DANNY BOYLE'S GUIDE TO MAKING BRUM A MOVIE STAR

TRAINSPOTTING director Danny Boyle came to Birmingham thinking it would be a great place to make a thriller - but he went away dreaming of romance. . .

He was in town to promote his new film Millions, but when the Birmingham Mail showed him the sights he suddenly realised like so many people before him that his preconceptions were all wrong.

Now he wants aspiring filmmakers to know that if they want to make a name for themselves, they should capture the reborn city on film.

'It surprised me just how romantic Birmingham was in a kind of way I just wasn't expecting,' says Danny.

'My instinct before you showed me round was that, yeah, it would be a very good place to make a thriller - I was always a fan of Gangsters. (Philip Saville, 1975).

'Yet I found it to be the very opposite of what I was thinking.

'I can see how you could make a romantic comedy there and romanticise the place in the kind of way that Richard Curtis does with West London.

'You could have a Friends-type thing where people are wondering more about how to spend their money than to earn it.

'We're now a nation of shoppers, everything is all about shopping - that is what has really helped to bring peace to Belfast where I spent a long time living. The women decided they just wanted to shop.'

Danny is now based in London's East End, but still visits his family regularly in Manchester.

He adds: 'You've got everything going here for the city.

'All you need now is a champion, a young film-maker with a great style who will come and say 'This is my town, this is my film'.'

Our first stop on Danny's tour is the Mailbox, Europe's largest mixed-use urban building.

Then it's off to the Bullring to take in St Martin's Church and Selfridges, New Street, Cannon Street, St Philip's Square, Colmore Row and Victoria Square.

We then move on to Chamberlain Square, Centenary Square and back into the rear of the Mailbox via Gas Street basin.

Danny, who has directed Ewan McGregor, Leonardo Dicaprio, Cameron Diaz and Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston says: 'What you need are iconic buildings.

'I just love the way Selfridges is next to the old church. That's very filmic. It's just what modern architecture should do.

'This is the sort of thing that galvanises everybody and you gradually build up the profile.

'I've seen so many wonderful parts of Birmingham today.

'I never knew the square at St Philip's Cathedral was there. It looks incredible and all of the other squares are just so beautiful.'

MILLIONS (12A) cost £6 million to produce, making it a good earner for the north west where Danny got permission to shoot in the new Selfridges in his native Manchester.

It tells the story of two boys who find nearly a quarter of a million pounds in a holdall, days before the introduction of the euro will render it worthless.

After a special Mail preview at (Cineworld) Broad Street, our readers were able to quiz Danny about his work which ranges from RSC theatre productions to Inspector Morse and other movies like Shallow Grave and A Life Less Ordinary.

But Trainspotting is the film he's most famous for and Danny says he's hoping to make a sequel to the most talked about British movie of the 90s.

Asked whether filmmakers should get tax breaks, he argues against it.

'Most of the British film industry is just not very good and lots of people think you can't be a film director unless you've been to Oxbridge.

'If you look at the pop industry, which gets no tax breaks, we make the best music in the world for the size of our country.

'It's all about talent and music is where a lot of our most talented people are - Noel Gallagher should have a go at making a film.

'Orson Welles said anyone could learn how to use a camera to direct in just an afternoon, the rest is all about knowing how to tell a story.'

After the Q&A and then watching a screening of Ridley Scott's blockbuster Kingdom of Heaven - 'it was dull' - Danny walked down Broad Street alone late at night.

'The cinema staff asked me if I didn't want a taxi to get back to my hotel in case I got beaten up!' he admits.

'People were partying even though it was late at night and in mid week.

'There's so many bars and there was loads going on.

'I found Broad Street really exciting'.

And that, folks, sums Danny up to a T. Wherever he goes, he listens, learns and assimilates. With Slumdog Millionaire, out on Friday, he cranks that ability up to the nth degree.