Time Out With The Slum Dog Millionaire

Danny Boyle has been telling Time Out all about his next project, scripted by The Full Monty's Simon Beaufoy and it sounds... well... read this, then I'll tell you what I think.

'It's called Slum Dog Millionaire, it's based on a true story, and it's about a kid from the slums of Mumbai, who has nothing – he's ill educated, he's illiterate – and he goes on the Hindi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and wins it. And they can't believe that he's done it. They think he's cheated. They think he's getting signals from embedded chips in his body, or that there are people coughing in the audience, but he won it.

'What's clever about the film is that the structure shows you how he knows the answers. Certain things have happened to him in his life and they happen to ask questions about those things. But the real reason he's on the show is to get in touch with the girl he loves but has lost in the chaos of Mumbai, and all he knows is that she watches the show religiously. So he's not even there to win the money, but that's when you win I suppose, when you're not even trying.'

'They happen to ask questions about those things' - hmmm. What's clever about a structure that hangs entirely on a series of coincidences? Surely that's the very opposite of a clever structure?