Questions for Mike Leigh

New York Times
November 27, 2005
Questions for Mike Leigh
Unscripted
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Q: Your 1977 play, "Abigail's Party," which opens in New York this week, presents a rather bleak view of modern British life. It revolves around five working-class adults who get together one evening to have drinks and pineapple-cheese hors d'oeuvres and end up either dead or devastated. Are parties in England so unbearable?
I don't believe my plays are about England or English people. They're about people. You're born and you die, and between those two events, it's a really difficult and hard journey. That's life. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.
In the play, the character of Laurence comforts himself with classical music. But why does he suffer a fatal heart attack after he puts on a record of Beethoven's Fifth?
I think he is going to die anyway. It wasn't the music.

I assume that you're not related to the current star of your play, Jennifer Jason Leigh?
No. My father changed our name from Lieberman four years before I was born. It was a Jewish middle-class home in Manchester, England.

Did you grow up in an observant household?
No. We went to shul on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. On Christmas, we would have a turkey, and my grandparents would listen to the king or the queen making some speech.
We should mention that you have a new play commissioned by England's National Theater, "Two Thousand Years," which tells the story of assimilated Jewish parents who are horrified when their only son decides to become Orthodox.
Yes, I have a play that is finally dealing with all these things. My parents were old Zionists, and the play is a lamentation for Zionist lefties.
Your last film, "Vera Drake," told the tale of a back-street abortionist in the 1950's - was that, too, autobiographical in any way?

Not really. In 1967, when abortion became legal in England, I was 24 years old. I remember what it was like. When I was a kid, there were certain women. . .you knew they had gone to prison for something, but you weren't sure what.
"Vera Drake" was dedicated to the memory of your father and mother, who were, respectively, a doctor and a midwife.
My father died 20 years ago. My mother died a couple of years ago. It's all right. She was old. She deserved it.
Do you see yourself primarily as a filmmaker or a playwright?

I am a filmmaker, and occasionally I get to do a play. I regard filmmaking as my proper day job.
You first became known in the 60's as a playwright who refused to write scripts. Are you still devoted to improvisation?
Every single play and film I have ever done is made in the same way. Only by seeing the play can I actually write it. I don't like to talk about it in too much detail. It's very complex, and on the whole it is no one's business.
I don't understand. Do you write? If you rehearse the material with your troupe of actors, how can you possibly say it is improvised?

It's a combination. I take lines from the actors and restructure and distill. Nobody writes anything. I couldn't do as well by myself. If I went into a room by myself and sat there for a million years, I couldn't come up with "Vera Drake."
Do you read fiction or look at art?
No, I am not interested in culture.
I am sorry to hear that.
I am joking. I have two grown sons in London. One is an illustrator, and one is a young filmmaker, so they keep me aware of things that are going on in the culture.
Is there anything else we need to know about you?
I have a partner. She is a costume designer. We live in the West End of London, near the British Museum. I am not a vegetarian.

Have you seen any good movies lately?
I go all the time. I like to go to theaters where they don't eat popcorn.

It's show business. No show, no business.
Dick Wolf