Filthmonger: Jon S. Baird revisits Filth ahead of home release

We’re used to our big screen law enforcers being a little bit edgy. From ‘Dirty Harry’ Callahan to Lethal Weapon’s Riggs, movie cops have had no qualms about embracing their dark side to get the job done. But Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy), the protagonist of Jon S. Baird’s film adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s darkly comic novel of the same name, takes this anti-hero shtick to a new level.

Somewhere between him taking part in bouts of erotic asphyxiation with his boss’s wife (Kate Dickie), slipping his straight-laced best friend (Eddie Marsan) a Mickey so that he can have a night of debauchery in Berlin and generally humiliating his oblivious Lothian Police colleagues (who are played by Jamie Bell, Gary Lewis and Imogen Poots) you realise this scumbag makes previous cinematic bad lieutenants look like Hamish Macbeth.

What’s remarkable about Filth, however, is that you end up rooting for the little sicko. The reason it’s hard not to be swept up in this depraved character’s antics is twofold: the gusto with which star McAvoy embraces his inner bad-guy and the morbid comic energy director Baird mines from Bruce’s misbehaviour.

Baird is currently hard at work preparing to shoot the first three episodes of Danny Boyle’s comedy-drama Babylon, the pilot of which screened last night on Channel 4. We spoke to the 42-year-old filmmaker from Babylon’s London production office ahead of Filth’s home video release.

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"We’re an incredibly talented and creative race, the Scots, but sometimes I don’t think we believe in ourselves enough" – Jon S. Baird

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The Skinny: When did you first read the book?

Jon S. Baird: I read it back when it came out in ’98, I wasn’t working in the film industry at the time, so I was reading it very raw, as someone who’d just finished university, but I was fascinated by the main character [Lothian Police detective Bruce Robertson] and went back to the books over the years. By the time I met Irvine [Welsh], I think it was about ten years later, I was working in the film industry and I just said, ‘Look, I’d love to take on this book,’ and it just sort of came from there. 

What was it about this character that you found so fascinating?

He’s the ultimate anti-hero. He’s very funny, but you shouldn’t really laugh with him, or laugh at him, but you kind of do. He’s tragic, he’s disgusting, he’s just extremes on all levels. I think as a species we are very interested in those types of characters, regardless of whether we like them or not. That was really why I was interested in him: I wanted to see if I could make an audience empathise, or at least follow, the ultimate bad guy. 

Your version of Bruce is a bit less extreme than Welsh's version, though...

I think whenever you do an adaptation it’s always going to be different – however you choose to do it. I think our version of Bruce maybe has more dimensions to him, and I think Irvine might agree with that actually. Bruce in the book is falling apart physically: you’re finding out about his flaky balls and his hemorrhoids and what have you. I never thought a movie audience would find that so interesting – or palatable. I thought the psychological deterioration would be more interesting.

In particular we’ve added a character called Mary, who’s played by Joanne Froggatt, and I think that her character makes Bruce different in the film. She does appear in the book but as a far smaller character. We’ve made her a lot more important in the film, and that’s to let an audience in to Bruce’s humanity.

Several filmmakers have tried to adapt the book over the years but never managed it. People started to claim it was unfilmable. How did you crack it?

I think everyone was afraid of the tapeworm growing through the middle of it. It’s a strange narrative device: the tapeworm was kind of [Bruce’s] conscience and gives you his backstory. So I found a character, Doctor Rossi [played in the film by Jim Broadbent], that I amalgamated with the tapeworm, but I made him into a psychiatrist as opposed to just a GP, therefore he’d do the same job – he’d let us learn about Bruce, but without it being very expositional.

I dealt with those scenes first and once I got them down it became relatively straightforward. When you’ve got a really interesting, complex character you can always make a story about them; you can always find a narrative for them. Irvine is very strong at writing character and dialogue – you’re really spoiled. It gets trickier with his narrative and his structure, so it’s just joining the dots together that’s the tricky part.

What drew you to James McAvoy for the lead?

He approached us. Irvine and I weren’t convinced he was going to be right, we’d only seen him in particular roles. But then eventually we met him and were just blown away. He’s just so different to what we thought he would be. I was expecting him to be a posh jock but he’s a street jock, for want of a better description, from Drumchapel. His grasp of mental illness as well was something that really won us over. He’d had experience of people growing up around him who he’d seen going through stuff, and likewise I had. I think that’s what really sealed the deal, his understanding of this character was just so in-depth that we just couldn’t ignore him. 

In the role, McAvoy proves himself the be a great comic actor. Your film really brings out the dark humour of Welsh’s book...

The film was intended to be even more of a black comedy than it turned out. There are two big setpieces that are on the DVD that were cut out the film, and you’ll see by watching them that the tone is slightly different. But I think we found the film it should have been at the end of the day, but I always wanted it to be a dark comedy first and foremost. It just got slightly darker than I thought it was going to be just as we discovered in the edit how we would get Bruce to that final place and get the audience to spiral down with him. 

Were you surprised by how popular Filth’s been with audiences?

As an egotistical film director I would like to think that it was always going to be popular, but I know what you mean. We thought it might have been more an art-house movie and we were very pleased to see the reaction from the mainstreams – you know the big multiplexes, they were really behind it. We end up having more trouble getting the art-house cinemas to screen it than the big multiplexes. And Lionsgate, when they saw its mainstream potential they really got behind it, and I think a lot of it has to do with a guy at Lionsgate called Ross Cunningham, he’s a Glaswegian, and he’s their head of marketing, and he just did a brilliant job on pitching this film to the right places. You hear a film called Filth and you think it’s going to be really hard going, but if you market it in an exuberant way you can get people interested. What I was really glad about is that the home audience took to it so well. 

Do you think its success, and the recent success of other Scottish films like Sunshine on Leith, will lead to more varied films being made in Scotland?

I hope so. It’s showing that there is an audience, and it’s showing that they can travel as well. I think the problem is confidence. We’re an incredibly talented and creative race, the Scots, but sometimes I don’t think we believe in ourselves enough. I really hope, as a very proud Scotsman, that films like Filth will give people the encouragement to go out there and just go for it and not be limited to this idea that we can only do social realism – there’s a place for that but people want to be entertained as well. I think there is a place to entertain people, to make them laugh and cry in the same film – and to be disgusted, or whatever kind of emotion you want. 

I believe Irvine Welsh was quite sceptical about you getting the film made. I hear you had a bet that he would get a tattoo if you pulled it off...

Yeah, he got a tattoo done. I’d completely forgotten that he was going to do it. He never showed me it ‘til the first time he saw the first cut. We were in this hotel in London and Harvey Weinstein was in the bar we were in, and he’d had the rights for the book previously, which all sounds very convenient but this is how it happened. Harvey walked past a very drunk Irvine Welsh, who at that point raised his t-shirt to show him the tattoo of the book cover, which is the pig’s face with the policeman's helmet, and he said, ‘Here, Harvey, ya C.U.N.T, look what you missed out on.’ True story.

From the Archive:

Screening the Obscene: Irvine Welsh on Filth