You woudn’t notice Danny Boyle in a crowd if he hadn’t just won a Golden Globe. That is, of course, if the Briton’s entourage doesn’t push you away.

In India for the premiere of his award-winning film, Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle spoke about his movie-making experience at the latest Masters Class, organised by the Indian Independent Filmmakers Worldwide (IFFW), at Fame Big Cinema, Andheri, on Thursday.

Boyle said the most encouraging thing about working in India is that it is acceptable to suspend realism. “As a film-maker, I like to push realities.”

“The problem with film-makers is that the more films you make, the more cunning you get with your technique. It results in a loss of innocence that you had when you made your first film,” he says. “So when people say I switch genres, what I’m really doing is trying something fresh to keep the naivete alive.”

What made Slumdog’s story doubly attractive to Boyle was that it was set in a city he’d never visited before. Boyle candidly admits that not all his experiments worked. “With A Life Less Ordinary, we’d originally intended to set the movie in France and Scotland but then we turned it into an American road movie. That was a mistake.”

As for The Beach, Boyle explains the worst thing that happened to the movie was that he got everything he’d ever wanted, including Leonardo Di Caprio and massive funding. “I went to Thailand to shoot the movie with an entire crew from Britain. It was like we were invading the place,” he says, “But with Slumdog, I brought only a crew of 10 from Britain.”

Boyle has come under fire for being a little extreme while portraying slum life in India, especially a scene where the protagonist Jamal jumps into a heap of excrement, just so he can get his favourite movie star’s autograph. But the film-maker explains that the scene was the key to Jamal’s character and the film. “You squash together two extremes here — this boy jumping into shit and then finally getting the autograph.”