A bundle of laughs

10:19am Monday 14th April 2008

Director Mike Leigh talks to Steve Pratt about his latest film, Happy-Go-Lucky

NOT for Mike Leigh the relaxed ebb and flow of a question-andanswer session to talk about his latest film. I've never wrestled an alligator, but I suspect it might be something like speaking to the British filmmaker whose credits include Vera Drake, Secrets And Lies, Naked and Life Is Sweet in the cinema and, most famously, Abigail's Party on stage and TV.

Uniquely, he makes his films by working with the actors over a period of months, creating characters and seeing how they'd react in certain situations.

On set, Leigh is a bundle of laughs, according to actor Eddie Marsan, who's worked with him twice. He obviously gets on better with actors than journalists.

Someone once described his style of film as "miserablist", a reference to the relentlessly unhappy lives of his characters.

Leigh himself always appears a bit glum, grumpy even. The title of his latest film, Happy-Go-Lucky, raises a smile because it's the last phrase you'd associate with him.

He takes criticism of his creations personally.

Consider Poppy, the leading character in Happy-Go-Lucky. She's a good person, a caring woman who always has a smile on her face no matter what horrors life throws at her.

You might think C and I do C that such an irredeemably cheerful soul could become irritating. Leigh is having none of that. "I don't know what the discussion is about. I have no concept of annoying in relation to Poppy," he says. "I can't see what's annoying about her at all. I can't see any logical correlation between annoying or happy or anything. It's just an irrelevant discussion."

He does add, "With all due respect". Just as he says sorry to the waiter who arrives during the interview with the pot of tea that's been ordered for Leigh. Having admonished the waiter for interrupting, he then apologises to him for criticising him and to us for the intrusion.

For him Poppy is a positive, rounded, intelligent, perceptive woman with a great sense of humour. "The idea that it's some way about unadulterated happiness, that she's either eaten a lot of magic mushrooms or smoking a lot of dope is rubbish,"

he says.

"It's about someone who's for real and knows how to deal with life and cope with it. To be logical, happy is one kind of condition C it's what a person is. But annoying is a condition to do with the other person who finds the person annoying."

Anyone who's met Leigh knows he hates questions about his working process. He doesn't like to discuss it. When someone misguided soul wonders if he allowed a lot of improvisation on Happy-Go-Lucky, he's met with a "no, no, that's not the point, that's not what it's about" by the filmmaker.

"These are made, there is no script.

We make the films by creating the characters and exploring the relationships and improvisation. It's not something one allows or encourages. It just is the process by which the action comes into existence."

So no, there were no special surprises on the Happy-Go-Lucky shoot. The whole point of doing it like he does is that it's "an endless cornucopia of surprises", he explains.

"Every moment is a surprise and that's the joy of it. My job is to distill all kinds of surprises into the experience of the film, which is hopefully a bundle of surprises for you. There isn't one anecdote about one surprise.

"Someone asked me this morning why I do it as opposed to working with a script.

This is all I've ever done and wouldn't know how to do it another way C and wouldn't want to do it and wouldn't want to write in isolation.

"The real point is that working conventionally is boring. Here, we're making it up, exploring and finding new things. It's about film, not something on a piece of paper."

Nearly every answer comes across like a lecture in film-making, something that perhaps accounts for his popularity abroad as much as, if not more, than in this country.

You can't help wondering what he makes of other people's work. There are good films and lousy films, replies Leigh.

But it's all about world cinema, not just about what we do in this country and America.

"It's about cinema that's being going on for a long time. It's that wider context which I think about," he says.

"There are many, many directors that I admire, love, respect. I also think there's a lot of crap getting made. I'm lucky because people give me the dosh and let me get on with it and don't interfere, and that's partly why I'm able to do what I do.

"What screws up a lot of film-making is that films are made by committee and a massive amount of compromising goes on.

And also too many films are made with an eye to being like something else. Or made by misguided notions of what's commercial."

He has no difficulty finding actors willing to devote six or seven months of their working lives to creating and shooting one of his films. Actresses, in particular, do well in Leigh films. Both Imelda Staunton (as backstreet abortionist Vera Drake) and Brenda Blethyn (for Secrets And Lies) earned best actress Oscar nominations for their work. Happy-Go-Lucky star Sally Hawkins has already won best actress at the Berlin Film Festival.

ö Happy-Go-Lucky (15) opens in cinemas on Friday. A season of Mike Leigh's films on Film 4 features Secrets And Lies, Wednesday, 11pm; Naked, Thursday, 11pm; and Career Girls, Friday, 11.40pm.

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