HAPPY-GO-LUCKY Interviews Part 1: Mike Leigh

A legend of British filmmaking and a man notorious for not mincing his words, us lovely folk at OWF have had our go at taming this wild beast of the cinematic Serengeti and you can have the pleasure of reading the results below. His answers are detailed, deliberate and often very overt in his distaste for the journalistic profession and thus I squirmed for a very long time in providing this little treat for you guys, that's how much I love you! Enjoy. Are you surprised by people's reactions to the film?

Well, you know, I've made a lot of films and there's always some quirky reactions that are surprising because they're so off the.... But on the whole the truth is that the reaction to the film is not that surprising because people are reacting to what they properly should.

From your point of view, can you see a fine line between someone being very happy and someone being annoying?

I don't even... I've no concept of the relationship between... The thing is I don't know what that discussion is about in relation to the film, I have no conception of annoying in relation to Poppy, I can't see what's annoying about her at all and I can't see any logical correlation between annoying and happy I think it's just another discussion. With all due resect.

No, it's fine, I'd just heard that from people.

Well people talk all kinds of crap, I mean yes I've heard that but I think it's nonsense I mean apart from anything else I don't see Poppy as remotely annoying she seems to me to be a positive, grounded, intelligent, perceptive woman with a great sense of humour. Of course she's got her frivolous side but the idea that it's in some way about unadulterated happiness as if she'd eaten a lot of magic mushrooms or smoked a lot of dope is rubbish, that's not what the film's about. Sure if you wanted to slap a sort of label on it it's about a sort of positive-ism... but it's not even about that, it's just about someone who is for real and knows how to deal with life and cope with it. But you know, just to be logical, happy is one kind of condition, it's what a person is, but annoying is to do with the OTHER person who finds them annoying. The only people relevant to any discussion about Poppy being annoying are all those people, mostly journalists, of whom I'd say it is THEIR problem that she is apparently annoying but that's nothing to do with Poppy, or the film, or me or anything else.

I felt that Poppy was someone I'd like to have as a friend...

Me too

... and I wondered if that was something you started out with when creating the character?

Well I don't think in those terms but the film started for me as a kind of general feeling about... things... and certainly as I started to explore and discover things and work out what it was that we were up to and I was up to, certainly it made sense to see the idea of this person who is a good person... I mean I've done GOOD people before, Vera Drake is not dissimilar from Poppy in the sense that she's a good-humoured, warm, loving person who does things for other people. The circumstances of course are entirely different to say the least but yeah absolutely.

Can you be more specific when you say the film is about a "general feeling about things"?

No. NO. Actually, just to answer your question, no because if you want to know what the feeling was all I can say is that's the feeling you can sort of get from the film, the thing that's there in the first place. Because I work very intuitively, because I make films where I don't have to explain and justify things before I do it, I embark upon the journey of discovery which is the making of the film it's kind of... not vague, but doesn't exist in slogan-ised terms.

I know this is going to sound really stupid but I had a feeling it was very timely because Poppy's very much about passion and tolerance and Scott is her polar opposite.

Oh sure, but I didn't start from those premises that is obviously what's there I mean Scott is as screwed up as you can be and is a very paranoid, sad, lonely and disorientated guy who's obviously absorbed in a lot of stuff that's all slopping around in his head but he doesn't understand it basically. But there's a whole range of different characters that she interacts with.

Would you recognise that Poppy's very positive outlook on life is not a character we see very often in English film? I mean had she been American I think that would've been something more familiar.

I could agree perhaps with the very general principle of that statement but I have to say that would suggest that a positive, good person in a Hollywood film would be a very different kettle of fish from the likes of Poppy and this film, because this is not, I hope, whatever it is, I hope it is not a sentimental ilm or a schmaltzy film or a film that panders to sentimental notions. This is a film that I suppose I would say is in the main tradition of British cinema which is that it looks at real people in a real context in a real way, and I hope it does that. It just so happens that this is about somebody who is positive and the reason that I hope she is multi-faceted is because it's real.

Did the scenes where Scott and Poppy were driving bring you any new directorial challenges on a logistical level?

Yeah, there are directing problems in terms of the mechanics of filmmaking. I've made a lot of films, as everybody else has, with people in cars talking and normally you bang the car on a low-loader or a sort of A-frame and tow it around while they're pretending to drive, but I was insistent from the outset that these guys would have to be actually driving and interacting with the world. But you couldn't bung a camera in front of them. So working, as ever, with Dick Pope who is a genius cinematographer he decided to use these so-called lipstick cameras which are that big and those shots are filmed on high-definition film and the rest is on 35mm film. The joy of modern digital grading is that those shots are integrated into the film and you cannot see the difference. I have to say, people talk endlessly about my filmmaking in terms of my relationship with the actors but ACTUALLY as much that I get a buzz out of the whole nuts and bolts of filmmaking, I think it's great fun.

You mentioned earlier that you allow a lot of actor improv, was it the same in this film?

Well I wouldn't ALLOW a lot of improv, that's not the point, I do do that but that's not what it's about. There is no script, these films are made by creating the characters and exploring the characters. Improvisation isn't just something that one allows or doesn't it is the process by which the action comes into existence, so it's a central part of the operation.

Did anyone come up with any surprises on the shoot?

The whole point of working with actors and doing what I do is that it is an endless cornucopia of surprises, every moment is a surprise and my job is to distill all kinds of surprises into the film which hopefully is a bundle of surprises for you, so yeah all the time. There isn't one anecdote about one surprise, that's how it is all the time. Someone asked me this morning why I do this as opposed to working with a script in a professional way, well apart from the fact that this is all I've ever done and I wouldn't now know how to do that really and wouldn't want to do it - I could never write in isolation I like to 'write' with everybody - the real point is that working conventionally is BORING because it's all done. Here you're there making it up and exploring and finding new things and suddenly thinking of other things and putting it in and opening it up. It's about film it's not about a thing on a piece of paper.

Did you tell Scott why he was angry?

It doesn't work like that! We create the characters, I collaborate with each actor to create a completely three-dimensional character with a whole history layered in so what you've got is the actors doing something that's totally three-dimensional. Then you explore situations when you arrive at the scenes. So the notion of me telling him why he's angry doesn't arise, we collaborate and make characters like real people. It's all the complexities and layers of accumulations that have happened to this guy that make him what you'd call angry but actually is much more complicated than just that, he's sad he's lonely and a whole lot of other things. So the convention that belongs in other kinds of works of filmmaking or theatre, which is not obviously what I do, where the director says "right now you're angry and you're angry because" it's just not in the equation at all because it's a much more sophisticated and fully-fledged operation.

What about when you're dealing with the primary school children? You're way of working must have to be slightly adjusted.

Oh it's different, yeah. The first decision was not to have stage school kids, those kids were from that school. The main child wasn't playing himself, I just explained to him his character and he just got it basically. Those scenes are improvised unusually and you have to approach it appropriately. Generally speaking I have avoided working with, they say avoid children and animals and I have, although there was the famous dog in HIGH HOPES, so it's not something I'm naturally drawn to doing but in this particular context that's what it was about so...

Your process of actively engaging with actors is very special, and unique, what do you make of other people's work and is there another director whose work you admire now?

Well, what I make of other people's work is that there are good films and lousy films! For me that is all about world cinema, and I don't see cinema as being about what we do here and what they do in America full stop it's about world cinema as a context. And it's also about world cinema that's been going on for a long time. So in that wider context, which is what I think about, there are many many many directors that I admire, love and respect and some of whom who have influenced me. I also think there's a lot of crap that gets made. I'm lucky because people do give me the dosh and let me get on with it and don't interfere, but I think what screws up a lot of filmmaking is that films are made by committee and the massive amount of compromising and things that go on means that films are made a thousand times over before they even go out and shoot it and so it kind of degenerates the thing. Also, films are often made with an eye to being like something else, with an eye to being like a Hollywood film or whatever it is - a lot of films are made by misguided notions of what is commercial. Without me slagging off anyone in particular I'd say that applies to a lot of films, not least here in the UK.

But of the films you admire...

Well I mean they're various, I'm a great fan for example... and I know you want me to talk about British filmmaking but I... I think for example Roy Andersson is a great filmmaker but I mean I've got a great mutual fan club with Pedro Almodovar I like him, he likes me, I like his work... but he's a lot camper than me!

Do you find as time goes on that the kind of actors who respond well to your style of working gravitate more to you now they'll have seen the body of work?

Well I suppose so, I don't know whether there's anything very illuminating about that. If you're an actor and you're familiar with a particular director's style of work then you naturally gravitate towards it. There are plenty of very good actors out there who would rather die than be confronted by the prospect of being in a film where you don't know what you're playing, you don't know anything about the other characters and all that type of thing, and really that you're being asked to be resourceful and creative and intelligent and use your head as well as your.... everything else. There are actors who would actively avoid that like the plague, and quite rightly if I may say so.

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY is in UK cinemas on Friday 18th April.