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Perhaps you remember the scene: Iggy Pop\u2019s \u201cLust For Life\u201d a gleeful thump on the soundtrack, and Ewan McGregor sprinting through Edinburgh after a shoplifting spree. It was 1996, and for a young UK audience, the opening of Trainspotting became an instant classic, a micro time capsule. All credit to director Danny Boyle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the key creative element was Irvine Welsh, writer of the source novel, and patron saint of British counterculture. Now, three decades on, with many more books in the back catalogue, he takes his own turn in front of the camera in the wry, engaging documentary Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough.<\/p>\n
By the time Welsh made his name, it had already been some time since the early heroin addiction that gave rise to the novel. Still, even now, an interest in altered states remains. The film is framed by a visit to Toronto, and a legal psychedelic therapy centre that should surely one day be the scene of a sitcom. Made comfortable in a pristine room with heavy-duty eye mask, Welsh duly takes natural hallucinogen DMT under the watchful gaze of soothing clinicians. (\u201cThis is Chad, our facilitator.\u201d) Here, the subject is told, he is safe to explore his \u201cjourney space\u201d.<\/p>\n
Our facilitator is director Paul Sng, whose CV includes the poignant documentary Tish<\/a>. And the journey space of the film takes shape as a first-person tour of memories and insights. Acid house, brutalist estates, Thatcherism and Scottish independence all feature, alongside interior matters of love and death.<\/p>\n Beyond Toronto, a less cosmic scene finds Welsh at the South Beach Boxing gym in Miami, the city where he now spends much of his time, describing the connection between the sport and writing. (Both are \u201ca square go with yourself\u201d.) Meanwhile, Liam Neeson, Maxine Peake, Stephen Graham and others read excerpts from the bibliography.\u00a0<\/p>\n