‘Pistol’ Director Danny Boyle on Why His FX Sex Pistols Series Is Personal (VIDEO)
Director Danny Boyle made his name with the 1986 film Trainspotting, a black comedy-drama about aimless Scottish youth trapped in a bleak working-class world. Since then, he’s helmed several projects featuring underdogs, including the 2008 hit, Slumdog Millionaire. So, it’s fitting that his current undertaking, Pistol, is a six-episode miniseries, this time about aimless English youth, who became the groundbreaking 1970s punk band The Sex Pistols.
“It’s personal, really,” Boyle says of his frequent return to the theme of the longshot. “I came from a background where someone like me would never end up in a position directing stuff like that.”
Boyle was born the same year as Pistols lead guitarist and driving force Steve Jones (played by Toby Wallace), on whose autobiography Lonely Boy the series is based. It was a period when Britain had low expectations of working-class lads like them. The director didn’t see the band live in their heyday but credits their music (“I loved it,” he says) as being a factor in his creative career.
“The guys who make up the Pistols, like so many of us, were thought of as kind of not worth much…It was work in a factory or go to prison. The [Pistols] said, ‘No, we’re going to blow that up.’”
Pistol, Streaming Now, FX on Hulu
