Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh says his film Happy-Go-Lucy wanted to be 'anti-miserablist', so he just let it evolve. On stage at BFI Southbank, Sarfraz Manzoor asks the director how he managed to pull out radical optimism from a world full of cynicism
Sarfraz Manzoor
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday April 17 2008
Sarfraz Manzoor: Mike, a lot of the reviews for Happy-Go-Lucky have been in the "Mike Leigh in cheery film shock" sort of vein. Has that surprised you?
Mike Leigh: Well, there was a review in London Lite which said, "Can this be true, Mike Leigh has made a comedy?" Does it surprise me? No, not at all. It doesn't surprise me the rubbish that journalists talk. In this particular case - and this particular journalist otherwise gave it a wonderful review, I have to say - you tend to think that she's either got amnesia or she's very young, if she only knows about Vera Drake, and even that's got it's humour. I don't know, and I don't want to talk about this because it's so irrelevant.
SM: But before we talk about the film properly, I thought there's a real brightness to this film, isn't there? It's all splashes of colour in the set design, costumes and the film you used. Tell me a little bit about that.
ML: At the point where I got a sense of what the film should be, and I was able to share that, principally with Dick Pope - the cinematographer, who's a genius and who's shot all my films since Life is Sweet in 1990 - and also the production designer, costume designer and makeup designer, I talked about Poppy. I said that this is going to be a vivacious, positive, intelligent, bright woman with a great sense of humour and buzzing with energy, and the film really needs to take its cue from that - the film should burst with energy and colour. At this point, we decided to shoot this film in widescreen - it's the first film I've made that's been widescreen. And we set about shooting tests, just to work out what stocks to use, how to treat them, how to find the palette and things. Curiously, at that precise moment - that week in fact, Fuji announced this new film stock called Vivid, which we used. And it's an absolute delight. So we have this wonderful, rich, succulent colour experience.
SM: When you think about the genesis of the film, was it the character of Poppy that first came about or the idea of doing something that was positive, or doing something that was anti-miserable?
ML: All of those things, in a way. The making of my films is a journey of discovery - I discover what the film is, really. But obviously, one always has a conception, an idea. In this case, I would more accurately say that I had a feeling. And if you ask what that feeling was, I'd say on the whole it's the feeling that you've got now having seen the film. As it evolved and I started to focus on what I was up to, it began to be clear that the film wanted to be positive, to be anti-miserablist. And I felt that was the right thing to do. Not least because it's about a teacher, it's about somebody who cares and who nurtures the future. We are screwing up the world, and while that's going on we can feel very depressed about that. But actually, people get on with it, and that's what the film's about. But I also wanted to make a film where we could just enjoy ourselves. [Chuckles]
SM: I was listening to Salman Rushdie on Sunday evening and he was making a complaint that everyone these days reads everything as autobiographical. With this film, is it autobiographical, is that how you're feeling or were feeling at the time? Or is it just the character?
ML: It's very hard to say that there's anything autobiographical in any concrete or literal sense. Some people have suggested that I'm a Scott character. [Laughter from the audience] But I think that you could put that under the general heading of "Hyperbole". And apart from anything else, Scott's main characteristic is that he's totally devoid of a sense of humour, which I don't think is something you can accuse me of. But I guess everything's autobiographical - you make a piece of work about people and life and the way we live, and you draw from all kinds of stuff, consciously and subconsciously.
SM: I thought the film was quite radical in a way - I mean, the prevailing ideology at the moment is cynicism. It's much more fashionable to be cynical and negative, whether it's about politicians and public institutions, even about teachers. So to make something that's not cynical and about somebody who approaches the world with an open heart - that's really not in the grain of the culture of the moment.
ML: I can't add to that. I feel that, and I think that's what we've done in making the film.
SM: Here's a clip from Life is Sweet, with Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks discussing boys and feminism.
[Runs clip]
SM: I thought it would be interesting to show that, as an example of the humour and wit of your films, and also to demonstrate your impressive record in working with actors, many of whom you work with again and again. What do you look for?
ML: Claire Skinner, her contribution to Naked, which was the next film we made after Life is Sweet, is one of my favourite characters in all of my films - Sandra, the nurse, who shows up at the end and who has this wonderful, disjointed way of not completing her sentences. She shows up from her failed safari holiday in Zimbabwe in 1992. And it's a great comic performance.
SM: Sally Hawkins, this is the third film that you've worked with her?
ML: Yes, Sally was in All or Nothing and Vera Drake, where she's the posh girl who gets a private abortion after being raped.
SM: What did you see in her that made you want to make her the focus of this film?
ML: Well, she's brilliant - she's extremely versatile, intelligent and hardworking, and she's got a great sense of humour. You've seen her in all kinds of films apart from mine. She's a great actor when working with other people, very generous. She's full of beans. And I just thought it would be great to tap into her energy and special skills.
SM: I found Poppy slightly annoying at the beginning - sort of unnecessarily and overly perky. Even when her bike gets stolen that doesn't faze her.
ML: Why is that "unnecessarily, overly perky"? She's cool, philosophical. The bike gets nicked, but what else can you do about it, life goes on. So defend your statement.
[Audience laughs]
SM: Initially, I thought she came across as a bit one-note - as in she's perky and nothing fazes her. But over the course of the film, she does become more complicated and reveals different levels.
ML: As far as I'm concerned, you could be forgiven, especially with the scene where they've gone clubbing and they're being silly having had a few drinks, you could be forgiven for thinking at that point, "Can I actually spend a couple of hours with this person?"
SM: You almost agree with me then?
ML: I am agreeing, but I'm saying that it's pretty much straight away that you start to get the hang of what she's actually about, and I don't think there's any real reason to go on thinking that [she's one-note]. When she gets into the car with Scott - I mean, he's so ludicrous that she just deals with it, her sense of humour takes over.
SM: He's a fascinating character - he comes across as somebody who's just a joke but ends up like the love-child of Richard Littlejohn and Melanie Phillips.
ML: I don't know them.
SM: Probably better off that way. How did you arrive at his backstory?
ML: I can't really answer that. We invented him, just like we invented all the other characters and we created his world. I think the important thing to remember is that what we don't do is to say, "Let's do a baddie, or let's do a guy who's a monster." Because in some ways, he is a monster, but he's a real person. So what we do is, without attitude or prejudice, we invent somebody with this complete background who has not had a good time in his life, not been treated well and has all these terrible paranoid hang-ups, many of which have grown into really negative and destructive views.
SM: But you still have empathy for him.
ML: Yes, and you know he's fallen in love and he can't handle it.
SM: It reminds me of All or Nothing and one of the characters - Jason, when he goes completely crazy when his girlfriend gets pregnant. You know he's acting totally vile but at the same time you do get some sense of empathy as to why he's behaving the way he is.
ML: Yes.
SM: I read somewhere that you said that making cheery films cost more money, costume-wise, etcetera ...
ML: I never said that - that would be a ridiculous thing to say.
SM: I mean you said that for All or Nothing, you said that you could buy all the clothes in charity shops.
ML: Well, that's true, that the costume budget for All or Nothing for that reason was very low. I suppose if you follow that logic through, but I think we should talk about something more profound in the National Film Theatre.
SM: I can do profundity. Recurring themes in your films - kids, not having kids, etc - do you know they're coming up when you watch the films, or is it a conscious act that they come into your films again?
ML: Do you mean when I watch it or when I make it?
SM: I mean at the end, when you're watching it, do you think, "Oh, I didn't realise that that theme is in this as well." For example, in Happy-Go-Lucky, the desire to have children is in this as well, isn't it?
ML: Well, I'm around while these films are being made. [Audience laughs] And I'm quite closely involved in the form and content of them, so I don't have those revelations when I watch them.
SM: But you can watch something and see something new for the first time at the end, can't you?
ML: Yes, but not main thematic things like that. I'm sorry, I'm not being difficult, but that's an honest answer to your question.
SM: Ok, that was a bad question. How much does commercial success matter at this point in your career? You've now got a body of work that speaks for itself, so does it matter as much as it might have done in the past?
ML: That's always mattered. First of all, we make these films to be seen. There's no virtue in a film that nobody or very few people see. But unconventional my films may seem to be, they're perfectly conventional in the sense that they are films, they're movies. They're not alternative films that we shoot for no money at all with a little camera. They're proper movies and they have to be funded, and although the budgets are tight, the money has to come from people who back films. And if you've made films that are not commercially successful, people don't want to know. Not least film-makers such as myself, someone who doesn't have a script, who can't tell the backer what it's going to be about and who will not enter into any discussion about having Hollywood stars involved.
SM: It helps protect risk in some way.
ML: The main thing is, we're not Trappist monks up mountains. We're in the movie business, we want people to see the films. And also, if there's any money made, it simply goes back into things. My most successful film commercially was Secrets and Lies, partly because it got the Palme d'Or at Cannes, partly because it was nominated for five Oscars. But as much as anything, it was because at the time of its release, and it remains illegal today in many countries, including all of South America and many of the Catholic countries in Europe as well as almost all the states in the USA, to trace your birth mother, which is what the film is about. So there was enormous interest in the film. And because the film was, relatively speaking, commercially successful, it enabled us to raise rather more money than we normally did to make Topsy-Turvy. So the short answer to your question is very important indeed.
SM: So has the success of Vera Drake helped in putting Happy-Go-Lucky in more screens, for example in multiplexes?
ML: Vera Drake was successful critically. It was reasonably successful commercially, but sadly not as successful as we would have liked. And therefore, it really didn't have that cachet.
SM: If your films about the business of getting people to see them, have you ever been recently tempted to make things for the BBC or Channel 4, where you'll get a couple of million people watching them?
ML: Well, a number of my films, including this one, are backed by Film4, which is effectively television money, and they will, as part of their journey, get seen on one of the Channel 4 channels. So in that sense, that already happens anyway. So, as you know, recently on Film4, you had Vera Drake and Naked. So far as actually making television drama is concerned, I did it with great enthusiasm, between the 1970s and the early 80s, at a time when you couldn't make indigenous serious feature films. That couldn't happen until Channel 4 came along, which changed the landscape, as we all know. But the truth is, that my passion is movies, is film, is cinema, is the big screen. It's partly working to the highest quality that's possible - that's what films are about. It's partly just the experience that you've all had this evening. But it's also the international currency - it's wonderful to make a film that participates in this world language, this universal sharing of movies. And for me, that's as central to the whole thing as anything else. Television drama, which is absolutely important and seen by a lot of people at once, is great. But my own feeling at this stage in the game is that I've sort of done that and I don't really want to do that because of my passion and commitment to cinema and international cinema.
SM: Let's open this up to the audience now.
Question 1: On the tube and the posters that you see everywhere for Happy-Go-Lucky, the top quote is, "This is Mike Leigh's funniest and finest film." I just wondered if you thought it was possible for you to make a better film than what we've seen tonight. [Audience laughs] And I mean that lovingly.
ML: I hope that I can make a better film than this one, and after that a better film than that one, for the next 106 years. I think you'll just have to wait and see.
Question 2: With the tramp (in Happy-Go-Lucky), Poppy decided to take that big risk, but she decides not to take that risk with Scott. Do you want to explain that?
ML: You're really trying to compare different kinds of situations, with all due respect. First of all, she's intrigued by what she hears [from the tramp], she's open, she's brave and she's cool. It's true that initially the situation could be a dangerous one, and he could be a dangerous character, and indeed there's a moment when you might think that something dangerous is going to happen. But actually, the real point is that she gets him. She's sensitive and sympathetic - she hears him, and gets the spirit of the guy. In this sense, you can compare it with the Scott situation. She knows all about Scott by the time we get to the moment you're talking about - it's an entirely different thing. She can see what's happened, she's been on that journey for a while, she gets Scott and she can see that it's not acceptable and she can see where it's going. She doesn't bail out just for the sake of her own skin. She bails out because she knows she's got to. She's got to walk away. But it's true that in both cases, she gets each guy. All the talk about whether she's irritating or not, the point is she's bubbly and fizzy and has a sense of humour, but also that she's focused and she's sharp and perceptive. And she's caring. She actually deals with the Scott situation, I would submit, in a caring way. Also, it's important to note that she's able to deal with that situation with Scott because she knows how to deal with kids, and Scott's just a big kid. Whereas the tramp, whatever that's all about and you can draw from it whatever you want to, it's not comparable at all because this is a guy who's been through something, but there is a mature man in there, when there isn't with Scott.
Question 3: Would you rank Life is Sweet among your better works?
ML: Well, it's very hard to talk about better or worse. I don't know. I'm very close to these films. There are film-makers who, very legitimately, have relationships with their films which are more or less close, depending on say, whether it's closest to the book it's adapted from, or screenplay or whatever, or whether they were hired into a project that already existed, etc. None of those things apply to me. I'm as close to all of my films, each and every one of them.
SM: Do you watch them?
ML: I do, and I like them. I mean, I'm not like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd, sitting there every night watching my movies. [Audience laughs] But I do watch them, and although I've watched this one until it's coming out of my ears, I did watch a good 40 minutes of this screening. I particularly love watching them with audiences. Some film-makers say, "I can't watch my films, I can't stand them." My feeling, rather piously, is that if you don't like your own films, how the hell can you expect anybody else to like them?
Question 4: You say that this was your first shift into widescreen - did this have an impact on the way you did your staging, shooting in that format?
ML: Curiously enough, we'd considered widescreen before for other films but for various reasons decided not to. And one of the things that concerned me was exactly the thing you're talking about, which is that given that you've got a wider screen, then in constructing the action as I do, very precisely, through the camera, that there would be an issue with, to put it crudely, filling the whole frame. But the interesting thing is, it's actually like wearing glasses and getting used to them. It was never an issue, not on a single shot. Everything was very natural. Even in a close-up, it still felt very natural, because once you get used to looking in that mode, that becomes the language of the film.
Question 5: I was looking at Poppy's character in that scene with her sister and brother-in-law. Should she have gone down the path of being a proper adult, having a family and so forth, do you think she would have any similarity to Beverly in Abigail's Party?
ML: I think Poppy's extremely grown-up, but she's being measured about it. There's no way, as I read her, or indeed as Sally Hawkins read her, that she's somebody that's going to stay juvenile forever. She's not. She's simply a mature but measured person who's taking life steadily and enjoying it and being fulfilled. It's only her sister Helen's perception of her that she's not being responsible, that she's not being sensible. I hate to say this, and don't take it personally, but it's really a silly question, and I say it with the greatest respect. She won't stop being an intelligent, sensible person with a sense of humour, politics, life and a sense of values and a love of children - none of which is Beverly. Beverly hates children, and hasn't got any of the perception or applied intelligence or education or the ability to care that Poppy has. They're absolutely chalk and cheese.
Question 6: I wanted to ask you about your relationship with theatre. You studied at Rada, and you recently did a play at the National. To what extent do you allow yourself to be influenced by the structure of theatre in the way you structure your storytelling, and secondly, whether you believe in theatre less than you believe in films?
ML: I love theatre less than I love films, that's for sure. For every film that I've ever walked out of, which is not very many, I will have walked out of about a thousand plays. Having said that, theatre is very much a part of my life nonetheless. As far as the question of structure goes, certainly what is true is that from a practical, nuts and bolts point of view, I don't think I'd have been able to develop the particular way that I make films - by having very long and extended rehearsals before I go out and shoot anything - if I hadn't served my apprenticeship in the theatre context, where unlike films, rehearsal time is the prevailing convention. Some of the foundations of my practices come from having been exposed to thinking about theatrical practices in the 60s. One of the first things I directed was Pinter's The Caretaker when I was a student at Rada, when it was still a fairly radical new play. I learned a lot from Pinter and Beckett, and you can still see that, even in this film for instance, when she meets that tramp, that's somewhere lurking in the foundations of what's going on there, although I don't think about that consciously. I also in the 60s worked for a season and a half at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where I was assistant director at the main house at Stratford. And whilst I learned a lot about directing, what was immensely important from my point of view, was how to deal with those texts and the writing, so that was to do with storytelling and structure. Shakespeare is nothing if not cinematic. But having said that, when I go and do a play like I did three years ago at the National, Two Thousand Years, or when I made plays way back when, like Abigail's Party or Goose-Pimples, so far as I'm concerned, the way that I make these stories for the stage or screen, from the point of view of what my job is and how it feels, it's pretty identical. The general approach, the philosophy, the way I work from my instincts and certainly the way I prepare the actors and the kind of acting it involves, it's the same thing, whether it's a play or a film. Obviously, the difference is the differences inherent in the media.
Question 7: How long does it take for the plot to evolve? And what do you do about practical things like having locations booked if you don't know how the plot's going to evolve?
ML: The whole process of discovering the film is, in the first place, a long period of arriving at the premise, and that's a question of my working with the material and responding to it, to shape it and push it in different directions, so that I arrive at coherent elements that will add up to a potential story. The deadline of when we're going to start shooting always looms, it's fixed on the horizon. Therefore, there is a series of deadlines by which decisions have to be made. You don't rehearse for six months, and then on Friday of the last week say, "On Monday we're going to be in this house." It doesn't exist. You're right. So obviously, planning goes on as soon as there's anything concrete or tangible to start thinking about. Actually, the tradition on these films has been that the production designer, aided by the location manager, may go out and find a whole range of locations just to allow for all kinds of possibilities, once there's some notion as to what the general territory is. Sometimes, things are researched which wind up not being used. The myth is that there's some kind of inner holy enclave of just me and the actors and nobody else knows what's going on. I've already described how as soon as I can, I share with the cinematographer and the others what the general spirit of the film is. But the tradition very much is that the production designer and the costume designer tune in to what's going on and start to find out about the characters, and work with the actors so that everyone's on the case. And I have constant conversations with the production designer in particular about possible images and locations and the reason behind things. So we talk the thing into existence. Having said all that, we do go out and make the film up as we go along. I do write a kind of structure before we start shooting, but there are always elements that have crept in. I very often don't know what the end is going to be, I didn't with this one - and the truth is that we were shooting a lot of the driving lessons stuff takes place around the Finsbury Park end of Crouch End, and the unit base was in Finsbury Park itself, next to the lake. I was walking around one lunchtime and I thought, "I know, they should go rowing." So I talked to the girls and they said yes. They were game for anything, these two. So we were there, with a scheme to invent a scene on that lake, but for a variety of practical and technical reasons, we couldn't finally do it there, so in fact we shot it at fairly short notice in Regent's Park, at the Baker Street end. So I knew what the spirit of the thing should be, and as soon as you think of them in a boat on the lake, it just felt right. Actually, I think it was far more interesting visually to have done it at Regent's Park than Finsbury Park, mostly because - you'll know it at Regent's Park, it's that very flat bit right nearest to Baker Street - it meant that we could have one of those wonderful film cranes, which allowed us to be with them and then rise up above, which for practical reasons to do with trees and narrow paths and fences we wouldn't have been able to do with anything like the grace Dick Pope has managed had we shot it at Finsbury Park.
SM: Does the process of discovering a film get any easier, or is it always a white-knuckle ride?
ML: I can only say what any artist would say, and that is that some things come easy and some things are tough, depending on a whole variety of factors.
SM: Is your instinct sharper now?
ML: No, I don't think so.
Question 8: Thank you Mike for this fantastic film. Was there any plot or story which you developed, rehearsed and perhaps shot but didn't make it into the film that we saw?
ML: No. Actually, the editor of the film is sitting right behind you. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce to you Jim Clark, who's a brilliant editor. [Audience applauds] Jim, I can only remember a couple of shots, we didn't pull out any whole sequences did we?
Jim Clark: No, I don't think so. But then, you don't like to cut stuff out anyway.
[Audience laughs]
ML: I mean, some of the driving lessons were a bit longer than we got them down to. But unusually for my films, there was some improvised material in there. For instance, that last driving lesson scene - nothing's improvised in the films, normally - but that scene to a considerable extent was. But there weren't any substantial things cut in this film.
Question 9: Do you have any sort of sense of advocacy? You made a comment earlier about how we're making a mess of the world, but this film is about people who are just dealing with it. Do you feel any sense of advocacy to your audience about how to cope with this world we're messing up?
ML: Well, it's implicit in being so arrogant as to make a film and ask people to watch it and to consider what it's about and to care for it - implicit in that there is and has to be some responsibility for what is being said. Having said that, I think there are different ways of advocating, to use your word. I would suggest that this film would talk to you emotionally and not necessarily with a clear, rational slogan, but simply to leave you with a feeling that may in some way inform the way you look at the world. Whereas, Vera Drake, for instance, albeit also a film that works through your emotions and the way you feel about the world and the way human life is and the way society organises itself, at the same time was obviously making a very specific implicit statement about legal and illegal abortions and abortion laws, and thus more explicitly advocational.
Question 10: The taxi driver, Scott ...
ML: He's not a taxi driver, he's a driving instructor. Loads of people keep calling him a taxi driver, but there's nothing that suggests he is that. It's a very strange thing. You're about the 70th or 75th person who's said that. However, please continue.
Q10 add: Well, the way Scott made reference to 666 conspiracy theories, it just made me think of Johnny in Naked talking about a similar thing. Just wondering if there was a connection at all.
ML: There is, only in so far as they're talking about the same thing. But the huge difference between Scott and Johnny and Brian, the night security guard in Naked, is about as massive a difference as between Poppy and Beverly in Abigail's Party, I would say. Johnny, and indeed Brian, understand what they're talking about. They've made connections, they've got ideas on the go, and they're perceptive. Scott is none of those things. He doesn't understand anything that's in his head at all. It's all this stuff slopping around in the tank of his brain but he hasn't added it up at all. It's a very superficial experience for him, which isn't the case at all for Johnny.
Question 11: The way you portray Englishness is very interesting. Have you ever considered shooting in a foreign country with a completely different crew and getting away from all that's familiar?
ML: It seems natural to work in a context that one understands. I think the most important thing about working here and with teams of people on both sides of the camera who are completely tuned in to everything that you need to be to make these great films with very specific roots. The important thing is that we can go anywhere - the instrument is totally tuned and we can play anything on it, so to speak, within the parameters of the sort of film that I make. To go, for example, and make a film which wasn't in English, where English wasn't the first language, because specifics are so much a part of what I do, and language is very, very important, it would be very difficult to play the instrument properly.
Q11 add: I don't mean necessarily to use foreign actors, but to be in a foreign place, a different environment, a different context.
ML: I must admit, I have done it twice. I made a film, the last BBC television film I made was Four Days in July, which was set in Belfast, and which I took a year to make. This is not a joke, but it was very much making a film in a very other place. It was in English, but tapping into a whole different world, a different language and all kinds of values - this was in 1984. And I also, at the end of the 80s, went to Australia, where I created a play called Greek Tragedy, which was actually about Greek Australians and all the actors were from a Greek Australian background and that was again a very specific investigation into a world which I didn't actually know about. So I've experimented with that to a degree. The only thing I would say in addition to that is that it remains a frustrated aspiration of mine, which I've talked about a bit in an article in the current issue of Sight&Sound, that I would really like to make a film with a much bigger budget, which would allow us to get around more, and that may involve what you're talking about. If I wasn't allowed to take my regular crew, where we all talk the same language and we have a real rapport, I think it would be very difficult. I certainly don't see any inherent virtue in doing what you're saying just for the sake of it.
SM: She asked about Englishness, and you've talked about not having more money to make slightly more ambitious films. Do you regret not having explored your Jewishness on film, which you've done in the theatre.
ML: I don't regret it, and should I wish to do it, I will.
Question12: Why did you choose to make Poppy a primary school teacher, and at what stage in the process did you decide that? And also, if there's one thing that you'd like people to learn from Poppy, what would that be?
ML: As far as your second question is concerned, I don't think I want to say to an audience who've just seen the film what I want you to take from it because it's there for you to feel and take from it what you are disposed to. As for the first part, we were developing her together with her sisters, that's where we started the whole operation. And when we reached the point in her life where the issue was what she did, we thought about various things. When she was kind of a mid-teenager, her sort of nutty wildness left us thinking for a while that she didn't even want to go to college. But as she got mature, she started to think more seriously and then we realised that the thing that would really make sense was that she should be a teacher. And we started to explore it and it made absolute sense.
Question 13: My question is about dialogue. I love how the dialogue in your films flow so freely. How much of that is improvisation and how much of that is you saying, "I don't like that, say something else"? How much freedom do the actors actually have in what they contribute?
ML: Well I do say that, but that doesn't constitute their not having freedom, because it is a collaboration and we all work toward the same end. Certainly all the action in all my films comes out of massive amounts of improvisation and finally exploring the actual situations that are going to be the scenes in the film, and then gradually deconstructing relations and reconstructing them, experimenting with them, pinning them down, fixing dialogue, changing things around, cutting and pasting, until you arrive at something coherent and pithy and that works. But always it has to work for me dramatically and from a literary point of view, but it also has to work from each actor's point of view of the character. I would never say to an actor, "You have to say that whether you feel it's right or not and I don't care if you think he or she would say that, just say it." That's never happened ever and I wouldn't do that. Because by the time we get to that stage, we've been on this whole journey with each actor and so I really understand the actor and the character and the actor understands his or her character totally. And on the journey, one of the many jobs we've done is to decide and to work on how the character talks, the kind of language the character uses because of the sort of ideas in the person's head and whatever. And so, you arrive at those things and it is very, very precise, but by very much a harmonious collaboration. It is very precise indeed, down to whether it's a full-stop or a semi-colon.
Question 14: The other part of that Sight&Sound article you mentioned explores your interest in JMW Turner, the landscape painter. What's your vision for that film, and if it's going to be biographical, is that impeded in any way by the way that you make films?
ML: No, not at all. We made Topsy-Turvy in exactly that way, and that depicted events that took place and we drew from actual events that happened. What I would say about the notion of making a film about JMW Turner is that it is to me, obviously, a great cinematic subject. And he's a great character. To me the tension between this extraordinary Londoner who spoke with a cockney accent and had himself strapped to the mast of a ship so he could paint a storm ... a cinematic investigation and reflection of how he looked at the world and what he painted seems to me, with all those amazing characters in his life, would make a splendid Mike Leigh film. I say that because I've been very closed about this idea for a long time and we've endlessly approached people for money and nobody gives a fuck. People are just not interested and it makes us very sad and very angry. People have said no way will we get the kind of money we need to do that, even people who are otherwise sympathetic won't even contemplate it, which is very frustrating indeed. And so I say a Mike Leigh film because one of the reasons that you don't talk about a film is because you worry that somebody else will do it first, and that is one of my fears.
SM: I want to thank everybody for your questions, and please join me in thanking Mike Leigh.
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