The boys are back.
Well, not counting Tommy of course. Or, rather, not counting the Tommy that we knew.
And taking into account that they are no longer boys. Though still trainspotting. Well, some of them.
Twenty years later Renton is back. And so, as well, are all his old friends: “sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger”.
We are told that, between them, “much has changed but just as much remains the same”.
As you recall, when we last left them, Renton had just fucked Begbie and Sick Boy up the ass. He left with the money. He did leave some for Spud, but the assumption was that he would never be back. And that, this time around, he was going to choose “life”.
Well, sometimes that sort of thing just doesn’t work out. So he is back again to reality trying to come up with the least harrowing agenda for making it though the days, the weeks, the months. Of course now he’s accumulated 20 more years to make himself all the wiser.
Or not perhaps.
Another trek into the trials and the tribulations of the lumpenproletariat. The idea is that in so many ways, they’re all just scumbags. But somehow [for some of us] that doesn’t make them any less “one of us”. Also, the occasional flashback. Enabling us to garner a little more understanding about how the boy becomes the man. The part that embodies, among other things, dasein.
IMDb
[b]Robert Carlyle kept away from his family in Glasgow while filming because he became so much like Begbie.
The opening shot of the movie mirrors that of Trainspotting (1996), only Renton is this time running on a treadmill rather than the streets of Edinburgh.
Although Irvine Welsh wrote a follow-up to his novel Trainspotting in 2002 called ‘Porno’, this movie follow-up is actually only very loosely based on ‘Porno.’ It is mostly an original story which includes some unused parts of the Trainspotting novel, and some elements from Porno. That being said, during pre-production, this film was titled ‘Porno.’ [/b]
trivia at IMDb: imdb.com/title/tt2763304/tri … =ttqu_sa_1
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2_Trainspotting
trailer: youtu.be/EsozpEE543w
T2 TRAINSPOTTING [2017]
Directed by Danny Boyle
[b]Begbie [in prison about to be denied patrole]: Five more years, eh? What do they think I am? They think I’m like one of those cunts in the Bible that live forever? Is that what they think? I’ve written letters, you know. Letters to every cunt. Even wrote to the Queen. Never got back to us, like. Too fucking busy to speak to the working classes. Different story when she needs a soldier.
…
Begbie [to his attorney]: So you gonna press that little yellow button or no?
…
Spud [in group therapy]: Daylight saving. Me, I’m no one way or another when it comes to daylight. Like, neither a saver nor a spender. More like just agnostic, you know? Unfortunately, daylight hasn’t shown the same ambivalence towards me. I had a job… Construction. Laboring, a bit of carpentry, a bit of plumbing now and again. I mean, it wasn’t my first choice of vocation, but the cuts at the benefit office made it clear. No coal, no dole. So, I’m off the skag. I’m seeing Gail, little Fergus, though he’s not so little anymore, but this was back then. Basically, I’m holding it together. Then, one morning, I gets to work and gets fired for being an hour late. And then, one hour late at the DSS to explain why I lost the job. And an hour late to appeal against losing my benefits. And an hour late for my work-focused interview. An hour late for my supervised visit with little Fergus. And late again to social services to explain why. Eventually, I let on to it. It was the clocks. Going forward one hour. British Summer Time, they calls it. It wasn’t even warm. I was still wearing a jumper. “Happens every year, Mr. Murphy.” How was I supposed to know? I’ve been on skag for 15 years. You know how it is… Daylight isn’t exactly high on your agenda when you got a habit.[/b]
Same old Spud!
[b]Deputy headmaster: Who are you?
Sick Boy: I’m your blackmailer. And your salvation. You cooperate with me, no one will ever see this video. Now, my research suggests that, as deputy headmaster of one of Edinburgh’s leading private schools, you earn, near enough, 70,000 per annum. It’s not in my interest to squeeze you too hard, and it’s not in your interest to provoke me. So let’s meet in the middle. 10% of your salary per annum. Paid monthly on a rolling, indefinite basis.
Deputy headmaster: You disgusting shit! I will not stand for this!
Sick Boy: Naturally, you’ll have to lie to your wife. If you need inspiration, just imagine her reaction to that. Or how this might interest the pupils of that leading private school. I think they might enjoy the interlude with the strap-on. I know I did. I’m gonna text you the details of a bank account. I expect to see a 1,000 payment in there by the end of the week.
…
Spud [after Renton just saved him from asphyxiating]: You ruined my life, and now you’re ruining my fucking death too!
…
Renton: I gave you 4000 pounds!!!
Spud: Well, what did you think I would do with it? I WAS A FUCKING JUNKIE!
Renton: Yes…Yes, I suppose you was.
Spud: I still am.
…
Sick Boy [thumping Renton with a pool stick]: 16,000 pounds! You thieving fucking bastard!
Renton: You missed a trick! That’s what hurts, isn’t it? That I had the brains and the fucking balls to steal the money and you didn’t!
…
Renton [to Sick Boy, laying a packet of money on the table]: This is for you.
…
Sick Boy [to Veronika]: Fuck’s sake. We did a deal back then. Twenty years ago. Couple of bags of H. Good quality stuff. We took it to London. Me, him, Begbie, Spud Murphy. Sold it. Not a bad price. 16,000, to be divided in four equal parts. He ran off with it. Took it all. And now what does he think I am, a whore? He can just pay me off? 4,000, not even any interest. What am I supposed to do with that? Buy a fucking time machine? Live my life all over again? Only this time without being robbed and betrayed by my best fucking friend! No, it doesn’t work like that. What I’m gonna do, Veronika, is I’m gonna draw him back in as my friend, my very best friend, my partner, and then I’m gonna hurt him. I’m gonna hurt him in every way that I can.
…
Renton [to Veronika]: So, you’re plan B.
…
Renton [to Sick Boy and Veronika]: This place is a goldmine. It’s a certainty. I mean, these are people who’ve been abandoned by their political class. But at least they have what we don’t… A sense of identity.
…
Renton [voiceover]: The Battle of the Boyne was fought on the 11th of July, 1690, between two rival claimants of the British and Irish thrones, James II, Catholic, and William of Orange, Protestant. The battle was decisive. The Protestants won. But 400 years later, the uncompromising and victorious loyalists now feel estranged from the modern, secular United Kingdom. The sectarian songs have been banned, but they still gather and remain loyal to the victory of 1690, and to a simpler, less tolerant time.[/b]
The rest, as they say, is history. Sort of.
[b]Begbie [to his son who wants to manage hotels]: Stick one on then, you cunt. Take a fucking swipe at me. Do it. Do it! No, you cannot fucking do that. See, if you were my son, you’d have stabbed us there. I’d be lying, breathing my last through a hole in my chest. But you cannot fucking do that!
…
Diane [now a solicitor]: So, are you the woman in the video?
Veronika: My face is not seen.
Diane: Do you have any identifying marks? Tattoos on your buttocks?
Veronika: Certainly not.
Diane: On your perineum?
[pause]
Renton [to a confused Veronika]: It’s the bit of skin between your vagina and your bumhole.
Veronika: That’s disgusting.
Diane: So you’re not vajazzled.
…
Diane: Does he still take heroin?
Renton: No.
Diane: Do you?
Renton: No. Not for 20 years.
…
Veronika: What’s ‘Choose life’?
Renton: What?
Veronika: ‘Choose life’. Simon says it sometimes. He says “Choose life, Veronika!”
Renton: ‘Choose life’. ‘Choose life’ was a well meaning slogan from a 1980’s anti-drug campaign and we used to add things to it, so I might say for example, choose… designer lingerie, in the vain hope of kicking some life back into a dead relationship. Choose handbags, choose high-heeled shoes, cashmere and silk, to make yourself feel what passes for happy. Choose an iPhone made in China by a woman who jumped out of a window and stick it in the pocket of your jacket fresh from a South-Asian Firetrap. Choose Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and a thousand others ways to spew your bile across people you’ve never met. Choose updating your profile, tell the world what you had for breakfast and hope that someone, somewhere cares. Choose looking up old flames, desperate to believe that you don’t look as bad as they do. Choose live-blogging, from your first wank 'til your last breath; human interaction reduced to nothing more than data. Choose ten things you never knew about celebrities who’ve had surgery. Choose screaming about abortion. Choose rape jokes, slut-shaming, revenge porn and an endless tide of depressing misogyny. Choose 9/11 never happened, and if it did, it was the Jews. Choose a zero-hour contract and a two-hour journey to work. And choose the same for your kids, only worse, and maybe tell yourself that it’s better that they never happened. And then sit back and smother the pain with an unknown dose of an unknown drug made in somebody’s fucking kitchen. Choose unfulfilled promise and wishing you’d done it all differently. Choose never learning from your own mistakes. Choose watching history repeat itself. Choose the slow reconciliation towards what you can get, rather than what you always hoped for. Settle for less and keep a brave face on it. Choose disappointment and choose losing the ones you love, then as they fall from view, a piece of you dies with them until you can see that one day in the future, piece by piece, they will all be gone and there’ll be nothing left of you to call alive or dead. Choose your future, Veronika. Choose life…Anyway, it amused us at the time.
…
Sick Boy [to Renton at the same spot that Tommy took them]: Well, I’m trying hard, Mark, but I’m not feeling anything. We were young. Bad things happened. It’s over. Can we go home now?
…
[Begbie drops Viagra in his bathroom stall and they end up in Renton’s]
Renton [laughing]: What all this then? Planning a special event are we sir?
Begbie: Give me the tablets pal!
Renton: Remember not to exceed the stated dose.
Begbie: Give me the fucking tablets or I’ll come through there and pound your fucking head in!
Renton: Alright fucking calm down. For fuck sake.
Begbie: Cunt.
Renton: Prick!
[Begbie and Renton realize who they’re talking to…Renton slowly heads toward the stall door]
Begbie [looking over the side of the stall]: CUNT!
…
Renton: Look, we’re here as an act of memorial.
Sick Boy: Nostalgia. That’s why you’re here. You’re a tourist in your own youth. Just 'cause you had a near-death experience, and now you’re feeling all fuzzy and warm. What other moments will you be revisiting? Here’s a good one. How about the time you sold Tommy his very first hit, leading him on to heroin addiction, HIV infection, and ultimately his death at the age of…what was it, 22, 23?
Renton: Twenty-three.
Sick Boy: Twenty-three. How innocent was that?
Renton: Aye, that’s mine. How’s yours? Don’t know what you’re talking about. She’d be a woman by now. Maybe kids of her own. But she never got that far, did she? Never got to lead her life. Because her father, someone who should have been looking after her, protecting his own infant, was too busy filling his own veins with heroin to check that she was breathing properly. How do you keep a lid on that one?
…
Spud [voiceover, writing his stories]: First, there’s an opportunity. And then, there is a betrayal.
[cut to Sick boy]
Sick Boy: Mark stole from me. His best friend. So this money is mine.
Spud [voiceover]: First, there is an opportunity. And then, there is a betrayal.
[cut to Renton]:
Renton [to Veronika]: Simon knew that Francis Begbie was out, and he chose to keep that a secret. I owe him nothing. We owe him nothing.
…
Renton [to Veronika]: I did steal the money, but they shouldn’t have been surprised. I mean, we stole from all sorts of people. Shops, businesses, neighbours, family. Friends was just one more class of victim.
…
Begbie: There’s something I have to do tonight, and then I’m going away. One way or another, it’ll be a long time before you see me again. So I just thought I’d come by. I just thought I’d come by and say good luck, son. That’s all.
Son: Thanks, Dad.
Begbie: See, it’s difficult for me, 'cause… We never had any of that when I was a boy. Not, like, hotel…
Son: Management.
Begbie: Aye, hotel fucking management, all that shit. I never has any of that. Still… World changes, eh, June? Even if we don’t. So… Look after yourself, son.
[pause]
Begbie: The old wino was my father. This fool is yours. You’ll be a better man than either of us. [/b]
It struck me as totally unbelievable however. Entirely scripted in other words.
[b]Begbie: You know, I killed a man once. A man who’d done nothing to me. Cunt just looked at me the wrong way in a moment when I was thinking of you. I’ve been thinking about you for 20 year. When you robbed us. Your best mates. Never got my money back. Never got my hope back. I always promised myself that one day… Come on, Rent Boy. Not like you to be so shy. Renton: I remember my first day at primary school. My very first day. And the teacher, she said, “Good morning, Mark. You can sit here, next to Francis.” Remember that, Franco? You were older. You’d been kept back.
Begbie: I remember that well enough. Aye.
Renton: Had it all before us, didn’t we? Had it all still to come. And now here we are.
Begbie: Aye. You’ve done all right. World’s all right for smart cunts, but what about me? What about fucking men like me? What do I get? All I can take with my bare hands. All I can get with my fists. Is that what I fucking get?
[he hammers a hole in the wall of the room where Renton is hiding]
Begbie: Who’s the fucking smart cunt now?!
…
Sick Boy: He’s doing what?
Renton: Writing them down.
Sick Boy: Really?
Renton: That’s what he told me.
Sick Boy: Murphy?
Renton: Apparently so.
Sick Boy: So, who’s gonna read 'em?
Renton: Well, that’s the problem. Nobody.
[cut to Gail reading them with Spud]
Gail: I thought of a title.[/b]
And we all know what that is.