DOCUMENTARY maker Paul Sng had just moved to Edinburgh when he not only met but became friends with one of his idols, the writer Irvine Welsh.
“We had a few mutual friends,” says Sng, who was born and raised in north London and until 2018 had been working in Brighton. “We went to a gig, hung out after, shared a bottle of wine, and just clicked. I remember that the wine was really horrible.”
Little did Sng know that this would be the start of a journey that led to him direct the documentary Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough, which will be released on Friday. The film takes an observational look at Welsh and his unique mind, while the likes of Liam Neeson, Maxine Peake, Ruth Negga, Stephen Graham, and musician Nick Cave read excerpts from his array of novels.
Last month, it closed the Edinburgh International Film Festival, receiving strong reviews for providing a previously unseen view of the Trainspotting author.
In the years since their first meeting, Sng and Welsh have only grown closer. Eager to find a new group of friends after arriving in Edinburgh, Sng even joined Welsh at Hibernian games, with the film maker joking that he now bears the cursed of supporting the Scottish Premiership side.
The two also started to see movies together. It was after one excursion to the cinema, to watch Todd Haynes’s documentary on The Velvet Underground, that Sng raised the topic of whether Welsh would want to appear in his own documentary.
“I was obviously fishing to see if he’d be interested,” admits Sng, who over the last 10 years has explored austerity in Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain; the lack of social housing with Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle, and told the story of musician Poly Styrene’s life and legacy with Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché.
After Welsh said he was indeed interested, he and Sng then began to discuss what the film could cover and how they would approach a film on Welsh’s past and impact.
When Sng is considering a documentary subject, he always asks himself a series of questions: “What’s the story? What’s the film about? Who is it about? Who’s the audience? What’s the vision? How are you going to tell the story? Why is it important now?”
For Sng, it was important to show a side of Welsh that most people didn’t know existed, especially as he’s gained a reputation as a “shouty, controversial figure, a provocateur”.
While Sng acknowledges that is indeed a part of Welsh’s personality, he also wanted to display the “warm, loving side to him, because he is a very loyal friend, a great husband to his partner Emma, and someone who is very thoughtful and romantic”.
At the same time, Sng wanted to give creatives and Welsh fans a peek behind the curtain at his creative process.
One of the ways Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough dives into his mind is by filming him take the hallucinogenic drug Dimethyltryptamine, otherwise known as DMT. Welsh took a supervised dosage during a trip to Canada, which Sng filmed.
Upon his return to Scotland, Sng instantly knew this would be the framework for the film.
Since Welsh was lying down during the experience, Sng decided to visualise his journey by having him walk through an exhibition of photos, clips and passages of his life and work. Sng said: “I wanted this to kick off the exploration of who he is.
“We wanted to show Irvine surrendering control and being in a moment when he had stepped outside of himself.
“When you have this kind of hallucinogenic experience your understanding of reality shifts from second to second.”
By getting inside Welsh’s head, Sng aimed to show how Welsh has used incidents that have happened to him and the people in his orbit to inform his characters and stories.
The biggest discovery Sng made regarding Welsh’s work is that every book he has written is set in the same universe. “I didn’t realise that, Sng said. “You could have the Trainspotting cinematic universe because characters do pop up in all his books. If we’d had more time, we might have explored that a little more.”
Welsh was wonderful to work with on the documentary, says Sng, who was left hugely impressed by the way Welsh was so secure in his life and achievements.
“He’s been doing this for years. He’s such a well-known person. He doesn’t have any insecurities, whereas I carry all of mine with me. He just has confidence and it’s so easy to collaborate and work with him.”
Half-way through filming, Sng realised that while he was making a documentary about Welsh, he was also exploring topics close to his own heart. It began to change him and his outlook.
At one point in the film, Welsh admits he always thought therapy was a bad idea, as he didn’t want to give over control to other people. This was a view Sng shared.
But after watching how Welsh had given himself over to DMT and the impact it had on the writer, Sng started to question this belief. “Now I’m in therapy and it’s very useful for dealing with things that have happened in the past,” he said.
After discussing Welsh’s hedonistic days and realising how big a part of his life drinking and drugs used to be, Sng decided to give them up. Sng is hopeful that Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough can inspire viewers to re-examine aspects of their own lives, while at the same time celebrating one of the most important Scottish writers and figures of the last 50 years.
“He writes about outsiders, friendship, being imperfect and not conforming,” Sng said. “All of those things are so appealing to me. I mean, look at Trainspotting. It’s not just a book about drugs or addiction, it’s about how great it is to be young, have friends and have no responsibilities.”
Just like Trainspotting, Welsh is famous for having a complex relationship with Scotland. “Irving has left Scotland and come back,” Sng said. “That familiarity probably brought him back, but then it pushed him away.
“He’s independent, but not anti-English. He’s not the sort of kilts and shortbread Scot, instead he’s more about the street language of Scotland.”
But while Sng can appreciate Welsh’s complicated relationship with the country, after nearly a decade of living in the Scottish capital himself, the filmmaker is delighted to have made a film that doesn’t just honour Welsh, but Edinburgh too.
Sng said: “I love Edinburgh. It has its faults, like anywhere. But it really became home very quickly for me. It’s been really great to make a film that is, in some ways, partly about the city as well as about Irvine.”
