It wasn’t just the U.S. that beefed up national security measures ten-fold after 9/11. As part of Inverse’s 2023 oral history about the making of the film, Boyle noted that the “freedom” he and his crew had shooting “28 Days Later” in London “was just ridiculous when you look back on it now. We were able to tow in and turn over buses outside Downing Street. Now, they’d be around you with machine guns.” Even at the time, though, flipping a double-decker bus onto its side for Jim to pass by in his journey through London required a bit of subterfuge.
In the same interview, line producer Robert How admitted the Westminster Council wouldn’t allow the film’s crew to lay the bus right outside Downing Street … so they snuck in at four in the morning and did it anyway. This aligns with what Boyle said on the movie’s DVD commentary:
“This, you wouldn’t be allowed to do this. We did this before September 11, and to put a bus on its side in Whitehall, literally just outside Downing Street where the Prime Minister residence is, you just wouldn’t be allowed to I don’t think. We only got away with it by the skin of our teeth. And by the inventiveness of Mark Tildesley, the [production] designer, who swore blind to them that he could get it in and out of there in 15 minutes – and proved himself right.”
Brief as this moment may be, it serves to further immerse you in the film’s vision of a devastated London. Images like this would once again become a dark mirror of the real world two decades later when the COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in identical visuals of vacant cities the world over (with far fewer flipped buses, thankfully). Perhaps Boyle and Garland’s “28 Years Later” is arriving right on time after all.
