Film

Irvine Welsh says Bob Dole a big help in Trainspotting’s success in the US

’He was one of the real unsung heroes of the whole marketing campaign. He kind of broke me in United States. So thank you Bob’

Irvine Welsh: said that looking back on his own experiences with addiction he is of the belief that 'anybody can become an addict' but that 'you have to have compelling reasons to stay one'. Photographer: Dara Mac Dónaill

Olivia Kelleher
Sat Jul 22 2023 - 15:39

Scottish novelist and playwright Irvine Welsh has attributed the success of his book Trainspotting in the US to the late Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole who in 1996 said that the film adaptation of the same name “glorified heroin”.

In an interview with Second Captains Saturday, on RTÉ Radio 1, Mr Welsh said that Senator Dole, who died in 2021 after a 27-year career in the Senate, inadvertently raised his profile in the US.

“The Bob Dole thing was brilliant because he basically was my PR in [the] United States because nobody knew who I was was. I was actually heartbroken when he died a couple of years ago.

“I was actually quite heartbroken because he was one of the real unsung heroes of the whole marketing campaign. He kind of broke me in United States. So thank you Bob.”

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In September 1996, Senator Dole denounced both Trainspotting which starred Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Whilst on the campaign trail he said that both films promoted “the romance of heroin”.

The makers of Trainspotting said they didn’t understand the criticism from the Republican stalwart. They stressed that the film and its source material in fact showed the “horrors of heroin use”.

Mr Welsh told the show he was relieved when Trainspotting failed to make the shortlist for the 1993 Booker Prize. It had made the long list but was subsequently rejected for the shortlist because it “offended the sensibilities of two judges”.

He said that winning the Booker Prize would have been the worst thing that could have happened to his career.

“Because I would have been another writer who was in this literary establishment and was getting asked to write pieces for The New Yorker and all that kind of stuff. Because I was so ostentatiously rejected by the literary establishment . . . I was kind of painted perennially as this glittery bad boy. Which was a fabulous cachet for me and much more congruous with the audience that I had picked up. So it was a fabulous thing for me to have that rejection from the Booker crowd.”

Mr Welsh said that looking back on his own experiences with addiction he is of the belief that “anybody can become an addict” but that “you have to have compelling reasons to stay one”.

“To be involved in something so destructive to your own health and social life you have to have a good reason to stay there. Usually it is post-traumatic stress.

A lot of people in the rehab groups I went to were self-medicating in some way. They were self-medicating for some kind of trauma. Maybe they were abused as kids or they were in an abusive relationship or they were suffering from some kind of anxiety or depression issue that hadn’t been treated. The heroin use was the manifestation of that. ”

Mr Welsh said the lasting cultural impact of Trainspotting, which was published 30 years ago this month, has led to the creation of a new musical in the West End. The 64-year-old says the musical, which is set to debut next year, is darker than the book or the film.

“It is darker in terms of storytelling but there is some great new songs and great singing and dancing routines. There is a lot more humour in it. I don’t want people just to come away feeling completely miserable or having their own sense of misery vindicated.

“You have to challenge people’s misery as well. You have got to use humour. I love people adapting my stuff for stage and screen and I love adapting it myself. There are all sorts of ways the story can be told differently or it can be improved or augmented. To give it a whole different spirit or emphasis.

“That is fabulous. I would rather if somebody did something I didn’t actually like rather than they did a supposed ‘faithful reproduction’. I would rather be annoyed than bored.”

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