The Big Picture Interview with Mike Leigh

It might surprise you to learn that Mike Leigh has earned five Oscar nominations in the past 12 years, both as a writer and director. There's every likelihood that more nominations will follow for his latest homegrown effort, Happy-Go-Lucky. The film focuses on a tremendously positive character named Poppy, and for her work, Sally Hawkins seems destined for one of those nominations.Leigh makes no bones about...well, anything. He's completely upfront and a complete original. We had a chance to talk to the famed British director on his first visit to the Arizona desert. And, as always, he had plenty to say.Happy-Go-Lucky, even though it seems very much like a Mike Leigh film, is playing different notes than we've heard from you in the past decade or so.Maybe it is, but I try to do something different every time I make a film. I mean, Naked was startlingly different for everybody following High Hopes and Life is Sweet - which, by the way, those resonate with Happy-Go-Lucky in some ways. Career Girls was slightly different from Secrets and Lies, and nothing was more different from everything else than Topsy Turvy. So my job is to serve up a different dish every time to come for supper. Is that the job? Do you feel any pressure to do it that way?There isn't any pressure to do that, it's my inclination to do it. I'm a storyteller - I'm not going to tell you the same joke every time I tell you a joke. Apart from anything else, it's good fun to keep you, the audience, on your toes. And for me, I call this an anti-miserabilist film, really. This is about being positive in an age when there's a great deal to be gloomy about, which we don't need to explain. We can be as gloomy as we like, but there are people in the world getting on with it.As I watched the film, it dawned on me that Poppy is not the kind of character we see in leading roles in American films. She's a bit of an odd penny and we don't give her the spotlight in our films; she's always the supporting character, the best friend. Was that part of the appeal of exploring this character, that we don't see her type too often?No, to be honest, until you've said that, it had never occurred to me. She just is a fascinating character. I'd never really thought about that. Is it true? It may be. I don't think of the films in terms of [fitting in to] Hollywood, so no. I've never thought of it.Well now, Hollywood is thinking of it.And that's its prerogative. Fine - that's good (laughs).And that's been your position all along, right? That if these things come, OK, but you don't make films to win Oscars.No, but I do care. I'm very flattered if we get Oscar nominations. It's one's peers and it's celebrating our work. I think it's the novelist's prerogative to not care about the Pulitzer Prize, because novelists work by themselves. But you don't make a film by yourself. There's a huge number of people involved. And when you get the likes of the Palme d'Or or the Golden Lion or Oscar nominations, it's as much for them as for anybody else.But also, more important than anything else, I'm not some Trappist monk up a mountain; I'm in show business. I make films for people to see. And the likes of Oscars and all the rest, it's all about getting the films out there.We talked once before, when Vera Drake came out, and I asked you if you'd ever consider directing a project like a Harry Potter movie. And you said that it didn't interest you. Is it that those kind of big films don't interest you or just that you're more driven to go another route as a storyteller? I mean, you watch big blockbusters, don't you?Yeah, oh yeah, of course. I'm a member of the [AMPAS], and I'm interested to see what people are doing. But, you know, a lot of my comrade actors fetch up in Harry Potter movies, so sure, to see what they're up to.But the point is this: You, yourself, very accurately identified me as a storyteller, and I'm a compulsive storyteller. It would seem a total waste of my limited time to tell someone else's stories anymore than a painter would paint someone else's pictures. It's as simple as that.The way you work fascinates me. You build movies essentially from the ground up, with a central idea but no script. I'm not comparing you to Woody Allen, but like you, he works with a lot of the same actors and crew members, and you both tell similar stories in terms of their size and...I know what you mean. I know you're not comparing, but I know what you're saying.But he writes his scripts very privately and nobody in the cast sees pages they're not on or even knows other characters that are in the film. So it's an interesting comparison between coming at similar stories his way, that is so scripted out, and yours, which you build organically with your cast. How do you know when that process is really working?Well, it's instinctive. How do you know when you're writing something if it's really working? Sometimes you - you, personally - write something and it flows out and sometimes you have to struggle with it. But this goes back to the difference between a novelist and a filmmaker...But it's still the same thing. You're asking me how I know. How I know is the same way the novelist knows. It wouldn't matter if I wrote detailed scripts or whatever, filmmaking in any way is collaborative. In the end, the job is to make the film you want to make and you have the first and last word, but you have, through ways of sharing, ways of getting there. Knowing how to usefully and creatively deploy their input. Now, of course, when the actors work with me - and this relates to what you said about Woody - the deal with every actor is, I won't tell you what the film is about. I can't tell you about the character because we're going to create the character together. And you'll never know anything about the film but what your character knows at any given stage. That is central to how it all works.