Interview: Slumdog Millionaire’s Danny Boyle on Mumbai Before the Terror

By Miller, Brian

English director Danny Boyle was visiting Seattle a while back, raving about the inspiration Mumbai provided during the filming of his acclaimed new Slumdog Millionaire. Then, last week, we all know what happened in that city.

Though at press time we can't be certain of the terrorists' identity, Islamic extremists are strongly suspected. And without giving too much of a Slumdog spoiler, its hero is a Muslim from the very lowest social stratum—one who loses his mother in a violent Hindu-led riot against his people. His response to adversity and discrimination is much different than today's headlines, of course. And while Slumdog is a film rooted in realistic poverty, it's also a Bollywood fantasy, a love story unburdened by politics or revenge.

Never has the film business been more international. And Boyle, born in Manchester, has the passport to prove it: Transpotting up north, The Beach in Thailand, outer space for Sunshine...and now, Mumbai (formerly Bombay) for this adaptation of the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup. Which, he tells me, was perhaps less important than another book about the booming, newly global city.

"I'd never been [to Mumbai], and then I read the script," says Boyle. "It's a great narrative, but also a dazzling picture of the city. Then I read Maximum City." Author Suketu Mehta's 2004 nonfiction account compares his experience in New York and Mumbai, two teeming metropolises with much in common. What New York has become, the book suggests, Mumbai (population 18 million and growing) will become. And perhaps surpass.

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