yes, do you need to.? take your jacket off. hello, i m john wilson, welcome to this cultural life, the radio four podcast, in which i ask leading creative figures to reveal the key moments in their life, and the most important cultural works that fired their own artistic imagination. my guest is director, screenwriter and playwright mike leigh. he s known for gritty social dramas, including vera drake and secrets and lies. domestic comedies, like life is sweet and happy go lucky, and historical stories, including mr turner and peterloo. i spoke to him in one of the many radio studios in bbc broadcasting house. mike, welcome to this cultural life. let s take you to the beginning. what is your earliest cultural memory? as a kid, we had, and i was exposed to. ..pantomime, live theatre of various sorts. circus. the circus was a big deal. variety. live variety, the old, you know, descendants of the music hall, including, at the age of nine, a trip to the ardwick hippodrome in manc
hello, i m john wilson, welcome to this cultural life, the radio four podcast, in which i ask leading creative figures to reveal the key moments in their life, and the most important cultural works that fired their own artistic imagination. my guest is director, screenwriter and playwright mike leigh. he s known for gritty social dramas, including vera drake and secrets and lies. domestic comedies like life is sweet and happy go lucky, and historical stories, including mr turner and peterloo. i spoke to him in one of the many radio studios in bbc broadcasting house. mike, welcome to this cultural life. let s take you to the beginning. what is your earliest cultural memory? as a kid, we had, and i was exposed to. ..pantomime, live theatre of various sorts. circus. the circus was a big deal. variety. live variety, the old, you know, descendants of the music hall, including, at the age of nine, a trip to the ardwick hippodrome in manchester to see laurel and hardy live on stage.
this cultural life. let s take you to the beginning. what s your earliest cultural memory? as a kid, we had, iwas exposed to pantomime, live theatre of various thoughts, circus, the circus was a big deal, variety, live variety, descendants of the music hall, including at the age of nine a trip to the ardwick hippodrome to see laurel and hardy live on stage on the famous tour, which i later realised was the famous tour, and the two important things about that were one, two extraordinary things, one was it was in colour they were in colour and two, that oliver hardy com pletely couldn t get his act together at all, he was absolutely out of control, and of course later we realised that that was because he was cracking up and it was the end of their of their career. were they funny? no. but i was fascinated, it didn t make any difference. of course, in school, from the earliest age, i was drawing, putting on sketches, generally wanted to be creative in all kinds of differen
the students looking at the subject, at the model in the life drawing class, the actor has got, you know, he or she is going to start to stand up and play this person they actually know, and then that person they know, and then we meld them together and the character is created. but, of course, the two famous myths about what i do with actors is, one is that the actors come with ideas, and the committee is formed as to what the subject. that s not the case at all. in fact, it s very it s essential that they. ..when i say to an actor, participate in this piece of work, this play or this film, we can t talk about a character, because there isn t a character. you and i are going to collaborate to create a character, and you will never know anything about the whole thing, except what your character knows . so they don t know about the other characters? not until, not until and unless they meet them in the context of the work. are they banned from talking
really, isn t it? absolutely. and what were these directors doing that was so different, do you think? it s the possibilities. the thing about influence and the thing about being stimulated by what other artists do it s as much about making you think about the possibilities of what you might do. but with the french new wave in particular, was it also about the visual style? do you think that had a direct influence on your later work? well, i mean, the great move forward was shooting in the streets, was shooting in real places. now, of course, i unlike for example my compatriot ken loach who was a great pioneer, who, again, was a great inspiration to me a little bit later on in the 60s, with the work that he and tony garnett, who i used to work with in television, bbc. their great revolution was to say, well, let s not. bbc drama is studio bound, let s get out there in the street with the guys that shoot