Millions-part 1

PART ONE: DIVINE INSPIRATION

As all filmmakers know, there is no such thing as a patron saint of filmmaking - and if there were, their effigies would loom high over every film set across the globe. Indeed, when writer Frank Cottrell Boyce first conceived the idea that would become Millions, he had no idea it would even become a movie at all, much less that it would be the experience of a lifetime.

It grew out of a conversation Cottrell-Boyce had with producer, Graham Broadbent, shortly after the two had collaborated on Michael Winterbottom's eastern-European conflict drama Welcome to Sarajevo. But although the writer is a father of seven, it was actually Broadbent who suggested that this should be a film about children. "Seeing Frank at home with his own family made me realise how fantastic he was with kids," says Broadbent. "He encourages their most imaginative view of the world and I sensed this would make for a unique viewpoint. I knew he'd make these characters extraordinary, individual and wonderful and we finally hit upon the idea of having two children who come across a million pounds from a robbery."

Cottrell-Boyce, perhaps most famous for his script for Michael Winterbottom's Manchester music scene comedy 24 Hour Party People, says that Broadbent's suggestion struck a chord. "I'd always liked the idea of writing a film that my children could enjoy," he explains. "As a man with many children, I spend most of my time in the company of people who think they are pirates, or saints, or are suffering some kind of colourful delusion, rather than mixing with filmmakers, so it was quite easy for me to tap into that energy. The characters in Millions are actually quite sane compared to some of my own children! A couple of mine are yet to discover that the Middle Ages is over, so I do spend quite a chunk of my day with people waving cutlasses and wearing helmets".

The team worked on the script on and off for quite some time, seeing it through various different drafts. "It's actually impossible to describe how much fun I had writing this script," says Cottrell Boyce. "It was like coming home. I loved writing about children, I loved the fact that it was set near where I live and I loved the fact that we could create a story about how magical and complicated people really are."

"We always knew we had a good idea and some wonderful writing," says Broadbent, "but we probably only had about half of a really good script. About two years ago I had a general meeting with director Danny Boyle. I remember saying to him, that if he was a brave man, he should take a look at it, even though it was by no means ready. He did and he called me within a couple of days and said he really liked it and wanted to talk further."

Having established himself with edgy, adult movies such as Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and The Beach, Boyle knew this project would be a departure and possibly a risk. But as fate would have it, Boyle was in the precise mood for that challenge. "I'd just made a couple of small films for TV in my home town Manchester," the director explains, "and I wanted to work there again. Graham sent me the script and I thought the idea was absolutely captivating. I was also very keen to work with Frank, who comes from a long line of amazing writers from the North West. He was someone I'd always admired; there's a combination of warmth and originality in his writing that's a bit special."

There was also a more personal reason for Boyle's interest. "Like Frank, I've got kids as well," he says, "and that was a very big factor. When you have kids you want to do something for them, or event based on them. And my kids are getting quite old, so I thought I'd better get on and make something they could legally watch!"

Even so, he insists that Millions is not quite the departure that some might think. Although the film centres on a robbery, the drama here lies in how the boys react to the money: what they will do with it and whether it truly can ever bring happiness. It was the latter that captured his imagination.

"Some people wouldn't think so," he says, "but I do think all of my films are life-affirming in some way. There's an energy about them and I am very optimistic like that. The idea that you can have faith in people - and they will then keep faith in someone else - is all you can do, really. And I believe that. But it's hard to express that without sounding like a total fucking prat! But it's true. I do believe it and I wanted to make a film about that. Frank and I never talked about it in a specific way, but it was always there in our two personalities."

The script still needed work - indeed, at that time, it was a period piece set in the 60s - but Boyle kept pushing it forwards and brought out the real essence of the story. "We worked on it relentlessly," he says, "until the only scene that remains from the original is the central robbery sequence."

The heist also allowed for more tension in the script, since one of the robbers, a shady Bill Sykes figure known only in the script as 'Kangol' (now in the credits as 'The Poor Man'), is hard on the trail of the missing money. "The minute you see the money arrive, you know that someone's going to be after it, because that's the language of cinema," says Cottrell Boyce. "I wanted the person after it to appear like your worst paranoid nightmare or a little boy's bogey man - like in Raising Arizona, where the character is after him and you never really know whether he's dreaming it, because it cuts from dream to reality. I wanted that intense fear that you only experience as a child."

Although the writing process took around five years from original conception, it was not beset by the usual production difficulties and, unusually for a British movie, had little problem finding funding. "It was quite simple, really," says producer Andrew Hauptman. "We knew we had a really good script and a world-class director that everyone wanted to work with. A lot of people were waiting for the script to be ready, but we already had a relationship with Pathé and Francois Ivernel from Pathé was extremely aggressive in his pursuit of the project. He's a huge fan of Danny. He basically said he'd commit to green-lighting it and true to his word, we sent him the finished script, he read it overnight and the next day there was an offer on the table. We'd met with other financiers in between, but really felt Pathé were first pas the post and full of enthusiasm."

Looking back over the five years, Broadbent is now surprised to see how quickly the project evolved, as if helped along by unseen forces. "Frank and I had worked on many drafts over a three-year period. Frank just kept on writing it and we kept meeting up every few months. Frank even said to a colleague, just after we'd got Danny Boyle interested, 'Oh this is just our lunch club, we're never going to make it.' As we completed the last shot of the film, I went up to Frank and reminded him that it had been quite a lunch club. He burst into tears."

A USER'S GUIDE TO SAINTS. #2: FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1181-1226)

A reformed character, Francis Bernardone was a former street-fighter and soldier who converted to Christianity after receiving a message from Christ while serving a prison sentence in Perugia. Francis devoted his life to helping the sick and working with animals and two years before his death, while meditating in the Apennine Mountains, he developed the signs of the stigmata. The patron saint of families, he also benefits animal welfare societies, ecologists, environmentalists, lace-makers, needle-workers and zoos.

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