A film that’s like pulling teeth
TWENTY years after Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie first burst onto the screen, I was excited to see the Trainspotting 2 trailer released this week – although a little surprised it involved four middle-aged guys standing on a platform for two hours tweeting about ScotRail.
Of all the Trainspotting stars, Ewan McGregor has been the runaway success. Since his early adventures down the Worst Toilet In The World, he’s scarcely stopped working both here and in Hollywood, but his new film, American Pastoral, is a change in gauge, with McGregor both starring and directing.
The US critics have not been very kind about his feature film debut, and some of this may be protective, since the original Pulitzer prizewinning novel is regarded as a modern classic over there. It’ll be interesting to see if the Scottish reception will be more relaxed when it comes out this weekend.
The BBC asked me to interview Ewan just ahead of the movie release and we had a bright and breezy chat, but couldn’t find agreement on how to pronounce ‘Pastoral’.
I stuck to the homeland pronunciation of PASToral, but Ewan seemed to favour a more musical PastorALL, before confusing me completely towards the end by switching to ‘Past Oral’, which sounded less like the story of a man struggling with a disaffected daughter against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, and more like a really unpleasant procedure at a dental surgery.