In most porno films, the script doesn’t matter. In the film Porno, however, it’s the deal-breaker – at least according to Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. The writer was back in his home town for a live audience interview session to mark the World Premiere of his first film as director, the short film Nuts. When quizzed on the non-arrival of a sequel to Danny Boyle’s iconic 1996 film, Welsh insisted that it all comes down to the words on the page – not his own in the Porno novel, which came out in 2002, but in the screenplay currently being worked on by John Hodge, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the original Trainspotting.
Porno follows the sex film career of Sick Boy, the return to Edinburgh of Mark Renton, and the continuing bampot antics of Spud and Begbie. Andrew Macdonald has the movie project in development at the moment, with Boyle interested in directing. At the Edinburgh Film Festival event, Welsh agreed that the original four actors – Jonny Lee Miller, Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle – had to be involved for the film to work, but stressed that he didn’t blame McGregor’s falling out with the director and producer over casting of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach for the sequel’s delay.
Welsh did, however, add a couple of other film titles to the Future Films slate. First up is The Meat Trade, an original screenplay about a modern-day Burke and Hare duo in Edinburgh who murder people in order to illegally sell their organs. Robert Carlyle and Colin Firth are attached, with Antonia Bird directing. Welsh is also currently scripting a big-screen version of fellow Scot Alan Warner’s novel The Man Who Walks, about a one-eyed man who steals his local pub’s World Cup kitty and the demented nephew sent to hunt him down.