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Training
The Script Factory SCENE Masterclass with Mike Leigh
Photo: Micky Goeler
Mike Leigh on stage with Sandra Hebron at SCENE 2004
Saturday 30 October 2004, Curzon Soho, London W1
In a Script Factory first, Mike Leigh joined us at the end of last year, after the premiere of Vera Drake, for an exclusive conversation with Sandra Hebron, Artistic Director of The Times bfi London Film Festival. Notoriously reluctant to talk about his "scripting process", Mike reveals all in a detailed conversation about improvisation, the evils of 'performed readings' and the confusion between script and film.
Sandra Hebron
To describe Mike Leigh as a filmmaker is a little bit limiting. We’re here to talk about scripts and script development, but we’ll touch on some other aspects of Mike’s career more generally. He’s worked in theatre and television as well as film. Although he’s had a pretty good run over the last few years making feature films, he’s in the process of preparing a play that’ll be in the National Theatre next year. There are two things that have marked Mike’s career during the years that I’ve been watching his work: first, a commitment to tell real stories about real people, and second is a commitment to a unique way of making films which is very much his own method of script development and production. So I want to begin, Mike, by asking what you think are the problems with the orthodox model of the relationship between the script and the film?
Mike Leigh
I don’t have any negative or, what I would like to regard as, irresponsible views about what is undoubtedly the case, that films must be well conceived and properly structured. One of the elements in dramatic and feature films is the quality of good writing – that’s not in question. There is no doubt that proper preparation is absolutely necessary. It’s important, however, to draw a clear distinction between the practicalities of filmmaking. A film needs to be prepared – even if you plan to go out in a documentary mode and shoot footage where you’re not even sure what it’s going to be. You have to have some conception that drives you even though you may only discover what it is in the process of being there. You have to be prepared technically to deal with whatever may come up and conceptually - even if you organise your conception in the privacy of your room at home, or whether you are finding your conception on the hoof – that is itself, is a discipline. Technically, preparation involves time and place, footage, equipment and organisation. Even things like whether anyone is going to eat anything. I would suggest that the most basic view of film – that it is made in the cutting room or editing suite – whatever kind of film you make, and however organised and disciplined is the footage you shoot (or however improvised it may be), ultimately, you’re manufacturing the raw material to take to the cutting room to make the picture. It’s important to make a distinction between that type of preparation, and the film having been made in everybody’s head, to the very last detail, before anybody has set foot on the location or studio (to the point where the execution of shooting the film runs the risk of being an entirely dead and moribund investigatory process).
The discussion arises about the pros and cons of the convention of a screenplay. I was asked to talk today about the scripting process about which I am fundamentally reluctant to do. I’d like to make one thing clear – and it’s quite famous about my films - that there is no script. But I have in my breast pocket, the script of Vera Drake, and I’m going to show it to you now! [Takes a single small piece of card from his pocket]. I used it to shoot the whole film. 
Mike Leigh on setIt starts here, and ends there, and there’s a space here for me to write the schedule. What this actually is, and I’ll just read it out so you have some idea what I’m talking about. Across the top it says: “Scene, Location, Action, Week, Day, Interior/Exterior, Day/Night”, and the last column is for a tick, where I mark if I’ve shot a scene. So, it’ll say, Scene 1 – Somewhere; Location – Somewhere; Action – Vera; Week - 1; Day – Tuesday; Interior/Exterior – Interior/Exterior; Day/Night – Day. Scene 2 – Ivy and Vera’s; Location - George’s etc etc.
What I’ll do at the end of my long preparation period where we’ve brought into existence the world of the film and the characters, and we have the premise in place, is write a structure. It’ll be on four or five pages of A4, and everybody has a copy. Except the actors, who have an edited copy so they only know the bits that they’re involved with. For practical importance, because everybody needs to know what scene it is, which costumes are needed and the cinematographer needs to know which scene follows which, and from the actor’s point of view in his or her journey (the emotional construction). When I written the structure, and drawing from what I’ve done and want to happen (in this particular film we knew what was going to happen at the end because what does happen at the end is what would inevitably happen). But in most of my films, I often don’t know what’s going to happen at the end: it sort of peters out and ha s a real question mark. I lock myself away and I write structure. I don’t write any dialogue and I certainly don’t write a document which defines every detail of the film on paper which is a complete waste of time. I merely work out the structure of the film. If you were to be a fly on the wall in my little room in my house, you would see me going [stands up and begins pacing the stage]: “Scene 1”… quick quick steps… Scene 2 … quick quick.. stop! Stamp it, quick scene quick scene. Stop!…” It seems silly, but normally I do it with nobody else there!
In other words, I’m imagining the architecture and the structure of the film. But I’m not getting bogged down in details. Scene by scene and sequence by sequence, location by location - you go to the location and have rehearsal time there: weeks, days or hours, whatever it takes. And, you build scenes by improvising at the location and drawing from things we’ve done before, reinvestigating things and often creating absolutely new things. By a process of rehearsal, and never writing things down separately, and you bring them back – through rehearsal and improvisation evolves to a very precisely structured pieces of action which we then shoot. I wouldn’t know how to write a scene unless I could be there and see it. What happens in the scene and the dynamics of the scene are absolutely integral to what is happening physically, psychologically and emotionally. What is called writing, and directing are actually one thing: they inseparable. Of course, that only works because I’ve worked very intensely with actors, so when they come to doing all this kind of thing they can be organic and spontaneous. But the fundamental point of all this, is that what we’re doing, notwithstanding the preparation beforehand, is going out on location and making the film up as we go along. But, that is not something that I’ve invented. That is the root of cinema. One hundred and eight years ago, when they invented the camera, they went straight out and made things up. What happened in the early days of cinema also related to conventions of vaudeville and music hall, and some kinds of theatre (which itself has roots in going out and making it up). If you’ve ever tried to decode Shakespeare, as they did in the early folios (published twenty years after his death) knows that you can’t work it out. Some of it was written by one hand, and some by another. Then there’s a comedian’s scene plonked straight in the middle of the porter’s scene in Macbeth. So making things up in a spontaneous way goes back to the roots of cinema. Until the talkies came along, it was natural for films to be made with just the most rudimentary of notions within the conception, and creating the thing and responding to the material. We know that’s what Keaton and Chaplin were up to – they’d show up on the set and not know what they were going to do. That is what its about. But it’s a balance between not having no idea what you’re going to do but having a sense of what you are concerned with, and having a conception of some kind, and knowing what it is that you do want to do with the film.
SH
When you describe it in those terms, with that historical background, it makes perfect sense. Why do you think that as a method of making films, it’s not become the norm?
ML
The way things have evolved is all fair enough. 
Photo: Micky Goeler
Mike Leigh in London for The Script Factory
Once you get into the territory of dramatic films where there is dialogue – and I don’t want to get dragged into appearing to be saying that all films with scripts are rubbish – that would be arrogant and display a fundamental ignorance on my part of world cinema. That would be ludicrous. My concern is to warn of the dangers of the script. As writers, you have forced to putting so much on to the page things that ought not to be there, but rather discovered in the process of making the film. You are forced by the conventions of film screenplay writing to detail the whole thing in a way that allows for no investigation of any kind in terms of responding to character, time and place. That’s the bee in my bonnet. The reason I was reluctant to come to this session in the first place is because I have a fairly nutty and idiosyncratic way of making films which apparently happens to work, which is a very personal way of filmmaking. It’s along time since I was disposed to proselytise about it, far less discuss in detail what it is I actually do. It’s quite complicated and esoteric, bordering on the psychic. I would suggest that all art is a synthesis of improvisation and order – whatever you do (painting, poetry or music) you improvise something then revisit it then organise and distil it into a coherent form. I’m talking about film as a pure medium. A good solid screenplay with the right director etc is great. The problem is when things start to mushroom into existence, that aren’t really organised, or truthful, and if they have to justify something or compensate for something, the script becomes a secondary artefact. But people in the industry, and worst of all on the other side of the Atlantic, confuse the script with the film. In the US, they say “in your script”, and I have to say, you mean “in the film”? Because it’s the film that we’ve made. We’re sitting in a building which the architect had to plan before it could be built, and nobody looks at the building and says “what a fantastic set of plans”. So when I hear that the Script Factory sometimes has readings of scripts, to test scripts out for films, to me it is absolutely outrageous! Unless it’s for that one film in a zillion which is entirely about talking. And even then, it’s ridiculous. My partner is a costume designer, and she’s got to read through a three-part film they’re making for the BBC. Nothing will be learnt from this event. The only thing it will do is screw up the actors, who have to do their parts organically. By having to sit round in a room and come up with something way ahead of the real moment where they have to do it truthfully, and physically and in the moment, each of them will be forced to mortgage off and waste something creative that they should be conserving for when they get to the moment. Film, more than any other medium is about the moment.
SH
In terms of your last point about the read-throughs being of no use whatsoever, on the one hand you talk about the organic process by which the film develops as you are working, the people who are working in a different manner, do you think that the read through, as part of the process of developing even the dialogue in the script – do you think they are unequivocally the case that they are just not useful?
ML
[Asks audience] Are they really useful?
Audience member
No ! [Laughs]
ML
Well, that’s up for discussion. It’s not for me or anybody else to say, “That’s a waste of time”. I make no apologies for being provocative in this context. But I do so because I do think that its important for anybody that going to be involved with any sort of filmmaking, which includes the screenwriter as a craftsperson, to understand the nature of the medium. I can’t get too involved in a discussion about tests and readings and so on, it’s not the point. It’s important for all artists to understand the actual medium they’re working in. That’s the fundamental point.
SH
How did your method evolve as a way of working? Was it instinctive, or tied into the fact you originally worked in theatre? What were the roots of the method?
ML
I said I didn’t invent making films up as you go along… Well, I started my grown up life when I escaped from Manchester at seventeen years old (where, incidentally, I’d never seen a film that wasn’t in English). I came to London in 1960, and during the time I was training as an actor at RADA, which is a terrible experience. I thought I wanted to do something like write and direct films, insofar as a provincial seventeen year old who’s grown up in Manchester (a fundamentally different place from the very buzzing place recorded by Michael Winterbottom [24 hour Party People]). While I was doing that and at the same time going to the London Film School, lots of things were happening. The minute I set foot in town, John Cassaveti’s first film Shadows was playing. 
Photo: Micky Goeler
Mike Leigh takes a 'nice cup of tea' in preparation for his SCENE masterclass
And here was a film that was created by improvisation. That was very exciting. There were also British New Wave films going on, but they were interesting but adaptations of novels. The French gave a sense of films being made in a completely organic way, from Breathless onwards [A Bout de Soufflé]. There were lots of things going on in the sixties which made lots of us wake up, me included. Having found out about acting and gone to art school and studied in a life drawing class one day in Camberwell, I’m just standing in a disused primary school in Peckham, and we’re all looking at the model and really expressing something about something real, it occurred to me that what was happening in the room, had never happened once at RADA. What we did there was completely dead. It’s not a comment on that institution now, which is very exciting. Acting could be elevated to a creative process along with other things. So, I had a fascination with writing, and had been writing since I could write. In my teens I edited magazines – and writing is very much a central part of what its about. But I saw myself as a director. It was clear to me that all of these things could function together, and it was possible to create work, including the writing of it by making it happen. I did all kinds of experimental theatre in the sixties, mainly because it took some years to get a film together. That finally happened in 1971 with Bleak Moments with Albert Finney.
SH
As a way of working, it seems to give actors a degree of latitude and involvement in the process which they would not have if they were just reading a script that they were just reading in advance. You’ve spoken before about the collaborative nature of what you do, but how do you balance the collaborative aspect with the fact that ultimately you are the director and at some point, you’re going to take charge. Is it all about the structure that you’ve got in your pocket or are there other things that come into play?
ML
It’s not about the structure – structure is only about structure. Filmmaking is collaborative – it’s not just about directors. On my films there’s a great sense of collaboration and stimulation on both sides of the camera – from the designers to the actors and me. We create the world of these characters, and the designers are part of that. Look at any of our films, and you’ll see that it’s very disciplined and ultimately quite classical in style in terms of stylistic categories. I’ve arrived to that by working in an organic way with the material, the cinematographer and the actors. It’s all completely organic. The question you’re asking me, which is “whose film is it anyway?”…
SH
It’s sort of, but not quite that.
ML
The truth is that the control that I have over the material and what goes on on the screen, is as great as anybody’s because everything is properly rooted in something which I’ve been involved in from the ground upwards. One of the great myths about my films is that the actors just invent the characters that they wont and we just make it up and shoot it. There are ways of making films where that happens, and on the whole any film that I’ve seen where that happens is a pile of shit. There’s a great deal of discipline, selection and layering of choices. It’s choices, choices all the way down the line. I make completely personal, intuitive and idiosyncratic choices throughout the entire thing, right up to the final moments in the final cut, working with the editor. We did a famous, massive improvisation about the cops coming round and arresting her during that celebration, and afterwards, Imelda Staunton, once she had come out of character and we were talking about it the next day, analysing what had happened, she said “I know I shouldn’t say this, because it’s outside the rules, but the police seemed very nice”.
Mike Leigh gets the absolute best from a great cast in Vera Drake
I said, that’s for me to worry about, because she couldn’t see what else was going on. And that’s why it was outside the very strict discipline of the rules. And the actors agree to take part on the basis that they’ll never know anything about the film other than what each actor’s character knows. And that’s right throughout the whole process. And there’s no question of the actor’s sharing in any way an overview, which is very different from my shared work with the cinematographer, the designer and everybody this side of the camera. They have to share the conception and an overview because we’re making a film.
SH
I wasn’t asking you whose films they are, but how the processes work.
ML
One of the things that often happens on the shoot is that two or three days in you hear a spark [an electrician] saying “I don’t understand this film. All the actors know their lines, none of them throws a wobbler, nobody’s having a row or telling anybody to fuck off, it’s really peaceful, there ain’t no script, and everybody’s happy. I don’t get it.” One of the reasons why everyone’s happy is that no one’s carting around three South American jungles around, and I’m the only one wasting any paper.
SH
We’ve touched on acting and relationships with actors. One thing we’d like to do is run a clip from Naked.
ML
It’s interesting for me to look at that in this context. Part of the problem that often arises when talking about my work is that because the dialogue is often domestic - in Vera Drake she’s endlessly making cups of tea - so the sophisticated complexity of the dialogue, and we’ve been precise, and worked with the subtext of what’s going on, doesn’t quite show up. Because you think, “well, it’s just like Coronation Street”. The Guardian, for weeks and weeks in The Guide, when Secrets and Lies was running around London, it said “two and a half hours of Coronation Street”. It’s kind of insulting, with no disrespect to those who write CS. But because of the domestic nature of the dialogue, people can’t see or detect the writing. Which is great because you don’t want to see the wheels turning around. We’ve made this film in the same way as we’ve made all the other films, and the other film with the writing demonstrating itself more is Topsy-Turvy, but it’s done by the same means. And we could only arrive at what you’ve just seen [clip from Naked] by, apart from all the preparatory work, when it came to creating that sequence we had to go into the location for several nights, improvising it and building it up and defining and scripting it through rehearsals – and we had to do it in night mode because we felt we couldn’t get the motivation or the feel of it by working in the day. So we stayed in night-time mode for about a fortnight, which was spooky. And that spookiness informs the scene.
SH
And the linguistic complexity is more obvious there, and is incredible.
[Audience member]
How do you go about choosing actors for your films?
ML
Are you an actor?
[AM]
Yes. [Laughter]
ML
How did I know that? Actors always ask that question. Really what you’re asking is “how do I get in touch?” Well, see me at the end.
Like anybody that does it, I am aware of actors, and I see stuff – plays, tapes, watch films. A lot of people in my films have auditioned and met me and got a part even if I’ve never seen them act before. So, by all the usual channels. The thing that actors have to be in my stuff, is a character actor. That is to say, someone that can do people that’s not like themselves but real people in the street. It works for actors who are intelligent, which not all actors are. A sense of humour is essential too, and an ability to work with each other and not be narcissistic.
[AM]
Do you keep track of the type of films the actors make after you’ve worked with them? How do they feel about going back into more conventional ways of working?
ML
A lot of actors find it more difficult and not as rewarding. Once I’ve worked with someone, we become friends so I’ll know what they’re doing.
[AM]
The scene we just saw required a large accumulation of facts. What is the process you use to research the scene? Is it information you teach the actors, or is it information they know themselves?
ML
Research is a major part of all these films. During the development period actors get involved in research alongside the development of the character, and the characterisation and improvisation. Anything that needs to be researched gets done. So if they need to learn how to do the jobs their characters do or reading the books that the characters will have read (which David Thewlis and Peter White did here). 
David Thewlis steals the show in Leigh's Naked
Film, music or whatever. It’s as important for articulate as well as inarticulate characters. Particularly with my two period films (Vera Drake and Topsy-Turvy), which were set respectively in 1950 and 1885, the additional research was what it would have been like to be alive then. For Naked, David Thewlis had gone into all kinds of reading. I didn’t even attempt to keep up with it because I’m happy to work with the stuff he comes up with, and then go back to it and refer to it and distil it. One time he’d been off getting on with stuff, and he came in, really excited and said, “I’ve met this crazy guy in the West End giving out pamphlets”. And this nutter had been giving out pamphlets about the bar code. And we took this obsession on board immediately. And all that is actually true. I tend to think that the apocalyptic moment in August 1999 must have been September 11th. But maybe that moment is yet to come. Judging from today’s news that’s a possibility.
[AM]
How do you convince producers and financiers to trust your vision the first time you worked in this open way? And how can this apply to young filmmakers?
ML
When I first developed this stuff over a number of years, I couldn’t do it in a film context for the reason that lies behind your question. I did it in what was then the beginning of fringe theatre. We put on plays in all kinds of curious half invented venues for no money. For my part, I have been exceptionally lucky by being in the right place at the right time on a number of occasions. My first film, Bleak Moments was backed by Albert Finney, who was then an actor in his mid thirties who had opted for a percentage rather than a flat fee from Tony Richardson’s adaptation of Fielding’s novel Tom Jones. So he’d made a lot of money out of it. He decided to give some of it to young filmmakers. I was one, Stephen Frears was another (who made Gumshoe) and another by Tony Scott called In Loving Memory. Albert gave that money to us in a trusting way. Subsequently, a producer called Tony Garnett, who’d worked with Ken Loach on BBC Television, wheeled me into the BBC and gave me a film with carte blanche. Then, for a good twelve years, it was impossible for anybody, even with a script, to make an independent, indigenous feature film in the UK. So all of us worked in television, making films there. Virtually all the films except one (Mean Time when Channel 4 first started) were made at the BBC. The BBC was very different to the one that exists today. It was very liberal – the producer would say, these are the dates, that’s the budget, go and make a film. So that’s what I did for a long time, including some things that were quite popular like Nuts in May. Then I was able to make independent films with Channel 4’s support. Having said that, it remains difficult. And we had a tough time with Vera Drake, because the previous film, All or Nothing, although we thought it was an alright film, it didn’t do at all well commercially. And the backers were very reluctant to back it. Part of your question is this: although I am extraordinarily lucky in that I’ve made seventeen full length films without any interference from anybody, and with money from various sources, nevertheless, the price I pay for having total control – in that there’s not being a script, usually no discussion of what the film is going to be about, no interference with casting or in pre and post production, and the final cut being mine – the price I pay for that is that we continue to make films on very low budgets, and its very tight. Yesterday, I was involved in discussions where once again, with my producer, Simon Chandler, we were saying to a potential backer, we really want substantially more so that we can paint a broader canvas. The problem is, that beyond a certain ceiling, none will take that risk.
SH
Do you think that the response to Vera Drake is going to change that?
ML
It may, but we haven’t got there yet.
AM
I read in one of the broadsheets, when you were at the Venice Film Festival, you were saying that because you found problems with backing, you went to France which gave you some of the funding. Would you consider making a film somewhere else other than Britain?
ML
Do you mean Hollywood?
AM
No, I mean Europe.
ML
As far as I’m concerned, I do make films in Europe. Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy, All or Nothing and Vera Drake were all backed by money from Paris. Not completely as the UK Film Council was involved and other funders. It’s natural for me to make an indigenous film here with money that comes from just across the water from another part of Europe. I wouldn’t make a film in France unless there was a content reason for that. The good news is that they are European films with European money where the long arm of Hollywood hasn’t got its grip on these operations.
AM
Can you talk about the importance of premise.
ML
What do you mean?
AM
You mentioned that when you are making your extensive script, there’s a premise in your head.
ML
All I meant was simply, what is it about? What is the idea or conception, the feel or the notion? If you’re asking if it’s important, plainly it is.
AM
There are lots of different forms of improvisation: what forms have you found to be successful or useful?
ML
There are many conventions when actors improvise. At one end of the spectrum in the UK is the “Whose line is it anyway” style, where actors are instantly expected to be funny characters. I used to leave the room when my kids were watching it because I couldn’t watch it. It’s about having to deliver the goods or come up with interesting material, dialogue and situations. At the other end of the spectrum is what I do, where actors slowly get inside a character, so they become solid with that character. So when doing improvisations, they have to be in real time. That is to say, if it’s an hour, it’s an hour, and if it’s seven hours it’s actually seven hours. The actor’s I work with are under strict instructions not to try and be interesting, or come up with anything fascinating, or decide what should happen (i.e. make an editorial decision as to what should take place), but to be in the character, and respond and do what the character would do. Even if that involves long passages of nothing happening. Because even then, there’s organic growth in terms of the things going on between people. The one world record I will always hold is that I’ve sat through more excruciatingly boring hours of actors not doing anything in the privacy of development rehearsals. And that’s to get it so real that then you can work with it and distil it down to something dramatic. There are some who think my films are as boring as I’ve just described, but you cant win them all.
AM
How do you come up with ideas for stories and scripts. Do you spend time in your little room thinking, “I want to make a story about Vera Drake”? Do your ideas just come to you or do you thrash them around?
ML
I’ll never live long enough to make all the films that I would like to. But what my films are mostly about is the main stuff of living. I don’t look for or find obscure, esoteric notions, or single ideas. It’s just life. People ask me where I got the idea to make a film about abortion [Vera Drake]: firstly, it’s a major issue and is with us all the time. I’ve always been very aware of it. I remember the times before the law changed, and it’s cropped up in my earlier films within the context of parenthood, childhood and families. So, to me, ideas aren’t singular things. And, you asked do they come to me in my “little room”. No. That’s the last place they come to me. Unless you mean the little room next to the little room which has a lock and a roll of paper.
AM
If the money were right, would you ever do a commercial?
ML
I’ve done lots of commercials. And I usually do the because of the money. I used not to do them, but a particular advertising agency said, Ken Loach does them, call him up and see what he says. So I did and he said, Mike, everything you think is terrible about commercials is true, but do them. So I did a commercial for MacDonald’s ten years ago, which I wouldn’t do now. There was a series of Kleenex commercials with three women, and I started those and cast the original three women. The first commercials was a series for Exchange and Mart which were written for Leslie Grantham, but the owners, who lived in Texas decided they didn’t want him because of the things in his life that may sully the product. So we went for another actor. We’d arranged to shoot it in Bromley, as Leslie was in a pantomime there, so we went to Bromley for no reason whatsoever. And apparently I’m doing a commercial for Breast Cancer Care, which I’m currently involved in. I always work with a script, even though they say we want you to do what you do. I did one that was impenetrable, but they were very happy with it. It was about a couple using a combination of a mobile, a landline and an intercom so they could hear the baby upstairs if it cried. It was so badly thought out that we said, do you want the mobile next to the baby’s head, because that would be bad for the baby. So they said, put it the other side of the room, but then they wouldn’t hear the baby. But we made the commercial and nobody batted an eyelid.
AM
The method of organic writing while you are work-shopping for the film you’re making is mainly for writer/directors. Should there be a method adapted that should be just for writers?
ML
There has to be positives when answering that question. But it’s not as straightforward as a method or the method. In the great days of Hollywood, going back to the roots of cinema history, and in the studios here and elsewhere, there were writers on the staff who worked with directors. So, for an aspirant writer, the point is to work with a director, so that you’re talking the same language. To create a script in a total vacuum, without reference to anything is fraught with the dangers I’ve implied, although it can work. But work as a writer with a team, like the screenwriter Tony Crissoni (who worked with Michael Winterbottom), who is there, hands-on with the director. The language of adapting methods doesn’t mean anything. It’s all about the spirit of filmmaking, and seeing screenwriting as part of the filmmaking process – not an ivory tower or little room artefact that has no organic relationship to the filmmaking process.
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