Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh - Google Books Irvine Welsh 19 Reviews Brace yourself, America, for Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting—the novel and the film that became the cult sensations of Britain. Trainspotting is the novel that first launched Irvine Welsh's spectacular career—an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating episodic group portrait of blasted lives. It accomplished for its own time and place what Hubert Selby, Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn did for his. Rents, Sick Boy, Mother Superior, Swanney, Spuds, and Seeker are as unforgettable a clutch of junkies, rude boys, and psychos as readers will ever encounter. Trainspotting was made into the 1996 cult film starring Ewan MacGregor and directed by Danny Boyle (A Shallow Grave). What people are saying - Write a review User ratings LibraryThing Review User Review - qkennedy - LibraryThing The crazy and deranged lifestyle of the characters in this book was absolutely shocking, however the content of their internal dialogue was thoroughly entertaining. A character would will the pages ...

Read full review Classic Class and Drugs Tale User Review - marsattacks28 - Overstock.com Saw the movie before I read the book and that was a shame because this book is great. Not to mention the original printing of this book was a plus. Way to go Overstock Read full review Selected pages The Skag Boys JeanClaude Van Damme and Mother 3 Scotland Takes Drugs In Psychic Defence The Glass 95 Inter Shitty Na Na and Other Nazis The First Shag 153 Courting Disaster Junk Dilemmas No 66 Deid Dugs 177 View all » Common terms and phrases All Book Search results &raquo; About the author (2002) Irvine Welsh was born in Edinburgh on September 27, 1958. After leaving school, he lived in London for awhile, but eventually returned to Edinburgh where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He received a degree in computer science and studied for an MBA at Heriot Watt University. His first novel, Trainspotting, was published in 1993 and was adapted as a film starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle in 1996.

He became a full-time writer in August 1995. His other works include The Acid House (1994), Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995), Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance (1996), Filth (1998), Glue (2001), and Porno (2002). He also wrote the plays Headstate (1994) and You'll Have Had Your Hole (1998). Bibliographic information Irvine Welsh - Literature Literature Biography Irvine Welsh was born in Edinburgh in 1958. He lived in London after leaving school, but returned to his native city where he worked in the Council's housing department. He gained a degree in computer science and studied for an MBA at Heriot Watt University. His first novel, Trainspotting (1993), a blackly comic portrait of a group of young heroin users living in Edinburgh in the 1980s, was adapted as a film directed by Danny Boyle, starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle, in 1996.

The Acid House, a collection of short stories, was published in 1994 and was followed by Welsh's second novel, Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995), a harrowing stream-of-consciousness narrated by football hooligan Roy Strang. Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance, a collection of three novellas, was published in 1996, and a third novel, Filth, a vivid account of the violent adventures of a bigoted, racist and corrupt Scottish policeman, was published in 1998. Glue (2001), is the story of four boys growing up in an Edinburgh housing estate. Porno, a sequel to Trainspotting, was published in 2002.Welsh is also the author of the plays, Headstate (1994) ; You'll Have Had Your Hole (1998); and Babylon Heights (2006), written with Dean Cavanagh. He has also written the screenplays for three original films and four short films.

The books Ecstasy, Glue, Filth, Trainspotting and Marabou Stork Nights, have all been adapted for the stage and The Acid House and Ecstasy have been made into films.His journalism includes a column for Loaded magazine and occasional articles for The Guardian. He is also a DJ and has recorded a single with rock group Primal Scream. In February 2003 he began writing a Monday column for the Daily Telegraph.Later books include The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (2006); and If You Liked School You'll Love Work (2007). His novel, Crime, was published in 2008 and his latest collection of stories is Reheated Cabbage (2009). He has recently branched into film, and is a partner in two film production companies. The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins (2014) is described by the Independent as ‘[eviscerating] Western society’s great…obsessions with food, health, sex and emotional perfection’. Set in Miami, it examines the effects of fame on a woman lauded as a ‘hero’ after her role in disarming a gunman. He lives in Chicago.

A Decent Ride appeared in 2015 and was followed by The Blade Artist (2016). In late 2015, Welsh went with the British Council to FIL, Guadalajara International Book Fair, Mexico, and also to Peru. Awards Critical perspective Two common complaints of literary reviewers when considering the work of Welsh are that his books are read by people who don’t normally read and that their author has a negative view of literature (he prefers the title ‘cultural activist’ to ‘writer’). If either of these claims is true, then they perhaps deserve more credit than lofty condemnation. If Welsh really is managing to engage a culturally illiterate audience that has traditionally remained beyond the influence of the bourgeois novel then this is a form of ‘cultural activism’ most other ‘writers’ of his generation seem to have turned their backs on.Although Trainspotting (1993) was longlisted for the Booker prize, Welsh’s writing belongs more accurately to the realm of the ‘popular’. By ‘popular’ I am not necessarily thinking of sales figures, but of the grotesque, carnivalesque imagery for which his work has become notorious.

The emphasis of his novels, short stories and screenplays is on what Carl Ewart, a character in Glue (2001) describes as 'tales of excreta and ejecta – shite, pish and puke'. It is no surprise that some of the central images of the film adaptation of Trainspotting involve unforgettably graphic acts of bodily expulsion, from the soiled sheets of Spud, to Renton’s unfortunate expulsion of his own drugs down a filthy pub toilet.Welsh’s books are equally well-known for their gatherings of junkies and drug dealers, prostitutes and pimps, psychos and scam artists, a cast made famous within his best selling debut novel, Trainspotting. The book is set in Edinburgh - not the tourist Edinburgh of Princes Street and the Royal Mile (what Welsh refers to derisively as 'shortbread disneyland') - but the geographical and metaphorical outskirts of the capital: the deprived and depressed underside of Leith. So why ‘trainspotting’? Near the end of the text, Begbie and Renton take a ‘pish’ in Leith’s defunct Central Station.

It is one of the rare, oblique references to ‘trainspotting’ in a novel whose title is said to revolve around the joke (Welsh likes his ‘in’ jokes) that Leith has not had a rail link for decades.If ‘trainspotting’ on one level appears to be an allusion to the social division between Leith and commercial Edinburgh (Welsh is a regular critic of the Edinburgh Festival on these grounds), then his novels are free from a nostalgic or sentimental vision of working-class Scotland. His is a post-Thatcher landscape in which traditional community relations have broken down. There is a lack of male solidarity – key to earlier post-war working-class fiction - to be found in Welsh’s writing. Begbie is as big a danger to his ‘pals’ as he is to the Edinburgh toffs he stumbles into in the city bars.In 1994, Welsh's short story collection, The Acid House, was published. The language of these tales, written in an unrelenting and aggressively masculine Scots dialect, has since become a trademark of Welsh’s fiction.

Considered by some as the main strength of his prose (Welsh, some claim, has an ‘ear’ for the urban underclass of Leith), by others as strained and inauthentic, what is clear is that the repetition and excess associated with its ‘bad language’ serves more than a ‘realistic’ purpose. It is through the inarticulate outbursts of his characters that their powerlessness is most eloquently and symbolically expressed. More recent short story collections include If You Liked School, You'll Love Work (2007) and Reheated Cabbage (2009). The former is an eclectic collection, stitched together by lurid sex acts, the latter, a recollection of (mostly) older stories and formerly pulished pieces, including, for diehard Trainspotting fans, a festive encounter with Begbie. Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995), Welsh’s second novel, followed quickly (some say too quickly) on the heels of the first. A rambling narrative (but then these are nightmares), it is structured around the memories of a football hooligan who is unconscious in hospital.

Marabou was followed soon after by Ecstasy (1996), a collection of three novellas and critically the least successful of his books. Welsh had to wait until 1998 and the publication of Filth (1998) before receiving warmer reviews. The filth of Filth refers principally to Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson. However, the title is not just a nod to the content of the book but to its form, its textuality. Filth is both the subject of the book and a reference to the book itself. The title demands we read it literally. If filth is a metaphorical reference to the police (Bruce Robertson works for Lothian and Borders force), then Robertson is ‘filth’ in a more literal sense: a serial rapist, thief, and drug abuser. If trains are pretty much absent from Trainspotting then glue is about the only substance not taken by the characters of Glue (2001), one of Welsh’s most adventurous novels to date.

Like Marabou Stork Nightmares, Glue centres on the lives of a group of Edinburgh ‘schemies’ and charts the coming of age of four young men over four decades and over 400 pages.Porno (2002) is a return to the fictional world of Trainspotting that made him famous a decade earlier, and has been hailed by many critics as a return to form. The novel progresses plausibly from where Trainspotting left off. Renton is now living in Amsterdam. Begbie is in jail. Sick Boy works in a strip joint. Meanwhile Spud, in the most unlikely career move of all has decided to write a book. When the group come back together, it is not long before another money making scam begins to emerge. The title provides you with all the clues you need. Welsh’s mid-decade work was dominated by a couple of collaborative efforts including Babylon Heights (with Dean Cavanagh, 2006), and One City (with Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith, 2006). Babylon Heights is a bizarre but extremely funny play.

Spinning off from The Wizard of Oz, it imagines four munchkins in a Californian Hotel room getting high on drugs and alcohol. One City is a collection of three stories, one of them by Welsh, written for the One City charity, which seeks to combat social exclusion in the city. The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs (2006) unfolds during the US elections of 2004, and in tandem with the unfolding of Edinburgh-based Health Officer, Danny Skinner’s unhealthy obsession with tv programme ‘The Secrets of Masterchef’. It is an obsession that takes Danny to America in a narrative exploring the conjunctions between food, pornography and celebrity. Described in the Financial Times as ‘Welsh at his best’, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs was hailed by various critics as a return to form. In his tenth and most recent novel, Crime (2008), Welsh opts for one of his trademark titles: a single word, a blunt literalism. However, beneath the in your face cover is a surprisingly restrained handling of a risqué (even for Welsh) subject: paedophile rings.

Ray Lennox, formerly of Filth, is a policeman who ends up in America on the trail of a serial child abuser. It is a book that is currently dividing the critics, as The New York Times summarised: ‘Crime is an ambitious, compassionate and serious book; many of Welsh’s fans, however, will miss the trash talk, the perverse comedy and, yes, even the spastics.’ Irvine Welsh - IMDb IMDb View Resume | Official Photos » Welsh's books have made him a cult figure within the writing world since the 1990s. Several of his books have become best sellers and all have a mixture of comedy, drama and hard-hitting issues...the best-known being Trainspotting (1996) which was made into a box-office smash worldwide at the movies in 1996. Of his other works, one other has been ...

See full bio » Born: a list of 31 people created 10 Oct 2011 a list of 18 people created 15 May 2014 a list of 10 people created 26 Apr 2015 a list of 315 people created 22 Jul 2015 a list of 79 people created 6 months ago Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Irvine Welsh's work have you seen? User Polls 1 win & 1 nomination. See more awards » Known For 2011/II Ecstasy (based on a book by) 2010 Counterplay (Short) (novel) 2003 Dose (TV Short) (story) 1999 Dockers (TV Movie) 2007 Wedding Belles (TV Movie) (co-executive producer) 2003 Dose (TV Short) (executive producer) Hide 2016 Goodbye Britain?

(TV Movie documentary) Himself 2008-2015 The Wright Stuff (TV Series) Himself - Guest Panelist 2012 Melvyn Bragg on Class & Culture (TV Series documentary) Himself 2010 In Sunshine or in Shadow (TV Movie documentary) Himself 2009 Artworks Scotland (TV Series documentary) Himself 2009 Movie Connections (TV Series documentary) Himself 2008 The Hour (TV Series) Himself 2006 The South Bank Show (TV Series documentary) Himself 2004 This Week (TV Series) Himself 2001 The 100 Greatest Films (TV Movie documentary) Himself 2001 Question Time (TV Series) Himself 2000 Chemical Generation (TV Movie documentary) Himself 1997 Brit Awards 1997 (TV Special) Himself Novel: "Marabou Stork Nightmares," 1996. See more » Publicity Listings: 6 Interviews | 4 Articles | See more » Height: Did You Know?

Personal Quote: [2016 interview, on T2 Trainspotting (2017)] It might not be as well received because it doesn't have the shock of the new, but I have absolutely no doubt that it will be a better movie. Everything's just better now. See more » Trivia: Welsh vowed that if any producer proved brave enough to take on the filming of Filth (2013), he would get a tattoo of the book's cover, a pig dressed like a cop. It took 15 years to get Filth made, and halfway through filming, Welsh proved true to his word and tattooed the pig on his arm. See more » Trademark: Biography :: Irvine Welsh Official Website Irvine Welsh :: Home :: Biography Biography Irvine Welsh was born in the great city of Edinburgh, Scotland. He can't quite recall if it was Simpson's or Elsie Inglis maternity pavilions. In fact he remembers little of the birth, though his mother assured him later that it was fairly routine. This selective memory at key points in his life would continue.

What he seems quite certain of is that his family moved from their tenement home in Leith, to the prefabs in West Pilton, and then onto Muirhouse's maisonette flats. Welsh left Ainslie Park Secondary School when he was sixteen and had various jobs, but didn't really like work any more than he did school. However, he was very fortunate to meet some exceptionally decent people at both, most of whom tolerated him. London called in the late seventies and he tried to catch up on some of education he'd missed on while daydreaming about more interesting things, as enjoyed the London punk scene. The jobs got better and he got on the property ladder and made some money, but in the good Scots tradition, he managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Cleaning up his act, and, in keeping with another great tradition, 'finding a nice lassie and settling doon', Welsh eventually returned to Edinburgh where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He went on to study for an MBA at Heriot Watt University.

Welsh regards himself as very fortunate to be back in his home town when Kevin Williamson, Duncan McLean, Barry Graham, Alan Warner, Paul Reekie and Rodney Relax were all doing their thing. Energised by the rave scene, he started to write and his paths crossed with the above. Digging out some old diaries, Welsh did a draft of what would become Trainspotting. Welsh published parts this from 1991 onwards in DOG, the West Coast Magazine, and New Writing Scotland. Duncan McLean published parts of the novel in two Clocktower pamphlets, A Parcel of Rogues and Past Tense: Four Stories from a Novel. Meanwhile Kevin Williamson, a member of Duncan McLean’s Muirhouse writers’ group, published sections of Trainspotting in the literary magazine Rebel Inc. Duncan McLean recommended Welsh to Robin Robertson, then editorial director of Secker & Warburg, who decided to publish Trainspotting, despite believing that it was unlikely to sell. When Trainspotting was published in 1993 Irvine Welsh shot to fame.

According to Lord Gowrie, the chairman of the panel, the novel was rejected for the Booker Prize shortlist after offending the sensibilities of two female judges. Despite this unease from the critical establishment, Welsh’s novel received as many good reviews as ones swathed in disgust and outrage - establishing a tradition that continues to this day. Harry Gibson’s stage adaptation of the novel was premiered at the Glasgow Mayfest in April 1994 and went on to be staged at the Edinburgh Festival and in London before touring the UK. In August 1995, Irvine Welsh gave up his day job. Since Danny Boyle’s film adaptation of Trainspotting was released in February 1996 Irvine Welsh has remained a controversial figure, whose novels, stage and screen plays, novellas and short stories have proved difficult for literary critics to assimilate, a difficulty made only more noticeable by Welsh’s continued commercial success. More books have followed, Ecstasy becoming the first paperback original to go straight in at No1 on the Sunday Times best-sellers list, a feat emulated by Filth, which became Welsh's highest selling book after Trainspotting.

His first novel has now sold almost 1 million copies in the UK alone and is a worldwide phenomenon. Books such as Glue, Porno and recent The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs have seen him increase his profile in America and Canada. He has recently branched into film and is a partner in two film production companies. He joined Four Ways films, which was founded by Antonia Bird, Robert Carlyle and Mark Cousins, and has recently set up Jawbone films with his screenwriting partner Dean Cavanagh, and Phil John and Jon Lewis Owen. In 2005 Welsh married for the second time. He promises that he's never doing it again. He lives mainly in Dublin but retreats to Miami Beach for a large part of the winter. He visits his home city of Edinburgh regularly, usually to visit friends, family and Hibernian FC at Easter Road. As Welsh says: 'the jobs are a wee bit too boring to recount and the books and other stuff you can get from other parts of the site.' Interviews BBC Two - Writing Scotland - Irvine Welsh Writing Scotland 1961 - Biography Irvine Welsh was born in Leith in 1961.

He moved with his family to Muirhouse, in Edinburgh, at the age of four. Welsh left Ainslee Park Secondary School when he was sixteen and went on to complete a City Guild course in electrical engineering. Thereafter, Welsh worked as an apprentice TV repairman until an electric shock persuaded him to abandon this work in favour of a series of other jobs, before leaving Edinburgh for the London punk scene in 1978. There, Welsh played guitar and sang in The Pubic Lice and Stairway 13. Later, he worked for Hackney Council in London and studied computing with the help of a grant from the Manpower Services Commission. After working in the London property boom of the 1980s, Welsh returned to Edinburgh where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He went on to study for an MBA at Heriot Watt University, writing his thesis on creating equal opportunities for women. Welsh published stories and parts of what would later become Trainspotting from 1991 onwards in DOG, the West Coast Magazine, and New Writing Scotland.

Duncan McLean published parts of the novel in two Clocktower pamphlets, A Parcel of Rogues and Past Tense: Four Stories from a Novel. Meanwhile Kevin Williamson, a member of Duncan McLean’s Muirhouse writers’ group, published sections of Trainspotting in the literary magazine Rebel Inc. Duncan McLean recommended Welsh to Robin Robertson, then editorial director of Secker & Warburg, who decided to publish Trainspotting, despite believing that it was unlikely to sell. When Trainspotting was published in 1993 Irvine Welsh shot to fame. The novel was apparently rejected for the Booker Prize shortlist after offending the ‘feminist sensibilities’ of two of the judges (Purlock, 1996). Despite this unease from the critical establishment, Welsh’s novel received good reviews. Harry Gibson’s stage adaptation of the novel was premiered at the Glasgow Mayfest in April 1994 and went on to be staged at the Edinburgh Festival and in London before touring the UK. In August 1995, Irvine Welsh gave up his day job.

Since Danny Boyle’s film adaptation of Trainspotting was released in February 1996 Irvine Welsh has remained a controversial figure, whose novels, stage and screen plays, novellas and short stories have proved difficult for literary critics to assimilate, a difficulty made only more noticeable by Welsh’s continued commercial success. ﻿(Last updated in September 2004) Works Irvine Welsh’s first novel, Trainspotting (1993), is set mostly in Leith and Edinburgh in the 1980s and consists of a series of loosely connected episodes which follow Welsh’s characters as they tell their stories of sex, drugs and dance music. The novel’s energy comes in part from the degree to which Welsh gives such distinctive voices to each of his characters, expecting his readers to tune in and recognise them with the first few words they speak. Trainspotting gained notoriety for its depiction of Edinburgh heroin culture; the novel is set at a time when Edinburgh was thought to be the ‘HIV capital of Europe’. While heroin is undoubtedly crucial to many of the narratives in Welsh’s first novel, Trainspotting draws its readers’ attention to aspects of Scottish and British culture which are perhaps even more uncomfortable.

Trainspotting talks about poverty, sectarianism, racism and attitudes towards disability, above all insisting that if there is no such thing as society, there is certainly no such thing as a classless society. Welsh’s characters are often highly sceptical about the ability of therapists, activists or politicians to change society for the better. For Mark Renton, the state’s attempt to bring him off heroin is a symptom of society’s inability to deal with someone who has consciously chosen to reject its values; ‘ah choose no tae choose life. If the cunts cannae handle that, it’s thair fuckin problem’ (Trainspotting, 188). Renton insists on his individual right to opt out of society, to take his life in his own hands, and refuses to allow society the option to view his rejection as a curiosity of medical science. This individualism also marks a rejection of socialist representations of the Scottish working class, which insisted upon class solidarity and the potential of collective action. Welsh followed Trainspotting with a novella and collection of short stories called The Acid House (1994).

One aspect of the use of drugs in Welsh’s fiction is that it has allowed him to integrate elements of fantasy into his portrayals of urban life. So, in the title story, ‘The Acid House’, Welsh has Hibs casual Coco Bryce exchange minds with a young baby, and then follows the baby and Coco as their mother and girlfriend try to make them into the men they want them to be. Elsewhere, in ‘The Granton Star Cause’ Boab meets God in the pub and is then turned into a bluebottle. Whereas Trainspotting is told in a cacophonous surround sound, Marabou Stork Nightmares (1995) is a monologue. Roy Strang is in a coma after a failed suicide attempt. He uses fantasy to avoid remembering the real life that has brought him here, from his childhood in Muirhouse, through his family’s attempt to make a new life for themselves in apartheid South Africa and Roy’s subsequent return to Scotland and time as a football casual. The comparison Roy makes between the poor of Edinburgh and black South Africans under apartheid, along with the novel’s representation of rape, has made Marabou Stork Nightmares the most controversial of Welsh’s books to date.

For Glue (2001), Irvine Welsh returned to the polyphonic style he employed in Trainspotting. Glue is Welsh’s longest book to date and also his most ambitious in scope. For the first time in an Irvine Welsh novel he takes us through three decades of his characters’ lives, from the 1970s to the early years of the new millennium. This allows Welsh to explore his four principal characters, Terry Lawson, Carl Ewart, Billy Birrell and Andrew Galloway, as they develop and change over time, charting their reactions to the changing world around them. The novel begins with its four characters’ parents in a Scotland so markedly different from the Scotland of Welsh’s earlier novels. It then moves to their children as they grow up in 1970s Edinburgh, beginning with Terry Lawson’s first day at school. The novel varies between a third person narrative and the distinctive individual voices of its characters. The early section of Glue takes the traditional ‘young man growing up’ narrative and transforms it, replacing the individual focus of that form with an examination of how different people develop differently under similar circumstances.

Welsh also takes away the soft-focus lens, refusing to censor his characters or sanitise their experiences. As Glue progresses, and its characters move from childhood to youth to middle age, it explores, in a more sustained way than elsewhere in Welsh’s work, the solidarity rejected at the end of Trainspotting. Glue is about friendship as much as it is about anger and inequality. Porno, the sequel to Trainspotting, was published in 2002. The events of the novel can be dated quite precisely, occurring after the opening of the new Scottish Parliament, but before Alex McLeish left Welsh’s beloved Hibernian football club to manage Rangers. In Porno, Welsh brings the Trainspotting characters back together, still suffering from the collective hangover caused by Mark Renton’s getaway to Amsterdam at the end of the earlier novel. It is a common feature of Welsh’s fiction that characters from one book have cameo roles in another, creating a sense that each of Welsh’s stories takes place within a wider world in which there is always something going on offstage.

(Lat updated in September 2004)﻿ Irvine Welsh - News NEWS 12 January 2017 2:45 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news » This supercharged 1996 story of drugs, violence and growing up has lost none of its edge ahead of the release of sequel T2 Prior to the guys’ Take-That-style reunion in the forthcoming sequel T2, here is a very welcome big-screen rerelease of Danny Boyle ’s original Trainspotting , 21 years on. It holds up terrifically well. This movie was the first, maybe the only successful 90s British attempt at answering films like Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction ; it has a version of their spirit and power – and matches them for hardcore violence, horror and drugs. But John Hodge ’s screenplay, taken from the novel by Irvine Welsh , brings in a grittily British kind of social-realist pessimism. Watching it again, especially during the periodic “family” scenes in pubs after court appearances and funerals, I thought of Ken Loach ’s Poor Cow .

Trainspotting is supercharged with sulphurous humour and brutal recklessness: it charges at you like » - Peter Bradshaw 10 January 2017 9:48 AM, PST | Indiewire | See recent Indiewire news » Danny Boyle ’s 1996 film “ Trainspotting ” follows a group of heroin addicts in an economically depressed Edinburgh in the late 1980s. Based on Irvine Welsh ’s novel by the same name, the film went on to become a critical and commercial hit around the globe. Besides parking controversy for its subject matter, the film also produced two acclaimed soundtracks that featured music from and inspired by the film, including Iggy Pop , Brian Eno , Primal Scream , Pulp , New Order and more. Read More: ‘ Trainspotting 2’ Trailer: Danny Boyle Unleashes Another Round Of Mayhem On Rent Boy And The Gang Now, Boyle has prepped a sequel, “ T2 Trainspotting ,” due out early this year, based on Welsh’s sequel “Porno,” that picks up 20 years after the events of the first film.

Ahead of the film’s release, the soundtrack has leaked onto Amazon UK, as reported by NME, and features music from artists young and old. » - Vikram Murthi The return of Trainspotting ’s psychopathic antihero in sequel T2 has reignited old friendships for Robert Carlyle . He talks pushing buttons, Brexit blues and the benefits of getting older The unmissable films of 2017 In May 2016, a group of actors arrived in Edinburgh to begin shooting T2, the long-anticipated sequel to the fabled Trainspotting . Picking up the threads of his own film, director Danny Boyle had already been in the city some time. The novelist Irvine Welsh , writer of the original book, occasionally dropped by. And then came the stars – Ewan McGregor , Jonny Lee Miller , Ewen Bremner and Robert Carlyle , back to play moustachioed psychopath Francis Begbie. Each was now well into middle age. Their mood was united. “Oh, the fear was palpable,” Carlyle says. He still sounds nervous now.

“You just don’t want to fuck it up.” Carlyle says he fancied a sequel as soon as the original came » - Danny Leigh 3 January 2017 9:31 AM, PST | HeyUGuys.co.uk | See recent HeyUGuys news » Author: Jon Lyus We’re a few weeks away from catching up with the camaraderie and chaos of the Trainspotting lads. Ewan McGregor , Ewen Bremner , Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle are all returning for Trainspotting 2, or T2 Trainspotting as it’s being called. Danny Boyle is back behind the camera and from the very first trailer the magic is clearly still with the gang. We return twenty years on from the moment when Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor in his star-making turn) chose life and lifted £20,000 from his band of soon-to-be not so merry men. The trailers have hinted that upon his return to the fold Renton is welcomed back with open palms and closed fists. There’s a tremendous moment in the first trailer which suggests that, despite the two decade gap, nothing has changed for the boys.

Ewan McGregor Talks T2 Trainspotting before he started filming Two new » 3 January 2017 8:20 AM, PST | Flickeringmyth | See recent Flickeringmyth news » We’re just a few short weeks away from the release of Danny Boyle ’s hotly-anticipated sequel T2 Trainspotting , and today has brought five new images from the film featuring Begbie ( Robert Carlyle ), Mikey ( Irvine Welsh ), Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller), Renton ( Ewan McGregor ), Spud ( Ewen Bremner ), Nikki ( Anjela Nedyalkova ) and Renton’s Dad ( James Cosmo ). First there was an opportunity……then there was a betrayal. Twenty years have gone by. Much has changed but just as much remains the same. Mark Renton ( Ewan McGregor ) returns to the only place he can ever call home. They are waiting for him: Spud ( Ewen Bremner ), Sick Boy ( Jonny Lee Miller ), and Begbie ( Robert Carlyle ).

Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger, they are all lined up to welcome him, ready to join the dance. New T2 Trainspotting photos show off the returning cast ahead of the film’s release later this month. You can see the new Trainspotting 2 photos below. Ewan McGregor as Mark Renton and Jonny Lee Miller as Simon on railway tracks in TriStar Pictures ’ T2 Trainspotting Later this month, the long awaited sequel to Trainspotting , which was released over twenty years ago, arrives in cinemas. T2 Trainspotting stars returning cast members Ewan McGregor , Ewen Bremner , Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle in a film directed by British legend Danny Boyle . First there was an opportunity……then there was a betrayal. Twenty years have gone by. Much has changed but just as much remains the same. Mark Renton ( Ewan McGregor ) returns to the only place he can ever call home.

They are waiting for him: Spud ( Ewen Bremner ), Sick Boy ( Jonny Lee Miller ), and Begbie ( Robert Carlyle ). Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, » - Paul Heath 2 January 2017 9:29 AM, PST | Cineplex | See recent Cineplex news » The Most Anticipated Movies of 2017, part oneThe Most Anticipated Movies of 2017, part oneJenny Bullough and Adriana Floridia1/2/2017 12:29:00 Pm As the new year begins, we’re winding up our coverage of the best movies and moments of 2016 and starting to look ahead. As great as many of the films of 2016 have been, we have to admit we are totally stoked for 2017 – there’s such an amazing lineup of films! From great dramas to cool indies, fun animated movies to crowd-pleasing superhero epics, 2017 looks to have everything a movie-lover could want!

In fact, there’s such an embarrassment of riches in 2017, we had to separate our annual list of the most anticipated movies into two parts! Today’s installment covers movies scheduled to release from January through June; check back tomorrow for our list of the July through December movies that will make Fall 2017 epic! Sound Opinions at the Movies: Trainspotting with special guest Irvine Welsh | WBEZ Sound Opinions at the Movies: Trainspotting with special guest Irvine Welsh More content below this sponsor message The latest installment in the popular Sound Opinions at the Movies series will be the 1996 British black comedy Trainspotting, to be screened at the Music Box Theatre , 3733 N. Southport Avenue, Wednesday evening, February 17 at 7:15 p.m. in celebration of the film’s 20th anniversary. Irvine Welsh , author of the novel Trainspotting, will appear live alongside Sound Opinions hosts and acclaimed music critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis to introduce the film.

Set in Edinburgh, Scotland, Trainspotting follows the hilarious yet tragic lives of a group of friends struggling with heroin addiction in the late 1980s. Featuring wonderfully droll performances by Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner, and others, the film manages to be stylish and exuberant while simultaneously exposing the devastation of drug abuse. Trainspotting was helmed by Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later) and its screenplay, adapted from Irvine Welsh’s novel, was nominated for an Oscar. The film features an acclaimed soundtrack perfectly reflecting both the rush of heroin and its inevitable comedown, including songs by Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, New Order, and more. Advance tickets for the Sound Opinions at the Movies screening of Trainspotting can be purchased online here . Tickets will also be available at the door for $15. Sound Opinions is co-hosted by noted music writers Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune and Jim DeRogatis of WBEZ and reaches more than 400,000 tastemakers each week through national radio broadcasts and a popular podcast.

Chicago Public Media creates award-winning content for people curious about the issues and ideas that affect our community, our nation, and our world. Chicago Public Media is also the home of This American Life, Serial, Wait, Wait...Don’t Tell Me! (a co-production with NPR), The Morning Shift, and Worldview. In addition to WBEZ 91.5 FM, Chicago Public Media also operates Vocalo 91.1 FM, a next generation service that seeks to expand the reach of public media. For more information, visit Irvine Welsh was born in the great city of Edinburgh, Scotland. He can't quite recall if it was Simpson's or Elsie Inglis maternity pavilions. In fact he remembers little of the birth, though his mother assured him later that it was fairly routine. This selective memory at key points in his life would continue. What he seems quite certain of is that his family moved from their tenement home in Leith, to the prefabs in West Pilton, and then onto Muirhouse's maisonette flats. Welsh left Ainslie Park Secondary School when he was sixteen and had various jobs, but didn't really like work any more than he did school.

However, he was very fortunate to meet some exceptionally decent people at both, most of whom tolerated him. London called in the late seventies and he tried to catch up on some of education he'd missed on while daydreaming about more interesting things, as enjoyed the London punk scene. The jobs got better and he got on the property ladder and made some money, but in the good Scots tradition, he managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Cleaning up his act, and, in keeping with another great tradition, 'finding a nice lassie and settling doon', Welsh eventually returned to Edinburgh where he worked for the city council in the housing department. He went on to study for an MBA at Heriot Watt University. Welsh regards himself as very fortunate to be back in his home town when Kevin Williamson, Duncan McLean, Barry Graham, Alan Warner, Paul Reekie and Rodney Relax were all doing their thing. Energised by the rave scene, he started to write and his paths crossed with the above. Digging out some old diaries, Welsh did a draft of what would become Trainspotting.

Welsh published parts this from 1991 onwards in DOG, the West Coast Magazine, and New Writing Scotland. Duncan McLean published parts of the novel in two Clocktower pamphlets, A Parcel of Rogues and Past Tense: Four Stories from a Novel. Meanwhile Kevin Williamson, a member of Duncan McLean’s Muirhouse writers’ group, published sections of Trainspotting in the literary magazine Rebel Inc. Duncan McLean recommended Welsh to Robin Robertson, then editorial director of Secker & Warburg, who decided to publish Trainspotting, despite believing that it was unlikely to sell. When Trainspotting was published in 1993 Irvine Welsh shot to fame. According to Lord Gowrie, the chairman of the panel, the novel was rejected for the Booker Prize shortlist after offending the sensibilities of two female judges. Despite this unease from the critical establishment, Welsh’s novel received as many good reviews as ones swathed in disgust and outrage - establishing a tradition that continues to this day. Harry Gibson’s stage adaptation of the novel was premiered at the Glasgow Mayfest in April 1994 and went on to be staged at the Edinburgh Festival and in London before touring the UK.

In August 1995, Irvine Welsh gave up his day job. Since Danny Boyle’s film adaptation of Trainspotting was released in February 1996 Irvine Welsh has remained a controversial figure, whose novels, stage and screen plays, novellas and short stories have proved difficult for literary critics to assimilate, a difficulty made only more noticeable by Welsh’s continued commercial success. More books have followed, Ecstasy becoming the first paperback original to go straight in at No1 on the Sunday Times best-sellers list, a feat emulated by Filth, which became Welsh's highest selling book after Trainspotting. His first novel has now sold almost 1 million copies in the UK alone and is a worldwide phenomenon. Books such as Glue, Porno and recent The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs have seen him increase his profile in America and Canada. He has recently branched into film and is a partner in two film production companies. He joined Four Ways films, which was founded by Antonia Bird, Robert Carlyle and Mark Cousins, and has recently set up Jawbone films with his screenwriting partner Dean Cavanagh, and Phil John and Jon Lewis Owen. In 2005 Welsh married for the second time.

He promises that he's never doing it again. He lives mainly in Dublin but retreats to Miami Beach for a large part of the winter. He visits his home city of Edinburgh regularly, usually to visit friends, family and Hibernian FC at Easter Road. As Welsh says: 'the jobs are a wee bit too boring to recount and the books and other stuff you can get from other parts of the site.' Trainspotting was better than health warnings in fight against drugs - Telegraph Crime Trainspotting was better than health warnings in fight against drugs Film and novel written by Irvine Welsh sent a powerful message about the harm drugs can do, according to former chief medical officer Sir Kenneth Calman Trainspotting depicted the dark side to heroin addiction in Edinburgh Photo: Miramax/Everett / Rex Features By Hannah Furness , Arts Correspondent 6:30PM BST 20 Aug 2014 Follow Trainspotting was more powerful in fight against drugs than warnings from health experts about them, former chief medical officer Sir Kenneth Calman has said. Sir Kenneth, who has served as chief medical officer in Scotland and England, said Irvine Welsh's novel was one example of a story that had captured the public consciousness to change medical understanding.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, he said the arts, including literature, can "change things", making members of the public think differently about health issues. Suggesting their impact could be even greater than speeches from most learned professors, he has now compiled a book detailing the history of literature in relation to public health. When asked about the importance of stories to people's lives and public health, Sir Kenneth said: "I think that's right - it's stories that can change health. Related Articles Trainspotting sequel: 'there will be a toilet scene...' 19 Mar 2013 "If you were to read Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh, and looked at what it says about drugs and HIV and things, that is much more powerful that the average professor standing up talking about it. "Stories are contagious, stories can change things. "Whether it's in the medium of social media or books. These ideas which poets and writers have can make you think quite differently." Trainspotting, the novel by Welsh, was published in 1993 and was adapted into a 1996 film starring Ewan McGregor and directed by Danny Boyle.

It tells the story of heroin addicts in Edinburgh and became a cult classic, but was initially accused by some of glamorising drug use. Last month, research by the Home Office found crime rates are declining due in part to a decreasing number of heroin addicts, with statistics showing between one quarter and one third of the fall in crime since 1995 was due to a drop-off in heroin and crack cocaine use. Statistics from the British Crime Survey found the proportion of adults aged 16 to 59 years in England and Wales reporting drug use decreased from 6.7 per cent in 1996 to 5.2 per cent in 2011-2012 However, the fight against Class A drugs is far from over. The National Records of Scotland show that while there has been a drop in the number of drug related deaths since a peak in 2011, the number of deaths has risen from 244 in 1996 to 526 last year.

Sir Kenneth, who is now the chancellor the University of Glasgow as well as chairman of the National Cancer Research Institute, added: "Literature is one part of it - creative writing for example - but the wider arts are just as important, whether it's painting or visual arts or whatever. "These two things together can make it better." When asked about the danger of novels also spreading misinformation, he conceded it was important to balance fiction with scientific research. "We must have the science; without science we wouldn't have been able to affect the huge changes in medical treatment," he said. "But you need the humanity as well. "It's entirely possible to spread the wrong idea as well as the right idea. "I suppose someone could read Trainspotting and think 'that sounds great'. "So part of it is to try and assess the impact of the humanities. In principle, it's entirely right to think about that [the problem of inaccuracy]." * Sir Kenneth's book, A Doctor’s Line, is out now.

The FreshSite: Film: Reviews: Trainspotting (1996) Trainspotting (1996) Andrew MacDonald Screenwriter (based on a novel by Irvine Welsh): John Hodge Review Danny Boyle was promoted from promising new filmmaker to the next big thing in the business with this in-your-face, uphill/downhill depiction of heroin addiction, superficial male camaraderie and the seemingly prospectless reality of young and aimless twenty-somethings in the outskirts of post-Thatcher Britiain, Edinburgh department. The adaptation of Irvine Welsh's acclaimed novel was the trio Boyle/MacDonald/Hodge's follow-up to their breakthrough Shallow Grave , and it is a documentaristic lesson in forerunning editing, camerawork and use of filmatic stylistics, accumulated into a disturbingly acute depiction of bypassed youth generations and what happens to people who haven't found a way to grow up when their own youth culture is being replaced by a new one. The similarities between Trainspotting and A Clockwork Orange is palpable. Ewan McGregor, as Mark Renton, is Alex De Large of the 1990s. His futile existence hovers between light-heartedness and utter inertia.

He eyes himself as an inherently bad person and the society around him as a natural enemy with him being our "humble narrator". Both films have their origin in what the authors warn us is the British society's corruption of the young, and both films use stylistic and egregious means for effect. Whereas Clockwork was about violence, Trainspotting depicts drug-use, and it does this in an effectively non-didactic and unbiased manner. It is in the portrait of inebriation Boyle's work is at its best, as he is able to transfer these visceral experiences, both ups and downs, in an often surrealistic and visual manner. His camerawork and careful assortment of music enables us to largely adopt the emotional mode of his wretched characters. Trainspotting is not first and foremostly a narrative film; it is an atmospheric and evocative piece designed to stir up emotion - from exhiliration and fascination to disgust and gloom.

The plot veers along with the recognizable combination of vital purpose and fundamental meaninglessness that characterize the day of a drug addict, and all along there is always the search for that little glimpse of hope for he who happens to be lucky or resourceful or determined enough when the one opportunity to choose life (or electrical tin openers) comes along. Mark Renton (McGregor): "We would have injected vitamin C if only they'd made it illegal." Re-reviewed : Copyright ï¿½ 1.8.2008 Fredrik Gunerius Fevang Original review: Copyright ï¿½ 17.4.1997 Fredrik Gunerius Fevang 'Trainspotting': Theater Review | Hollywood Reporter 'Trainspotting': Theater Review Courtesy of In Your Face Theatre Company Gavin Ross in 'Trainspotting' The scuzzy Scottish tragicomedy remains a fecal attraction two decades later TWITTER Irvine Welsh's druggy low-life classic that spawned the Danny Boyle film returns to the London stage in this fast-moving, filth-heavy, full-frontal revival.

A cult novel that became a screen sensation, Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting painted a grim but extremely vibrant picture of working-class Edinburgh at a time when heroin, AIDS and unemployment were sweeping through the Scottish capital’s poorer fringes. The book is now more than 20 years old and firmly established in the British pop-culture canon thanks largely to Danny Boyle’s hit 1996 movie adaptation, which helped propel Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Kelly MacDonald and Robert Carlyle to global fame. Newly transferred to London following an acclaimed run at last summer’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Scottish theater troupe In Your Face’s immersive stage revival feels like a bid to rescue Welsh’s dirty-realist classic from its cinematic reputation by restoring some of its scuzzy low-life energy. The text is based on Harry Gibson’s 1994 stage adaptation, which predates Boyle’s film and is truer to the novel's gritty, scatological, tragicomic tone. Led by gangly, shaven-headed Gavin Ross as antihero Renton, the junkies who inhabit this scummy run-down apartment set have heavy purple eye bags and filth-stained jeans, not catwalk-model cheekbones and designer T-shirts.

The cast sweat and spit, drop their pants and flash their penises. They also move promenade-style among the crowd, jostling and displacing audience members. Most scenes are not just performed but also narrated by multiple observers. Thus the movie’s glamorized rock-video spectacle is supplanted by a verbose, intrusive, intimidating intimacy that more closely mirrors Welsh’s hectoring stream-of-conscious tone. Read more London Theater's Olivier Awards: James McAvoy, Gillian Anderson Among Nominees In Your Face has trimmed Gibson’s text to a single high-energy hour, thus allowing the company to stage up to four performances a day during this short run. They have excised various subplots, most obviously the London drug deal that forms the climax of the movie. The essentially comic character Spud (Ewen Bremner in the movie) is also absent, though some of his lines have been transferred to Tommy, played by the play’s co-director Greg Esplin. The fearsome Begbie (Chris Dennis), immortalized by Carlyle onscreen, is less dominant but more unequivocally evil, a bullying sociopath who beats his pregnant girlfriend.

Neil Pendleton and Erin Marshall both do decent work as Sickboy and Alison, respectively, though their characters are marginalized in this new edit. The updated production does make some concessions to the film’s influence, opening in the thick of a booming dance-club rave and closing with Underworld’s euphoric techno anthem "Born Slippy," which featured prominently in Boyle’s movie. Otherwise the background music is mostly 1980s indie-rock, and too quiet to have any dramatic impact. An amplified blast of Pink Floyd’s "Comfortably Numb" during a somber overdose scene feels like a clumsy bid for emotional gravitas, incongruous and oddly anachronistic. Welsh’s novel is a Dickensian sprawl featuring multiple characters and loosely linked plotlines. Boyle’s film streamlined the story into a more conventional cinematic narrative. This filleted stage version is leaner still, but feels a little rushed and disjointed. The accents are authentically broad, the dialogue dense with weapons-grade profanity and poetic Scots colloquialisms like swedge, gadge, feart and more. This commendably uncompromising approach could prove a linguistic obstacle even to English audiences, never mind international tourists.

But these are minor wrinkles in an otherwise impressively visceral, adrenaline-fueled production. In Your Face’s remix of Trainspotting is not so much an inspired reinvention as a faithful cover version that incorporates elements of all previous treatments, from page to stage to screen. It moves too fast ever to become boring, leaving the audience high on a heady blend of exhilaration and disgust. Venue: King’s Head Theatre, London (runs through April 11) Cast: Greg Esplin, Gavin Ross, Rachael Anderson, Neil Pendleton, Chris Dennis, Erin Marshall, Calum Douglas Barbour, Calum Verrecchia, Jessica Innes Playwright: Harry Gibson, based on the novel by Irvine Welsh Directors: Greg Esplin, Adam Spreadbury-Maher Lighting designer: Tom Kitney

Question: A novel by Irvine Welsh set in Edinburgh was made into which 1996 film?
Answer: Trainspotting