肯·洛奇（卫报）

Ken Loach and Paul Laverty
The director and writer of the migrant worker drama It's a Free World discuss their working relationship, the time they went to Hollywood, and why individually they're nothing.

guardian.co.uk,
Monday September 17 2007

Simon Hattenstone: Ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome Ken Loach and Paul Laverty. [Applause] Those clips do in a way tell the story of your relationship as film-maker and writer. Let's go to Land and Freedom first and learn how you got together.

Ken Loach: Well, Paul had been in Nicaragua and when he came back wrote a script which was very interesting and sent it through the post. After that we met and out of that came the first film. It was two or three years after we'd started working together that we decided to do a film together. Paul went to LA to do a course and when he was there I thought, when we were doing Land and Freedom we needed a kind of extremist who spoke Spanish. He'd learned Spanish in Nicaragua, so he came back and did the film.

Paul Laverty: I didn't recognise that rabid demagogue at all...

SH: How do you move from lawyer to screenwriter? And you'd never acted either had you?

PL: I think that's quite obvious really... It was a series of accidents. Ken is just remarkably open to new ideas and I'm not the first person who's written in to him... [to Loach] You'll get a lot of letters now, won't you? He just examined the material rather than paying attention to reputation or a CV: it's just the ideas and experience. I did write to a lot of people, and the reaction was, "You must be joking. You're going to go to a country at war in central America and do a political film? Whereas Ken just said he was really interested in what I had seen and what I had experienced.

SH: You wrote to other filmmakers. Can we have names please?

PL: I wrote to a few people... But I was a witness to some incredible things in Nicaragua in those three years. And that's what fascinated us both and made us want to try and tell that story. That was the start of it, and in relation to the other stories I remember on my last day of Carla's Song I remember Ken saying it might be nice to do a little story up in Glasgow. And then he got on a plane and left! And that was enough to get me started on My Name is Joe, because I thought it would be a nice idea to do something personal and really intimate.

SH: It's really interesting what you said, Ken, about sifting through all the letters you'd got. Working on newspapers you get lots of letters and what really bad editors do is have a tendency to chuck them in the bin. But looking back you've found great people that you knew nothing about?

KL: Yes, but in a way that's what I learnt from my time at the BBC. You will always find talented people, whether it's writers or actors or in whatever department, because a lot of people can write. Maybe they can only write their own experience, but a lot of people can write well. Shaping it is something I would expect to do together with a writer, because that's a director's job.

SH: Can you write?

KL: Well, no... laboriously and slowly, as you know because we've collaborated on one or two pieces.

SH: Oh yes it's torture: took us about two years to reach the deadline, didn't it? It was supposed to be a piece for New Year 93 and we put it in for New Year 95. But... your relationship went to what is known as the Scottish Trilogy. Tell us what that is?

PL: Actually there's three and a half films on the west of Scotland. Somebody can't count. It does sound a bit arty farty... Every time we come on to a project we try to be our own best critics and be really tough with the possibilities in front of us. It's a huge effort for everyone involved. The premise is so important and to try and choose something is one of the biggest things we've wrestled with.

KL: Yes, I guess it's about finding a subject which will be an apparently simple narrative but which will have a significance beyond the story and characters, who have a contradiction which they have to unravel. It's the un-tieing of that knot through the narrative to a climax or revolution ... The story should make connections, beyond the story of that person.

SH: Scotland has been incredibly important. It's much easier when you know what you're writing about, isn't it?

PL: It's certainly much easier to do the stories in Glasgow, for me, than the ones in Nicaragua and Los Angeles. But it's a very enriching process too stepping outside your own world. We did a film called Bread and Roses - I was in LA and I came across these fantastic cleaners for the very first time at a bus stop at 3am. I saw all these women coming out of some of the richest real estate in the US, many from Guatemala or Nicaragua, places I'd worked in. We came across these people who had started this Justice For Janitors campaign. It was these people who were illegal, scared of being thrown out, working with church groups, grass roots organisation and it was fantastically creative and a fantastic story to tell. You can't just dump someone from City of Mexico with 40m people or people who are Campesinas from Guatemala into the same boat. You have to spend more time with them to understand their different takes. And so it's a lot longer process, but very enriching.

SH: Do you find with some of the people who become actors, presumably you can't do the film and then just dump them. Do you end up living with these people?

KL: Well of course you become friends and it's a very strong experience to make a film together. And you stay in touch, but it is a finite experience. It's the experience of making the film which is what you have in common.

SH: Bread and Roses was sold as Ken Loach goes to Hollywood. The implication was that you were making films for $70m. What was the reality? Have you been back since?

KL: No, don't think I have, really. Don't miss it. We were a European film on location in LA. We had no connection with Hollywood and those who did show some interest wanted to be much more interventionist than their counterparts in Europe. They wanted to say who we should cast and what the ending should be, just for a small investment. And we thought, this isn't for us. We didn't rate very highly there because there you are judged by the size of your crew and our whole aim is to be minimalist and discrete and slip around the streets and that didn't go down well in Los Angeles. We were seen as really of no significance at all.

SH: Did they see you as traitors for being on the minimalist wagon?

KL: No not traitors so much, just sort of curious. "Why would you want to do this? What's the point?"

PL: It was a remarkable feat. We shot the film in 30 days...

SH: Ken seems an incredibly quiet and diffident man. I can't believe he's like that on set. Is he a real dictator on set?

PL: Aye, he puts on a wee moustache.

KL: Well, no, not really. You've got to work with very good people and just set a tempo.

SH: And now I do believe it's over to you...

Q1: Why did you choose to focus your new film on the issue of migrant workers?

KL: It's a hugely important issue. Somebody who works in a drop-in centre in Hammersmith who we showed the film to said the figures she has now are that unofficially there are three million people from eastern Europe here. It does bad things for the countries where professional people are leaving and they are also the perfect way to discipline the working class here because they will work longer hours for less money. It's a big issue and it's one we have to be very specific about. We have to defend the migrant workers and give them our support and demand that they have the rights that workers here have from day one, but absolutely hate the system that forces people to leave their country, leave their homes, leave their families, to go somewhere else to be exploited. We really have to make those clear distinctions.

Q2: I used to work at the HSE [Health and Safety Executive] and they are cutting back like hell. It just goes through the whole system. I work a lot closer to this sort of thing now, ironically. I've only just started in the job and I had to lie the other week and I told my boss I didn't like it. We're all put under different pressures all the time. I also wanted to ask about distribution: I noticed the film is out on DVD next month and on Channel 4 later this month. You're getting it out very quickly.

PL: I'm glad you raised the point about the culture of impunity. There is all this legislation in place but it means nothing unless you can implement it. You get crocodile tears all the time from the supermarkets. They say they have great concerns when it's pointed out that people are working for a pittance in Bangladesh but it's really funny how they can notice one bit of bad fruit or D-list a farmer who asks too many questions. There's absolute hypocrisy underneath the whole thing.

KL: About it going on television. Channel 4 were very supportive of the project from the very beginning. Every four or five films we've made a film that has gone on TV first. It's quite nice to tap into the TV audience, but it is nice to see it on the big screen too.

Q3: I find your films very hard-hitting and I was wondering when in your lifetime you were first struck by social injustice?

KL: I got involved in the 60s, I suppose, when I was working with writers and people who were looking at these issues. It was a very political time: we had a Labour government after a long period of Conservative rule. We were in our 20s then and helped deliver leaflets for Harold Wilson. And there was a sense that things would change, but of course they didn't. And that process of seeing things not changing and realising what the Labout party was and what social democratic politics were was very instructive for us. It was a time when the working class's organisations were stronger and there was a discussion of politics in the air in a way which there isn't now. So I just began to read books about what we were seeing around us. It very quickly became apparent that if you wanted to [see] change then you had to push the Labour party to one side and say, well there's another analysis. I guess from then on things have endorsed that view, more or less. Margaret Thatcher saw a way of rescuing the economy to make the working class pay. And of course once you are hooked you are hooked. It would be great not to carry that burden around...

SH: Genuinely, it would be great?

KL: Well I'm joking ... It's like anything. You just wish you could go and watch the game, and not worry about what you ought to be doing.

Q4: I would really like to find out whether with all these films that I admire very much, do you feel optimistic about the future, because very often there's one facet which makes you think it could get better. Is that by chance?

PL: I mean when you look at statistics - I think there was a UN report in yesterday's Guardian which said there were 225 people who own and control the same resources as 2.7 billion people, which is 40% of humanity. And when you look at those figures it's quite hard to connect with the level of inequality, and the amount of human suffering. But then you look at the ideology and the debate that's on the news and the radio and the two things don't really mesh and coincide. So I think there's sometimes a dislocation. And I think that's the great challenge. Many many people run that paradime and create the language of flexibility and globalisation and modernisation: they would love us to give up and to be hopeless.

I'm always reminded of those wonderful words of Woodie Guthrie, who said: All about a human being is, it's a great big hoping machine. I think when you think back to times when things have been more difficult than ours, you know black slaves or when people got the vote for the first time... trade unions being ripped apart and lynched. I think there are the possibilities now of great progress. Fifteen years ago people who talked about global warming were seen as cranks and idiots. So I don't think anything is inevitable. I think it depends on us making decisions and organising. I think we have to be massively creative and look for opportunities and work together. If we lose faith on that notion of collective effort I think we are sunk. And that's what we tried to talk about in this film. You know, people like Angie [in It's a Free World[ who have lost hope and say, well, nobody gives a shit out there. Our experience of working out there with so many people in different parts of the world is that they do give a shit. And we have to maintain ourselves and encourage ourselves and do what we can within the conditions with which we work.

Q5: Hi Paul. You say that a lot of people do give a shit but even though I found your film fascinating from the point of view of migrant workers, I think you need to see the other side of the story. We happen to live in an area where we have got a Pole underneath us who causes tremendous problems for the people below. Ironically it's an Iranian family who are being driven out of the block because of this person that the housing authorities refuse to do anything about. And yes, Ken, it happens to be Hammersmith.

KL: You'll get unsociable people whatever the nationality, colour, race or creed. I guess the British abroad have probably got the worst record of anyone. Which is not to minimise your point; I'm sure there are problems. The overarching problem I think is that migrant workers are exploited. Full stop. And yes, there will be individual cases of people who are anti-social whoever there are and wherever they live.

PL: I think life is full of massive contradictions, you know. Another phenomenon that normally takes place which we touched upon in the film is an area in the middle of Madrid that I know very well and they have hotbedding. It's literally shifts and workers are moved in and out, sometimes 12 people to a room, 24 hours in a circle. And of course, they are exploited, they can't afford to pay anything else and for the other people who live in that block it's an absolute disaster. Their lives are a misery and there is noise all the time. Everybody's diminished by it, so I hope we're not painting it in black and white. It's very complex and it's contradictory.

Q6: Thank you for your film. You were saying that the lead character was a mix of sentimentality and ruthlessness. And you said: "Isn't that what American culture is about today?" But of course it's a British film. In what ways do you see the British and American cultures overlapping and do you think that's a good or a bad thing?

KL: Well, I think by and large, certainly in terms of cinema, American culture dominates our cinema, mainly in the films that are shown in the multiplexes but also in the way that it has a magnetic effect on British films. We too often make films that are pretend American films. But of course the effect is much wider than that. It's throughout our culture and throughout our way of viewing the world because the States is the centre of the empire. Just as countries in our empire were dominated by British culture, now countries of the world are infiltrated by American culture, because America is the centre of the empire.

Q7: I spend a fair bit of time in France and everybody there reveres you as a great film-maker, which all of us regret that you're not seen as in this country, because you are a minority taste. Do you see a parallel between the British attitude to strikes, such as the prison officers? I wrote a letter at the weekend and thought I might get some support - and I did, but not a lot. The Underground workers go on strike and everyone's put out. "Oh, I can't get into work." The prison officers were on strike and there were people complaining they couldn't get in to see their lads, behind bars. Tough on them. But they didn't think about why people go on strike; people who earn a pittance don't do their jobs. The French appreciate this; when people go on strike in the public sector they get support. Would you like to make any comment about that political attitude and the fact that your films are popular in France?

KL: Well, I'm very lucky over here as well really, so I wouldn't complain at all. But I think that what we get is a massive propaganda by the press against any dispute. Part of what the people on the tube were out for was safety, which concerns us all, and pensions. And there's a massive pensions crisis. And job security, which is what we are on about in this film. But this is what we have to expect. One lesson to learn is that the press and the broadcasters are not neutral. And it seems we have to learn it each time there is a dispute: they are actually committed to one side. I took great heart from the prison officers' dispute because they broke the law. They came out, they phoned round each other and said: "we're out". And they all came out. And we can do it, it can be done. I never thought I'd say this, but three cheers for the prison officers.

Q8: I just wanted to ask. Obviously it's a very hard-hitting film. And when you walk away from something like this you are reeling from it and you think about it for several days. And I think there's also a tendency to feel a little bit helpless. You sympathise one minute with the migrants and then with Angie and it's almost too hard to know what to do. I just wondered as part of the younger generation what I can actually do to change any part of the situation?

PL: What would you do?

Q8: I guess write about it ..?

KL: It's a fair question. There are things that we could say, like first of all join a union, even if it's only the students' union. No I don't mean only the students' union (laughs). But I only say that because unions are mainly about activity at work. Well, students work. I'm getting worse than ... (laughs) But I think take part in an organisation is rule one, because then you're in some collective and you're not on your own being anxious and feeling isolated. It's about us getting a sense of power again and strength. So joining a union, it does give you that. There are people around you; you can talk it through; you can organise together to intervene. As Paul was saying, as individuals we're nothing. Collectively we're everything.

PL: I think it's just an attitude of mind, because it is so complex and it touches everything. I trawled the streets yesterday trying to buy a free trade T-shirt. And it was almost impossible to do where I was. I was asking the young people behind the counter where it was made. But not everyone has the time or the money to do that. But I think whatever circumstances you are in, it's an attitude of mind to remember the chain of it. Who makes it. And it's talking to your friends and your family. Change happens very gradually in contradictory ways and it feels like an attitude of mind just to think it through. I don't think many people in the world want to wear a T-shirt that's made in Bangladesh by someone earning 2p and 4p an hour. But how do we untangle that? And how do we organise so we can go to the high street and buy that? It's fantastically complex and it's one step forward, two steps back, but we have to just think.

KL: It's collective action. Individual acts won't work. We have to be organised.

Q9: The vast majority of your films end in a way which is pessimistic, rightly so in my opinion because the same institutions remain at the end of the film which allow for exploitation at different levels. But in Bread and Roses you showed an optimistic ending and showed a victory. Why did you make that decision?

PL: It's really important to show that you can win. Justice for Janitors was absolutely wonderful and creative. It was really smart and well organised and we felt it was a wonderful story to tell. Many many workers in the States and here too have been inspired by that possibility. It's really important to also tell stories that are uplifting and give you hope.

KL: And there's some great characters there. You have to be driven by the people in the films and not just an abstract idea and they were extraordinary and funny and courageous and brilliant, really.

Q10: Do you see your films as depressing? I think it's in the interest of people who don't like your films to portray them that way.

KL: We hope they're not. People always fight back, and that's the thing that gives you hope. I hope we've indicated that from time to time. It's always a dynamic situation. The most depressing thing is the political slogan: there is no alternative. But there is. History hasn't ended, to use the quote.

SH: I think we'll end it there. Thanks very much for coming everyone and thanks to Paul and Ken. One final question: do film-makers ever retire?

KL: Well there's a guy in Portugal called Manuel D'Oliveira who's still making films at 98. What a terrible thought! So I think the time will come.

.SH: You've got 28 years, which is good by my books.

PL: Thanks to Simon as well. [Applause].