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00:00 You know, I'm still kind of permanently amazed I've got a career.
00:04 Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh, it's still going on. That's good.
00:08 You know, it's worked out.
00:08 It's worked out. It's worked out. But, you know.
00:11 Hello.
00:16 Hi.
00:18 Saw you looking at me from the street.
00:20 I'm assuming you're not with anyone. Never see you with anyone.
00:27 Is your mom and dad?
00:33 Yeah. They died just before I was 12.
00:40 I'm trying to write about them at the moment.
00:43 How's it going?
00:46 Strangely.
00:49 Hi.
00:51 Hi.
00:55 Welcome to Behind the Lens today.
00:58 Really one of the best filmmakers around.
01:00 His films have passionate followings to begin with.
01:05 Let me just name a few.
01:07 Weekend, Lean on Pete, 45 Years, which won Charlotte Rampling an Oscar nomination
01:14 for Best Actress and well deserved a terrific movie.
01:18 And now All of Us Strangers, which is another winner, Andrew.
01:22 Welcome, Andrew Haig.
01:24 Thank you. It's great to be here. Very nice to be here.
01:26 It's good to see you in Telluride, where this film debuted.
01:31 And I was curious, had you been there before?
01:34 I've been there twice, actually.
01:35 I've been both 45 Years and Lean on Pete played there.
01:38 And Julie, the festival director, invited us back once without a film, which was lovely.
01:43 It's just such a great festival.
01:45 It's an amazing place to see films. It's an amazing place to play your films.
01:49 I adore it.
01:50 Do you get nervous when you're showing and this is the first place you're showing the movie?
01:56 It's terrifying.
01:58 I mean, you work on a film for so long and you sort of lose objectivity and you have no sense
02:07 sometimes if it's actually going to connect with an audience.
02:10 And sometimes films do connect with an audience and sometimes they don't,
02:12 even if you love that film.
02:14 So you never quite know.
02:16 And so, yeah, it's terrifying.
02:17 You sit there and I always watch the film usually only once and that's at the world premiere.
02:23 So, yeah, in Telluride, you sit there with an audience and you feel the reaction coming back.
02:28 And yeah, so it's terrifying.
02:30 Well, I think it connected.
02:31 Yes, I think it did.
02:32 And it's multiple awards, a lot of awards buzz, the Gotham Awards.
02:37 Congratulations.
02:38 Thank you.
02:39 Thank you.
02:40 On and on like that.
02:41 Do you like that kind of recognition?
02:43 Do you know what I mean?
02:44 It would be crazy to say no.
02:46 I mean, who doesn't like recognition?
02:47 I've seen a couple of people say, I don't care.
02:49 Yeah, I think they do care.
02:52 And they probably care because it just means that people are talking about your film.
02:57 And if it means that people are talking about it, you hope that they will see the film.
03:00 And, you know, I want to make films that connect with audiences,
03:04 stick true to what I want to do as a filmmaker, but still connect with audiences.
03:09 So any kind of awards conversation or any kind of conversation like that
03:13 just means that more people get to hear of it.
03:15 And that's almost the biggest struggle nowadays, is to make sure that your film
03:18 can break out of some kind of bubble and get heard about and seen.
03:23 Exactly.
03:24 And now this is a holiday film, as they say.
03:27 It's opening in December.
03:28 That shows Searchlight, which is releasing the film's confidence in it,
03:34 because that's a prime slot to go.
03:36 Yeah, no, it's lovely.
03:38 I mean, you want people around you that feel passionate about the film.
03:41 And I feel like from the beginning, all of my collaborators and Searchlight
03:44 and Film4 have really understood the film and cared about the film.
03:48 And, you know, as a filmmaker, that's kind of all you can hope for, really.
03:52 This is a fascinating film.
03:53 OK, so it's based on a book.
03:55 It has been changed to a certain degree.
03:58 The essence of it, of what I think was in the book, is in the movie.
04:02 But it's also very personal to you.
04:05 Yeah, it's a strange one because it is an adaptation,
04:08 but it's also probably the most personal film I've done.
04:11 So it's a strange kind of combination of those two things.
04:13 Well, had you read the book when it came out?
04:14 No, I hadn't heard of it.
04:16 Producer Graham Borbent and Sarah Harvey, the producers, sent me the novel.
04:20 And it's a very traditional ghost story in a Japanese sense.
04:24 And it's a really good, really good book.
04:26 But I wasn't sure how I would approach it if I was going to make it.
04:31 But the kind of central idea of meeting your parents again long after they've gone
04:36 just was such a fascinating way to sort of dig into the ideas of family
04:40 and the ideas of paternal love and the idea of what we want from our family
04:45 and what the things that we wish we could have said.
04:47 And I don't think it even necessarily means if you've lost your parents or not.
04:50 I think all of us can be dragged back to an idea of wanting to kind of
04:54 recalibrate our relationship with our parents.
04:58 And so then it was about me sort of throwing myself into that story,
05:02 turning the protagonist of the story into a queer character,
05:08 bringing that into the story and making it just feel like it was the story that I had to tell.
05:13 Because that's what you have to work out, even with an adaptation.
05:17 It's like, why do this adaptation?
05:19 What is it that I can bring to it that makes it something different?
05:21 Well, you made it very personal because you shot part of it in your childhood home.
05:26 That is a dream of mine to go and knock on the door of a house
05:31 where I lived when I was seven years old and see what's still there.
05:35 Yeah, it was a weird one.
05:38 I don't know if it was necessarily emotionally healthy for me.
05:40 You just showed up, right?
05:42 Showed up.
05:42 Because when I was writing, I think, you know, it's a well-known kind of phenomenon
05:46 that when you're thinking of a home, you think of your own childhood home.
05:49 It becomes so imprinted into your mind.
05:51 And I'd left that place when I was seven or eight.
05:54 Yeah, and I went back and just thought, let me just consider the idea of filming in this place.
06:00 So I knocked on the door and he let us in and we looked around
06:03 and it was a very strange experience walking through that home, remembering things,
06:08 feeling the banister and feeling the carpet and everything sort of comes flooding back.
06:13 It's a very strange experience.
06:14 And, you know, I didn't have the happiest of childhoods.
06:17 So being in that house again was a complicated mix of like nostalgia
06:21 that you already automatically have and then sort of digging into that nostalgia
06:26 and remembering things that you perhaps don't want to remember,
06:29 which is nostalgia in general, I guess.
06:31 It hides the truth sometimes.
06:33 Different kind of nostalgia.
06:34 Exactly.
06:35 Your parents are still alive.
06:37 They are still alive, yes.
06:38 That's the difference here in this story.
06:39 The parents here are a ghost.
06:41 They were killed in an automobile accident,
06:44 a traumatic experience for the Andrew Scott, the character that he plays.
06:49 And so he has to go knock on the door and sees they're there.
06:57 The parents are there.
06:58 It's kind of eerie.
07:00 It's such a strange conceit, actually.
07:02 And I was concerned for a while that it just would not work
07:04 because it's an odd conceit to actually make a reality in the story.
07:09 But there was just something.
07:10 I think we all understand that parenting is difficult,
07:13 that being a child is difficult.
07:15 But if you could sort of go back and have conversations that you never got to have,
07:18 that's a very powerful thing.
07:20 And I think in terms of like the element of grief in the story,
07:23 I think so many of us experience loss in so many ways.
07:27 So I think even if you, you know, we all lose people.
07:30 Of course you are.
07:30 You're going to keep losing people throughout your life.
07:33 But also you lose people and they don't have to have died.
07:36 Relationships end.
07:37 Friendships disappear.
07:38 You move away.
07:38 I moved around a lot when I was a kid.
07:41 And so I try to tap into that sense of loss that I think Incorporate
07:45 is encompassing so many people's lives and sort of dig into that a little bit.
07:50 Yeah, it's really interesting.
07:52 You know, you deal with very intimate stories.
07:56 I mean, a few cast, 45 years, which I mentioned,
08:00 I mean, you had Tom Courtney and Charlotte Rampling, a marriage.
08:04 Fascinating, complex.
08:06 What happened over the course of that weekend, 48 hours in a queer relationship there.
08:12 And this film, which is essentially four characters.
08:15 Yeah, I just, I mean, look, I think most of our lives are defined by our close relationships.
08:21 They are the things that we, you know, exist in day by day.
08:24 We're having those relationships.
08:25 So for me, they're just the best thing to want to investigate
08:29 because they're so complicated and messy and we don't always act the way we want to act.
08:33 And so many things that are unsaid.
08:35 So I always am just drawn to that need to connect within relationships.
08:40 Yeah.
08:41 So how did you cast this?
08:42 Because everyone knows your lead as Scott Andrew from the television show he did.
08:51 I mean, I think that's a hot priest.
08:54 Hot priest.
08:56 I know.
08:56 Everyone was talking about him there.
08:58 What made you think he was perfect?
09:01 I've just, I've liked him for a long time.
09:03 I think he's a really great actor.
09:05 It was always surprising to me that he's not like taking a lead role in a movie because he's so good.
09:10 And he's now in his like mid to late 40s.
09:13 He's been around, you know, a good amount of time.
09:15 He's done lots of wonderful theater work.
09:17 And so I knew he was a really good actor.
09:19 And then I didn't know if he was right until I sat down with him and had a conversation with him.
09:23 And we talked about what the film meant to me, what the film would mean to him,
09:27 what the script means to him, how he responded to it.
09:30 And he connected with it on such a deep level
09:32 that it just felt like he was the obvious choice from that moment.
09:35 And I think his performance is wonderful.
09:38 And I couldn't be happier that he's the choice.
09:40 He's so good.
09:41 He's perfect in this.
09:42 They might see, looking at the cast with Paul Mescal, that he might be the lead now.
09:48 He was just nominated for an Oscar.
09:50 You know, he's coming off of Normal People and all of that.
09:54 He took a supporting role here.
09:57 Yeah.
09:57 And Paul's a wonderful actor.
09:59 And I think what he, what's so interesting about him
10:02 is that he just really cares about the project.
10:05 He wants the project to be good.
10:06 I don't think he's driven by ego in that sense of I need to be the lead actor.
10:10 And it was fascinating watching him come in and knowing that this is a story that is about Adam.
10:15 Like he is the central character.
10:17 Everything circles around him.
10:19 And both Claire and Jamie and Paul, they all knew what that meant.
10:23 And they can bring their characters to life in beautiful, fascinating ways.
10:26 But it's always circling whatever that lead character is.
10:29 I thought Claire Foy, who you just referred to, was a revelation here.
10:34 She's so good and just heartbreaking in a way of the way she's dealing with her son
10:38 as he talks about who he is now.
10:41 Yeah, I think she's wonderful in the film.
10:44 It's such a hard role to do for us to believe that she is his mother.
10:48 And I wanted her to be a complicated woman that doesn't do everything right,
10:53 has doubts about her own skills as a mother.
10:56 She never got to look after her son, which is the tragedy of the story for her.
11:02 That she never got to see her son grow up and get to know him.
11:04 And I think to me, the film was about wanting to be known by the people that we love.
11:10 And I think that's what their relationship becomes about.
11:12 It becomes about her understanding him, but also him understanding her
11:17 and allowing them to develop a relationship that they could never have in reality.
11:21 Essentially, this is a very universal story.
11:24 I mean, I would think it would appeal to audiences.
11:27 They don't have to be queer.
11:29 They do not have to be who's portrayed on screen here.
11:32 They will see themselves here.
11:34 Yeah, and I always knew that that was what I wanted the film to be.
11:38 You know, I wanted to be very specific about it being on paper,
11:41 the experience of this character that lived at a certain time during the 80s,
11:45 when he was young, when he was coming out, is queer,
11:48 that his family were from this kind of background.
11:51 But at the same time, I think the more you dig into that specificity,
11:54 the wider it sort of strangely becomes to everybody.
11:57 You're not blanding anything out.
11:58 You're being very specific.
12:00 But you know, we're all children of somebody.
12:03 You know, lots of us are parents.
12:04 We all have to deal with loss.
12:07 We all have to deal with death.
12:08 We all have to deal with the unsaid in our lives.
12:11 So it made sense to me that it would become universal.
12:14 And we're all trying to connect,
12:16 whether that's romantically or with our families.
12:18 And, you know, so that is a universal quest, I suppose.
12:23 Still, I'm interested how younger gay audiences are looking at this,
12:27 because this is 2023.
12:29 That's not the period it was set in, in the shadow of AIDS
12:32 and all kinds of things so unique to that generation.
12:36 How are they reacting and responding?
12:38 And were you worried?
12:39 I think you, I think I wasn't worried.
12:42 I knew that some of the reaction from a younger generation
12:45 might be like, what the hell are they talking about?
12:46 Why are they worrying about these things?
12:48 You know, why are they dealing with all of this?
12:50 And to me, it's like, well, they are dealing with it,
12:53 that generation of people.
12:54 So you couldn't, I'm glad that lives are very different now
12:59 for a younger queer generation.
13:01 But there is a generation above them
13:02 that had a very different situation.
13:04 I think as a young person, you always want to think
13:07 that you have all of the answers.
13:09 I know when I was young, I felt exactly the same.
13:12 And I wanted to not listen to anybody else
13:13 that had lived any kind of similar experience.
13:16 But I also think that lots of younger people
13:19 are reacting really wonderfully to it.
13:22 I was just in Savannah at the film festival there,
13:24 lots of young audiences, student audiences,
13:27 and they really connected amazingly well
13:30 with the material.
13:31 So I think it's all about the individual, I suppose,
13:34 in the end about whether it speaks to them.
13:36 But hopefully it will.
13:38 How did you come up with the title?
13:40 So it was called, the book is called "Strangers."
13:42 Right.
13:43 I mean, there's like 30 million films called "Strangers."
13:46 Like you put it in the IMDb and there's like so many.
13:49 But also I just felt like it ended up feeling
13:51 like it was a generic title, if I just called it "Strangers."
13:56 And I wanted to dig into a little bit about this idea,
13:59 as I said before, about wanting to be known in the world.
14:03 We want to be understood by the people that we love.
14:05 And so often we're not, or we struggle with being known
14:09 by those that we love.
14:11 And so the title, "All of Us Strangers,"
14:13 just made sense in terms of that,
14:16 about wanting to connect, I suppose,
14:19 and feeling often that we can't connect.
14:21 Yeah, and again, it's that universal connection.
14:23 Exactly.
14:24 All of us.
14:24 Exactly.
14:25 All of us are pretty much wanting the same things,
14:27 regardless of where we're from, how old we are,
14:29 what our sexuality is, what our gender is.
14:32 We all kind of want the same thing.
14:34 So I've known you a little while,
14:36 and certainly through your films.
14:39 I didn't know you started as an editor,
14:42 assistant editor, working with Ridley Scott on "Gladiator"
14:46 and all of these big movies.
14:48 And like all these movies people would know,
14:51 this is like you have a resume that's very impressive
14:54 before you made a film.
14:55 It's very impressive.
14:56 And then until you realize, I was like,
14:58 "Third assistant editor on one of these projects."
15:00 I'm going like, "Look who you're an assistant editor
15:03 working with."
15:04 Yeah, it was really, you know, I worked for a long time.
15:08 I'm 50 now, you know, I didn't make a film
15:10 until I was in my late 30s was the first one I made.
15:15 So I spent a lot of time working up in the industry,
15:18 learning craft, learning what it's like to be on a film set,
15:22 what it's like to be in the edit.
15:24 And that was always really important to me.
15:25 And you know, you needed to earn money.
15:27 You know, I needed to live.
15:28 And so, and I don't, I really am glad that I worked
15:33 in all of those jobs.
15:34 I worked in production for a while as well.
15:36 So you get to see how films are made.
15:37 You get to see how everyone can put themselves
15:40 into the film and the job that everyone does,
15:42 rather than just coming onto set and being like,
15:44 "Listen to me, this is the way it's going to go."
15:46 Which is not the way that I like to make films.
15:48 You started out working with Merchant Ivory though.
15:50 James Ivory is still going strong at 90 something.
15:53 You know, I mean, that has to be a great internship
15:58 right there.
15:58 Yeah, I worked, I was worked in their London office.
16:00 I worked mainly with this small merchant
16:01 who's no longer around,
16:03 but I worked for him for like a year and a half.
16:06 And they opened my eyes to how you make films, I suppose.
16:10 And they were always trying, you know,
16:12 fighting for their last dollar that they could try
16:14 and make their film.
16:15 Well, isn't every indie filmmaker doing that?
16:18 Yeah, you need that, you need that pressure.
16:20 I like that pressure when you feel like you can't
16:21 make something because there's not enough money
16:23 and it makes you concentrate on what is important
16:27 and what it is that you really need to tell the story.
16:30 And you, I mean, Weekend was made for incredibly
16:34 small amount of money.
16:35 Yeah, I think it was like £65,000,
16:37 which is like $90,000 is what we made it for.
16:40 And I always think about that because it was a very,
16:43 there was like 10 of us on the crew.
16:45 There was no ADs.
16:46 I was the first and the second and the third
16:48 as well as the director.
16:49 And we had no costume or makeup or any of those things.
16:52 But it just like, it became about what is the best thing
16:56 for this story and make it, I wanted to make it
17:00 and no one would give me any more money than £65,000.
17:03 So I was going to make it regardless.
17:06 And, you know, I still never, that film has got a legacy now,
17:10 which is beautiful to me that lots of people come
17:12 across that film and they love that film.
17:14 And I never expected it at the time.
17:16 So I'm very proud of it.
17:18 And, you know, I'm still kind of permanently amazed
17:21 I've got a career.
17:22 Do you know what I mean?
17:23 It's like, oh, it's still going on.
17:25 That's good.
17:26 You know, it's worked out.
17:27 It's worked out.
17:28 But you know, I didn't grow up thinking
17:31 it would be a possibility.
17:32 So when it becomes a possibility, it's like,
17:34 well, it's pretty cool.
17:35 I wonder a guy growing up in England is on a set directing
17:41 Tom Courtney and Charlotte Ramplane and thinking,
17:45 OK, she was in Georgie Girl in 1966, the same year he was in,
17:51 oh, Dr Zhivago.
17:52 Yeah.
17:53 That has to be a mind trip that you have that experience.
17:57 And I'm a big fan of all those like old British films.
18:00 You know, Tom was in Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner.
18:02 It's just a beautiful film.
18:03 Billy Lyer, so much stuff.
18:05 And, you know, I'd just made Weekend, so I hadn't worked
18:08 with famous actors.
18:10 So it was daunting.
18:12 But then you realize that actors are just wanting
18:15 to do the best they can.
18:17 It doesn't matter how experienced they are.
18:19 They're still nervous.
18:20 They still want to do good for the material.
18:23 And they were both wonderful to work with.
18:25 But it was, yeah, it was amazing to feel like I got to work
18:28 with legends, essentially, of like, you know, European cinema.
18:34 It was incredible.
18:35 It really was.
18:35 That's cool.
18:36 I saw you participated before we go here.
18:38 You participated in the Sight and Sound survey,
18:41 which is only done once every 10 years.
18:43 And I wrote down some of your movies.
18:45 Because so I don't know if it was in order or not,
18:48 but Some Like It Hot--
18:48 Was it in order?
18:49 It was just there.
18:50 Yeah.
18:51 Because it's not alphabetical either.
18:52 Oh, well, that's interesting.
18:53 So maybe there is some kind of order to it.
18:55 Well, then Some Like It Hot's first.
18:57 I can't tell you how much I--
18:59 that's, I think, the best film ever made.
19:02 I watched it like--
19:02 Me too.
19:02 The best comedy ever.
19:03 Best comedy, easily.
19:04 I used to watch it almost every day as a kid for about three years.
19:07 I love that film.
19:08 That's my answer.
19:10 Anybody says-- I can't say favorite film.
19:12 I can never say it.
19:13 But I can say favorite comedy is definitely Some Like It Hot.
19:16 It's-- there's very few films that are flawless.
19:18 And I think that is so close to flawless.
19:20 It's like everything works in that film.
19:23 Everything perfect, right down to the last line.
19:25 Absolutely.
19:25 Billy Wilder, you can't go wrong.
19:26 Do you have heroes that you've--
19:28 I have so many heroes.
19:30 And they change.
19:31 Billy Wilder, definitely.
19:32 Powell and Pressburger, I love their films.
19:34 Bergman, I love Bergman.
19:37 You have Cries and Whispers.
19:37 I have Cries and Whispers, which is my favorite of his films,
19:39 even though it's hard to choose a favorite of his films.
19:42 A lot of American filmers.
19:43 Bob Raefelson, I really--
19:44 I think-- is Five Easy Pieces on my list?
19:46 No.
19:47 That was on my-- like, down on the list.
19:50 And I was trying to work out if I should put that on.
19:52 I just re-watched that like two months ago.
19:54 I hadn't seen it in forever.
19:55 Yeah.
19:56 It's a stunning film.
19:57 Yeah.
19:58 So I think my love of film is wide.
20:01 So there was a huge amount that I adore.
20:04 Well, we can tell watching your films, absolutely, that.
20:08 And All of Us Strangers is going to be in theaters in December.
20:14 December 22nd.
20:16 December 22nd.
20:17 And everyone will have a chance to see it.
20:20 Congratulations on it.
20:21 And best of luck going forward.
20:23 Thank you.
20:23 All right.
20:23 Thanks for joining us today on Behind the Lens.
20:25 Great to be here.
20:26 Thank you.