“The dogs would sit in the sun, apparently asleep,” he says. “They were really mangy. Absolutely rabies-on-legs-type dogs. And you had to tread carefully over them... They always appeared to be asleep, but if you looked closely, you’d see one of their eyes a tiny bit open. They were watching everything.”
“It was a nice metaphor for the lowest of the low,” Beaufoy recalls, “for this person who apparently knows nothing, who is worthless, but actually he’s been watching all his life, and he knows everything.”
That’s why Beaufoy coined the title 'Slumdog Millionaire' for the name of his new movie, directed by Danny Boyle. Slumdog refers to the title character, Jamal, a street urchin who claws his way into adulthood and winds up a contestant on the Indian version of the game show 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire'. Jamal is poised to win Rs 20 million when he’s arrested and accused of cheating.
Slumdog is based loosely on Q&A: A Novel, a collection of short stories, by Vikas Swarup. Aside from the original conceit, the operatic, kinetic narrative of the film springs from Beaufoy, who deftly balances a fusion of memory and reality, of Jamal’s nerve-racking stint on the TV show, his brutal police interrogation, the story of his hardscrabble life and the idiosyncratic fashion by which he’s come to know the answers to the questions.
The film evokes “the rapacious development” of modern India. “The place is on steroids,” says the writer, who immersed himself for weeks in the neighbourhoods of Mumbai, listening to conversations at tea stands.
“You have to be careful making that kind of film that you don’t parachute yourself in as a middle class white guy from London,” he says.
Beaufoy started out as a documentary filmmaker. The filmmakers were shocked when their $3.5-million indie, 1997’s 'The Full Monty', turned into a worldwide sensation, grossing about $257 million. Before the film’s release, Beaufoy was so broke that he sold his share in the project — for a mere 500 pounds — an interest that wound up being worth millions.
“I never did a film for cash, though it would be nice to be very rich... I didn’t come here because I wasn’t good enough technically. I felt that I had to go away and learn to write.” Beaufoy stayed in England making small films that interested him.
“You can’t do subtext and nuance in India. You have to be operatic and dramatic. It’s no coincidence that all these Bollywood films have singing and dancing. I was infused. I was writing in a way I hadn’t written before.”
“I never felt sorry for a single person I met,” Beaufoy says. “...you expect to wander the slums and see all these poor people and go, ‘Isn’t it sad.’ You don’t feel that for a minute. They’re all living their lives.”
