Choose Irvine Welsh Interview: Irvine Welsh & Ian Jefferies – ‘For thirty years they’ve relentlessly put the boot in’.

After his seminal novel Trainspotting was published in 1993, the debut work of Irvine Welsh quickly became a cultural phenomenon, spawning theatre productions, the iconic film by Danny Boyle, sequels, and soon it’ll be turned into a stage musical. Other books of his such as The Acid House, Filth, and Crime have since been adapted for the screen and his writing has become instantly recognisable around the world due to its dark humour and Scottish dialect.

Taking a closer look at the man behind the material, documentary Choose Irvine Welsh celebrates the life and work of the author. Ahead of its premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, I sat down with Irvine Welsh and the film’s director Ian Jefferies to discuss the piece…

Early in the film, you mention that you don’t like to be confined to going to the same place to do the same thing every day. Would you say that’s still true today given how busy you are with your various projects on the go at once?

IW: Yeah, yeah definitely. I do have that itinerant thing with moving around a lot and not finding stimulus from being in the same environment day in day out so that’s very present in my make-up. It’s indicative of who I am. I like structure but I like structure that I can create and impose myself – I don’t like it when it’s imposed upon me. I don’t operate well in those situations.

You use a lot of archive footage in the film. What was the most challenging part of pulling all of that together?

IJ: I think the stuff on the bus crash was the hardest. It probably sounds easy because it was all at a library but it was tricky.

IW: That took me by surprise. It’s one of these things that you never forget about. It’s logged in your subconscious so it’s always kind of there but to see it starkly brought home was still shocking.

IJ: A lot of the other old pictures you see in the film were ones I actually got from Irv, and we went online and you can go on Instagram and things like that and go back through the history. With the Trainspotting parts, you can pick up a lot quite easily.

I was interested by the music in the film – there’s a real energy to it which keeps the pacing ticking along. Can you talk a little on how that came about?

IJ: Well, the first documentary I made was on XFM so I approached the music in the same way. I use unsigned bands that are coming through because I just think it’s an opportunity to get their songs heard and they get a bit of money, and then we mix that up with the famous tracks. The tracks we’ve chosen moves the film quite quickly. The last track is called Proud from a band called Marquis Drive that’s used at the end of the documentary and I think it works really nicely.

The film feels very much like a celebration of Irvine’s work and career. Ian, what’s your favourite of his books?

IJ: The Acid House for me! I really like the movie as well, but it’s so dark! Proper dark.

And Irvine, this might be a weird thing to ask but what is your favourite? It might be like a parent picking between their kids I suppose…

IW: I really liked Skagboys – that’s when I started writing, really. I thought I was explaining too much in it about how the whole heroin thing took off but I really liked it as a piece of socio-political fiction. At the time, I thought to myself ‘fuck all this shit, I’m just going to go straight into their lives’ and I chopped it a bit and made it into Trainspotting…which was a great move from me, like! [laughs] I thought ‘I’ll put the wordy shit out later on’…but I liked Skagboys because it’s quite sprawling and I enjoy the big sprawling novels. A bit like Glue which was a big multi-generational, multi-character novel. The continuity can be a pain in the arse but once you get it done, it’s very satisfying.

IJ: What’s your favourite?

I really liked Marabou Stork Nightmares…

Both: Oh, that’s a dark book!

Well to pick a lighter one, I’d go with A Decent Ride. I love the character of Juice Terry so that was a lot of fun to read…which brings me onto my next question. Is there a character from your books that hasn’t been seen on screen that you’d like to be?

IW: You said it, Juice Terry! I’d love to do a TV show that follows Juice Terry and I already know who I’d want to play him!

Who would that be?

IW: Mikey Keat from The Cuban Brothers. He IS Juice Terry. He just needs to show up as himself, you know! [laughs]

What does it mean to you to have this film premiere in Edinburgh?

IW: It’s great, you know, because it’s my hometown. Edinburgh is still a working class city in the schemes and all that, but in the centre its quite posh and bourgeois so I’ve never really had the best reception from the establishment…but I’ve already had a great reception from the punters so to have a film about me at the Edinburgh Film Festival is quite interesting. I actually had a great write up about me in The Scotsman the other day and that’s never happened in thirty years!! For thirty years they’ve relentlessly put the boot in so it’s like ‘what the fuck’s going on here, like?’ It’s quite worrying too – am I finally getting co-opted by the Edinburgh establishment?

And the premiere clashes with the John McGinn derby (Hibernian vs Aston Villa) tonight so did you not try to get it moved to another night?

You know what, it’s a heartbreaker. We’ve had this date planned in for a while but I’m actually being spared a lot of pain because we’ll get absolutely fucking gubbed all over the park.

What’s coming up next for you both?

IJ: We’ve got a documentary just finished called Georgie’s Hope about a young girl who’s given medical cannabis because she’s having thirty fits a day, which was something the UK Government wouldn’t prescribe so they campaigned for it and won…so we’ve got a few interesting bits about the Home Secretary in there! After that, I’m doing something on the Hollywood Vampires drinking club!

IW: We’re speaking to theatres about the Trainspotting musical so hoping to have that on the go in the Spring…and I’ve got a novel out next year which is going to be the third part of the Crime trilogy…and I think I’ll be done with Lennox after that!

There’s currently no general release date for Choose Irvine Welsh.