LONDON — MIKE LEIGH'S reputation for a unique creative process and for fiercely resisting compromise comes at some cost to the director. In making a film, Leigh begins with an idea, naturally enough, but then he hires the actors and improvises with them for several months before shooting -- a style he has used from his earliest efforts in 1971 to his most recent film, "Happy-Go-Lucky," which opens Friday.
Leigh can work no other way, he says. "Part of what makes [a film] work is the fact that I have collaborated with each character and the whole thing is grown organically and arrives in a complete way," he says. "And that is more than a technicality; it is integral to the whole thing."
But it is also so exclusionary of Hollywood filmmaking practices that Leigh finds himself in his later years lamenting its price.
"My tragedy as a filmmaker now," he says, "is that there is a very limited ceiling on the amount of money anyone will give me to make a film. Because they don't know what it's going to be about and because I won't use stars and because there isn't a script. And I really passionately want to have the resources to paint on a much bigger canvas. It's a shame and I won't be around forever, I'm 65, so . . ." he says, trailing off.
The happy outsider
'I won't use stars' and 'there isn't a script.' It's no wonder Hollywood doesn't get how Mike Leigh works. But he won't do it any other way.
THE DIRECTOR'S CRAFT
Yet even with that disappointment haunting his thoughts, Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky" has been praised as his most cheerful film to date, a critique that actually irks him. The title is a giveaway, as are the opening scenes that follow the main character of Poppy, a 30-year-old schoolteacher, played by Sally Hawkins, as she bikes around London spreading good cheer. The narrative thrust concerns the dynamic between Poppy and an angry driving instructor named Scott, played by Eddie Marsan.
When the film opened in England earlier this year, it was revered as a departure for Leigh. "That simply isn't true," he says, mildly exasperated at the perception of his films as he settles into an old armchair in his airy office on the third floor of a town house in London's Soho, on a midsummer afternoon. "Even if that were a serious discussion about the previous film ['All or Nothing'], that is certainly not accurate of 'Vera Drake.' "
What is certainly true is that "Happy-Go-Lucky" is very funny and, like his much-praised "Naked," is the rare Leigh film that is centered on the main character, as opposed to an ensemble.
