers will mine this rich subject matter the kind of comedy of degradation that made “Trainspotting” such a adrenaline-spiking descent into a grimy underworld.

Boyle certainly won’t be alone in rummaging around behind the green door. The upcoming dramedy, “Thanks For Sharing,” starring Gwyneth Paltrow, follows a group of sex addicts through a twelve step program.  This year’s Sundance Film Festival saw the debut of “Don Jon’s Addiction,” in which Joseph Gordon Levitt (who also wrote and directed the film) plays a character so porn-obsessed he can’t tear himself away from his computer screen long enough to focus on real life relationships. Then there’s “Lovelace,” a biopic starring Amanda Seyfried as the titular legendary (and reputedly sex addicted) porn star.

With all these films headed for theaters in 2013, along with the much-anticipated adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, audiences are due for a crash course in modern sexual deviance. And if Boyle’s “Porno” has any chance at capturing the public imagination, he’ll have to deliver a film that doesn’t skimp on insight or exposure.

Tags: Danny Boyle, Ewan McGregor, Irvine Welsh, Porn, Shame, Trainspotting