"I'm there to make you care, to move you, to make you laugh, to make you cry…to hopefully improve your lives." Mike Leigh has directed 15 feature films over 5 decades with a unique style of immersing his actors in the creative process of developing scripts over months of research and improvisation. From 'Secrets & Lies' to 'Hard Truths,' Mike takes a look at all of his films and discusses in detail how they came to life.HARD TRUTHS is now playing in select theaters, https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/hard-truths/Director: Claire BussDirector of Photography: Eric BrouseEditor: Matthew ColbyTalent: Mike LeighCreative Producer: Christie GarciaAssociate Producer: Alexis AlzamoraProduction Manager: Andressa PelachiProduction Coordinator: Elizbeth HymesAssociate Director, Video Talent: Meredith JudkinsCamera Operator: Carlos AraujoGaffer: David DjacoSound Mixer: Lily Van LeeuwenProduction Assistant: Ashley VidalSet Designer: Jeremy Derbyshire-MylesPost Production Supervisor: Christian OlguinPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAdditional Editor: Jason MaliziaAssistant Editor: Justin Symonds
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Life is tragic and life is comic my films are tragic comedies always people say to me
00:07Where'd you get your ideas from?
00:09Well, the truth is I've only got to walk down the street if I pass 10 people there are 10 possible films there
00:15Really? This is Mike Lee
00:17He's directed 15 feature films over 50 years with a really unique style of developing scripts with his actors over months of research
00:25And improvisation we're gonna take a look at all of his films
00:30Let's start with bleak moments one vegetable curry
00:36nine
00:38Number nine bleak moments centers on a bunch of lonely people trying to communicate in various ways this couple
00:46Sylvia and Peter the central character and her doomed non-boyfriend are out on this date
00:52They go to an empty Chinese restaurant except. This is a rather aggressive man sitting by himself in the corner
00:58Munching away and basically it's just the worst date
01:01It just is and it's very very sad, but boy if you don't laugh at it. You ain't got no sense of humor
01:07Really? I mean it's that's what it's about
01:1054
01:12Yes, do
01:14No
01:16for one
01:19One sweet and sour pork
01:25Fried rice
01:27I hope that people find it as funny as it's supposed to be and as sad as it's supposed to be it is
01:33Probably in that sense if you like the prototype
01:37Mike Lee film no film I've ever made was ever interfered with by anybody by way of backers or
01:45producers or
01:46anybody else if you can imagine
01:49executives saying well actually I
01:52Maybe this is too slow or those pauses are too long or
01:55Maybe there'd be
01:57Something else should happen that lightens the whatever it is. You'd blow the whole thing up
02:02Out of existence before you started really because I make a film that start with no script script comes out of the work
02:08We go to a backer and we say there's no script. We can't discuss casting. We don't know what it's going to be about
02:15We'll find that out by making it and please don't interfere with it at any stage while we're making it now only one or two
02:22Happens when when we do that either they say
02:26Fantastic, there's the money go and make a film or they tell us to
02:30And basically the latter is what happens mostly. So I think it's important that such
02:40Idiosyncratic and if you like to put it like extreme
02:45Elements and situations are ways of looking at things
02:49Happen in my films
02:50it's because we've had the freedom to explore the situation in a real way and then distill them down without
02:58Worrying about conventions and norms of what you can what you can or couldn't shoot. It's well, it's not
03:07You know, it's not so easy to know what it is you you really do want to do
03:16What do you do like
03:19I'm the president of Venezuela
03:23As to where I was in my personal life, yeah, I mean I was
03:28In my late 20s, I'd gone through some relationship experiences
03:33I was not far away from meeting somebody that I
03:37Married and was with for a very long time and have to have children with but I was very much at that stage
03:44Where you not quite sure who you're really going to be able to communicate with and share it with or whether you're going to go
03:50through one of those
03:52Bleak moments, you know, so yeah in that sense. It was personal
03:58Meantime really came out of there was a quite dire unemployment situation in the UK under Thatcher
04:05it dealt with the pain and the waste of young people who are unemployed such as government had
04:13Introduced some rather bogus schemes that were supposed to give the impression that they were giving people
04:20solutions to their unemployment problems
04:22But in fact there were like schemes and you went on them for like three weeks and that was it and it didn't change anything
04:28In meantime where you have an unemployed family working-class family in the East End of London
04:34there's an upwardly mobile aunt the sister of the mother who from the best of intentions and
04:40Generous of spirits invites one of the boys rather unintelligent one played by Tim Roth to go and help her decorate the house
04:48These are the terms of your employment
04:50You do a seven-hour day
04:52That's 10 a.m. To 5 p.m. With a one-hour lunch break, right?
04:57Wages, I'll give you one pound twenty an hour plus
05:01Four pounds per day to cover your return fares, right? And that was a sort of reference to these bogus
05:08Thatcher schemes and there are other characters including a
05:11incredible nutcase
05:13Aggressive skinhead played by Gary Oldman bleak moments have been made with a very very very tiny budget with a very small crew
05:21but they were television film people and you'd get a
05:26cinematographer a cameraman and they were all men who would
05:30Be very good, but it show up having shot a farming documentary or a news item or something
05:37The previous week to say, okay, what's the first shot? So it was kind of wasn't cinematically adventurous when he came to
05:45Meantime the producer and I wanted it to be a feature film
05:48We said can we do it on 35 millimeter as a movie and the answer was well, we're not there yet
05:55Maybe next year or the year after we'll start to do that. But at the moment, it's a television film
06:00So it was shot on 16 millimeter, but we had a completely
06:05Feature film crew for the first time we talked long before we started shooting when I was developing the thing with the actors
06:12We started talking about the look of the film tests were shot
06:15The crew were like what a feature will feature film people
06:18So it was shot at a higher level and you can see in it a much
06:24much greater qualities cinematic qualities
06:30Boy Pratt
06:35It's
06:43Worth stating something very important about all of my films
06:46I work with character actors and that's a very specific thing. That is to say actors who are
06:52Not only good at characters
06:55Actors that don't play themselves
06:57That are that play real people out there in the street who want to play real people out there in the street and are good
07:03At it not all actors are character actors
07:06The first thing that happens is we make the actor makes lists of real people that they know
07:10I don't necessarily give a specification
07:13They talk to all sorts of people that the only specification is always of the same sex as you they just talk about lots of
07:18people and I choose
07:20people out of these long lists and we distill them down to a tiny number and usually about three and
07:25Out of that we build this the starting point for the character. I think an actor
07:32Please be in this film. There's no script
07:34I can't tell you what it's about because we're going to discover that by the process of making it
07:39I can't tell you about a character because there is no character. We're gonna you and I will collaborate to make one and
07:46At no time. Will you know anything about the whole thing except what your character knows?
07:51This is very important because it means that in the through the improvisations and everything
07:57They can respond completely in a real and organic way
08:00They don't have an overview of the whole project and they certainly don't know about other characters
08:20I
08:23Suppose you could say it was a film about what you believe in without
08:29Question. It was a political film. Here's a young couple
08:33he is
08:34got absolutely
08:38Unquestionable and unashamed left-wing leanings. She is a free free-spirited liberal the work
08:44They you know live in a tiny apartment, etc
08:47They grow plants they smoke a bit of weed and they were cool and very nice people. What's that?
08:54It's cactus in it. Oh
08:57Guess what? His name is
08:59Thatcher
09:00Because it's a pain in the arse prongs you every time you walk past it. That's Dennis
09:07That's bollock dick turd brains
09:11That's Willie. That's knob. They've all got names
09:15Their mother is old and is heading towards her end and
09:20There's a question of caring for her and the mother lives in an area that was being
09:25Gentrified by wealthy upper-middle-class people. There are now districts in London that you would not recognize
09:32From how they were several decades ago where they were working-class
09:37Slum areas, you know
09:38Those Victorian houses are now smart and they're very wealthy areas next door to the old lady a couple has moved in posh people
09:51And they really want to get rid of the old lady that's who's living in council accommodation public housing
09:57They're extremely unsympathetic and the film is an exploration of confrontations between these various factions
10:04Do you have all your original features?
10:09The cornices fireplaces
10:14Fireplaces, yeah, voila bring in the estate agents
10:20Not my house, ah
10:22It belongs to a member of your family
10:25Thanks to the council. Oh
10:29Well mercifully you people do have the opportunity to purchase your council property nowadays I'd snap it up if I were you
10:37Then of course one resells I
10:40Put that famous quartet from cozy fun to to playing on the radio. I just thought I'd be very
10:45Nice just kind of detail when she asks her that question that you refer to do you have your original features?
10:52Yeah, they want that house. They will hope it's preserved the house next door so that
10:59like-minded smart people like them can take it over and refurbish it and
11:03And
11:05Etc. It's a film about class. It's a film about
11:08mobility
11:09But above all
11:11It's a film about caring
11:13It's about caring and sympathy often what I've done because I like to do it is start the film on
11:20A character that you think is going to be the central character
11:23So here's a film that starts with this guy a long shot down the road in central London with a suitcase
11:28And it stays on him it stays on him and then you see him moving around and finally he stops a guy an
11:34Incidental character with him who is repairing a motorbike of course it turns out that the guy with the motorbike is the central character
11:41Guy who's looking for his sister and is lost in central London
11:44They care for him and they think what he needs most is just to go back home
11:51One of the things that they argue about is whether to have kids she desperately wants to have a kid he is
11:58Concerned about bringing
12:00more kids into a tough world
12:03The character Wayne gives us the opportunity to see their natural function as potential parents
12:16One
12:19Two
12:22Yeah
12:23Come on stereo, please
12:25Cool, that's a bit smart in it. It's a ghetto blaster
12:29Thanks, I do in a private way divide all of my films all my work actually including the plays
12:36Into two lots something did shift
12:39When I became a parent it's not very obvious to that in a way that I can illustrate
12:44but I know it was there in the dynamics and
12:48And the dramatic premises and the
12:50Preoccupations and stuff and that informs your life does it not you know?
12:55But I wouldn't want to say to go too far with that because obviously the subjects are what they are
13:01But certainly by the time you get to high hopes. I was very much into
13:05being a
13:06daddy
13:08Life is sweet
13:10Well, here's life is sweet. We'd made I hope so we
13:14Established the principle a feature film was possible at this point
13:18Simon Channing Williams, and I formed our own company
13:21Which we called thin man films because both of us were a little bit corpulent at that time
13:25I thought it would be good fun to make a film about food
13:28To start with it's a character played by Jim Broadbent who you know
13:32He buys this old caravan that he wants to make into a portable tea bar
13:36And you think this guy doesn't know what he's doing. He couldn't even boil an egg you discover. He's not only is he
13:42a
13:43consummate chef is the head of a kitchen
13:46You know a commercial kitchen, and then they've got this friend
13:49If you like to call it that has been a chef in the past with and in the central character
13:54I called or be played by Timothy's ball. Who's been in a lot of my films and this guy starts a restaurant
14:02called
14:03the regret free and
14:05Reference to Edith Piaf and the guy is completely out of his depth. I mean it's a fuck-up from a to said
14:10It isn't what he's doing. Basically. It's your brains. I speak for themselves
14:15Prune quiche, that's one for our vegetarian friends, right?
14:18Like pudding and camembert soup. Oh, no, don't boil back and cause me and I'll come song that's the same as soup in it
14:25It's basically the bacon water
14:26Yeah
14:26That's like what your mom gives you when you will when we were developing the character and the idea of the restaurant Tim's pool
14:32And I sat down one day and we made a list of the most ridiculous
14:38Recipes you could think of I mean the most outrageous
14:42pretentious recipes unless it okay
14:44We'll use this in the action because it's it I'll say something about the style of the whole thing in a moment
14:50But we'll do this, but I'm gonna get a professional
14:54Cook to test all these recipes
14:56Which I did and she tested them and I said anyone's that are completely implausible or impossible
15:02Tell me and we we cut out all the implausible. So everything although there are
15:07Preposterous ones, they're all feasible. And then we have duck in chocolate sauce. Yeah tongues in a rhubarb
15:16Liver in lager and clams in ham
15:19That's with a pan for a cocoa based sauce
15:21Yeah, or quails in a bed of spinach with treacle on my page of resistance grilled trotters with eggs over easily
15:28But then on top of everything else the anorexic daughter
15:33Nicola
15:34Has got a secret boyfriend who comes around and this is something that came out of the research into an eraser
15:40He comes around and he he she has him lick
15:45Chocolate off her bare tits as a kind of that's a turn-on for her. And it's something that really is
15:52As I say from what we discovered incidentally to everything else that character was played by David Thewlis
15:59Never said it was coming to die. I'm sorry. I'll go. Shall I? No
16:05What's all this?
16:07Fucking dumb
16:09Not rest of your ass middle-class wanker
16:12Finally, I decided that that would would be a dramatic red herring and you shouldn't see him again
16:18So he was only in two scenes because that's what happens for these. I mean the actors take on the possibility
16:24I don't know what the parts going to be
16:25They don't know how much they're going to be in the film either after we finish that film
16:29I had a drink with him one day and I said will you do it again? And he said well
16:33Yeah, I'd love to but he said how do I know the same thing won't happen again, you know
16:37So I said, I'll tell you what be in the next film and I promise you you'll get a good slice of the pie
16:42And so he played Johnny the central character in naked and you never see it. He's never hardly ever off screen
16:51Naked I
16:52Thought well, okay, let's do a film that isn't going to be just domestic in its environment
16:59I thought what happens if we explore a guy who is a victim of the education system a guy who would
17:07Certainly have been rather than encouraged to be imaginative and verbal
17:14Would be punished and sent out of the room or caned or everything would happen to him
17:19But who in fact should obviously have gone to university and is a bright bright guy with a
17:25voracious appetite for reading and ideas and facts
17:29I could have been a doctor if you want to examine me you don't believe me do I believe everything you say
17:36I've got a level psychology
17:41Resolve is never stronger than in the morning after the night. It was never weaker. What do you think of that?
17:49I thought of that, but I also will often cast
17:54An actor and I've got no idea what we're going to do
17:57Or where he or she's where the character will fit in it's simply enough to know that
18:01This is a really good character actor and the sky's the limit and we're going to explore and arrive at something
18:07This is a film about a guy that runs into isolated people on a on a picker esque
18:13Kind of journey and so that was a different departure. We made the film in
18:191992 I was starting to think
18:21The Millennium is on the horizon
18:24But nobody's talking about it. So one of the things that was lurking about a bit in my
18:31the back of my mind was the mood of the film the stuff to do with the you know,
18:38The Millennium the end of the world the total eclipse. I don't know this is it sounds pretentious
18:43But the different kind of poetry of the film you believe in how?
18:47I
18:48So do you believe in the devil?
18:50What do you think it looks like?
18:54What a little nudist homunculus with a pink quiff
18:58I referred earlier to the way in which during the course of the preparation of the film I
19:05Have to at a certain point to share with the principally with the cinematographer, but also the designers
19:11What I think is emerging with naked I said to dick Pope
19:15I see it as dark
19:18Nocturnal maybe monochromatic it's about this guy on a solo journey
19:22And I those are the things I said and he in collaboration with
19:26Particularly the designer Allison Chitty who's a great opera designer set out to shoot tests and made decisions that were quite
19:34I mean, you know the bleach bypass thing where you don't do everything in the laboratory that well
19:38This is of course back in the days of celluloid film
19:41Those decisions were really really interesting and gave us so the film has a look and a spirit
19:47Which is quite different from any other films that we would make
19:57I am very very strict, and we are very disciplined about going into character
20:03Being completely in character when you're in character
20:06But then absolutely definitely coming out of character when the instruction comes to come out of character
20:12And that's both in the preparation period
20:15And in the rehearsals and in the shooting period so that the actor is a doesn't become as it were
20:21psychologically contaminated by the character or the characters experience and be
20:26the actor is able to be objective about what happened in the
20:31improvisation if you like
20:33so that we can then deal with it and
20:35Wield it dramatic turn it into dramatic
20:40Constructed material
20:43We got any suggestions. It's like a fucking Eskimos grave out there
20:52I
20:54Mean the people who understand Johnny don't simply find him
20:58Relentlessly horrible basically if you don't understand him it's easier to see how you would find him
21:04Precisely that what I'm not concerned with in any characters in it one way or the other
21:09Is to make sure that we put on the screen nice people because we want the audience to have a nice time
21:14I don't want the audience have a nice time what the audience have a rich time
21:17what the audience to be stimulated and to connect with their sense of the real world and what matters to them and what they
21:23care about and
21:24All the rest of it the Johnny's of this world are to be experienced and dealt with and you can deal with him
21:30However, you want basically, but we're not in the business of romantic nice characters
21:46When it came out initially in the UK
21:49It was attacked
21:51From some extreme feminist quarters as being a misogynist film. It is not a misogynist film
21:58Nor is Johnny a misogynist is a frustrated idealist. I mean, of course some of his male behavior is
22:05less than attractive, but that doesn't make him a misogynist and
22:09What's very important is precisely because he should not be misread as a misogynist
22:15I have deliberately put in the film an unquestionable misogynist in the guise of the landlord of Jeremy's
22:21He sometimes calls himself was your tattoo painful
22:24Yeah
22:26Good that guy is an absolute monster of a misogynist and I think that's important. That's there to
22:33Put down a marker as to what is and isn't a misogynist really
22:47Andrew Dixon did the scores for a number of the films. It is an extraordinarily original
22:51Composer who lives in the middle of nowhere in Dorset in England. He said well, we should we need a harp for this, you know
22:59And we got a famous
23:02harpist
23:04Called Skylar Kanga went to her house. She's just two houses
23:07She lived in one and the other one was full of harps and we spent a day choosing the right harp, you know
23:12I think that's important for me. The music is a very essential part of what my films are
23:18It's not a sort of added
23:20Extraneous confection of some kind nor is it standard movie box standard movie music for anyone that's
23:27Interested in the technicalities when we're editing my films. We never ever work with a temp temporary music track
23:35It's the most absurd conventions of all, you know to have music. There's any old music just so it's so that you can show
23:41Executives where the music will be but it's just nonsense
23:44We don't do that. Anyway for me, it's important for that composers
23:49React to the to a cut of the film and then start to feel their emotional response to it
23:57Secrets and lies
23:58Secrets and lies in the first place arose from the fact that there are two sets of people in my family
24:06Who adopted kids and I decided to explore and investigate
24:11That as soon as I started to think about it, seriously
24:14I realized that I wasn't didn't want to make a film about people who adopt
24:19but more important to make the film about the baby who is adopted and the birth mother who gave the baby away and the
24:24Possible connection or not between the two and that was really the starting point also when I
24:31Researched it. I
24:33discovered that in the 1960s
24:36A lot of working-class white girls gave away mixed-race
24:41Babies, which brings us to Marianne Jean Baptiste. She plays Hortense
24:46the young woman
24:48optometrist who
24:50Traces her birth mother as I know you're very well aware
24:53The law has changed since then and you are now legally entitled to seek your birth mother out, but the snag is
25:01She may not be able to have a child
25:03but
25:05She may not want to see you
25:08And we built the whole world for her character and the fact she was adopted and she didn't really know anything about her actual birth
25:13mother, etc, etc, etc
25:15And we also built
25:16Cynthia's the mother's life with Brenda Blethyn and indeed her brother again played by Timothy Spall
25:22Brenda Blethyn and I were dealing with the point in the history of Cynthia's life
25:26When she was a teenager about 16 very vulnerable not very bright
25:31Very very susceptible to guys and getting herself into bad
25:35and dangerous situations and
25:37We were just talking into existence
25:40Various experiences and we said well, she's at a party. She was 16. She was a little bit drunk
25:45So I said maybe it's a black guy and she said yeah, that's possible
25:48And we talked it through we decided that what happened is she went into the bathroom locked the door and had a fuck
25:54which she then
25:56The character forgot about but brenda blethyn forgot about it as well. She knew about it, but she absolutely sublimated it
26:04Look at you
26:11I'm a bit of a disappointment to you, ain't I?
26:14No
26:16You don't have to say that darling. I know
26:20When you've got actors that are as grounded in the characters and situations as they are you can do anything
26:25They were and we did we started by improvising it
26:29I said we always do and then we scripted it through rehearsal. Okay, stop. Let's go back. Let's fix that
26:35Why don't you say that instead of this? Why don't you swap that round and so on and we did that and we
26:41thus fixed the scene and made it very
26:44disciplined and
26:45Precise it's an eight and a half minute take the truth is about that scene that we actually shot reverse
26:52close-ups
26:53When we got to the cutting room one of the takes was so absolutely impeccable
26:58In no time. It took us no time to say we absolutely don't need to cut into this at all. Really. It's there
27:04And that's the story of that shot. Your mom and dad told you today. Yeah, they did
27:10They sound like nice people
27:13Yeah
27:15My mom told me on the plane on our way back from barbados
27:19Little girl
27:23Was you're upset
27:27I just looked out at the clouds
27:30for a number of years following its release around the world because it was in fact incidentally my
27:37Commercially most successful film I would receive letters from all over the place people saying either i've seen your film. I was adopted. I
27:45Am now going to trace my birth mother or I have traced my birth mother and etc
27:50or
27:51from women saying i've seen your film and I
27:54Gave my child away either he or she did get in touch or i'm hoping that they will or whatever. It was especially popular
28:01in countries, including the united states where here
28:06It was I think still is the case. It's illegal to trace your birth mother in most of the united states
28:11And in the catholic countries, it's also the case. So that was all part and parcel was a very gratifying thing
28:18career girls
28:20We did what we always do which is to explore
28:23the characters
28:25and their relationship in depth in improvisations in real time, i.e
28:3130 minutes is 30 an hour is an hour etc. And
28:34My job is to just sit and watch these things and think about the possibilities and things the girls were all
28:40Around 30, but in order to explore their backstory
28:44We did improve we'd set a whole lot of improvisations for quite a long time for weeks
28:49About when they were students and it was really interesting and I sat there one day and I thought
28:53You know, of course the assumption is that this is only the backstory. We'll never see this
28:57This is simply the backstory. We're we're going to see them
29:00When they're grown-ups and then I sat there and I suddenly thought oh why not?
29:04Why don't we make a film where we see them and then we flash back to 10 years earlier?
29:08So that was the genesis of the idea during the course of actually doing it
29:12Oh, hello
29:14Hello, are you uh, hannah? It's hannah actually. All right
29:19So it becomes a film about the enormous gap
29:23Between when you're 20 and when you're 30 when you're you know
29:26Coming out of your teens and when you are
29:28You've settled into the grown-up world and you've got a job and all the rest of it. Oh fax machine
29:34Yeah, I'll need it for work really
29:36Oh, you've got everything. Oh, I wouldn't say that
29:38Huh
29:40The backstory of 10 years ago was shot on 16 millimeter with a handheld camera and the present was shot on 35 millimeter
29:47Our legs are not handheld. I mean, it's not so much the acting style is different
29:52It isn't it's the way the girls are behaving is different
29:56Wuthering heights. Why don't you ask?
29:59Bronte to inform you what the rest of your entire life will consist of don't want to go on. No, I insist
30:05No, you don't want to that's interesting because neither do I
30:08Hannah is more over the top and kind of ridiculous because she is
30:12She's just a girl that's sending herself up all the time and doing funny voices and things
30:17And the other girl has got a terrible skin problem and it makes her sort of you know
30:22But that she's her skin has cleared up 10 years later, you know, well, she found a way of dealing with it
30:26You know, it is also a film about coincidences
30:29and it's unashamedly there are
30:31outrageous coincidences in it because that sometimes that happens in life and that's one of the
30:37the tropes of the film
31:01Topsy-turvy
31:02I grew up in manchester
31:05Going to shows going to the movies a lot going to the circus the pantomime variety what we call the old vaudeville
31:11I saw laurel and hardy on stage and every year we would go and see the doily cart opera company
31:17Who specialized in the works of gilbert and sullivan? And so I became
31:22and remain
31:23uh an unashamed fan
31:25of gilbert and sullivan's operas and i'd hatched for quite a long time the notion that it would be a good idea to
31:33Deviate from my 20th century domestic
31:37narratives and actually explore
31:41the theatrical world of
31:43Of gilbert and sullivan if you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am
31:48I'm a genuine philanthropist. All other kinds are sham. It's little fault of temper and it's so sure
31:55In my erring fellow creatures. I endeavor to correct but it's also an exploration
32:00of course of the creative process of you know, it's
32:03Doing something that I never thought I would do but unashamedly
32:08Did by saying let's turn the camera around on those of us in show business how seriously we take the um
32:15Profoundly difficult job of entertaining and amusing other people. I am unable to set the piece that gilbert persists in presenting
32:23The piece I persist in presenting sullivan is substantially altered each time
32:27Otherwise there'll be little point in my presenting it to you
32:30With great respect old chap. It is not substantially altered at all. It was like a mini university people not only were
32:37Actors all these that's a big cast. They're researching not only the theater and the specific music and the drama and all that
32:44but everything else politics and religion and
32:47You know, so they became really three-dimensional
32:5119th century
32:53People we even had etiquette workshops because the etiquette amongst middle-class people that that was very very strict about
33:00You know ways to behave and all that. I meet a gentleman. He invites me to supper. I mentioned my little
33:07secret
33:08And then he's off quick smart
33:12Well, you shouldn't reveal your little secret until he's fallen hopelessly in love with you and has asked you to marry him
33:17Oh jesse for goodness sake by the by michelle. You do realize do you know that I have a little boy?
33:22I thought it would be more interesting just to focus down on one specific period
33:26Which is the genesis of the original production of the micado influenced by the arrival of a japanese village with real japanese people
33:34Uh that this dutchman brought over from japan
33:37So japanese village was set up in a building near where the royal albert hall now is in 1884
33:43Which was a complete japanese village with all sorts of things going on and you can read about this
33:48Village all over the place and all the books on the subject of this particular history
33:52But nowhere does it say that there was a theater in the exhibition
33:56But when we did the research and we found the ground plans of the actual
34:01village itself
34:02There was one corner was a theater and I thought this is really interesting if there was a theater
34:07There were no way gilbert didn't see some performance. So
34:11Collaborating with the japanese actors that were in the film. We distilled down a famous kabuki play
34:18And that's what you see. You see a kind of tiny distillation of this kabuki play and you see gilbert seeing it
34:35Now topsy-turvy was not only a departure from my normal
34:39Because of its content and subject matter, but also its scale to persuade people to back a film
34:46About the working lives of gilbert and sullivan in 18 in the 1880s. It's a tall order one of the key. Um
34:54players in my story was a
34:57Producer called simon chunning williams, but we know I know this is important for anyone that's thinking about
35:03Making films or getting involved with movies in any shape or form
35:07there are two kinds of producers which is to say there are producers who
35:11Really wants to make their own films and they want to have input
35:16and involvement into artistic decisions
35:19and
35:20casting choices
35:21But then there are produce those producers who are enablers
35:25Who are there to make everything work so that you I could do what we do with creative freedom
35:31And comfort and resources and simon chunning williams was the consummate producer
35:37All or nothing
35:40Having made topsy-turvy. I thought okay. Let's return our attention to now and there was really a lot of poverty going on
35:46So I thought let's look at working-class families and the struggles, but for me
35:50Apart from anything else place is as important as people
35:54It's all part of the whole and eventually I said to the location scout
35:57Let's make a number of families that live in the same depressed tumbledown housing estate
36:03Depressed tumbledown housing estate. They said that is the worst decision you can make it's terrible
36:10Shoes on housing estates is a nightmare cat. You can't move stuff
36:14You know you have to protect this and that and you can't move
36:17You know where to put the catering and all that. It's an absolute nightmare on one day
36:22They rushed and they said you'll never guess but down the road
36:25from here
36:26Is a complete housing estate with 300 houses and it's empty because they're going to demolish it and build new
36:32New residences that we'll have complete control of it and what you see in the film
36:36This is well, of course it meant that we could have it quite empty and just the occasional
36:41Suggestion of other people so it has a kind of balefulness which was absolutely right for the spirit of the film
36:55I'll see you tomorrow
36:57Many of my films have got endings that are ambiguous or enigmatic or because I want to hand it over to you
37:03Say, okay, you go away with it now to debate it
37:06Um ponder it argue about it, whatever all on a thing
37:11does actually
37:12end
37:13on a positive note
37:15You know, the lad has had a heart attack. He has got over it
37:18He started to eat properly and he's being a bit more positive and they've resolved their relationship through a crisis
37:24the general vibe is that it's
37:27Things are okay now, but if you look at the sister, you can see that she's not entirely convinced
37:32So there is a hanging question mark there, which I think is important
37:37You're all right rage
37:39Yeah
37:42Vera drake
37:44So vera drake comes out of the fact that as I said i'm old enough to remember
37:51What it was like I was personally never responsible for an unwanted pregnancy as it so happens
37:56But I was around situations where there were abortionists
38:01On the scene the research that I did at great length for quite a long time showed that there were all kinds of women
38:08Who performed this necessary?
38:11social
38:12Facility there are stories
38:14Abundant stories of women who when they were arrested by the police people came out and cheered them
38:20Because they were so popular because they helped they solved people's problems for them
38:24And there were vera drake's women who out of the kindness of their hearts saw it see it and saw it I should say
38:30As their job to help young women solve their problem
38:34Now what's going to happen?
38:36Is tomorrow the day after you get a bit of a pain down below?
38:40Take yourself to the toilet. You'll start bleeding then it'll all come away. What do you mean? It'll come away
38:46It'll all be over dear. You'll be right as rain
38:48I invite actors to take part and I do not tell them what the film is going to what I have in mind
38:53And often I haven't I don't even know what i've got in mind
38:55Although in this case I did however with emelda staunton whose work I knew but I hadn't worked with previously
39:02It was important that I couldn't not tell her she was going to play an abortionist
39:05Of course I shared with her. I said this is what it's going to be. She said that's fine, but the family had no idea
39:10Here's to epilogue
39:13Welcome to the family rich
39:14And all the very best in abovia. Cheers
39:17Cheers
39:18And for quite a long time for two or three months or something we did lots and lots of endless improvisations
39:25about this family and
39:27nobody in the family knew
39:29That she was an abortionist because she because the woman wouldn't tell wouldn't have told them and didn't tell them so they didn't know
39:35That she had done all these different improvisations with actresses playing women with who wanted to terminate their pregnancies
39:43She didn't know that the last one she'd done
39:46Had gone wrong
39:47She didn't know that there were actors playing doctors and nurses and things and none of them knew there was a whole bunch of actors
39:52playing the police
39:53and we'd done research with an
39:55Retired police superintendent from the metropolitan police who remembers what it was like when there were illegal abortions and all the rest
40:01but that of course involves
40:04a very
40:05um rigorous
40:06Discipline on the part of everybody involved including the crew to keep their mouths shut about things
40:12In front of the actors and here's the interesting thing, you know people say well surely some actors would
40:18Spill the beans and you know, it's never happened
40:21Not once never because people get it. They embrace it. They enjoy it
40:26They find it stimulating and it is what happens. So there you go. So finally there was a
40:32An 11 hour improvisation and 11 hours means 11 hours with the actors in character not coming out of character in costume
40:40um for real
40:42for 11 hours and I of course
40:45Watch this quietly, but never interrupt. You don't hear a peep out of me
40:48My job is to shut up and listen and this was a party celebration party as you see in the film and all of a sudden
40:57Knock at the door the police show up
41:00It was traumatic for everybody because the act the character actors playing the family
41:04Had no idea why the police would show up for a melder sorting in character. She knew exactly why they were there
41:10Sorry to interrupt your celebrations, but we need to talk to mrs. Vera drake
41:16You know, they've all came out of character under instruction and now come out of character it took them
41:22a couple of hours they sat around and they drank tea and coffee and sort of came down from the
41:27Experience and then we spent several days
41:31Debriefing it and analyzing two months later two and a half months later in the location of that apartment
41:38We then were able to draw on that experience and construct the scene that you see in the film which hopefully is as as
41:46powerfully emotionally traumatic as
41:49That experience. What's all this about?
41:52We will keep you posted. Oh my husband. I've got a right to know
41:55I appreciate that sir
41:57He'll just do as I've asked
42:00Close the door. Thank you
42:03You
42:06One of the number one rules about this when i'm working with the actors is don't try and
42:10Don't think about making it interesting. Don't try and make things happen
42:13Don't don't i'm not asking you to be a writer or a dramatist or a filmmaker or a storyteller
42:19You're there to monitor what the character is experiencing and only that
42:24My job is to deal with that to negotiate with it to challenge it to change it to accept it to
42:31Exploit it whatever it is
42:34Happy go lucky
42:37I'd worked with sally hawkins
42:39A few times with vera drake playing the posh girl who was able to get an abortion
42:43Privately because she's got the resources and means to do so and also she was of course in all or nothing
42:49And so I would work together and I knew her and I I just thought it would be great to make a film where we
42:55Tap into her energy. She's got a kind of positive energy
42:58And then there was eddie marsan who plays scott the fascist driving instructor as always all the actors work
43:05Separately just on what their characters so eddie
43:09Marsan doing this character was he knew that all these other actors were doing different things
43:13He didn't know what they were doing. He knew that he was isolated and and so therefore he was quite
43:19Convinced that it was going to be a film about a driving instructor with all these different people learning to drive
43:25And eventually he reports with some amusement that eventually it dawned on him that that was not the case at all
43:32But in fact, it was about this girl this woman and he was just part of that
43:36They told you the price 22 pound 15 hour. Yeah, that's right. Cheapest chips. You know, we may be cheap, but we're better
43:43You want to go with the big companies? They use inexperienced instructors
43:47Just pass their test and they charge more
43:50Us experienced instructors. We go with the small companies and we charge less
43:55That makes a lot of sense. There were people that said I couldn't stand that woman. I couldn't stand it
44:00As i've already said it was ridiculous. You soon see that she's a really good teacher. She's got a great sense of humor
44:07Yes, she's got a great sense of fun and of the ridiculous but she can teach when there's a kid that's got behavioral problems
44:15She could deal with it first. She you know is quite jolly and deal with her
44:21Fascist driving instructor when it comes to the crunch she can deal with him, you know, she's grounded. She's intelligent and she's uh,
44:29Sophisticated, you know, so people that have that reaction to the film
44:32I think which as i've said it tells us more about them than it does about the film actually
44:38Like the eagles spreading his wings beautiful
44:47Another year
44:49By the time we get to another year
44:53i'm
44:5560 something or other I can't remember exactly so
44:58We're having a look at the later part of your life primarily
45:02You have a couple who are really very solid in their relationship and very uh grounded and fulfilled
45:08What's for supper
45:12I'm starving
45:13You have an old friend of theirs who really is a very sad case
45:18And you've got this person very incidental to their lives mary played by leslie manville who incidentally is
45:24Actor that i've worked with more than any other
45:26She's the record holder and you never see her play the same character twice in any shape or form
45:31Hello, jerry, it's not raining. Thank goodness. I know this woman who is very sad this woman who is a victim
45:39Of having been obviously told all her life that you have to be gorgeous for men and she's had terrible relationships
45:45Because of that and now she is looking into that black hole of actually old age, you know
45:50She's not there yet, but she's heading that way and it's very sad and she's very lonely and she gets drunk
45:55And then she behaves badly in some ways and then they get fed up with her and so on
46:00He'll be 64 now
46:0264 blimey is older than me almost a pensioner. You'd be past it now mary gives you hand. Oh, no tom
46:10He was lovely. Well, we all grow old. It's about sadness and it's about frustration and about um
46:18disappointment and fulfillment and generosity as always I
46:23I
46:24Reached that point when I shared with dick pope
46:28Um what it was that we're having and I want to just digress for a moment because as we speak here at this moment
46:34It's about seven weeks since dick pope died
46:38He was a great cinematographer a great colleague great friend and a great guy
46:42And he shot everything that we've been talking about since life is sweet in 1990
46:47When he came to another year, I was a little bit more vague than I sometimes it's this and it's that
46:53And he said okay i'll shoot some tests and we went into a preview theater at eight o'clock in the morning in soho in london
47:00And he said look i've shot four different looks
47:03See what you think choose which way you want to go and I sat there and I suddenly thought
47:08Ah, I know what this is. We'll do spring summer autumn and winter
47:13In fact what he then developed was a different look for each of the four seasons and he does that brilliantly
47:18And of course that meant I then went back into my work with the actors and that informed
47:23my sense of narrative structure and that was very helpful and so that's just illustration of the again the relationship between the
47:29the cinematics and the dramatics
47:32Mr. Turner
47:34When I was at art school, I started to look at turner and start to really really understand
47:40We weren't just looking at landscapes. We were looking at something very profound and special and radical having made topsy-turvy
47:46Which was just the first proper period film
47:50I I thought well there hasn't ever been a feature film about turner
47:54Weirdly, they've been little television
47:56Dramatization. They were never a real turner-esque landscape informed
48:02Motion picture the thing about the potential of a film about turner not just that he was a great painter
48:07I
48:11It's the tension between this curmudgeonly
48:15Eccentric dogged guy, which he was by all accounts and the epic
48:20visionary
48:22Poetry of his extraordinary work if that's not the recipe for a cinematic investigation
48:28Uh, not least one by me. I don't know what is basically. Oh, you are an artist mrs. Arville
48:33Oh, I don't think we can quite use that term in the presence of mr. Turner nevertheless daddy mrs
48:39Somerville is a fine watercolorist. Oh, you flatter me. Oh, what an epic storm scene rock crusher analysis, switzerland
48:47Yeah, can I say women digging a bite?
48:51I don't care that much
48:53As to the artists sharing with each other and that's what they did and they were all actors that could paint
49:00Just as all the actors that sing in topsy-turvy can really sing and can sing that kind of material
49:06I know all the people play musical instruments are actors who can play musical instruments. So that was very straight. Morning. Mr. Turner
49:13Oh, it's billy gussie. Good day delighted. You could join us
49:17Damn fine spectacle this year billy. It's important looking at turner to look at his relationships. He did father children who he was then
49:25Didn't want to know about he had this housekeeper
49:28For years and years and years and we actually
49:32Invented them having a sexual relationship though. It seemed to us pretty inevitable again the tension between
49:39the in some ways the mess of his domestic
49:43Life and everything and again the spiritual nature of his
49:47of his work
49:49That seemed to me very important to uh explore
49:54Peter loo
49:55For some people from the northwest of england who have a any sort of political background
50:01They grew up knowing all about
50:03The peter loo massacre
50:04It was a major major thing that happened
50:06A lot of us and that included and all the actors and everybody that were in the film were from that part of the world
50:11I was very rigorous in the way. We cast it weirdly lots of us
50:15Really didn't know much about the peterloo massacre and where it happened. I mean I grew up
50:20In the city that's adjacent to manchester called salford
50:24And I you could get to where it happened on the bus from our house in 15 minutes. I mean it was a you know
50:30But we didn't really know much about it. Only two percent of the population had the vote and it was about
50:36Demonstrating for people to have the vote. No, sir. They do not have that right. No, but we have a right
50:43We have a right to present a petition to this big fat prince and that we propose to do
50:50Yes
50:53This petition will demand at last a fair proper and full representation for all englishmen
51:00I mean reactions will be more varied than
51:02Than to any other film i've made some people said oh god. It was boring. It was all talking
51:07Well, there's a lot of talking. I mean you can't describe the final passage of the film, which is a
51:13Massacre sequence on a massive scale. You can't describe that as all talking, but there is a lot of talking
51:18It's about oratory. It's about argument
51:21You see here for different political factions having political meetings and I did that unashamedly because that is what it's about
51:27And you know on the basis that an audience could take it or leave it really
51:31I mean that's in the nature of what we were dealing with. I will not
51:36Have my reputation and name and the virtues which I espouse
51:40besmirched for the behavior of a single group of men
51:44This is lancashire, sir and authorities here have no regard for their reputation or anybody else's
51:50And meetings of this nature hear about invariably ending violence. That is because they have not been addressed by me
51:59Hard truths
52:00I hadn't worked with marianne jean-baptiste
52:03For all those years since secrets and lies what i've been doing over the many many years and films and plays
52:09Is to look at different corners of society
52:11So I thought okay now is the time to look at a black family
52:16I've had black characters in my films on and off quite a lot
52:19But I thought now's the time to focus on that but as to what the film actually is
52:24Which is a study of the kind of emotional problems that it is
52:28Behavioral problems and relationships that really wasn't quite there yet that really evolved once we start exploring
52:36I went on the journey of um
52:39Making the film susie davis designed again susie davis who is a brilliant designer
52:43I mean, you know, she designed barbie for example just to illustrate her versatility. I'll see in a bit
52:50What do you think you're going?
52:52Out we're out for a walk
52:55How many times do I have to tell you?
52:58People are going to accuse you of loitering with intent
53:01It's a collaboration between the production designer costume designer and indeed the makeup designer and the actors and me
53:08at first of course she started to put together knowing that this was a
53:12family of jamaican background various kinds of
53:15Interesting colorful jamaican artifacts of various kinds that as she assumed such people would have around the house as indeed
53:22The sister does and mariam
53:26Said no, no
53:27Not pansy pansy wants nothing there. It's sterile. There's nothing on the walls
53:32It's bland and we found the house that would lend itself to that. I mean, it's a brilliant piece of
53:38of
53:39sterile
53:40Anti-design, you know in opposition to that in the contrast you have the
53:45sister's
53:46Happy environment that she shares with her ebullient daughters and you know
53:50She's got a balcony full of plants that she tends and all the rest of it, you know
53:54And her over there with that fat, baby
53:57Cold cold cold and she's walking up and down the street with nothing
54:02But a big pink bow on its bald head so everybody can tell it's a girl like our care
54:07Parading it around in the little outfit not dressed for the weather. Nah with pockets
54:13What's the baby got pockets for what's it gonna keep in its pocket a knife? It's ridiculous
54:18Life is comic and tragic all rolled into one people have said about
54:24Hard truths. Oh, well, obviously you've decided to say to me you've decided to make it funny
54:29And then the second half it stops being funny. No, I haven't done that at all
54:33We've got what needs to happen happening and you what's happening evokes mirth on a grand scale
54:40In the earlier part of the film and there is a natural organic
54:45Unaffected moment when the laughter simply stops because it stops being funny basically not completely forever, but mostly
54:52Because that's in the nature of what's happening. There's sadness in what's happening from the word go and you know, people are
55:00Crazy and grotesque yourself and myself included
55:03I'm there to make you care to move you to make you laugh to make you cry and to in that sense
55:10Hopefully without being pompous about it to improve your life. That's what it's all about
55:16That's what we're in the business of doing and to entertain. I mean make no mistake about it
55:20I mean, you know, we are we are in show business. We are entertainers before too long. I will no doubt exit
55:27this mortal planet
55:29And i'll feel okay about it really, you know
55:32But um, you've allowed invited me to be pompous and that's what i've been for the last couple of minutes