The Deference Due to a Man of Pedigree

“It was fabulous,” says Leigh. “I mean, I make films with no script. I’d go in and I‘d say, ’I dunno what it‘s going to be. Gimme the money.’ And they‘d allocate me the money, and I’d bugger off and make it. My last film was Four Days in July -- all about Northern Ireland, a real political hot potato -- and it was made without any interference whatsoever, and shown unaltered.”

The BBC didn‘t bat an eyelid at Leigh’s total-immersion development process, signaled then by the credit “devised and directed by Mike Leigh.” The results -- excruciating tragicomedies of social embarrassment, such as Nuts in May, Grown Ups and particularly Abigail‘s Party -- spoke for themselves, and loudly. “By the time it became possible to make movies for theatrical release, I’d established the principle of how I work, and it became possible to do it. So I regard that period as being really important.”

Looking back, Leigh admits, “The fact is that I have been fantastically lucky. That I can deliver the goods is one thing, but to have been fortunate enough to get into situations where it was possible to establish the principles of what I do, that is all a fluke.” Now he‘s backed up by a group of regular collaborators, including producer Simon Channing-Williams and cinematographer Dick Pope, whose presence allows Leigh to function in an atmosphere of creative sympathy and relative financial security. The result has been the sustained burst of creativity that has lasted from Life Is Sweet through Topsy-Turvy, with Naked and Secrets & Lies as its high points. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Leigh doubts he will ever work from another writer’s script.

“I am a storyteller. I tell my own stories -- okay, here we‘ve gone and added some history -- but I’m a writer, and I like writing in a particular way, using my own tricks. Language is a very big thing for me, and whether it‘s the language of the articulate or the language of the inarticulate, it’s still language and idiom and dialect and usage and the poetry of what people say. So I‘m not really interested in other people’s scripts. I mean, painters don‘t paint other people’s paintings, do they? That‘s how I feel.”