Note: The following is a transcript of an episode of Glaring Admissions, a podcast dedicated to celebrating and promoting the best/most iconic films that the show’s hosts have never seen.

Trainspotting (1996)
Directed by Danny Boyle
Screenplay by John Hodge
Starring: Ewan McGregor
Ewen Bremner
Jonny Lee Miller
Kevin McKidd
Robert Carlyle
Kelly MacDonald

Episode Transcript:

Nick: I thought it’d be really cool to try something new on the show, which is me reading a couple of critical reviews from when the movie first came out, as well as a submitted review by a subscriber or two. We only have one of those, so I’ll just start with that. It’s by The Baird, The Beard? I don’t know how to pronounce your name, dude, but you can correct me in the comments. And in the future, you know, everyone listening, I do say what we’re going to do a week or two before we do it. So if you wanna have your comments read, that’s a good way to do it. You just do it there. Anyway, The Baird says, “It’s a seminal movie for British millennials like me. I’ve seen it countless times, but can never watch any of the scenes with the baby.” Which is relatable. I, I do get that.

Raekwon: Yeah

Nick: Meanwhile, the great Roger Ebert gave it a three out of four back in the day and said, “Trainspotting uses a colorful vocabulary. It contains a lot of energy. It elevates its miserable heroes to the status of icons, in their own eyes that is. And it does evoke the Edinburgh drug landscape with a conviction that seems born of close observation. But what else does it do? Does it lead anywhere? Say anything? Not really. That’s the whole point.” Which I, I don’t agree with, but good on ya, Roger Ebert

Raekwon: Three, three out of four is pretty good, you know

Nick: Yeah, it, it’s a good score, but

he, he also kinda shits on it a bit there

Raekwon: And I don’t know either if I totally agree that it doesn’t say anything, and that’s the sort of the point of it. What he may be getting at, at, at least like what I, what I think, is that there’s no, you know, buttoned up, “Hey, don’t do drugs,” kinda message at the end of it.

That’s kind of what people are probably expecting

Nick: They were expecting the PSA of the woman like, “This is your brain on heroin,” and then she smashes the egg.

Raekwon: Yeah. That, that’s what, like, I think he’s alluding to is like, “Oh, does it e- even say anything about anti-drug use?” Like, no, it doesn’t, but that, that actually is a point not for them to do it

Nick: Next up, and it’s funny you mention the whole, like, romanticizing and playing up the heroin thing, ’cause Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, who gave the movie an A, said, “In Trainspotting, Danny Boyle works in a fever dream style derived in equal measure from the street operas of Martin Scorsese and the adrenaline aesthetic of music videos.”

A bit later he says, “The movie will doubtlessly be accused of glorifying heroin, and in a sense it’ll stand guilty as charged. It’s a brutally honest depiction of the fun of drugs, yet we’re also presented with a hero who knows on some level that he’s in free fall, trashing his life.” I think that’s true.

I agree

Raekwon: Yeah, same. I don’t think that showing the fun of drugs doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re glorifying them. You know, the, it’s fun for, like, the second that you’re feeling the euphoria from it, but there’s literally a scene of him when he ODs being like, “Oh, this feels amazing,” and then

Nick: Being fucking dead?

Raekwon: Yeah. Like,

Nick: Being dead, you mean?

Raekwon: I’m almost dead. This is amazing

Nick: Every Tumblr user ever.

Raekwon: Yeah, right

Nick: Moving on to the next review, this one’s from Janet Maslin of The New York Times. She gave a positive review, and she said, “If this reckless British hit has attracted an ardent following and spun off everything short of its own ice cream flavor, then the wicked charisma of its mordant junkies really does explain why. Dark as its subject matter is, this film manages this incredible trick of remaining jubilant and fresh.” Yeah, it’s kind of what we were just saying. Like, I don’t

think the movie is glorifying drug use. Like, there’s a tragic element to it where you could argue that the characters are what’s fun about this movie, and it’s tragic that these characters are being eroded by abusing drugs

Raekwon: And that’s the point.

Nick: And that’s

the point.

Raekwon: the point.

Nick: And I do, I do have one more. I actually did lie to you. I have one more from a comment by trickydick69 of thewhitehouse.movies.

Raekwon: Hmm.

Nick: Totally real.

Raekwon: Yeah.

Nick: “Wow, this movie is all I needed to see to settle it. We should start a war on drugs that we prop up by actually bringing drugs into impoverished neighborhoods. Let’s create a crack epidemic and wiretap the Watergate Hotel.” That was trickydick69 of thewhitehouse dot moo-oo-oo-vies

Raekwon: That guy sounds evil. He sounds like the reason for everything that’s fucked up

Nick: Sounds like his flop sweat will cause him to lose an election, and then an assassination will cause him to win one. And that’s the point.

Raekwon: And that’s the point.

Nick: Jo- jokes aside, so that, that’s all to say Trainspotting, beloved film. Beloved movie. It’s been around for 30 years. People loved it from day one, clearly, and it has endured this status of being a beloved film. Raekwon, this was your first time watching this movie after years and years and years of me practically begging you to

Raekwon: Yeah. I think I texted you while I was watching it for the first time that my initial reaction first time watching was that this is a lot goofier than I thought it was going to be, and then it just takes a sharp turn at the about 45-minute mark where I’m like, “Oh, this is, this is actually dark.”

Nick: Yeah, it’s, I remember that. You were watching the movie and you’re like, “Yeah, this is a really fun film.” And I was like, “Oh, he didn’t get up to the baby scene yet.” And then like 10 minutes later you texted me to be like, “Anyway,”

Raekwon: Yeah.

Nick: I don’t think I’m gonna take drugs. I think I’m gonna choose life, Nick.

Raekwon: You know what? I think I’m gonna choose life, choose a house, choose a mortgage

Nick: Choose a big fucking television.

Raekwon: Choose a career

Nick: Yeah, I love the Scottish accents in this movie so much. Have you just been kind of launching into them here and there without warning for the past week?

We should apologize profusely, by the way, to anybody from Scotland

Raekwon: Oh, yeah.

Nick: We are so sorry.

Raekwon: Our accents are shite is what they’re gonna say.

Nick: like, “It’s Shite doing an accent,” you know? Oh my God, Ewan McGregor, are you in the room right now? No, no, but you’re so right, and it’s really funny because every time I rewatch this movie… So for, for everyone listening or watching’s reference, Trainspotting is, like, one of my favorite movies of all time. It was on my Letterboxd top four for the longest time.

It’s a movie I’ve basically watched every year since I was in high school. Every time I rewatch this movie, without fail, like, random phrases from it just become vocal stems for me for, like, a week or two. And I’m, I’m so glad that we got to, like, sit down and you got to watch this movie

because this almost is, like, the Rosetta Stone of Nick movies in a way

Raekwon: Yeah. It’s interesting because a- as long as I’ve known you, I’ve known that Trainspotting is one of your favorite movies

Nick: What gave it away? Just like the really pasty, skinny art kid in college vibe or what?

Raekwon: So yeah, that’s, that’s a kid who likes Trainspotting for sure.

Nick: That guy did not choose life. He’s wearing purple jeans and combat boots in a 90-degree studio

Raekwon: He’s wearing a beanie and a T-shirt right now

Nick: 21-year-old Nick feels so seen that you remember that, but he’s also so upset that you do also

Raekwon: Yeah, but it is, uh, it’s just funny knowing that this is a very Nick movie. And the first watch I was like, “Okay, I see why Nick digs this movie. It has the elements that I think that you would like.” I mean, the music is awesome. And one thing that I really loved was in the scenes where they were getting high or about to get high, the music always complemented it really well

Nick: I completely agree with you. I, I’m biased because, like I just said, this is like my Rosetta Stone. The music in this is what I listen to on a daily basis. Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, New Order. Underworld, their song Born Slippy has literally been on every workout playlist I’ve had since I was a teenager. And if I ever get a tattoo, it is probably going to be the words born slippy, choose life, or something like that.

But what’s so cool about it is, as you said, it’s very fun, it’s very in your face, but it is laced with double meanings. So like, for example, there’s that very powerful scene when Renton overdoses. And Swanny, your mother superior, is like taking him out to be hoisted to the hospital in a cab, and we’re listening to Lou Reed’s Perfect Day.

And it’s just… It’s so poetic. And in a weird way, it is a perfect day for the character in that moment because he’s feeling all of these conflicting emotions. He just got Spud, poor innocent Spud, sent to jail for like six months.

Raekwon: Угу

Nick: And he’s at the lowest of all lows, he’s going through withdrawal, and the perfect day is that one extra hit. And that’s a difficult thing to say, and that’s a difficult thing to feel, but the movie finds a way to allow us to feel that misery while also still having him cracking jokes in the lead-up to it, where he’s like, “Would you like some garlic bread or something?” And then, you know, Renton’s like, “No, I’ll just skip straight to the intravenous injection of hard drugs, please.”

Raekwon: that was a funny line. That scene of him overdosing, it just made me feel like maybe it was something that more is, more sinister was going to happen. I’m like, “Where is this cab gonna take him?” I thought maybe that was still him, you know, imagining, like hallucinating. We’re just also witnessing, like, a weird gag or something.

But I’m like, “Where’s this… Is he just gonna, like, drop him off him on a random street and this is the end of Mark

Nick: yeah.

like the rest of the movie just follows Begbie inexplicably,

Raekwon: right. I’d watch that.

Nick: I would watch that. There’s a moment early in the movie when Begbie is playing pool with Tommy and he’s like, “And I was squaring up with him all Paul Newman-like.” And I would kill to see Robert Carlyle star in a remake of The Hustler.

Raekwon: Yeah.

Nick: Why? And then he could meet Tom Cruise and they could have their own little Color of Money

Raekwon: There’s a lot of movie references. Maybe not that many, but Jesus, how many

Nick: Oh, it’s all over it,

Raekwon: yeah, James Bond s- talked about so much by Sick Boy in this thing

Nick: Yeah, I mean, this movie is full of references. I don’t know if you caught this one, but when they were at The Volcano, you know, like the club, there is artwork in the bathroom of Jodie Foster’s character in Taxi Driver. And Travis Bickle is in The Volcano also. When Renton makes eye contact with Diane, there is actually a giant mural behind him with Travis Bickle holding the two guns from the scene where he’s, like, shooting Jodie Foster’s pimp. And then if you think about The Volcano, it also has that room that’s inspired by A Clockwork Orange, which is where Spud and Tommy were talking earlier.

What I think is so special about this movie and the way it taps into pop culture, which is, this is almost like an extension of what we were saying with the music, is that it’s all motivated. Sick Boy loves James Bond because he’s a dapper man who sleeps with a lot of women and, like, all of this stuff. He even says it in the movie where it’s like that is the embodiment of his superiority over us. And as the movie goes on, we see Sick Boy try to embody that. We see him wearing a suit for the back half of the movie because he’s trying to be Sean Connery.

He wants to become a pimp as a way of kind of manifesting that side of the character

Raekwon: Something that I noticed was that you learn everything that you need to know about the characters upon their introduction, and it, it made sense for Sick Boy and Begbie. I clock that, especially Begbie. He fouls the dude super hard, and he’s just, like, laughing. He’s, you

Nick: Yeah, he’s psychotic

Raekwon: Like, legitimately, like he’s actually…

He, he needs help

Nick: I think Renton put it best when he’s like, “He didn’t do drugs, he did people.”

Raekwon: Yeah, that’s, that’s what he gets off on is fucking people over. You actually texted me something that was said in the movie when I was watching that, that it’s just safer to be Begbie’s friend than to not be his friend

Nick: That was Ewan McGregor on the Criterion commentary from the ’90s.

Raekwon: Oh, okay, cool. Well, Sick Boy fouls someone as well, but he’s just like, “Hey,” like, “What? What did I do?” You know, throws his hands up, you know, like, and that, that s- tells a lot, tells you a lot about him. Spud is just like, Spud is Spud. He just gets scored on, yeah, he instantly gets scored on. But Tommy is off by himself, like he’s in the corner with the ball, and there’s three guys surrounding him, and he’s just like yelling backwards like, “Hey,” like, “What?

No one’s helping me out here.” I’m like, wow. Like,

Nick: I never picked that up. That’s really good.

Raekwon: Isn’t that crazy?

Nick: He really didn’t deserve to go out the way he did. Like, what a horrible… Every time I re-watch this movie, I’m kind of like, “My God.” There’s this moment when Rent is visiting Tommy. It’s the last scene they have together. It’s when he’s, like, knocking on the door and Tommy’s, like, staring through the glass, and just…

You just see the look on his face through the glass, and he’s, like, not there. It’s, it’s so heartbreaking, and then for him to be the one in the gang that gets HIV is,

like, uh, upsetting

Raekwon: You know what else I noticed about their last scene together that was just fucking, just, just heartbreaking still?

Nick: Mm.

Raekwon: When he’s on the cot, you know, he, he’s talking about if he, did he get tested for HIV and all that. Mark is kicking around a fucking soccer ball

Nick: Yeah, like a completely deflated one

Raekwon: Yeah, and that’s ironic because the 100 Best Goals videotape that he replaced with his sex tape, I’m like, how funny is that?

Nick: That is, it’s true. There’s some serious irony there ’cause

this is Renton’s fault, right?

Raekwon: Mm-hmm

Nick: it’s his fault that they broke up because he stole their sex tape and yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a really heartbreaking thing I wanna rewind and go back to the soccer scene at the beginning though, simply because you pointed out Sick Boy is, like, kinda cajoling people for a tackle. And I always think it’s so interesting how much Sick Boy looks up to Begbie, and how you could read that as him aping Begbie for tackling the other guy. He’s like a, he’s like a little brother just copying, you know, his super cool older brother like that. And you see that again later when we get the first proper scene where Begbie beats those people up in the bar, because he’s telling that story where he was all Paul Newman-like or whatever, and everyone at the table is sorta like, “Uh-huh. Right. I’m sure this is exactly what happened, Begbie.” Except for Sick Boy

Raekwon: One of the things about Sick Boy that I just read and listened to was that people were saying that he is kind of like a fraud. Like, put Sick Boy on fraud watch, like at all times because he, he is

Nick: put him on, like…

every watch list. The guy is trying to, like, pimp out, like, college girls.

College… Like, the British college. So he needs to be on every list. But

Sick Boy is such a fascinating character, and to your point about him being this massive fraud, I think one of the best things, and I only picked this up re-watching it for this episode, is the scene when Renton and Sick Boy are at the park. He’s talking about how, “Oh, Sick Boy just… He only got off the scag at the same time as me ’cause he wanted to rub it in my face how easy it is,” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then if you listen to Sick Boy’s theory of life,

you have it and then you don’t, it sounds an awful lot like a person who might be struggling with withdrawal and being sober and having to confront life. Like, it sounds like a guy who’s just telling himself, “Well, I’m all washed up,” because he doesn’t want to actually do the work to, like, get his act together

Raekwon: You know, that’s funny you say that ’cause I had that in my notes about Mark, that he is a addict scumbag just like the rest of them. But because we hear his thoughts and hear that he’s, like, well-intentioned, we’re like, “Aw, poor, poor Mark.” But he’s just like them. I didn’t feel any sympathy or any ways about him being like, “Oh, I’ve never felt so alone.

I’m surrounded by my family and friends.” And I’m like, he’s the… People feel that way about their family and friends sometimes, you know? But with Sick Boy, most of the scenes that he’s in, he’s, like, plotting some scheme or he’s trying to, like, educate you on something. He’s not, like, some intellectual guy. I mean, he’s, he’s just an addict

Nick: He really is the embodiment of… It, like if they made this movie in 2026, he would be the guy who hang- watch this by the way, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get a lot of comments about this one. He’s the guy who, like, hangs out in his basement and has a podcast where he, like, explains movies to people.

Raekwon: Yeah,

Nick: some sick fuck.

Raekwon: Uh-huh.

We’re both in basements currently. Yeah,

Nick: know. Oh, you don’t say. Choose life, Raekwon. Remember.

But I think that’s why the character is so popular and, uh, why I think, like, all of these characters work is we know these guys.

Raekwon: Yep

Nick: Either we think we’re one of them on some level, we did at one point, or we know somebody who is a Sick Boy or a Begbie or a Spud

Raekwon: And it’s, it’s just interesting for Sick Boy. I mean, he’s, he’s also the father of the baby that died. So it’s like you could even see it play out in your head because we all know this guy who’s, like, some fake intellectual who, like, can’t get out of his own way

Nick: Hey, who’s photo- who, who’s fading up a picture of me on the screen right now? What the fuck?

Raekwon: But just like you could see it playing out. His like fake charms working on her. Him maybe convincing her to like not tell anyone who’s, who the father was ’cause I guess they were all sleeping with her. ‘Cause Mark says that, he’s like, “Who knows who the father is?” at some, before the baby dies, and then we see Sick Boy like sobbing and he’s like, “I guess we know who the father is now

Nick: It’s funny you mention that bit of narration, ’cause I do have something I want to say about the narration as a whole, but that moment in particular stood out to me when I rewatched it because it’s surprisingly… Like, it’s not ha ha funny, but it’s, like, very droll. It’s a very dry funny.

You know? Like, you could feel that as a transition, and it’s interesting because this whole movie for me circles around people refusing to choose life. Like, the phrase itself comes from an anti-drug PSA, and then Mark had added a bunch of different things to the end of it, and all those things represent normalcy and maturity and growing up. These are the things that, like, normal functioning members of society have and that Mark and his friends have actively rejected.

They’re refusing to do the work, to show up, to make the hard decisions that they know will pay off for them in the long run. And we see Mark struggling in that moment. Like, the first thing he wants to do after he sees the dead baby is get loaded again. So to see that humor come in, it’s, it’s just very interesting. And then you talk about the narration as a whole. Mark is an unreliable narrator. He dresses everything up a little bit because it’s his perspective. We’re watching things from his POV. So he’s kinda doing the, like, pseudo-intellectual thing where people’ll be like, “No, I’m okay. I know I’m feeling X, Y, and Z.”

Raekwon: Угу.

Nick: But you, you, like, you still have to do the work. You still have to, like… Hey, why do your friends remind you of yourself, Mark?

Raekwon: That’s why I was sort of annoyed with Mark on my first watch ’cause all you do is complain, but then you do the exact same thing that you and all your friends do. And I mean, that’s just so, that’s relatable. I mean, who hasn’t done that? Being like, “Oh, my friends fucking suck and they’re holding me back.”

But then in the very beginning he goes, “Oh, me, Spud, and Sick Boy all decided that we should get back on heroin, and we were sober for 45 minutes.” I felt as if when Begbie’s not around, Mark does have something. He does have good qualities about him. At, at the very least he’s self-aware and a good hang, you

know?

Nick: once he gets away from his friends, he does well, right? There’s the whole London sequence

Raekwon: Yeah, and they know that. And I think w- anytime Begbie’s not around, even when he is a little bit, like in London, he’s like the group leader. So there was probably no unanimous decision to get back on heroin. Mark was clearly having a shit day that day when they were on that walk

Nick: Right? He just found out he was a sex offender. That he, he ruined his best friend’s life. Yeah, you could call that a bad day.

Raekwon: Yeah, a pretty bad day.

Nick: Yeah

That’s not, like, I don’t think a beer is gonna s- um, that’s not gonna fix that

Raekwon: Speaking of that day, I had written down in my notes that that was such a bro hang. That’s why it’s so sad about what happened to Tommy. Tommy’s like, “Guys, let’s go on a walk in this really super scenic area.” Like, there’s a fucking mountain behind them

Nick: And did you notice how far they got from the train station, by the way?

Raekwon: No

Nick: They did not get far from that train station. You can quote me on this. I didn’t find proof of it, but if you look when the train leaves, we get like an over the shoulder shot where Tommy’s like, “We’re gonna walk to this mountain.” And if you look, it looks like there is sort of like a mini pallet or mini bridge maybe a couple hundred feet away, and it looks like it might be the one that they stop at when they start screaming about how they wanna turn around and this isn’t natural.

So they didn’t get that far on that walk, and I think you can even see like a sign just on the very corner of the screen. So I think they literally are still at the station. Like they… It’s the equivalent of like we haven’t left the parking lot

Raekwon: It’s just so sad that Tommy’s like this normal dude. It, it’s even more so when he’s like, “Hey guys, let’s just grab a couple beers and go on a nice nature walk, and let’s just hang out. You guys are all off drugs. I can hang out with you and not feel weird about it.” And they fucking ruined his fun.

Nick: I wonder how he felt about that. Now that you bring it up, like, yeah, all of his friends are sober. We don’t know the last time that they were all sober, but they’re all sober and hanging out with him. So he probably was really thrilled about that

Raekwon: Yeah. Yeah, it was his idea

Nick: Exactly. Like, I, I don’t wanna share too much, but, like, I know people who have struggled with addiction in the past, and when they seemingly turn a leaf with their problem, like, I am usually front of the line, like, “Oh my God, I’m so happy for you.

Let’s go celebrate and, like, do this,

this, and that.” So maybe I’m projecting, but I, yeah, you’re right. Like, other than, like, the fact that his relationship got ruined also, that probably is a huge part of why Tommy did end up beginning to use. Like, his support system was not a support system

Raekwon: It’s just funny that none of these guys are actually friends, you know? I mean, that became clear by the end of the movie. Maybe even Mark and Spud, who, you know, Mark kinda looked out for Spud in the end

Nick: I have no doubt that they were friends at some point. But also, yeah, without going, like, further and, like, bringing up stuff from Trainspotting, its sequel Porno, and then its prequel/parts of it take place during Trainspotting book, Skagboys. Yeah, we, we actually don’t know their relationship, and I kind of like that.

I kinda like that this movie maroons us in the middle of their addiction. I feel like a lot of films, like, go out of their way to show us the first time a character takes a drug. And then this one was just like, no, it’s like Star Wars. That opening shot of Renton running down the street may as well be like Princess Leia’s ship running away from the Imperial Star Destroyer or whatever it’s called

Raekwon: That’s why I’m saying, like, I enjoyed that I didn’t look into it that much because my impression of it was this is just a movie about Mark getting off of drugs while also having friends who are on drugs. But it really wasn’t that at all. It was like they completely flipped that for me, uh, within the first, like, five minutes of it.

That was just cool to see because that would’ve been a predictable movie, I think, which this was not

Nick: I do think that the movie does do it, it just does it in a very unique way where… I look at this as a coming-of-age movie. Here’s the real definition of it from Wikipedia. It’s slightly shortened for time, but coming-of-age stories tend to emphasize dialogue and internal monologue over action, and are often set in the past. The subjects of coming-of-age stories are typically teenagers. The plot points of coming-of-age stories are usually emotional changes within the characters in question. That is Trainspotting. They aren’t teenagers, but these characters are very much in a state of arrested development. And I have a whole spiel about John Hughes that I’ll bring in in just a moment. But they’re in this state of arrested development where they very clearly kind of probably peaked in high school. Based on the setting, we know it’s the mid to late 1980s. They reference The Untouchables at one point, and that came out in, I wanna say, ’87. So it’s at least 1987. We know Renton is mid-20s, so he would’ve been in high school about 10 years earlier. And the music in the movie is Iggy Pop, Lust For Life. That came out in ’77, I think, or ’76. So we know that mentally these guys haven’t really moved past high school, because that’s what they’re listening to.

You know, Lou Reed, that album, also the ’70s. Blondie, uh, Atomic came out in 1980, I think

Raekwon: I think a real turning point for Mark came from his high school girlfriend.

Nick: High school age girlfriend.

Raekwon: High school/eighth school. We’re

Nick: remind everyone that Renton is technically,

not even technically, he’s a predator

Raekwon: When she pops up for the second time, she comes over his house. In that scene, I’m like, what you’re saying, that’s what Diane tells him

Nick: This goes back to my whole thing of these guys are all trapped in arrested development, and they are practically children in adult bodies as far as I’m concerned. Renton keeps getting mentally outplayed by her at every turn in this movie. First off, he doesn’t figure out that she’s a child when they hook up the first time, which if you look around her room, I picked this up on repeat viewings, it is very much the room of, like, a person staying in their childhood home who might still be underage.

Two, he doesn’t understand why she can’t let him sleep in her room with her. Her flatmates are 20 years older than her at least. You know, and then also there’s the whole, like, she blackmails him into basically hanging out with her, and when she smells pot in his apartment she’s very much like, “Too young for what?”

Raekwon: Yeah,

literally

Nick: we’re gonna… That’s the splitting hairs.

Like, oh, so you’ll sleep with an underage person, but you draw the line at smoking weed with them. It’s good to know that you’re so pious, Mark Renton.

Raekwon: That’s, that’s funny. Even the way she phrased it, I made a note of, that she’s l- I, I think she says hash. She was like, “Is that hash I can smoke?” It’s like she didn’t say, “Is that weed?” She’s like, “Is that hash that I can have as well?”

Nick: Kelly Macdonald like, sells it so well too. This is her first acting role. I think she was like 19 or 20. And the amount of attitude she brings to the part is like pitch perfect. I love when she’s like, “Too young for what?” That, that’s my favorite delivery in the movie

Raekwon: She says that and then they cut to them smoking in his bedroom. He’s got his shirt off and is like, “Okay, too young for what?” It’s like too young for us to hook up or too young for me to smoke your weed

Nick: I- it’s interesting, and that’s not, like, to knock Diane’s intelligence because by the time we get to T2 Trainspotting, she’s a successful lawyer. It just shows that these characters are children in a big way, and that imagery appears throughout the movie, by the way. The term trainspotting feels a bit childish to me.

I don’t say that to knock people who enjoy watching trains. I actually grew up and I knew people who would, like, hang out at the train station and, like, knew the conductors and would trainspot. But you think of, like, trains and, like, my brain, because I’m a sick fuck, immediately goes choo choo trains. So it’s kinda, like, kid coded to me. And then you look at Renton’s childhood room and what’s on the walls? It’s train wallpaper. And after his overdose when he gets in the car and his parents are, like, passing cigarettes, he looks like a kid that just got in trouble and he’s, like, sulking. And then his dad carrying him to bed, it’s like, oh,

okay, he’s a child

Raekwon: They, they offer him a cigarette, his mom does in the car, and he’s just like, “Hmm, no.” You

know,

Nick: like

a parent, a disappointed parent giving her kid a stick of gum.

Raekwon: “Mm-hmm,” and he’s just like, “No, I don’t wanna.”

Nick: I’m sorry I did heroin, guys.”

Raekwon: Can’t you see that I’m sad I disappointed you?

Nick: I disappointed you and the nurse that saved my life stabbed me really hard with the needle

Raekwon: Oh man the nurses, I wrote a note about that too. When they’re slapping him they’re like, “Wake up.” I’m

Nick: That’s a real nurse, by the way.

Raekwon: Really?”

Nick: Yeah, that’s a real nurse doing the real protocol to

him.

Raekwon: that’s funny

Nick: in the commentary track, like, Ewan McGregor’s complaining. He’s like, “Do you know how hard it is not to react to somebody stabbing your arm with a real needle? Because you are unconscious in the scene.”

Raekwon: I, I thought you were gonna say to him being slapped, like how many takes did that take for him getting slapped around?

Nick: Well, that too, I’m sure

Raekwon: I thought that was funny watching it ’cause I’m like, “Is that really what they do?” I guess they would bec- but it’s just funny to, for her to be like, “Wake up,” you know, just-

Nick: “Wait, let me see if this’ll work.” She grabs an old school alarm clock and just holds it to his ear

Raekwon: She plays the, the iPhone alarm clock, that fucking annoying ass sound.

Nick: “Lucy, get the Tibetan gong.” And they wheel it in.

Raekwon: It’s like, “Hold on, let me try this.” Puts a, a plate of sizzling bacon next to his nose. “This always works for my son.”

Nick: To wake your son up or to get him to stop OD’ing? She comes over to him with a giant boombox and she just starts playing Wake Up by System of a Down. So Raekwon, when I say that this movie is a pseudo coming of age film, I kind of like to think of it as being on its own tier above the more traditional entries in the genre,

which would be like, I don’t know, like John Hughes movies, where they follow a very clear formula where it’s usually social outcasts being awkward. By the end of the movie, they stand up to authority, they get the girl, and they learn a powerful lesson. Trainspotting, obviously not that. It’s not a high school coming of age film. It’s about people who probably needed to watch more John Hughes movies in high school,

Raekwon: Yeah.

Nick: right

Raekwon: Yeah

Nick: And this is like the cautionary tale of like, I didn’t see The Breakfast Club in theaters and now my life just flew horribly off the handles, you know? Where all these characters needed was probably like a Ferris Bueller in their life just to like help them get their act together

Raekwon: Yeah. If only they had watched Stand By Me or something when they were in high school.

Nick: Yeah, exactly

Raekwon: if, Moonlight was out at the time, this, this would’ve been great for Mark.

Nick: Maybe when they steal the TV from the senior retirement home, they stop and they just happen upon The Breakfast Club

Raekwon: Imagine them walking into this, into the retirement home, and they, they’re about to steal the TV, and it’s just on. They’re like, “Hold on. Hold on a sec. Let’s watch this.”

Nick: But I, I really do mean that, and it kind of fits perfectly where I ki- Like, I, I consider this the anti John Hughes movie ’cause it, it is the opposite. John Hughes movies are bright, playful ’80s music. They’re colorful. They’re full of romance, and everybody learns a lesson by the end of it. And then Trainspotting is like, “Hey, life isn’t like that, and it’s gonna be 10 years later and you’re still going to maybe wish things had gone the way it did in Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink,” right? In Pretty in Pink, Molly Ringwald, like, friend zones Duckie pretty hard by the end of it, which trivia, they actually got together in the original cut and then test audiences were like, “No, put Molly Ringwald with the other guy.” But that, that’s the John Hughes version. But, like, the real-life version is Duckie, like, gets super into hard drugs after Molly Ringwald puts him down at the prom.

So it, it, to me it just fits this perfect thing. And then I think about the age of these characters, and they’re just close enough to be people who would’ve related to those John Hughes movies while they were in theaters, but they very clearly didn’t because life had different things in store for them

Raekwon: Just a thought, and we kinda touched on this in, uh, the Rambo episode where, when we talked about if only some of the men that are, you know, manosphere guys had seen Rambo and learned, like, what actual masculinity was.

Nick: we could have saved Clavicular,

Raekwon: we could have saved Clavicular, but we could have saved Mark Spud and Bag- well, Bagby’s worth, worth not saving

Nick: Ironically, I think had Clavicular seen Trainspotting, he might not have just like built a nasty meth habit too

Raekwon: Yeah. Sure, sure.

Nick: I don’t know, guys. I don’t think the new TikTok fad diet is doing meth Call me nuts

Raekwon: Noticing something about us, we’re, our solution because we love movies is like, if only they had seen a really good movie, you know?

Nick: Yeah. But like seriously, that might be our new thing on this show where every couple of episodes it might just come up, “Hey, who’s, who, what controversial figure’s life could’ve been changed had we just, like, shown them this movie?”

Raekwon: Yeah. I think if, if Spud had seen Moonrise Kingdom, it would’ve been such a… He would’ve embraced life. He would’ve chosen life, I mean

Nick: And I’ll go on the record now, our September episode we’re hoping to do is gonna be Magnolia. I think that Andrew Tate’s life would’ve gone very differently had he seen Tom Cruise in Magnolia.

Raekwon: You know, I don’t get why that’s funny, but I am gonna, I’m gonna get it pretty soon

Nick: You’re gonna do the Leo pointing meme in a couple of weeks when you sit down and you watch that movie.

Raekwon: oh . Okay, cool

Nick: And I think there’s something powerful about that. It’s a coming of age movie for people that haven’t come of age. It’s a repeated idea in this movie where, like, these characters can’t look past their past together.

Because, like, what do they say when Begbie does something psychotic? “Yeah, what are you gonna do? He’s a mate.”

Raekwon: Yeah. Yeah.

Nick: I don’t know, guys. If your friend is stabbing people or trying to stab people repeated- I’m gonna give everyone a free bit of advice. If someone you love is always trying to stab another person, you can just leave

Raekwon: He is like the definition of a wild card. Like, what do you mean you’re gonna tell a fake story and then chuck your glass over the top, hitting a girl? When they cut to the girl, blood, her head’s all bloody and shit. And then he goes and starts a fight with the guy

Nick: First off, I love that scene because it is just so ridiculously over the top.

Raekwon: Yeah.

Nick: And we all know people who, like, maybe wouldn’t actually do that, but kind of carry themselves like that. And then to see it completely disappear by the end of the movie when he’s doing the drug deal with the real dangerous drug dealer, it’s so interesting.

And he is. He’s a terrifying, imposing character, to the point where I wrote in my notes, and I’m just gonna read it verbatim, “Begbie fucks up an entire bar solo. If I’m being real with you, he’s my number one draft pick to join the Avengers for the next movie. He’d glass Doom.” He would literally throw a beer glass over his shoulder and kill Doom

Raekwon: You know, it’s, that scene, it makes you wonder, because Mark’s such an unreliable narrator, you gotta think to yourself how much of that was just, like, playing it up a bit or was Mark just, is Mark just, like, so intimidated by Begbie that he’s just like, “Oh, he, he fucked up the entire bar, and they, there was glasses flying everywhere,” and all that

Nick: It’s interesting you bring that up because I wanted to run this by you. When do you think Renton’s narration happens?

Raekwon: Do you mean like when something happens and he starts talking immediately be-it’s

Nick: he looking back at this moment or is he in the moment rationalizing it to himself?

Raekwon: It does seem like it flips between the two sometimes

Nick: hey, it– you don’t have to give a hard and fast answer, but the conversation’s what’s important

Raekwon: What immediately comes to mind is after the baby dies and he’s like, “Oh, guess we know who the father is.” And he narrates him like, “Oh, the first thing I wanna do is get scag,” or whatever he says. And then he says, “The girl who lost the kid wants a hit too,” but he’s like, “Not before me, of course.” And that was just so telling of his, of his character to me.

But that was, like, in the moment.

Nick: yeah

Raekwon: But then when the bar scene happens, he’s talking as if it’s, he’s looking back on it

Nick: I, I think it is a mix of both, for what it’s worth. But, like, one of the things that I noticed with it is a lot of it is him talking ill of his friends without just saying they’re bad people. That’s, that’s something that’s really interesting. I don’t think he actually calls his friends bad people at any point.

He calls himself a bad person at the end of the movie,

Raekwon: Uh-huh.

Nick: never them. I guess what I’m trying to say is it feels like the narration is often coming in to underscore and justify him leaving with the money at the end of the story, right? Like, at the end of the movie he’s like, “Well, Begbie’s crazy and, well, Sick Boy would’ve done it to me too, and I, I felt bad about Spud, but, you know.”

Raekwon: It does make sense because it, it could just be him recalling everything that led up to him taking the money and being like, “Well, I was right to do that because remember Tommy, remember this, remember that?” You know, and yeah

Nick: who, like I said earlier, knows how to intellectualize everything, but isn’t ready to feel everything. So he’s just, he’s doing what he can to, like, get through it. And I think in a weird way, it’s almost like a confession without a confession, right? Like, I don’t know if you picked up on this, but there is, like, some biblical, like, imagery throughout the movie. Just, like, by proxy of, like, oh, Renton’s in the depths of hell during his withdrawal scene where he’s seeing these, like, demonic manifestations of the people in his life. He sees the baby crawling on the ceiling. And Mother Superior, which is a Beatles reference, but it’s, like, kind of the devil ’cause it’s the guy giving him all of the heroin.

Raekwon: Even the lighting in that

Nick: Yeah, he has that huge red key light, which is… It’s so visually striking

Raekwon: Even when he starts to overdose, it feels like he’s going down into the depths of hell. You know, he’s, he’s sinking

Nick: I have a funny thing about that I’ll get to if you remind me. And then, like, at the end of the movie where he’s walking away and he’s saying, “I’m gonna be just like you. I’m gonna blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” It almost feels like he’s being reborn in that moment because he is choosing life. And you could argue that that is Renton dying and going to heaven ’cause the camera’s drifting out of focus.

He’s in broad daylight under the sun.

Especially in T2 Trainspotting where they, like, really overexposed it. ‘Cause they shit… The, the movie begins with some of that footage. Now, I mentioned something I could say about the overdose scene. Just one of those things I’d be remiss not to bring up. One of my earliest memes, I guess, was a mashup of Renton’s overdose scene with the Anakin-Obi-Wan fight in Revenge of the Sith implying that all of Star Wars was a heroin induced delusion.

Raekwon: Hmm.

Nick: So yeah, it’s, it’s kinda crazy. Um, I was, like, 17 when I made it and it’s so

dumb. Basically, it… Renton, like, sinks into the ground and then it fades to Anakin and Obi-Wan pulling their lightsabers out and getting into a fight, and then it hard cuts without any of the sound effects to Swanny just staring at Renton twitching on the ground. And then it cuts back to the fight and it just does that a few times

Raekwon: That’s the first meme you ever made, and that’s, that’s, that’s so you in… Imagine what my first meme I ever made. I don’t remember ex- it exactly, but mine was literally one of those, like, meme maker apps where you just pick a, one of the famous memes, like that one redhead kid in the sweater, and he’s, like, has braces and he’s smiling all goofy

Nick: Definitely Tommy’s, like, high school yearbook photo, by the way

Raekwon: Ah, yeah, right. Yeah. Just so wholesome and him like smiling all big

Nick: That just reminded me about Tommy. The other thing I was gonna say in relation to John Hughes movies is Tommy kinda looks like Michael Anthony Hall, just like a tiny bit.

Raekwon: Yeah, they kind of do look alike. Yeah

Nick: This movie, man, it’s one of those things that really stuck with me growing up. I’ve referenced it a million times in stuff I made without always intending to.

For example, the shot of Renton and Sick Boy walking to each other at the park, I stole that for something I shot with my buddy Jackson and my buddy Mike. Renton walking away with the money at the end, there’s like a shot where the camera is sideways and he walks under an archway and it, like, tracks him.

I lifted that exact shot for something I made in college. The song that Renton and Sick Boy are playing in the park, I stole the guitar riff from that for a song I wrote. I I just straight up played the riff, and I didn’t realize it was the same riff until I re-watched the movie, like, for this episode.

And then the last one I’ll share is from my senior short We Real Cool, where I actually just straight up ripped off a shot from T2 Trainspotting because I’d seen it, like, maybe two or three weeks before I shot it and that shot was, like, top of mind as, like, my favorite one in the movie

Raekwon: I wonder if you took anything from the stuff that we made before

Nick: I think that the shot in Fishbowl of inside the pot of Caesar soup, which for those watching, Caesar soup was like a concoction my character makes when he’s depressed where it’s just malt liquor in a boiled pot. But there’s a shot where you, you’re inside the bowl looking up, and that is probably a riff on the worst toilet in Scotland

Raekwon: I can’t believe we haven’t mentioned that toilet scene

Nick: Well, we, we can now. This movie doesn’t pull its punches. It’s very gross. I think what’s clever about it is Danny Boyle wanted to make a movie that’s very fun to watch, but he also didn’t want to make it feel like they were glorifying heroin. So for the part of the movie where it is fun to watch, they do a lot of gross-out humor.

Like, there’s a lot of poop

Raekwon: I thought that, that Ewan McGregor really sold it when he gagged.

Nick: Dude, I retch every time I see… And I know it’s chocolate. Like

Raekwon: I, I know it’s chocolate and water, I swear.

Nick: it is a reason not to watch the movie in 4K. But you’re, you’re totally right, like a very gritty movie.

It, it doesn’t… It’s very blunt, and that’s probably why it is such a great movie. Especially, like, you can compare it to the other great movies about heroin abuse, like Christine Eff, The Basketball Diaries, and Requiem for a Dream.

Raekwon: Shout out

Nick: Sha- I know you, uh, you’re a huge Requiem guy.

Raekwon: Yeah, I love Requiem for a Dream

Nick: I re-watched it for the first time last week, and it was probably the first time I’d seen it since high school. And I, I liked it, but then I was also like, “Yeah, I did wait 15 years to see this again for a reason.”

Raekwon: Yeah, it’s, it’s dark. Uh, Trainspotting is at least a little fun. They don’t shy away from the grittiness and the how hard drugs will ruin your life, but it’s at least a little bit more entertaining to watch, you know, a little easier to watch

Nick: I also feel like with Requiem for a Dream, this is actually going to piss somebody off.

Raekwon: Yeah.

Nick: Anyone who gets pissed off, come for me, not Raekwon. But it, it kind of feels with Requiem like it’s trying way too hard to scare you from using drugs. Whereas like Trainspotting is a lot more, “Hey, let’s actually have a dialogue about this.

Like I’m not gonna pretend that heroin isn’t really awesome while you’re on it, guys.”

You know? But dead babies, HIV, you know

Raekwon: Yeah. It, it’s like Requiem is, is like DARE or like, you know, the whole

Nick: Especially since Aronofsky shoots it like a commercial for huge chunks of the runtime.

Raekwon: Yeah, true. Yeah, actually. Requiem is like, “Abstinence is the only way to, you know, stop yourself from getting STDs,” and then Trainspotting is like, “Just, just use protection.”

Nick: But yeah, yeah. Like Requiem is showing you a picture of like a diseased lung for secondhand smoke.

Like you haven’t even bought the you haven’t even bought the cigarettes.

They’re just walking down the street showing you a pack, like someone’s diseased lung because someone’s smoking a cigarette nearby

Raekwon: This is just an aside, just a comment, but the first time that I’d seen the, uh, the pictures on the back of cigarette cartons with the, you know, the fucked

Nick: Oh, like carcinoma or whatever

Raekwon: I, I was like, “Jesus.” Like, that worked on me actually.

W- whereas maybe Rec Room worked on me. I did Wassaid in high school,

Nick: You didn’t take heroin,

so it

Raekwon: as far as you know.

Nick: Oh, no. And

now we’re here for the real podcast with everybody, and then I pull down, there’s an intervention sign. You’re at your family’s house, but your family is here. They come out and we’re

they’re just like

Raekwon: why no one’s here, you know, when I got here.

Nick: they left because you’re a speed freak.

Raekwon: You, you pull the… This is, that’s just a green screen behind you.

It’s like, all right

Nick: I- What were we talking about?

Raekwon: I don’t know. We were talking about Requiem and the,

Nick: about heroin. something?

Raekwon: You know, this is, this is the, the most fun I’ve had, the best experience I’ve had watching a movie about, uh, drug abuse

Nick: I was gonna say, this is the best experience I’ve had talking about hard drugs.

Raekwon: Yeah. Even Basketball Diaries was pretty intense

Nick: They really focus on, like, the cautionary tale where it’s like, if you do heroin, you’re gonna look like ’90s Leo DiCaprio. We won’t bullshit you on that one. But your mom is also gonna have to keep you out of the house because you’re begging for drug money

Raekwon: Speaking of, of mom, when, uh, his parents lock him in to sober up,

Nick: They bolted the door from the

Raekwon: yeah, they bolted the door for him too, and when they leave, he’s like, “I just need more, one, one more fucking hit.” And then he turns over in his bed and he’s like, “Bitch, bitch.”

Nick: Oh, does he

say bi- I I thought he says, “Hit. Hit.”

Raekwon: that’s what he’s saying? That’s even

Nick: what I think he says, yeah. I, ’cause I always do that. That’s one of my vocal stems from this movie, where, like, in the middle of the night I’ll, like, turn in bed and I’ll be like, “Hit. Hit.” And then I have a tiny chihuahua for everyone watching, so my dog is looking at me like, “Is he gonna fucking eat me?”

Raekwon: That’s funny actually, ’cause at the first watch I’m like, “What did he say?” And I’m like, “Oh, he’s, I guess he did say bitch,” but I was like, “Why is he focusing in on his mom in that situation?”

Nick: He’s actually, he’s reading the screen direction kind of like that Hercules clip where it’s like, “I’m in a different world. Disappointment.” He’s just, in brackets on the script is the word bitch to, like, complain about this

Raekwon: Uh, y- you know, my brain is just fried because I, when you said that Hercules… Yeah, all that, that heroin. My brain is just fried because when you said that Hercules scene, I immediately thought of the Nutty Professor. I’m like, “Hercules, Hercules, Herc-” I’m like, what?

Nick: the deleted scene that’s the deleted scene of Renton on heroin, believe it

Raekwon: Oh, yeah. He,

that’s what he’s thinking about

Nick: Sick Boy just rambles on and on about 007 the way that, like, single dudes in their mid-30s talk about Marvel, and Renton just quotes Eddie Murphy movies.

Raekwon: Not a bad guy. Sounds like a good hang to me

Nick: Yeah, totally. You know, that’s the thing too. I, I do think that this is something that critics did actually consider when the movie came out, where they were like, “Does this movie maybe glorify heroin a little bit?” I don’t think it does, and I think even a lot of them kind of come around to say it doesn’t.

Raekwon: Yeah

Nick: But it is hard to also deny the fact that, like, Raekwon, we live in a society. And no, I say that, I say that because, like, we live in a society where people will watch Joker and get the wrong message from it,

Raekwon: Yeah, yeah

Nick: and that is, like, one of the most on-the-nose movies. So I do kind of see why a lot of these other drug movies are cautionary tales, because they really wanna make sure that you get the message, like, “No, do not do narcotics for the love of God.”

Raekwon: It’s just a testament to, I think, the storytelling that they even question it because the character questions it. I mean, everyone else in the movie is questioning whether or not we should get back on scag or whatever. They don’t glorify it to me because of the very, the scenes that we’ve talked about. I mean, the fucking baby, a baby dies.

He has to hunt through a shitty, the worst toilet in Scotland to get his suppositories or whatever the hell

Nick: robs random people. He robs his parents

Raekwon: Gets his friend locked up for six months

Nick: Gets his best, one of his best friends killed. I mean, we haven’t said that one yet.

Raekwon: Oh yeah, like literally

Nick: I do think also it isn’t the film’s fault if people walk away with the wrong message. It is pretty clear about it. It’s more of a crushing indictment of, like, the state of media literacy than it is this movie’s ability to tell a story.

Because as you said, it does show a lot of the serious reasons why you shouldn’t get into drug culture. I think it also just wants to treat the audience like an adult and say, yes, but there is a reason that these people are using it, and it isn’t just that their lives are horrible and they’re running away from something. It is also because, like, drugs are designed to be addictive. They’re designed to be fun while you’re on them. And also, like, it’s something that Renton says in the movie. He, he puts it very literally. He’s like, “We’re not dumb for trying heroin.” Like, if you think about it on paper, it- no wonder people take this stuff

Raekwon: I had written a note down about how annoyed I was with Mark. I touched on that a bit before, but I was just so annoyed hearing him talk about drugs and his friends and complaining about his life and stuff because like I said, like we all know guys like this who can’t get out of their own way

Nick: Look, and it’s something that we’ve all been guilty of at different points of our lives

Raekwon: But my brain is just like, he doesn’t wanna get clean off of drugs. He’s also addicted to feeling like the smartest guy and like holier than thou so that he can continue to complain about the pieces of shit that he’s surrounded by, and that, that’s just him being, uh, stagnant. And th- this is a coming of age movie, right?

So he is growing. He’s, he’s getting there, slowly but surely getting there. When we meet him, he’s just a stagnant person. He’s just like, “Um, I’m doing drugs, I’m hanging out, and my friends are pieces of shit, and that’s why I can’t do any better than what I’m doing right now

Nick: So I think you put it so beautifully. And the way you worded it… No, no, no, seriously, I’m giving you your flowers. Fucking take them. But, no, the way you put it made me just stop and go like, “Aha.” In a movie full of Beatles references, I am immediately reminded of a lyric by George Harrison on While My Guitar Gently Weeps from the White Album, where he’s like, “Through every mistake, we must surely be learning,” or slowly be learning or whatever it is. While My Guitar Gently Weeps. And it’s exactly that. Guess. He’s getting a bit better. He’s, he’s choosing life 2% more. Every time he quits scag, like, he’s getting a little bit better. And by the end of it, we end with him walking away saying he’s gonna be just like us, which is the biggest admission from him for the whole movie.

That we went at the beginning of the movie, “Choose life,” but I chose not to choose life. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin? To, I wanna be just like you. I wanna have the electrical tin can opener or whatever, you know?

So it’s very interesting and it, it’s real, and it’s something we don’t see in a lot of these movies ’cause, you know, the one thing they say about people who struggle with addiction is you’re never not an addict anymore, right?

Like, if you are an alcoholic and you quit drinking alcohol, you will always be an alcoholic, but you’re in recovery. And the way the movie is so casual about… Like in any other movie, had this been made in Hollywood in the ’90s, y- you know there would’ve been a monologue where Leonardo DiCaprio’s Renton would be like, “I really wanted to stop, but they brought me back in and they’re my friends.” Or there would’ve been, like, a scene where Renton and Diane are, like, walking around at night and they’re, like, having a moment and he’s, like, realizing that there may be more to life than taking heroin. The genius of Trainspotting is that it is a very unconventional movie, while simultaneously hitting all of the beats that the, this type of film needs to hit

Raekwon: So something I like to add about sobriety is that Mark, he’s aware that his friends are pieces of shit. He’s, he says that he’s a bad person in the end of the movie, but it’s kind of funny that he never asks himself the hard questions about sobriety. And I watch a lot of podcasts on my free time. One of them I saw was with the actor comedian, uh, Nick Swardson,

Nick: Угу

Raekwon: and he’s been sober for a couple years now, and he talks about that, and he’s…

And the, the guy asks him, “What would you say to someone that’s in recovery that, or someone that you know is addicted to something?” And he’s like, “Just ask yourself the questions. Like, you, you just don’t actually ever ask yourself the hard questions that you already know the answer to. Are you a slave to it?

Do you cater your entire day around this,

yeah, whatever it is?” And we literally seen Mark and the gang, Mark especially, do that the entire movie. Getting clean from scag. Here’s the bucket for shit, the bucket for vomit, the bucket for whatever, water. But to do it itself, he’s like, “Oh, I need, I need this, this, and this.

I need, you know, all these things to make it the perfect day

Nick: Yeah, and it’s true because the way the movie presents it is it’s almost a little quirky where it is like, “Yeah, here’s the bucket for this, the bucket for

that,” you know? But you’re so right. There is something horrifying about how normalized that is. Like, he doesn’t flinch at that, right? Nor does the movie stop to tell us, like, this is bad when he’s like, “All right.

I’m finally ready to get clean. After one more hit, of course.” And then he’s, like, boarded his door up, and then we just cut to the boards ripped off of the door already. You know, which is a great visual gag, but you don’t stop to go, “Oh, yeah. Wait, this is actually, like, crazy behavior.” You know? This is a person with an addiction

Raekwon: Yeah, we kinda skip over it. I mean, we kinda skipped over it in the conversation before about how they, they were clean. They go for that walk. I mean, we did talk about it. They go for that walk and they’re like, “Oh, we actually just decided we’re not sober anymore, so cool. We’ll, we’ll just do heroin again.”

Nick: Nice.

Raekwon: y- nice.

Nick: Yeah, exactly. But no, you’re so right. It, it is. It’s the unconventional thing. I made the joke about, like, Diane and Renton in the Hollywood version of this movie going on a walk and them having this tender moment and it being the moment where Renton’s like, “I… There is more to life.” No, the walk with his friends where they basically say, “This fucking sucks,” like 20 feet into it is them saying, “This isn’t the movie we’re making.

We are the British Pulp Fiction,” which is how this movie was sold by Miramax.

Raekwon: Yeah.

Nick: You know, it’s, it’s in your face. It’s a little gritty. It’s gonna be a difficult watch. But hey, at least we don’t have a gimp like Pulp Fiction.

Raekwon: We got a dead baby though.

Nick: God, dead baby though, which they fought to keep in. Apparently they took, like, a, a pretty hefty budget cut to keep the dead baby in

Raekwon: Lame. That baby looked like shit too, crawling on the wall

Nick: I actually like that the baby looks cheap because it kind of adds this, like, otherworldly quality, and it makes it look like a wind-up toy, which really goes in well with my whole, like, coming of age infantile angle

Raekwon: I, I like that they didn’t even try to make it look like the real

Nick: They didn’t even try. They

just

Raekwon: it’s not even the same kid.

Nick: Yes

Raekwon: Yeah. It, but it did add some- It, it was kinda like uncanny and like a little scary. I mean, he did react to it like he was screaming ’cause it was extremely scary, and that was like

Nick: he looks like a baby while he’s screaming.

Raekwon: Yeah, yeah

Nick: One final thought I would like to share, to tie this whole coming of age anti-John Hughes thing up, is I think some people will say this can’t be a coming of age movie because not every teenager, or not every person has a drug problem. To which I go, it doesn’t have to be that literal. I, I think that you can just as easily take the drugs in this movie and just, like, Control + F adjective switch it to something else. It’s really about that, like, fear of moving forward in your life. I think a major thing in this movie that we didn’t really talk about, but we kind of did, was the repeated idea that Renton has outgrown his friends. They are holding him back. When he goes to London, as we said, he has a decent job. He has a modest life, he’s enjoying it, and he even says, like, “This is the closest I’ve been to being content in my life.” But it’s those people that come back and that represent baggage and a past that he isn’t willing to confront. And that’s a, that’s a real thing, and I think that’s a universal thing that, like, everybody can relate to on some level. I have friends that I grew up with that I love to bits, but I don’t talk to anymore

because they do things I don’t agree with or whatever. You know, I don’t… It’s my business and my business alone. But that’s kind of the potent thing about Trainspotting, and that’s why, going back to the anti-John Hughes thing, all of those John Hughes movies are always about, like, your friends are always gonna be there for you. It’s Judd Nelson throwing his hand up in the air at the end of Breakfast Club ’cause he had that one win finally.

And in Trainspotting, Trainspotting, like, kind of fakes us out because when they do the drug deal, they have that moment where it’s like, it almost felt like it meant something, that we were all really friends.

Raekwon: Угу.

Nick: And then at the bar immediately after, Renton is repeatedly clocking the ways, oh, Begbie is gonna take the money.

Sick Boy’s gonna take the money. Spud won’t, but someone’s going to take the money from Spud, and it may as well be me. Yeah, it’s, it’s a powerful film in that regard, and it’s, it’s that kind of… It’s just, it’s what I live for, right? It’s, it’s why I have a YouTube channel and I do what I do on it

Raekwon: It’s the conversations, you know?

Nick: Guys, maybe the heroine was the friends we made along the way That’s you at your intervention, and then your enti- it cuts to a reverse of me and your entire family. I’m shaking my head like, “Oh, you did not just say that. Can we do another take?” Like, you, you get where I’m going. Like, it really is, like, the choose life of it all.

There is a reason that the movie begins with that monologue

Raekwon: Theme throughout the movie, like you said, is just these people holding you back. And I do think that Mark ultimately makes a decision that is, “I’m no longer going to actually let these people hold me back

Nick: He kind of burns his bridges, and I think that’s why, like, before T2 Trainspotting dropped, I liked to think that Renton did okay for himself because he burns the bridges. He can’t go back now. There is no backsliding. He has to leave,

and I think that’s kind of the beautiful thing about the ending. It is a hopeful ending in that sense where, yes, he is still addicted to heroin technically, and he was still talking about doing more heroin.

There’s that shot when they get back to London where he’s like, “Yeah, that was good. Gonna do one more before I kick this stuff for good.” It’s when they’re crossing the street, and it’s totally the shot from Abbey Road

Raekwon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that was so on the nose. I, I don’t even listen to them and I clocked that. I was like, “What the fuck?”

Nick: Yeah, that was clearly a Beatles reference. The opening of the movie with the running is A Hard Day’s Night. But I think it’s great. I think it’s a really powerful thing, and it’s a movie that you can view as a movie about drugs or it’s a movie that you can view about relationships with your friends and realizing that it’s okay if you’ve outgrown them.

Hopefully you outgrow them and you recognize it before they’re doing, like, tens of thousand dollars worth of drug deals. And getting shafted on it, by the way.

Raekwon: Yeah. Yeah, actually.

Nick: Did you, did you know how much money was in the briefcase?

Raekwon: He had the amount that they requested, like that they thought they were gonna get

Nick: So Begbie said 20, and the guy said that’s too much. He had 24 in there.

Raekwon: Wow.

Nick: Yeah

Raekwon: Yeah, he was ready to negotiate if these were some real guys, but he saw it, and he– Mark even said, he’s like, he, he caught that right away that we were just some addicts that got lucky

Nick: Yeah. Uh, great blocking in that scene, by the way. If you note, all of Renton’s friends and the drug dealers are on one side of the room, and Renton’s by himself on the other side next to the faucet, next to the window. There’s this big white light casting on him. Again, kinda going with that, like, biblical imagery.

He’s seen the light, so to speak. I think that’s the moment, personally, that he decided to run with the money

Raekwon: That seemed like a very intentional, um, shot, you know, to show that he sat down. Like, when I saw him in front of the window and that they showed that, I was just like, maybe it’s because he’s gonna… Like, is he gonna try to make a break for it? You know, maybe that’s why he sat there, or maybe they’re just trying to showcase that he’s nervous.

I didn’t even think about the, the imagery of him just being, like, in front of this very bright light behind him

Nick: And sometimes film really is that literal, where, yeah, hey, Renton isn’t standing with his friends anymore. Hmm. Especially ’cause there are so many shots of him doing that. Even at the train station when the train passes by, him, Sick Boy, Spud, and Tommy, they’re all standing together. It’s an interesting framing too because if I’m not mistaken, they’re like screen right, and then there’s all this like empty space on the left, which is like where Renton could be if he didn’t agree with them.

And then sure enough, like a minute later when they’re arguing and it’s the, “It’s shite being Scottish” scene, Tommy is in his own shot. Everyone’s in the reverse.

Raekwon: Mm-hmm.

Nick: Also, bonus trivia for you, they are in the same position as The Beatles on the cover to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Raekwon: So many music references, music and movies in this one

Nick: Which is, it’s perfect. It’s the antithesis of what Diane was saying, “Hey, you can’t just like sit in your room thinking about old stuff.” But it’s, it’s so tastefully done. It doesn’t beat you over the head with the references

Raekwon: Yeah. Great movie

Nick: Yeah, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I, like I said, it’s been one of my favorites for a long time, and now you’ll get all my jokes

Raekwon: Yeah. It’s, it’s nice when we watch something, like how you must feel about me enjoying this movie is probably how I felt when you liked Ali. I was like, “Yeah, yeah.”

Nick: Which we, which we should do on the show ’cause I do think that counts still, ’cause I hadn’t seen Ali until like a year ago

Raekwon: Yeah, I, I just rewatched that, like, a couple weeks ago, like two, three weeks ago. So yeah, sure. I’m down

Nick: At any rate, that brings us to the end of the episode, I think. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you did and you’re on YouTube, drop a like, subscribe, choose supporting the channel, if you will.

Raekwon: True support

Nick: If you’re listening on a podcast player, drop a review, follow us on YouTube, check it out. We do cutaways and all sorts of fun stuff there. We’ll be back in a month hopefully doing Magnolia ahead of the new Tom Cruise flick, Digger.

Raekwon: What, what?

Nick: yeah. Bye.

Raekwon: Peace