Why was the name Lesley changed to Allison in the Trainspotting movie?
In Trainspotting the movie, the mother of the baby who dies is Allison, while in the book she is called Lesley.
There are a few instances of scenes from the book which are adapted for different characters in the movie, but his was always done to remove small characters and attribute those stories to the main guys.
But since this is the only scene of Allison in the movie anyway, this is not a plausible explanation for the name change.
Best Answer
Alison appears in 2 of the films scenes, in the prologue (where, unlike the book, she only shares drugs with Sickboy as opposed to sleeping with him as well) and in the tragic scene involving Dawn (where she acts as a proxy for the character of Lesley).
It was and is simply a way of making the characters play a more economical role in the screen story as compared to what are often sprawling books with a multitude of overlapping characters. The film (and to be honest the book as well) seems a lot more interested in the guys than the ladies and as such the characters of Lesley and Allison were combined into one person.
This is done frequently throughout the film, such as the combination of Rab "Second Prize" McLaughlin and Danny 'Spud' Murphy (even the book refers to how similar they are and with both 'having never been seen in the same place' a joke is made regarding the possibility of them being the same person.) The most dramatic example may be the combination of Matty and Tommy, while as they both contract HIV in the novel it is Matty who dies of toxoplasmosis.
This is often done in screen adaptions of books that have a lot of characters - one of the more classic examples of this in the most contemporary of pieces can be seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring where the character of Glorfindel was not included, with the film-makers choosing instead to expand Arwens role to cover events Glorfindel originally dealt with in the book.
Pictures about "Why was the name Lesley changed to Allison in the Trainspotting movie?"
What happened to Lesley in Trainspotting?
The chapter "It Goes Without Saying" opens with the death of an infant, Dawn, whose mother Lesley is a heroin addict and acquaintance of the main characters. The cause of death is unclear; characters speculate that it may have been a cot death or a death from neglect. The Skag Boys are unsure of how to respond.How did Trainspotting get its name?
The film title is a reference to a scene in the book where Begbie and Renton meet "an auld drunkard" who turns out to be Begbie's estranged father, in the disused Leith Central railway station, which they are using as a toilet. He asks them if they are "trainspottin'".What is the baby scene in Trainspotting?
In the film's most brutal scene, the characters are awoken from their drugged haze by a woman screaming hysterically \u2014 only to discover that her baby has died. The likely father, Sick Boy, is devastated, and yells at his friends to say something. Only Renton breaks the silence: "I'm cooking up."Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: RODNAE Productions, Angela Roma, Monstera, Tara Winstead