Interview With A Maverick: Mike Leigh

RD: MIKE, THANKS FOR TALKING TO US. TO START OFF - WHAT, IN YOUR OPINION, IS A SCRIPT WORTH FILMING?

ML: The question becomes: what is a film worth making? Because this whole notion of making a script is ridiculous. It is like talking about ‘what is a plan worth building?’. The script is only that. Not to be confused with a novel, which itself is a piece of writing. Or a poem, which itself is a piece of writing. Of course, the writing elements in a film, the quality of the conception, construction, language, etc, are important, but only as important as acting, cinematography, design, musical and editing considerations and all those others.

So what is a film worth making? As far as I am concerned, any films that are worth making are films that express what people care passionately about. And that is not as obvious as an answer as some people may think it is. Plenty of films get made where nobody cares passionately about anything. They are made for other reasons, sometimes cinematically, sometimes not, sometimes intelligently and sometimes in a state of deep stupidity. But as far as I’m concerned, I am committed to films that are really genuinely passionately committed films, that are about things people care about.

A lot of talk goes on about genre films – and the reality is, that’s about pastiches at best, or copies of other films that people love. It’s good to be influenced; inspired by world cinema, Hollywood cinema, Ealing comedies, you name it. But that’s the not the same thing. People say to me, “Why don’t you do a genre movie?” I do: the genre is called Mike Leigh films. I think the best films are the films that in one way or another, come from something – come from life, or come from things that have a kind of resonant meaning for filmmakers.

RD: ARE THERE ANY SITUATIONS IN WHICH YOU WOULD SAY NO TO FILM FINANCE?

ML: Yes. Plenty. What are they? Well, I made these films that I’ve been making forever. Where we say, there’s no script. I can’t tell you what it is about. And you can’t be involved in it at all, and I have final cut. Some people say, that’s fine, that’s cool, we understand what you do. The only proviso is that you can’t go over budget and it has to be beyond a certain length, which, provided those two things are reasonable, I say fine.

But sometimes, over the years, our producer Simon will go to see a potential backer, come back and say, “they don’t mind there’s no script because they know that’s how you work, they don’t really mind what it’s about, that’s cool, but they’re gonna insist on a star name. And then not only will they give us the money we’re asking for, but twice as much, or three times as much,” and what do I do? I walk away. Straight away. Or they say, ‘we understand the way you work, we know there’s no script but we must have something on paper.’ And I say, forget about it. I have made films where I’ve been able to say, ‘it’ll be about this’. Topsy-Turvy. Vera Drake, we knew that would be abortionists in 1950s. But many of my films come out of a complex of subtle investigations, which is part of the process. I wouldn’t have been able to say what it was. Or sometimes there is only a possible notion that may be a part of something else. In other words, I make films like other people make other kinds of art. But if they say, ‘we must have something on paper,’ they’re shooting it in the foot. So I walk away. So these are some reasons why I won’t take the money.

Of course, the thing about money for film is, you may think you are getting it from this organization or that company or this funding body, but particularly with companies, of course you don’t know where they got it from because all finances are complex. If there are X million pounds or dollars, it comes from various sources, banks, investors, and you don’t actually know some of the sources. You can let it worry you – and sometimes I do. If I knew that there was money from companies whose capital came out of serious exploitations of 3 rd world workers, then I would be seriously concerned. But the problem is, you don’t really know that. Because the money doesn’t come directly. But I have to put my hand on my heart and say, actually, I’ve never walked away from money for that reason. If I did know about it, I would – but that’s hypothetical.

But the other considerations are practical and about strictly tied-up freedom. That’s why, on the whole, my films don’t get backed by Hollywood. I’ve had 12 Oscar Nominations; everybody loves what I do and all those things. But finally they say “we’re gonna pass.” (in Hollywood, nobody says no to anything, they hold onto the option and then they say “we’re gonna pass”). I say thank God, because in Hollywood they have to interfere with everything: all these people have got jobs, and if they don’t interfere, their asses are on the line. We don’t get involved with them, thank goodness. There are times when it’s been dodgily close, but you got to walk away from this. They’d never leave us alone. They’d screw us up.

We make our films in a very inventive way - not just creatively, but from practical point of view. There’s no script and I do kind of a structure, filming schedule and making it up as I go along, and suddenly, we need more time to do this or that; we need to be inventive and during the natural preparations and the rehearsal for 6 months, we are constantly being inventive, reallocating resources, changing not just where and when we shoot, but what we shoot and how we shoot it. And constantly re-challenging.

Having the detail beforehand is what it stitches people up with conventional films. The great freedom is that it is fluid and flexible – they have all been created as we go along. That’s what makes us live in the moment. They are very disciplined. The freedom is not just to do whatever you want artistically and tell the story you want to tell, but also be inventive in a practical sense.

If you have production executives on your back all the time, saying why are you doing this and no, you can’t do this, then you’re screwed. The people who have money behave like that. People who back films, they have this conceit that they are making the film, which of course they are not. But they’re used to that approach, and not used to actually giving space to somebody not interfering. It is dangerous and dirty money, and that is the money we walk away from.

MIKE, WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ON THE STATE OF FILM FINANCE AVAILABILITY IN THE UK, AND WHERE DO YOU GO TO LOOK FOR MONEY?

That is a very complicated question because there are two separate answers. Within the UK, it is possible to raise money for films. With reference to UK film council: it’s still quite new, it can be better and it will get better, I dare say. It may tend towards being more bureaucratic than it needs to be, but my film Vera Drake was very healthily helped by them. But I think it’s tougher for young filmmakers and it’s tough for people with lower budgets. I didn’t have much difficulty with it because I’ve been around for a few hundred years, but that resource is there. It’s by no means the only resource: I have to be honest, there is television money, which is good and available – but again, I’d like to see both television and UK film council being more courageous, allowing people freedom to explore than rather being too prescriptive. But you can’t talk about money without having strings attached. But the other thing, which is a different answer entirely: I think it’s important to talk about UK films in terms of roots and culture, but it’s eccentric to be Anglo-centric about the money, because we’re part of Europe. We have to see ourselves as part of Europe. Virtually all my films for the past decade have had money from France, and other European countries. You have to think European and in the world context. We had financing form SE Asia, from Korea and Japan. That’s all important. It’s not straightforward, but we mustn’t see ourselves as an American colony. I think it’s important to see Europeanly, as it were, over and above just thinking British.

CAN YOU LIST THREE IMPORTANT THINGS A NEW FILMMAKER NEEDS TO CONSIDER WHEN STARTING PRODUCTION?

This takes a lot of thought because there are so many things. I suppose really, the first thing is asking: Do I care? Am I really doing what I want to do, for the right reasons? Instead, for example, people say, ‘I’m not too interested in this film but if I make this film, it will be a calling card for what I really want to do.’ Which is a universal disease. It is a disease. Make a film you care about. It can be long, short, big, that’s not the point, because all films are valid. Ask Am I making a film I really want to make? because that makes all the difference. That’s number one. Number two is: Have I got a clear conception of the film in relation to the practicality of making it?Have I got a clear notion of how to cut my cloth according to its length? Have I got a realistic budget? And is that realistic to what I want to do? And are these practicalities and the conception of the film properly in sync and harmony? That’s number two. And number three: and this is open to some debate: Who is this for? Now that’s the complicated one, but that doesn’t mean What is the target commercial audience? Because nobody always knows the answer to that. But, you know, Who is it for? People should ask this. Maybe the answer is ‘anybody’, and that’s fair enough. But at least think about it. There are your three.

RD: MIKE, HAVE YOUR PRODUCTIONS TYPICALLY BEEN ON-BUDGET, UNDER-BUDGET, OR OVER BUDGET?.

ML: Actually, typically they’ve been on-budget. I’ve been over-budget, but I don’t know whether we can record coming in under-budget. Because we don’t, basically. Pretty much, my films have been on-budget. Why is that? Well, again, one of the advantages of making films in the organic way that I do is that you can cut the cloth according to its length. But this is not to my credit; I’ve been blessed with very skilled people. With producers, line producers, accountants – and, with the two period films I’ve made, with massively inventive costume and production designers, doing immensely clever things to make period locations happen, or shooting in the same place with remarkable inventiveness. I suppose it represents the up-market end of low-budget filmmaking. Low-budget filmmaking carried to its high art. It’s amazing what you can do when you have to. If you’ve got endless millions of quid, you lose track of what you spend – you get this, get that, get expensive lunches – but if you have to worry about every dime, you keep it under control. Which is why poor people don’t go under-budget and rich people go bankrupted in life. We control cost by constantly revaluating priorities.

WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE BELOW-THE-LINE BUDGET WOULD YOU RECOMMEND TO SPEND ON POST-PRODUCTION?

I can’t answer that. I don’t know the answer in percentage terms. What I would say, however, is not to fall into the trap of “don’t worry about post production, we’ll worry about it afterwards”. In a way, the percentage is academic; but what do you have to account for? Make a realistic decision on how long you’re going to edit for – and that is editing it and the other things that have to happen to it after you’ve locked it off. And are you going to allow any sort of re-recording? How long you want to spend dubbing the film? Is there going to be music? Is it going to be composed? Is it going to be composed normally, after the film’s been shot? What’s that going to involve? Is that going to cost money? Or be done free? Where is it going to be recorded? All those things are calculable. Say you shoot on DV and edited on a laptop. Fine, if that’s the answer and can be done in your flat. Fine, that is a decision. So it’s a question of being realistic to what will be required. As part of a discipline of planning the whole thing.

So as for percentages, if one was to say 5% or 90% it would be meaningless. In fact, the question of ‘What is the percentage?’ comes from the very kind of thinking, on the part of backers, that I’ve been criticising in a lot of my answers. It’s not about a fixed formula; it’s about what is required for this film. I used to make films for the BBC, and I’d go in, and they’d say‘this is the film, these are the dates, this is the budget, go and make it’. Now, I always rehearse for months before we start shooting. At the BBC the budget was X, so I’d go in and sit down and say ‘let’s pull out everything we can from the budget, because there were no allocations for 8 weeks rehearsal’. So we’d pull out everything we could, put it there, shift it into another box so we can pay for rehearsals because that were inherently essential for a film with no script. So I automatically knew that there were things I couldn’t do; I couldn’t go to a foreign location, couldn’t do helicopter shots, could only have small number of crowds because I made a decision to prioritise rehearsal. It’s the exact same discipline in how we plan post-production. It depends on the film. You may say, for one film, we can edit it in 5 weeks, but for another idea you’ve got to allow for longer.

MIKE, DO YOU SEE ANY CHANGES COMING IN POST-PRODUCTION, I.E. FINAL CUT PRO VS. AVID?

Oh yeah constantly, all the time, that’s what’s so exciting. Up until 1996 – Career Girl – I cut on Steenbeck, on film, and we had a logo on the end of my films with little pair of scissors that said Cut on Film, and people use to clap. It was a big thing. But Vera Drake, never went to film till the end – it was shot on super 16mm, but we cut it digitally and graded it digitally. It opens up a whole world of what we can do when we shoot. So I think it’s all very exciting and points in all kind of fabulous directions.

ANY ADVICE ON SOUND AND MUSIC?

Sound is often the poor relation, people think. Sound editing is not just about dialogue, but all kinds of elements edited and designed in a sophisticated manner. So it’s very important for sound of all elements to be recorded throughout the shoot, and to be given serious space. When you record wild tracks, often everybody walks away and doesn’t take it seriously. I’m very strict about it, the recording of sound, even if it’s wild and not linked it’s as important as anything else. I stay with it as a director.

In another words, my advice about sound is take it seriously at all times. Make sure it’s recorded properly. Don’t compromise. People say ‘oh well, the shot’s good’, but the boom man says ‘I can’t get in there, there’s a shadow’, and people say, ‘don’t worry about the sound, we can fix it at post-production’. Ridiculous mistake. You can fix things at post-production, do amazing things digitally – but it’s like with costumes; some low budget films don’t want costumes, and people just get clothes. But costumes are part of the imagery of the film. Even if it is very naturalistic or contemporary. It’s like everything; you have to take it seriously.

If I die and they remember me for only one thing – and I’m not being arrogant here – it will be films where every element is well-crafted and everyone’s contribution is working on both sides of the camera. And that is because everyone gets given space and is taken seriously. And that includes sound and music. I think the important thing about music – and this may seem obvious – is for the director and the composer, or whoever is doing the music, to think and feel the music through the film; to see it in terms of the film, through the film. Music is not something you can tack on. It has to come out of the spirit of the film.

HOW DO YOU NEGOTIATE A DISTRIBUTION DEAL?

This is the toughest question of them all and belongs in a different category. For the most part, distribution is not in the hands of the filmmaker. Beggars can’t be choosers. If people offer to put money into a film in return for distributing to a territory, it’s very hard to say no. We may want to wait and choose – but it’s not something we can choose.

I have made films where distributors have bought into a film up front, and others that people only started to see and buy once finished. Curiously enough, in my experience the latter situation tends to be better, because any distributor who sees the finished film and wants it and cares about it is better than a distributor who bought into a film beforehand and is then disappointed in what they get.

I made one film, Topsy-Turvy, with backers from all around the world (so nobody had a very strong position, which was good) but when buyers came from JVC in Tokyo, they saw the film and for reasons we have never established they never released it in Japan. Tobus in Germany had money in it, and they never released it in Germany. It’s about musical theatre, and they said: It’s very good, but in one of the backstage scenes, we should take out the bloody singing and dancing!

It’s even more ridiculous if you see the film. So, a mixed blessing.And there was the British film company that backed what turned out to be Naked. They did it because of a previous film they liked a lot. They put their money in, we made the film, showed it to them and they hated it. They distributed it but hated it. And when people distribute a film that they hate, it’s not good news.

So it’s very difficult. The question was how do you negotiate? You don’t negotiate. How do you negotiate something where you are lucky to get it at all? It’s one thing for me to promote the philosophy of being tough-minded about the backing for the film, and I do say walk away if you’re not given freedom – but when it comes to distribution, you want a distributor, especially if you’ve made the film. You don’t want it sitting on a shelf.

WHAT TRENDS YOU CAN SPOT?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the really good news is the revolution of DV. Anyone has got access to be able to make a film. Now of course, all kinds of idiots will make all kinds of lousy films. But that’s always been the case anyways. But the fact is that young filmmakers, all filmmakers can get out there and do it, and do it very well and interestingly. And that’s very good news and I think it’s massively important. And apart from the fascinating things you can do with the technology. Just the shear access of it is a massive, massive step forward.

This interview ws conducted by Oscar Sharp on behalf of Raindance in 2004.

Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter
Watch independent shorts, features and documentaries on www.raindance.tv

Submission details to Raindance Film Festival

Visit us on Twitter for daily tips and updates