The happy outsider

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.

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.

For Hawkins, the director’s style was key to bringing it all together. “What’s so wonderful about working with Mike is that every thought and every root of a thought is created from birth, so you are always in character on a Mike Leigh film.”

Marsan added that, “All the work is done six or seven months beforehand, so the characters are set in stone, but the development of the script is fluid. When you finish a Mike Leigh film, for about six months afterward, for every job you do you just feel like a bad actor.”

The Leigh-actors dynamic

Leigh, WHO appears somewhat slight and frail, is used to such praise from his actors. He has an uncanny knack for discovering talent and over the course of his career has cast Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Ben Kingsley, Stephen Rea and Alfred Molina when all were unknown.

“I can outstrip them with mutual enthusiasm,” Leigh says in response to his “Happy” actors’ accolades. “They are both so brilliant and one of the joys of this film -- well, the look of it is extraordinary, we used this new stock that Fuji just came out with, and the music and the place -- but, of course, at the center of it all is the joy of working with brilliant actors. They are experienced at all sorts of acting so that you can push them and we all push each other to incredible levels. You can’t do that with lesser actors.”

Though that heightened give-and-take of improvisation and on-the-spot creation during preproduction has in the past led to a bit of discord. Thewlis, who has appeared in three Leigh films, said in an interview last year that actors such as himself, Oldman and Roth contribute enough of the dialogue during the pre-shooting months of improvisation that it rankles to see Leigh get sole writing credits. “It hurts a bit when you see the film and it says ‘written by Mike Leigh’ because that’s not entirely true. That’s not entirely the way I remember it in terms of who said what to whom. And Mike knows this and I’ve had it out with him,” Thewlis said in the interview.

So, has the group process ever led Leigh to consider sharing a writing credit with any of his central actors?

“No,” he says plainly. “The actors are not the author of the film, I am. That’s not a question. The conception, the structure, the meaning of the film is mine. The juxtaposition of all the elements, the entire long and short of the whole is part of my job and the actor makes a serious contribution through acting. Why should I share the credit with someone who hasn’t made an equal contribution? I have collaborated with Dick Pope as cinematographer. We collaborate artist to artist, but if anyone suggested to Dick Pope that he was the co-author of the film. . . .” He throws up his hands.

Leigh bristles too when asked if he would consider nominal compromise to gain his desire of major studio financing for a film. He has, for instance, directed commercials in England, so would he ever consider working from a finished script, or casting a Hollywood star to get backing?

“I don’t know what you’re asking me,” he says. Well, has it ever occurred to you . . . “To do what?” he interrupts, bluntly. “I won’t sell out for a split second. I don’t think I could if I wanted to. And anyway, to do what? No, it’s out of the question.

“Let’s say we are going to get X, the international famous American movie star. And I say to X, ‘I can’t tell you what the film is about. I can’t tell you about your character. And you will never know anything about the other characters in the film. And you will have to spend a lot of time just hanging around.’ ” Leigh then adopts a farcical American accent. “ ‘Just tell me what you want Mike and I’ll do it,’ ” he says with mock enthusiasm. “It just takes a certain kind of spirit and patience to work on my films.”

An honored man

That resistance to Hollywood is perhaps why he so enjoys the accolades his films receive, and he fully expects Hawkins to be nominated for an Oscar (she won the best actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year for her performance). Leigh has been nominated five times, three times as a screenwriter and twice as a director. He is delighted with Miramax, which will be releasing “Happy-Go-Lucky” in the U.S., but stresses that this is because it is the new Miramax, “certainly not the Weinstein Co. I absolutely, categorically, am not ever going to get involved with Harvey Weinstein,” he says, declining to elaborate.

It is mentioned that many of his actors go on to appear in Hollywood films. Marsan played the villain in Will Smith’s “Hancock” this summer, Hawkins appeared in Woody Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream.” Meanwhile, Thewlis spent time in the Harry Potter franchise, as did Oldman, who also appeared in “The Dark Knight,” and Roth was in “The Incredible Hulk.” Does Leigh ever despair of such great actors graduating from his projects to appear in films that are the polar opposite of the “essence” he is striving for?

“At any given moment around the world,” he says, in a studied tone, “there are dozens if not hundreds of very good films being made. It’s what we call world cinema. And a tiny slice of that is Hollywood. I love all kinds of movies that come out of Hollywood. Nevertheless, the fact is that I personally align myself with world cinema and I am Hollywood-resistant. The joy is to go to the States and share what we do on our terms and that’s even the joy of being at the Oscars when it happens. It is great being there with this uncompromised foreign product.”

While a Hollywood outsider, Leigh insists that he is “very much a part of the London film industry,” though, “you won’t find me eating at the Ivy [a trendy London restaurant favored by celebrities]. Not because I don’t like the dinners at the Ivy but because I am not comfortable in venues where people spend their entire time looking over their shoulders.”

With a book out this week as well -- “Mike Leigh on Mike Leigh,” an exhaustive series of interviews covering the course of his career -- Leigh ultimately shares the general optimism of Poppy. “I consider myself to be one of the luckiest people I know,” he says. “I have done my work with absolutely no compromise or interference at any stage of the game for the whole time -- 18 full-length films, a massive number of plays and I’ve even managed to scrape enough together to raise a couple of lads.”