“Telling the truth.” Perhaps it's his documentary background but, for Simon Beaufoy, the essence of his writing and screenplays can generally be brought back to those three words.
It's certainly an intention that's served him well, with acclaimed films such as The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire under his belt. It's also been vital in bringing 127 Hours to the screen.
It's the tale of adrenaline-loving American climber Aron Ralston who, in 2003, became trapped in a canyon in Utah when a boulder pinned his arm. After five days, Ralston amputated his arm with a pocket knife and staggered to freedom. Telling his story well was thus of the utmost importance to Simon.
“It's a massive responsibility,” he explains, “because Aron is here, he'll read the script, he's sitting next to you in the cinema, and it's the defining moment of his life: you have to get that right.
“If you're fictionalising a story you have a responsibility to your audience to tell it in such a way that it's communicated properly and that it's shaped and crafted the way drama should be, that it has emotion, that they understand. And that often runs counter to actuality, so it's a tightrope walk. And if you're teetering you have to fall the side of the facts. You have a deep responsibility to Aron but that's where all the best ideas come from: the most extraordinary things happen to real people. You can't buy that, that's the most valuable thing, the authenticity of real stories. People can smell it. It's very important to talk to the real people, to go to the slums in Mumbai. I didn't make those stories up, I said 'if I gave you a camera what would you point it at?' They said 'gangsters.' I shaped and crafted it, but the story came from that truth.”
As part of his research, Simon – also a keen mountain climber – spent a lot of time with Aron.
“We talked a lot about climbing. I think it was important to him, that we had a lot in common on that, that I completely understood his drama [because] it's not a survival film: that's a bit of a Trojan horse. It looks like a film about an athlete who gets in trouble and has to cut his arm off and survives. But it's really a story about a person who turned his back on friends and family and the human race, really, and was in this very self-regarding, self-challenging and ultimately self-destructive journey before this event that stopped him in his tracks.
“We've all been in situations where we don't take calls - 'ah, it's only mum, I'll call her back tomorrow' - and it's a film that makes you think it's not 'only' mum, it's 'mum', and she won't always be there everyday and I should take that call because people are the most important thing.”
The importance of people is something that Simon has come to embrace himself, albeit through less extreme reasons. Having tried the lock-himself-away route with the writing, he's relaxed considerably in recent years - “I thought the kids coming in was disturbing for a while, but now I see it as enriching, as little nourishing breaks” - however he has a degree of admiration for those writers who claim to write 2000 words a day.
“I'd love to be one of those writers but it's not going to happen. You know the ones, three tequilas at sunrise, keep the bottle open, six pages before breakfast, visit a bordello, shoot buffalo, write another novel in the evening... I can't do that. I just write when I can.” He laughs. “They can't have children...”
The film itself has already established something of a reputation with people apparently passing out during the (surprisingly non-graphic) amputation moment. Simon, however, is at pains to put the facts straight.
“We've had some faint but, oddly, they want to go back in after. They're just overwhelmed, they're not disgusted: at a test screening, one guy collapsed but at the end he ticked “excellent” on his scorecard.
“A lot of have said to me it sounds great but they won't be going to see it because of the gore. I'm trying to explain that you see more gore in an episode of Casualty!
“It's a measure of Danny's success that people are finding it hard to watch. But it's because of the intensity, it's not a horror film.” He smiles. “It's actually the opposite: a really hopeful film that says ring your mother'...”
127 Hours is out now on DVD.