Q: You had Brian Cox, physicist for consultation but you also went to the Cosmonaut School in the former Soviet Union. What did that experience bring to the project?

DB: We were initially going to make the film there. We looked for ways to make the film cheaper -- but not just cheaper, so the film feels original, different, and has an identity all it's own. You stamp it. The way you make it often identifies the film for what it is. That's certainly what happened for 28 Days Later. So we thought, let's go to Star City and make it there. It's cheap to work in Russia, at the moment, they're dead keen on dollars coming in, all these films being made there and they're beginning to revive their own industry. But interestingly its [Star City's] technology is all 1970s -- still. In fact, it's alarming because you think, "You're not going to send someone up into space in something that old, are you?" But it works and it always has worked and it doesn't fail and it's incredibly reliable.

We sent this one guy, an expert -- we told him what the premise of the film was, we said, "What would you do to create this mission?" And he said, "The first thing you would do on a long term space travel like this is you would try and get computer chips from the 1980s because they're way more reliable than computer chips now." Although computer chips now are thinner, they're more powerful, they're not as reliable. You'd harvest computer chips from the 1980s from all around the world because they're reliable. And that's the most important thing out in space, when you're far away, is reliability and the Russians are very good at that. So, they were really annoyed when. I told them the crew was a mixture of Americans and Asians and they said, "Where are the Russians?! Look at everything we've ever done in space and we don't even get a cosmonaut on board!" I had to squirm out of that one!

Q: Your films are dynamic and I hazard that comes from your interest in extreme contrast: the claustrophobic ship against the expanse of space, for example. Another extreme that recurs is the man against the infinite. Your films, in one way or another, involve characters that 'meet their makers.' Why is extreme contrast important to your vision and how does the search for greatness fit in?

DB: I haven't got anything against films that are about the minutia of relationships or customs, but I love extremes. I love taking a bunch of characters and it usually is a bunch of characters, and you throw something at them that's usually extreme, like a bag of money, or you send them out to explode a nuclear device on the surface of the sun. And those extremes are wonderful for drama, for me. So you get a scene that wasn't in the original script but because of the circumstances we built into the film, where they vote on whether or not they should kill another human being. That's as extreme as you can get! What would you do? You're a liberal democrat -- we're all liberal democrats. If a vote came, would you put your name to it?

I love that kind of stuff; it's my kind of drama, really. I'm not as much a fan of the minutia drama. I like those extreme canvasses, I watch them but I like those big extreme canvasses. I like action movies, even though I think action movies are kind of derided now. But there is something extraordinary about action movies, which is absolutely linked to the invention of cinema and what cinema is and why we love it. (Excitedly he talks with his hands) IT'S 40 FEET HIGH AND IT'S ABOUT MOVEMENT AND DANGER.

You think about Buster Keaton and the other performers. It's absolutely linked to that! We love that adrenaline! Otherwise, why go to a dark room with a lot of people you don't know (gasps) and do thinks like that?! There's something incredibly cathartic about that, don't you think?! It's quite difficult to talk about [a character meeting his maker] because it sounds trite, but the big issues come up. What I tried to pummel the actors with is everything we have here: your shoes, your computer, your eyebrow, everything, is a bit of exploded star. That's what everything is. It's stardust. Everything organic and inorganic is just stardust, from one star or a number of them that exploded and [is] sustained and maintained by this other star now. You are going to go out into there; you're going to be aware of the questions on a big level. "Is there a God? Is there something that created all this? Is there something beyond our rational capability?" Quite clearly there is. And also, on a macro level, what we are -- what makes us go there, into this hostile terrifying place, what makes us want to go there? There is a danger, it sounds a bit trite to try and talk about it a bit so we tried to visualize it as much as we could.

Q: Recently, you said you had an idea for a third 28 Days Later that you might be interested in directing. Can you talk a little about that?

DB: (Laughs) I can't really, but I've got an idea for it, which I didn't think I would have. I didn't want to do the second one, I couldn't have anyway because of Sunshine but I did do some second unit shooting for them because I could. I wanted to get out of the cutting room because I'd been in so long doing this film and I really enjoyed it -- you know -- doing something trashy like zombies killing people. Especially since it was all I shot one weekend and I was like 'Wow, this is really great! You just come in and kill him and that's what we'll shoot today." It's fantastic release.

I did have this other idea; I don't know whether it'll happen or not. It's to do with Russia, that part of the world. Not France, in the second film it gets to France and wipes out the French but the third idea has more to do with Russia but that's all I can say.

Q: Returning to the pace for a moment. I see a mythic gradient to the film. You are dealing with what Sara was referring to: an encounter with the ineffable. There's a Mayan glyph that is a verb for "to witness" and the glyph is the sideways view of an eyeball. And the eyeball, with the sun reflecting in it, is a repeated image in your film. Can you speak about what witnessing means in this film in pursuing the theme of encounter?

DB: The biggest fakedom of the film, but the most important thing, is that there's a room that they can sit in that allows them to see the star as they're approaching it. In retrospect, NASA would never give them that room. Although psychologically you'd think it's good to be able to see out the window it's a recipe for disaster to witness this thing, [a recipe] for ineffectiveness, for realizing how meaningless we are compared to this glowing globe as they grow closer to it but it was the drama really -- all drama -- for them to have the room and have them witness it, and witness Mercury and where he [Cillian Murphy] witnesses the most important thing, ultimately, Pinbacker.

That scene where he comes in and Pinbacker is burning himself in front of the sun. I don't think people get this from the film, which of course, is the fault of the film, but it's not so much about what Pinbacker is -- he's represents fundamentalism -- but he's really a challenge to Cillian's sanity. That's what it would be to go out there. Is it possible for someone, for seven years, to have burnt themselves and still speak to me as a human being. How is this possible? That's the key and that's the way the scene is played out.

He tries to touch him and there's no touch, of course, because in a way he's not human. He's the Taliban, or whatever. The interesting thing about the eyeball is that when you get light like that all eyeballs are interchangeable. It's absolutely incredible, it doesn't' matter what race you are. One of those eyeballs is the Japanese guy's eyeball. We just mixed them about. One of them is Cillian's, one's not and there's no difference at all.

Q: Which is to say that witnessing is universal.

DB: Absolutely! I love the fact that you could mix them up and no one could tell whose eyeball is who's eyeball. I thought that tells you all you need to know about us all, doesn't it? That's also what I love about space! Apart from that little blip where (Troy) Garity wanted to have that star wars up there, it's always been on the behalf of all mankind. I think that's one of the few times we've achieved that in all our history. I pray that continues and is not divided up.

Q: Cillian Murphy. He was in 28 Days Later, and now he's in Sunshine. What is it about him that draws you back to him?

DB: The biggest thing that shocked me was how much he changed. When we did 28 Days Later he -- well, both he and Naomie [Harris] were quite reluctant. I think they thought it was a bit of a trashy film and -- "what were they doing in it?" They liked the idea of me directing because of my reputation but they thought, "Wasn't it a bit [trashy] with lots of violence and trash?" And even though they did exactly what I asked, I could feel them being a bit reluctant.

They hadn't learned what cinema is, really. It's many, many things and there's many, many ways with it to get where you want to be. And he's [Cillian's] learned that since then. He's done a series of really good things in which he's being exceptionally excellent. You think about Batman {Begins], in which he nearly stole the film, and The Wind That Shakes The Barley, in which he's extraordinary, and Breakfast on Pluto and Red Eye. So he's learned to do a variety of films: an art film, a trashy mainstream film, and he has become a proper cinema actor. He understands the process and it's really cool. I've never seen that as graphically as I have in the way he's grown.

I think you can see that in Naomi (Harris) as well. She's done Miami Vice and Pirates of the Caribbean so she's seen the big end side of it. It's really interesting watching them grow as actors. One of the things you have to learn as a director -- and it's really important that you learn it -- although you're interested in who directs the film, nobody else is. Ninety-Five percent or more of the audience is only interested in who's acting in it and if it's any good. They don't give a hoot about what your theories are or anything like that. And you have to learn, even though you're in charge of the film and actors only appear for a few weeks -- whereas you're on it for years -- basically the film's for them and it has to be for them. Basically that's all we go to the movies for. There's a tiny little slip of us that go to see an interesting director but not really - they go for the actors. You have to find a way around that for yourself, to accept that.