Danny Boyle‘s Ink, which debuted at Venice followed by Telluride, is already generating plenty of ink for its inside look at The Sun and the rise of U.K. tabloid journalism at the hands of its editor Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell) and owner Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce).
“We all have feelings about the rights and the wrongs of that kind of journalism, but sometimes, when they get it right, how can you not admire it and just think it’s amazing?” says screenwriter James Graham, who adapted his 2017 play.
Graham sat down with Gold Derby alongside Boyle and O’Connell to unpack the film’s transcontinental reception since its release, as well as why now was the right time to tackle his inside look at tabloid culture.
Gold Derby: Congratulations on the response to the film. How are you feeling about it now that it’s out in the world?
Danny Boyle: When you’re editing a film — obviously you work with these guys, they’re fantastic—you go through stages. You think nobody’s going to watch this. Then you think everybody’s going to watch it. Then you think, no, nobody’s going to watch it. It’s not that you’ve lost faith in the film, but you feel like, oh, it’s so small, it’s so British. It’ll be OK in Australia because of Murdoch. And then [Telluride festival director] Julie [Huntsinger], who was the first, tells you you’re in this festival, and it’s difficult to describe how much that helps you. The ecosystem of film festivals in the landscape of moviemaking is underestimated. Not everybody gets into the festivals, but it was wonderful. Then Venice came along, and it was super glam. It was difficult to watch the film there because it had Italian subtitles, and then British subtitles under that for the hard of hearing. So it was wonderful to come here, and the screen was just a screen — there’s nothing on it other than our film, and all these people were there watching it and enjoying it. What’s not to love?
James, what does it feel like for you to see it translated from the play to the screen?
James Graham: Just wonderful. You do feel the gratitude — the number of people who had to contribute to bringing it from a 400-seat theater to walking that Venice red carpet. Making a film like this is hard. It’s hard to raise the money, it’s hard to write. I was determined — I’m sure everybody says this — but I was never just going to turn in a draft that goes, “Oh, it’s just the play, but with a few extra scenes.” Is that cinema? No, it’s not. I was determined to work really hard under Danny’s guidance to make it cinema, and to use the opportunity. So now, to see it with this guy [points to O’Connell] as the lead, you feel privileged. It’s my first Telluride, my first film festival, so it’s all wonderful.
Jack, how are you feeling about the response?
Jack O’Connell: Really buoyed, really thankful. I’ve been to Telluride before with another movie, and different projects ask different things of you. Sometimes you turn up for a week or so on the shoot and you try to do your best with that. But to be a fan of James Graham’s anyway — I’ve been in the theater, I’ve had my life impacted by his work, and the same goes for Danny — to be in and amongst it with these guys is really hard to put into words, to be honest.
Danny, what were the biggest challenges for you in adapting the play for the screen?
Boyle: Not the dialogue, because there’s a knee-jerk reaction — there’s so much dialogue, it’ll always feel like a stage play. I didn’t feel that. It’s one of the strengths of it, because it’s class dialogue, and if you can get the actors, then you’re halfway home. So, not the dialogue. I think plausibly doing 1969 is the biggest challenge, because you have to find variety in it, and you also have to find a realism in it. We’re now 50, 60 years later, and the world has changed. Fleet Street’s gone — it’s disappeared. How do you recreate that? Bouverie Street, where The Sun was, is completely unrecognizable, and it was such a part of the identity back then. Your job as a filmmaker is that you must have some of that identity, so that’s a big challenge.
I always believed the play was about Larry Lamb. I felt that when I watched it on the stage, even though, as a live experience, you weren’t guided that way. You were guided to acknowledge this huge performance by Bertie Carvel as Rupert Murdoch, which was wonderful and very entertaining. But I knew — maybe because I grew up in the theater — it’s the other guy in it. Then we worked together a bit, and I thought he’s the presence for it, because it’s not a showy thing. There’s a physicality nobody’s talked about in [O’Connell’s] performance. There’s very little footage of Larry Lamb, but you did harness him. When I see the little gestures — when you’re talking to Stephanie at the end, just before you reach for the paper, and you double-click the paper — it’s very Larry Lamb.
We had a good story, which is that we brought in three veterans of Fleet Street, proper veterans. Eve Pollard, who was the first woman to edit a tabloid. Roy Greenslade, who is the historian, in a way the voice of the past. And Roger, who was the editor of The Independent. They all knew Larry, they all knew the old Fleet Street, and they came in and were a bit critical about our set because we hadn’t been able to get the right typewriters. I thought, is it going to matter, really? I know it matters to you, but the public will love us or hate us based on different things. But then they heard his voice doing Larry Lamb—the accent — and I saw the look on their faces. “That’s it,” they said, meaning: you’ve not got it right in the design and the directing, but he’s got it. He’s got Larry’s voice, because it’s a very particular accent. So that was very pleasing.
Jack, how did you find your way into the accent?
O’Connell: Just listening to him. I started the process having had no footage of him—if you type him into YouTube, there’s a British actor who’s more likely to come up than this fellow. There’s nothing on YouTube or the regular channels of the internet. Luckily, someone you were with, Danny, was able to find all his footage — old programs of TV appearances, like when Newsnight was doing a piece on Fleet Street, and the heavy hitters of the news trade would be sat around, and Larry would feature on some of those. There weren’t many, but there were audio clips as well, of interviews. He’s very articulate, and he could probably speak for days about the trade. It was a really unique voice, a really unique way of speaking. If we were to analyze it, it’s because he’s from the north and ends up on Fleet Street. There’s a class thing in the U.K., and probably more so then — although I don’t think it’s changed all that much.
And did that help you get into the character?
O’Connell:Â Definitely, yeah.
Danny, what made him right for the part?
Boyle: What’s extraordinary about the script is that we tried to make the audience complicit in the first half of the film. By that I mean they enjoy being in this world. You may not entirely approve of it, but it’s flavorsome and dynamic and a bit different — cheeky, irreverent, risk-taking — and you expect to go with that, with the actors. But when it begins to change, and you begin to be pulled into the darkness, that’s when you need an actor who’s going to keep you with him, and there aren’t many actors who can do that.
I always think Pacino in The Godfather is the ultimate example, when he pulls you in with him, and you realize he’s sitting in that garden and he’s ordered the murder of his brother, and you go, “Hang on a minute.” With Larry, it’s the same — he says, “Listen, we didn’t kill her, we just reported it.” And that’s correct. The police were famously inept at the time in this case. Then he’s departed with Jules, who is his moral compass, if there is one — the last thing he clings onto — and then he dispenses with her. But you’ve got to remain with him, so that you stay with him and learn about his pain. Then in the final act, he’s not getting the credit he deserves — as soon as you get a knighthood, it’s not enough. “I deserve so much more.” So that was it — it’s an actor who can take you there. Not many can do it, in my opinion.
And was Guy always your first choice to play Rupert?
Boyle: They were both first choices. I know people always say that, but I can honestly admit it — because I did f–k up with Guy. I offered him the part and said I might have to cast someone else, because I really couldn’t raise the money. I’d offered it to Jack, but I literally couldn’t raise the money at the moment, so I had to jump through a couple of hoops with some famous people, and he heard about one of them. He was very gracious in the way he dealt with it, because that’s the territory when you’re a vagabond as a director. Anyway, it all worked out, and we got not enough money, but enough money to get us up on our feet so we could dance.
So we got our first choices, and then Claire [Foy] was the big surprise, because she came in and just blew us away, didn’t she? You’d know she’s a good actor, but those women who survived at the time had to have balls of steel. They were both promoting a world that was castigating them or exploiting them, and also trying to challenge it, trying to move things forward bit by bit. So I hope she’s judged by that, rather than by present values. She has to be seen as existing in a time when it was such a male world.
She’s got a really tough role there — she’s both creating the world and being challenged by it at the same time.
Boyle:Â Very much so, yeah.
James, what were the biggest challenges for you?
Graham: All of us set out with the ambition that, ideally, people would come to it—I love theater, and I’m so proud of the theater production we had on the West End and on Broadway. But theater is limited to the number of people who can get to see it in that physical proximity, and the potential of film to reach and access people felt so exciting. From the very beginning, we all said, ideally people would watch this and have no idea it started off as a play—it just feels like pure cinema, and Danny’s cinema is in his bones. So I wanted to start from scratch and ask: what is film’s superpower?
Danny will express this more eloquently, but the power of theater is its sense of collective live event—spectacle, and especially humor. There’s a lot of punchy, provocative humor, a bit like the Sun, that got the audience really laughing, and that feels like theater’s power. You’re sharing something in a space. Film is narrative, story, character — you get to go internally inside these people and psychologically understand what motivates them. That was thrilling for me: the idea that I could go deep inside his head and his intentions and his struggle. And what a struggle. They set out these values—that they were going to scrutinize anyone and everyone, whether the royal family, the government, the church, the working man—and a few months later, they become the story, and they have to apply that same value back to themselves. The torture of that, and how Jack portrays it, I think is extraordinary. That’s what film can do better than anyone—the lens, the performance. You’re not playing to an arena; you’re there in these people’s struggle. An audience going on that psychological journey—understanding the fun of being a disrupter at the very beginning, when you don’t really know the legacy or the moral cost of it, and then very quickly finding out the cost — feels so exciting and so moving.
Why was now the right time to do this?
Boyle: I’ve always felt there was — it was gently perceived in me when I watched the play — but I did think it was about the other guy. It wasn’t about Murdoch. I felt that very strongly, and I knew a film would make that clear. Whereas on the stage, it didn’t quite come across like that; you were more dazzled by the live Rupert Murdoch. But it also felt like an ignition point, the beginning of something. And — this is a bit retrospective — it became clear that it was partly about truth. Larry says, “Oh, the truth you want — well, people need stories.” That is such an issue for us at the moment: what are we going to trust, and have we got a central idea of truth anymore? That felt connected directly to them launching this paper. So it felt like you were making a period movie that was completely contemporary. And it’s hard, because the young people on set playing extras — some of them almost didn’t know what newspapers were. They certainly didn’t appreciate how fundamental they were to our lives. They were everything.
O’Connell: The fact that two editions came out in one day as well, and that four or five million people might read the Sun — imagine it. It’s the closest thing to a 24-hour news cycle. One of the lines that really stands out to me is, “Just because we can report on something doesn’t mean we should.” I think the commentary that has on capitalism—that line was being crossed all the time, especially when it comes to reporting and social media, and the way people were constantly hounded by the press—it really resonates.
Graham:Â That’s right.
O’Connell:Â You think of Amy Winehouse and the kind of harassment these people got. Just because you can report on something doesn’t mean you should. What is lost then, in terms of values and core values, by going there?
Graham: I think a lot about the model. If anyone could go back in time — Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the World Wide Web, who gave it away for free. What an incredible gesture, to just have it be free. That was well intentioned. The downside is that because none of us are paying for it, we are the product. So it’s a business model—exactly as you say about capitalism — that goes: whatever gets the most eyeballs, likes, and attention has the most value. And of course, that is not what has the most value. It might be the most unpopular thing that you have to hear. Imagine all the great civil rights movements of the 20th century that wouldn’t have gotten attention because they didn’t start off being popular. But you can’t unwrite the DNA here. It’s the public space that we have, which used to be the Sun; now it’s digital. It’s a moral nightmare that we all have to just not give up on, and try to improve, and fight for.
O’Connell:Â Mind you, I was just walking on the main street past a Bill Gates talk on AI.
Graham:Â What was he basically saying?
Boyle:Â He believes it’s already got away from us.
Graham: Yeah. I’m keeping my hope. You must have thought that so many times in history — “Oh God,” and we somehow found our way through. I have to believe that.
Is that what you were trying to say with that final coda—with all the images you were throwing at us? What was your message with that?
Boyle: It’s very difficult to say “message,” isn’t it? Because I think we’re all complicit in it. These things aren’t just happening to us. Four million people didn’t read the Sun because it was a bad paper. We are all complicit — these are decisions we’re making all the time. If we’re going to reverse it or change it, we have to understand where it’s come from and how we’ve got here. It’s as simple as that. And for me, the solution is more civic pride. I’ve felt that for quite a long time, and it’s part of the reason for making this film. It’s certainly the reason Thatcher’s in the film as a real person — I didn’t want a Thatcher impersonator. That is her, and she did go to his office; it’s documented. She did drink whiskey with him, and she did give him a knighthood. Before there was digital media, she wanted you to concentrate on the self—that singular obsession that excludes a kind of civic pride, which is about sharing things, and not being top dog, and accepting that others have an equal, if not more important, role than you.
So the purpose of putting it there is not to be aloof from it or to claim higher moral ground. It’s actually to say: we are in terrible danger, and I think AI is going to intensify that danger, clearly — as Bill Gates clearly thinks. I don’t know whether he thinks it for the same reasons I do, but that’s clearly true. AI journalists — and there will be AI journalists; if there are going to be AI f–king doctors, there are going to be AI journalists — they’re not going to speak truth to power if the power is the tech giant that created them in the first place. In simplistic terms, that is a danger, and we lose something, really lose something, by that. There are specific cases — in America, Nixon most especially, and in the U.K., phone hacking especially — examples of how crucial it was that these independent journalists, backed by very courageous editors who were risking everything, because the papers could be closed down very easily, managed to prevent something terrible happening. So that’s it. You want it to be in that kind of world, and to be a very entertaining way of getting there — because it has been very entertaining getting there. It has been the “Headless Body in Topless Bar” way of getting there.
Jack, what did you take away from the making of it?
O’Connell: I’m immensely proud of what this film stands for, immensely proud of what it says. Getting the chance to look at James, Danny, everyone involved — it’s really rewarding to be invited to places like Venice and Telluride with a movie like this. It’s such a British story, but what James has always been great at is taking a focus on something quite finite and making it infinite in terms of its relevance, and who it’s relevant to. When you watch the film, it’s a wild ride. It’s adrenalized, it’s punk, it’s naughty, salacious—but they end up with an awful hangover, the terrible comedown that follows. Much like the experience of watching the film: it’s breakneck speed. The shooting experience was quite breakneck speed too. Our days were chock-a-block, crammed Monday to Friday. This is the first time I’ve seen this man sit down.
What was the toughest scene for you to film?
O’Connell: That’s a good question. I think the first ones. The St Bride’s scene was quite early in the schedule — the memorial. I hope I’m not mistaken, but I kept getting Jules’s name wrong. I kept calling her the name of Larry’s wife, Joan — which is a catastrophic error. An affair.
Graham:Â Am I right in thinking the Page 3 scene was early too? That was the first day, wasn’t it?
Boyle: We did Page 3 first, in the fields. We had to film it when there was still vegetation, because we were going to film into the winter. So we literally did that first, and she was incredible, because she’d never done it—she’d never worked before. This was her first job. It’s your first job, and you’ve got to take your clothes off. You think, “What are we doing?” Because I thought we’d moved on from all this. But of course, it’s part of the story — a crucial part of the story — and the way Larry deals with it, the way he just serves it up.
And did you always know you were going to end with that?
Danny Boyle: Yeah, very much so. We followed the chronology by which they achieved this unlikely success in outpacing the Daily Mirror, in overcoming the Goliath — passing the Goliath. So yes, it was always there. We filmed that first. And again, it’s this hand acting he does, which is very Larry. I remember Finn, the editor — a wonderful, very young female editor, very much not my generation—she was obsessed with your hand gestures. Obsessed.
Jack O’Connell:Â Was she?
Danny Boyle:Â Mad about them.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
