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Like, for example, Figment Films, the company Boyle, Macdonald, and Hodge have been running since Shallow Grave. A tour of Figment's headquarters doesn't take long: It's a single ground-floor room with a few desks and stacks of cardboard boxes. Trainspotting may have made Boyle and his partners into indie gods, the darlings of the Brit-flick set (it was, in fact, the largest-grossing British film since Four Weddings and a Funeral, earning $20 million in the U.K.), but back in the States even Steve Buscemi probably has plusher digs.

"We'll get a massive kicking in Britain because of A Life Less Ordinary," Boyle predicts. "I think people will regard it as a sellout to the dirty Yankee dollar. But it wasn't meant like that. We didn't do it for the money. What we wanted to do was combine a British sensibility with some of the wonderful things about America--its land, its language, its people."

There was only one snag: Life's director knew almost nothing about America, its land, its language, or its people. Born and raised in Manchester, he'd spent his entire professional life in the U.K., making TV films for the BBC, until he hooked up with Macdonald, Hodge, and McGregor to shoot Shallow Grave, his first feature. "So I decided to drive across America by myself," he says. "It took 10 days. All that virgin, empty land. I mean, there was nobody."

Of course, after the success of Trainspotting, Boyle could have toured all 50 states in a chauffeur-driven stretch limo if he'd wanted to. Offers poured in from the studios, including one to direct Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder in Fox's Alien Resurrection. He met with both actresses but turned the film down because of "cold feet over the special effects." There was another reason as well: He didn't want to alienate Macdonald and Hodge, who weren't invited in on the project. While McGregor has gone on to act in outside projects (besides Star Wars, which he just finished shooting, he'll appear in the Miramax thriller Nightwatch next year), the behind-the-camera triumvirate have always stuck together.

"We don't even get many offers anymore," says Boyle. "People got bored with us saying no. We just really get on with what we're doing, so the offers aren't very tempting."

Fortified from his road trip, Boyle beelined it back to Britain and began casting Life. Hodge had written the lead character for McGregor, naturally, but finding his love interest took a bit of doing. Diaz was an early favorite, although at one point Renee Zellweger, Tom Cruise's wooed and winsome wife in Jerry Maguire, was considered, as was Julia Roberts. "But then it would have become a $32 million movie," Boyle figures. Choosing a location was even trickier. "We looked at North Carolina first, but it was so rainy and misty it was like Indonesia. Then everybody kept talking about these wonderful mountains in Utah."

Filming in Utah did have advantages--along with the breathtaking Wasatch range, the Beehive State offers plenty of cheap nonunion labor. But the culture clashes sometimes drove the Englishmen nuts. For instance, after the locals learned about the movie's psycho, gun-toting angels--a definite Mormon no-no--it became impossible to find extras for the film. Boyle had to bus them in from neighboring states. And then there was the sacred-underpants incident.


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