Trainspotting (1996): Choose Life, Choose Heroin

Ben and Rob step into Trainspotting, the 1996 adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel that sent Danny Boyle, screenwriter John Hodge and producer Andrew Macdonald out of the Shallow Grave sandpit and into the scuzzy flats, pubs and shooting galleries of Edinburgh’s heroin underworld. The film follows Mark “Rent Boy” Renton, played by Ewan McGregor, as he tries to kick the habit, fails, tries again, and drags his mates through the wreckage: Jonny Lee Miller’s Sick Boy, Ewen Bremner’s Spud, Kevin McKidd’s Tommy, Kelly Macdonald’s Diane, Peter Mullan’s Swanney, and Robert Carlyle’s Begbie, the friend nobody wants to be in a pub with.

What was Britain really like in 1996, a country caught between the hangover of Thatcherism and the glossy optimism of Cool Britannia? How did Boyle and his team turn a book many considered unfilmable into a £1.5 million sensation, and did they really shoot an Edinburgh story in Glasgow? How do you cast a group of near-unknowns, and how did Kelly Macdonald, who had never acted before, end up on screen opposite them? Why did a film accused of glamorising heroin become one of the most celebrated British movies ever made, and what did Underworld, Iggy Pop and the soundtrack have to do with it? And why does that “Choose life” monologue still hit so hard, thirty years on?

And finally… what does it really mean?!

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