The whole world knows Danny Boyle now, the director of Slumdog Millionaire. What a lot of them don’t know is that his last movie before Slumdog was called Sunshine. It came out in 2007 and made $3,675,753 domestically. That’s less than 4 million dollars. To call it a bomb is being kind. Danny himself says that when it appeared like Slumdog Millionaire wasn’t going to be picked up by a distributor, he told himself it was time to start looking for another job.
When you’re in the field of creative arts, you just never know. And when you’re an artist, you can never give up. You have to work hard and try your best and then see what happens. Sometimes doors close. Sometimes a project (a book, a movie, an album) doesn’t click and come together. Sometimes you try something and it tanks. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t any good (I saw Sunshine, and while it wasn’t perfect, it was still an interesting sci-fi flick).
Did Danny Boyle stop after Sunshine fizzled? Not at all. I’m sure there were many, many times when he was full of doubt. But he did what he could–he continued to create.
The rest, as we know, is history. And surely there will be fans of Slumdog who will venture to see what else this eclectic director has done.
I just can’t wait to see what he does next.
I’m happy for Danny too, but we all know Benjamin Button is the better film.
Well, I haven’t seen Slumdog yet, so I can’t say that for sure. But I doubt it will move me as much as Button did.
Slumdog was a good film, maybe even a great film… but Button is an instant classic.
Haven’t seen Slumdog. Did see Sunshine. When it was done, my wife and I turned to each other with the “what the heck was that?” look.
Glad to see he did better with Slumdog.
Yeah, I can relate, Macromab. The first half was good, then it like switched gears and became a whole other movie. The group I was with were laughing after the movie saying “what happened at the very end??” It reminded me of a slasher flick morphed with 2001. But yeah, like I said, sometimes you strike out!