‘Forget Hollywood, I Would Say’

Life has been sweet this past year for British director Mike Leigh. His 1996 film “Secrets & Lies” scored with critics and audiences alike, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes and receiving five Oscar nominations, including best film. It also won several British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards and the Humanitas Award for Leigh’s screenplay.

His newest film, “Career Girls,” opens Friday. Katrin Cartlidge, who appeared in Leigh’s acclaimed 1993 drama, “Naked,” and Lynda Steadman star in the intimate, bittersweet comedy as Hannah and Annie, former college roommates who haven’t seen each other in six years. During a reunion weekend in London, the two catch up and reflect on their lives and how they’ve changed over the years. Woven throughout the narrative are flashbacks to the early days of their friendship.

Leigh, 54, has a singular method of making films. With just the barest of ideas in his head and no script, he works with actors for several months until they settle on a character.

Leigh took time out from casting his next film to talk about “Career Girls,” the “Secrets & Lies” experience and his night at the Oscars.

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Question: Were you surprised with the incredible response to “Secrets & Lies”?

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Answer: If I said, “Yes,” it would suggest that I would think those [successes] shouldn’t happen and I think they should. They should have happened perhaps with some of my earlier films, to be honest. But I can see that this particular film hit a nerve and people were really moved by it. I do make films for a popular audience and they should be up in front of those audiences. They are not art-house films; they are not esoteric films that no one can understand.

Q: Since “Career Girls” is your first film since “Secrets & Lies,” do you think people will try to compare it to “Secrets”?

A: I suppose so. The truth about these things is that it’s very hard to anticipate and chart how these things will go. I dare say to some degree people looked at “Secrets & Lies” with “Naked” in mind.

I am philosophical about it. Obviously, I deliberately try to do something different each time. If people are going to look at it and say it’s not as good as “Secrets & Lies,” that’s up to them, really. So as far as I am concerned, we have made a film that, yes, is shorter, it is more simple, it was certainly cheaper, but it has its own integrity and own meaning. It isn’t “Secrets & Lies,” it isn’t “Naked”--but I think it works very well for what it is and I think it really has quite a lot to say.

Q: Had you been looking to do a film that explored different time periods in characters’ lives?

A: In the evolution of all my films, we go through a very long process where the actors live through the years and years of a character, so I always see that journey actually happening in the rehearsal process. Only we arrive at the final time present, we drop anchor and then I tell the story. You always get, and “Secrets & Lies” is no exception, in my films quite a lot of reference back to the past.

I simply thought, “Why don’t I make a film where you actually make that journey and see it a bit?” I think 30 is one of those major landmark ages really. I think that journey that you make from being a late teenager or a person in their early 20s to one who is well into being a grown-up is quite a journey.

I also felt the need to look at friendship. In some ways I am returning to old tunes really--the relationship between men and women. I wanted to explore all that stuff in the context of going back and forth.

Q: I thought the coincidences in the film--the scenes in which Hannah and Annie kept running into men from their past--were very clever.

A: It’s quite interesting. I don’t remember ever having something in a film that divided, in so obviously so crude a way, people with no sense of humor from people with one. People who say, “Oh, I couldn’t believe that. The coincidences are too much.” You think, “Ease up. Take it or leave it.” These things can happen.

Q: When does “Career Girls” open in England?

A: In September. It opened in New Zealand and it broke records. It’s one of those strange things.

Q: Do you feel it’s true that your films are appreciated more outside of England?

A: It’s partly true for two reasons. One is that the press here [in England] hate anybody who is successful, so they are always negative about it. That’s just an English disease. The other thing is that British films are distributed so badly in the U.K. I mean, “Secrets & Lies,” in the States, was seen in places where none of my previous films had been seen, like Kansas City and Oklahoma, for example. Whereas it was immensely difficult to see “Secrets & Lies” in Manchester. But there is a caucus of people who really like my films in the U.K.

Q: The British press reported you resigned from the British film academy this year after “Secrets & Lies” won several awards because you were so angry none of your other films had ever received nominations.

A: That’s not true. That’s the typical example of the British press. There is no such thing as a fact checker in the U.K., so this happens endlessly. They print things that are not only not true but they are blatantly untrue.

What is the case was that because nobody had ever received any nominations for anything of mine ever, after “Naked” had won the best actor and best director awards at Cannes in 1993, I quietly let my membership lapse, which so did a couple of other people.

Now, when we got some awards this year for “Secrets & Lies,” I stood up and said, “This is the first time that anybody had ever won a [British film academy] award for anything [I had done].” Don’t forget, apart from anything else, lots of actors had done brilliant performances in my films and television films over the long stretch. So the press picked this up, and they got the story very wrong and they reported that within hours of winning his award, Mike Leigh lapsed his membership. So it’s all rubbish.

Q: Has Hollywood tried to lure you to make a film here?

A: No. No. It would just be impossible. Pretty well every one of the studios in the last years has toyed with the idea of putting money into a project here and they have all finally walked, with the exception of October Films, who are involved in my next project as backers. The ones who have walked away [did so] because there isn’t a script. I won’t allow them to dictate anything and I won’t allow them to discuss casting and I must have final cut. The fact is I’m really kind of an independent, Third World filmmaker from Europe basically. Forget Hollywood, I would say.

Q: What are your impressions of your first Oscar ceremony?

A: It was horrid. People say to me, “Oh, I bet it was a great night out.” It was not a great night out. It was horrible. We were the only film nominated for best film who got nothing at all and the thing that makes it worse and also softens the blow all at the same time is that the rest of the night people were saying, “You should have won. I voted for you. It is the best film.”

I don’t have negative feelings about the people who did win. To be honest, on the whole, I thought all the other films were worthy, good films, which were good to be in there with. It wouldn’t be honest to say I thought it was a straight fight because I don’t think this particular thing is a straight fight.

I was on the jury at Cannes more recently and the joy of that is that we were unimpeachable. We were 10 people who really, really were entrusted with the decision without any interference from anybody of any kind, least of all money. In that context, that felt pure. At least you knew everyone had gotten a fair crack. I don’t feel that about the Oscars.

I’m not bitter. It was great to get nominated. It was terribly good for us, but it was disappointing only because it would have been good to walk away with one.