Renowned British filmmaker Mike Leigh believes that if the subjects of his 2018 historical drama “Peterloo” were alive to see the upcoming U.K. general elections they would be “not only horrified but mystified” about “people procrastinating about whether to vote and seeing justification in not voting, which is what’s happening right now.”
While in conversation about his career with Chief Executive of Film London Adrian Wooton at the Mediterrane Film Festival, the director emphasized that his retelling of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 is a film “about democracy” and felt it was vital to highlight the importance of voting ahead of the elections.
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Speaking on his period films, which include “Peterloo,” 2014’s “Mr. Turner” and 1999’s “Topsy-Turvy,” Leigh said those were “the only times where I’ve been able to get bigger budgets.” “What I failed to do and continue to fail to do to this day is to get money together to make a contemporary film on a bigger scale and with more characters. I couldn’t do a big wedding in detail because it takes time and money. My big regret – and I fear I will go to my grave before too long and carry this regret with me – is that no one ever had the balls to back a film on a bigger scale in the way I’d have liked to have made.”
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Still, even if it meant bigger budgets, Leigh continues steadfast in his belief directors shouldn’t have to bend to the will of others to get their films made. When offering advice to a budding filmmaker, the director answered promptly with “Never compromise.” “Never say, ‘Well, I don’t really want to do this project but if I do this, then I’ll be able to do what I really want to do. You’re giving yourself away. You’re wasting your time. Never compromise, do what you really believe in and fight for it.”
Another thing Leigh famously won’t negotiate is the way he works with his producers. When talking about how the relationship between directors and producers works, the filmmaker said there are “two kinds” of producers: “Producers who want to make their own movies and be involved in all the creative decisions, and then my producers, who see their job as enabling the creative filmmaker to do it ” – to create the space, the freedom and the support for the director.” He went on to reminisce about long-time collaborator Simon Channing Williams, his co-founder at production company Thin Man Films, who passed away from cancer in 2009.
Elsewhere in the conversation, which spanned the director’s entire career from studying to become an actor in London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the ‘60s to being nominated for five Oscars for 1996’s “Secrets and Lies,” Leigh weighed in on a series of issues, including entering the American market as a British filmmaker and finding commercial success versus critical acclaim.
“The great thing about the BBC, and by the way this is no longer the case – I repeat, no longer the case – is that you would go in and they would say ‘don’t worry about the script,’ and they would give me a budget and a deadline and I’d go on and make a film,” said the director of the freedom he had working with the broadcaster in the late ‘80s. Commenting on the difficulties of establishing British cinema around the same time, the director said he and his contemporaries “wanted to join international cinema culture” and, for a long time, “couldn’t get serious British movies made.”
While watching clips of his films, the director humorously said that now that he requires a walking stick, he identifies more with the older character of Mrs Bender in “High Hopes” and that hearing about Monet’s work of “growing and challenging the status quo” reminded him of his Cannes-breakout “Naked,” which he called “a film about different kinds of male behaviour seen through a feminine and feminist perspective.”
Amongst the people he praised are Imelda Staunton for her work in “Vera Drake” (“Imelda was absolutely on it. It’s irrelevant that she hadn’t done something like it before because she could do it”); David Bradley in “Another Year” (“He was fantastic and had never done anything like it. That’s what it’s about”) and Sally Hawkins in “Happy-Go-Lucky” (“I thought it would be a good idea to make a film that taps into her energy. There are very good actors who simply couldn’t do that.”)
While the filmmaker didn’t give anything away about his upcoming film “Hard Truths,” we are bound to hear more about it soon as it is due to be released by Studiocanal in the U.K. on Oct. 18 and is rumored to be eyeing a fall festival premiere.
