Mike Leigh’s films take an unflinching look at human beings in all their gloom and glory.
The writer-director himself is just as candid.
It’s not just that he’s frank about his work and the world in which he makes it. He insists on facing everything head-on - even something as seemingly inconsequential as a photograph to accompany this article: Rather than permit a mannered shot of himself looking off into the distance, he insists on staring straight at the camera.
It’s more “direct” and “honest,” he says.
The same thing could be said of his films.
True, they’re very different from one another — 1996’s “Secrets & Lies,” for example, was a modern drama about a black woman who discovers the mother who gave her up for adoption is white, while 1999’s “Topsy-Turvy” centered on the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta “The Mikado.” Yet they all share a method (improvisation without a script) and a sensibility (that it’s vital to show on film what life is really like).
His latest film, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” seems to some critics like a departure for the 65-year-old director. It stars Sally Hawkins as an irrepressible optimist who refuses to let the banal realities of life get her down. Mr. Leigh calls it an “anti-miserablist film.” It might seem an odd word to describe the work of a man often labeled a “social realist” or “kitchen-sink drama” filmmaker.
” ’Kitchen-sink’ is a lazy label,” he says, adding that he doesn’t really know what he does, except that “it’s far more complex and I hope richer than labels like ’social realist’ or ’kitchen sink’ describe.”
Mr. Leigh’s working methods are famous. He starts with just a premise, and through months of rehearsals with his actors, develops the story. It has produced a much-envied body of work. “Secrets & Lies” won its maker the Palme d’Or at Cannes, as well as Oscar nominations for screenwriting and directing. “Vera Drake,” his 2004 film, also got those two Oscar nods, while “Topsy-Turvy” got one for screenwriting.
Still, that success has never tempted Mr. Leigh to make a big-budget Hollywood film.
“It’s out of the question,” he says. “I make these films with no script. Nobody interferes with the casting. Nobody interferes with the story. … As long as the film is delivered on time and under budget or on budget, it’s director’s cut. The important thing is I don’t have to justify myself to a bunch of idiots with no idea what they’re talking about.”
There are very few filmmakers who have the freedom Mr. Leigh has. “I’ve made 18 full-length films that nobody’s interfered with. I think that’s amazing,” he says. However, he acknowledges, “There is a price I pay for my freedom. That is, low budgets.”
He had more money than usual to make “Topsy-Turvy,” but it was still done for a bargain price. “Which is a shame, because I’d like to paint bigger canvasses in all kinds of ways,” he reveals. “I’d like to do more period films, actually, but they’re expensive.”
He’d like to make a film about painter J.M.W. Turner, for example. “Everyone’s agreed it’s a good idea, but no one is interested because it would cost far too much,” he says.
He may be a low-budget filmmaker, but he makes films to be seen by as many people as possible. “I’m not a Trappist monk. I don’t make films for no one to see, for my own amusement,” he says. “It’s show business. And I’ve been showing off since I could walk and talk, since the 1940s. I’m a show business person. I want you to hear what I have to say, I want to tell the jokes, I want to dominate the proceedings, I want to be making you laugh, and all those things. That’s why we’re in it, we’re circus people.”
Getting back to basics
Jonathan Demme is a busy man.
The 64-year-old director has been working continuously in film since the early 1970s. Besides making critically and commercial successful feature films, like 1991’s “The Silence of the Lambs,” he’s “always working on my documentaries,” he says by telephone. They include the classic Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense” and the more recent “Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains.”
Mr. Demme has three children, who he says take up a lot of his energies. Still, he’s taking time out from his work to help get Barack Obama elected president.
“Each party is absolutely revolting,” he admits. So why is he spending valuable time helping the candidate of the Democratic one? “My kids are all for Obama, and I feel it’s my job to support their vote because they’re inheriting the future,” he says.
Mr. Demme might be best known for mainstream commercial films like “Philadelphia” and the remake of “The Manchurian Candidate,” but his latest has an independent feel. “Rachel Getting Married” stars Anne Hathaway as a former model who gets out of rehab to attend her sister’s wedding.
“I like to feel that anything I do is a departure. I’ve always been guided by whatever I feel enthusiastic enough about to get up off the couch to do,” he laughs. “This does feel like a rebirth. The last three fiction films I did were big budget, really corporately driven. I lost my taste for making fiction films as a result of that. I was really bored and stressed. That should be on my gravestone.”
Mr. Demme got his start working with B-movie king Roger Corman, and the older man has made cameo appearances in some of Mr. Demme’s films, including this one.
“That’s because I love Roger so much, I’m so profoundly grateful to him for turning me from a film publicist, which I loved doing, to being a producer. I think Roger’s kind of like a good luck charm, and also the only way to see this incredibly busy man is to offer him a job and pay him to come somewhere,” Mr. Demme laughs.
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