Choose Irvine

We open with "Princess Street, Leith, 1958". That's the Scott Monument, and it's Princes Street with one S and even then not possessive, and the Leith border is a matter for discussion but it's on Leith Walk, at least some way down past Calton Hill. It's one of several geographical oddities and issues with what we could charitably call 'fact'. It's also not even 1958, because that's an electric tram and those stopped running on Friday 16th November, 1956.

The fake film-grain, typewriter noises for the the early title cards, a repeated use of hand-written reel start. Still photographs that are almost certainly digital in origin are presented with Kodak (sometimes Portra) 400 35mm frames around them. In search of authenticity that is a lot of artificiality. Anachronisms too. I hadn't known that Irvine Welsh had been on the bus of Hibernian supporters that had been in a fatal crash in 1982, but I know that Hibs anthem Sunshine On Leith was written six years after that. The discussion of how the compensation from that incident got him on "the property ladder" might feed into the discussion of being a "failed punk".

There are some interesting elements in a rambling documentary. It's perhaps apposite that there's a discussion of Trainspotting in its early drafts, cutting a novel out of the middle of it and constructing an ending. It might be something that the film could have done with. There's a lot of Danny Boyle's Trainspotting, clips, cast, production stills, even cells in collage on the screen. Not surprising given how important that "remix" was to bringing Welsh to wider audiences, even if oddities of publishing meant he had two books on shelves nearly simultaneously.

Built around a long interview with its eponymous subject, the highlights are probably the appearances of other celebrities. There's Iggy Pop, whose work with the Stooges is bound up in the origins of Trainspotting but whose musical career almost bookends the punk and acid house that's so musically important to Welsh' journey. Gail Porter, Martin Compston, Rob Stagg, John Hodge (scriptwriter for the film), among others. There are loads of musicians, Iggy obviously, Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, Lisa Moorish, Rowetta Satchell, and Alan McGhee of Creation records talking about both the things he remembers from 1993.

We get a wee shout out, our own Symon Parsons is quoted describing it as "the most important film to come out of the UK since the days of Handmade films". That becomes recursively important as the reanimated post-bankruptcy entity of Handmade (after all that Nuns On The Run money was spent) produced Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, a film whose debts to Trainspotting have been so overshadowed by the over-leveraged borrowings from it.

They talk about the "next film" at one point, a romantic comedy that was meant to make all the money but was "a flop". That was A Life Less Ordinary, a film so of the Nineties zeitgeist that it was serialised in the pages of 2000 AD. Some of its eight parts were contemporary with "Space Girls" widely regarded as one of the worst strips in that title's august history, even now that we're further from it than it was from the first issue in 1977. Prog 1066 was 'the sex issue', and it's impossible to read it without the context of lad-era Loaded and, to be honest, almost impossible to think about without cringing. Choose Irvine Welsh isn't as dated, but does show several artefacts of that same degree of trying too hard. There's a long story of the era that runs through Ibiza and Berlin and floppy discs and a literal cavalcade of arseholes.

There's junket interview with Ewan McGregor (Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi) and Johnny Lee Miller (one of television's many Sherlocks Holmes) in a section talking about T2. That's the only way Danny Boyle appears too, and in that respect I was reminded of Memory: The Making Of Alien where many of the most important voices are only heard as echoes. There's what passes as a callback to the early title cards, a document (maybe Microsoft Word) with a now silent cursor spelling out a "by" and a "based on".

That same bit of felt-tipped film appears as we lead into that section that talks about the sequel. That becomes a recurring motif, appearing a fourth time (at least) in the lead-in to discussion of Filth. It's not just professional film, its fifth appearance presages a selection of phone footage (shot in portrait mode). In an assemblage of archive footage, including that repueposed and recurring stuff, there are plenty of new conversations and revelations.

The version Eye For Film saw was 'not yet rated' but given how often the C-word appears, including twice in one (oft-repeated) sentence describing Begbie, one doubts it'll involve any letters. It is a niggling and pedantic thing to say that there's a grocer's apostrophe in the credits when it ought to be Interviewees and given how often I rely on my editors to catch them innately hypocritical, but it is one of many places where Choose Irvine Welsh feels slapdash and slight.

Produced by (among others) Welsh himself, this could be considered to be semiautobiographical. Director Ian Jefferies previously co-directed documentary Kick Out The Jams About XFM. Brian Anderson also produces, they've a history in publicity and a whole media landscape that uneasily transfers to film. Screening at the 76th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, reanimated under the auspices of the Edinburgh International Festival, it doubtless played to a local crowd who will have connections to it in a chain cinema in a shopping centre closer to Leith than its establishing shots. There's a discussion about authenticity in (AIM-listed) Everyman Media Group and its ownership of the original 1933 entity but it's not one the film invites itself.

Choose Irvine Welsh screens at the same time that Hibernian take on Aston Villa at Easter Road. Given that one of the stories is Welsh missing an event for a pub quiz, if I were a betting man I might wonder if he'd again trade something for the ecstasy of defeat. Outwith scheduling woes, the film is interesting enough, but not worth seeking out. "in lieu of a credible alternative" isn't the catchiest pre-title, even without Scott Asheton on drums.