Mike Leigh – master of hard-scripted improvisations
Mike Leigh’s Method:
Actors Making It All Up!
by Jamie Jobb
Imagine you’re an actor and you get a personal note from Mike Leigh: “I’d like to have you work in my next film.” Of course you say “Yes!” because actors seek these prized roles with the acclaimed writer/director/producer from the United Kingdom.
Whatever these roles may be.
That’s the whole point with a Mike Leigh acting assignment. The director knows who he wants to work with when he begins a film. He just doesn’t have much of an idea who his characters are or what the story may be. That’s premature speculation at this point in Leigh’s process. It’s just enough for him in the beginning to know who each actor is.
Each actor does not know any other actor involved with Leigh on the project at this point of these collaborations. The actor simply works alone with Leigh developing a single character from a list of people the actor knows. They also work through a set of improv exercises to determine which character they feel is most worthy of development.
Once a single character is chosen, the actor gets to work alone with Leigh for another two or three months developing that character’s backstory, movement, speech patterns and other bits of nuance needed to bring the character to complete fruition.
Note that at this point, nobody is talking about story … only a single character’s development, one-on-one, actor-with-director. At the same time, Leigh has been working with his other actors this way --- each of them using the same method of character development based on individuals each actor knows. Once Leigh is convinced his actors know their characters, he introduces them into rehearsals where they improvise scenes in character.
After a few weeks of developing the story in this manner, the improvisations are shaped into a shooting script. From that point on the story and the text are locked in for the actors to develop in front of the camera.
This is why Leigh films contain a level of actorly involvement unknown in other writer’s works. This is why his early films said “devised by” instead of “written by” Leigh. Rather than spend more time on the man’s methods, let’s look at his individual films to get a sense of the kinds of characters and situations come out of this unique kind of actor/writer collaboration …
* * *
Mike Leigh Films: Short Reviews
* * *
Anne Raitt imagines her dinner date without trousers
Bleak Moments (1971)
“One top and two bottoms, like a beauty queen at a freak show.” Sylvia (Anne Raitt) is chartered accountant’s secretary who tolerates grim world of London’s South Norwood pebble-dash in her Bronte bun and Mona Lisa smile. Sylvia’s retarded sister Hilda (Sarah Stephenson) is “a bit dopey”and demands constant care. Sylvia’s latent mate Peter (Eric Allan) is a teacher who gets “very angry with waiters who, well, don’t do their job.”
Peter may have trouble balancing coffee, sherry and smoke on his knee; but at least he understands “the usual conversational gambits don’t seem to be any use.” (scene link below) Sylvia refills Peter’s sherry brimming to the rim. “I was just saying something to you in my head, it was quite amusing. I was saying to you: take your trousers off.”
Their lonely night out getting grilled by grumbling waiter (Ronald Eng) in drab Chinese restaurant may be most painfully funny sad-sack food scene ever filmed. “This no enough for two people! It’s one, one, one, one, one!” Sylvia’s sole office mate Pat (Joolia Cappleman) cares for Hilda, believes“Jesus was a faith healer” and admits she “might be getting married next year, about January.” Pat’s Mum (Liz Smith) frets over missing dentures while Pat admonishes: “You can’t have them on show. They’re not an ornament.”
Muffled mimeographer Norman (Mike Bradwell) prints student magazine and plays tuneless guitar in Sylvia’s garage. “You know, it’s not so easy to know what it is you really do … want to do.” Based on his original play, Leigh dislodges creeping avalanche of painful stillborn pregnant pauses as minds grind, tongues bite, eyes ricochet off floors and walls. “I find it easier watching the radio.”
Out-of-tune E-flat Chopin Nocturne echoes off softbound Wuthering Heights, Freight Train Goin’ So Fast roars past This Little Piggy Went To Market, and is The Medium Really The Message? Or “Does your daddy wear glasses?” All that remains is a neoclassical perspective: “It’s just like Romeo and Juliet all over again, isn’t it Hilda?” (British)
* * *
house-cleaner Liz Smith knows what makes it select
Hard Labour (1973)
“Flaming women! You’re all the blood same. That’s the trouble with ya. And you can’t get through this bloody kitchen, a-tall.” Careful Catholic house-cleaner Mrs. Thronley (Liz Smith) believes “I don’t love people enough” while she dusts and polishes High Broughton home of Mrs. Stone (Vanessa Harris). “I’m not gonna do any housework. I’ve got enough to do.”
Then she returns home to cobbled maze of mews in Salford back-to-backs where she starts all over again in her own home. “Well, you know it goes on, but there you go, you know.” Although toy-warehouse security-guard Mr. Thornley (Clifford Kershaw) knows “the company rules”, he guards plastic ducks on graveyard shift in his tight shoes, suffers “a bit of rheumatism” in his shoulders, and likes “to drink, it flushes me kidneys out”.
Vowel-stretching A-1 taxi driver Naseem (Ben Kingsley) arranges quickie abortions on Indian time. “Look, they’re half hanging on.” Leigh’s grindstone view of labor underfoot rides uplift of confessional newsprint, faded floral wallpaper, purple passion bra, broom-handle alarm clock, scrambled eggs and “shocking” cheese. “I like it because every house is just that bit individual. You know what I mean? They’re all a little bit different, makes it more select. See that wall. Not all the houses have got those.” (British)
* * *
The Pratts search for free-range eggs
Nuts in May (1976)
“This is a portable barometer, a bit like a traveling clock, really … in the middle of the night if you wake up, want to know the time, turn over and all you find out is whether it’s fair or foul.” The Pratts – social-service administrator Keith (Roger Solman) and toyshop clerk Candice-Marie (Alison Steadman) -- are self-satisfied vegetarian city-dwellers who ride chugging Morris Minor coupe on cramped camping holiday in Dorset, just to “get away from the hurly-burly of living in an urban conurbation” of Croydon.
“Lovely to have species all around you!” They seek “untreated milk” and self-service “free-range eggs” while packing maximum/minimum thermometer and “stage-seven fly sheet”. “Society gets what society wants.” Candice-Marie seems “to have a morbid interest in where the dungeons are”, while Keith chews his nuts 72 times before swallowing. “No killer whites in our tent!”
Excruciating hilarious pedantic hootenanny thrusts urban zealots inflicted with “The Country Code” onto less conscientious fellow campers Ray (Anthony O’Donnell), Honky (Sheila Kelley) and Finger (Stephen Bill). “Litter makes us shiver.” Leigh paints lunatic landscape of muddy dinosaur footprints, flashlight apology and vapid “I-want-to-see-the-zoo-she-said” sing-a-longs. “If I could take one of your lungs now and put it on the table in front of you and cut it in half, I think that you would be absolutely horrified.” (British)
* * *
Kay Adshead wants a good snogging – upstairs
The Kiss of Death (1977)
“You don’t know how lucky you are, Trev. You got security, no clocking in, nobody standing over ya, and you get paid for it as well. So when you retire, you have a good pension. And finally, when you pass away, you get a free funeral, on the firm.” Lancashire undertaker’s apprentice and hearse driver Trevor (David Threlfall) is “a bit scruffy”, doesn’t like disco, and looks “like a Cheshire cat, leering like that”.
His best friend Ronnie (John Wheatley) and his Betty-Boop mate Sandra (Angela Curran) are “getting a bit sick of him keep tagging on with us” to their pub dates. Undertaker’s joke: Q -- “How’s your wife?” A -- “I worship the ground that’s coming to her.” So Sandra introduces him to gum-chewing shoe-shop clerk Linda (Kay Adshead) who wants to know if Trevor is “deaf as well as daft”because “The last time you asked me out, you didn’t turn up. Did ya?”
Although she later admits he can “Kiss me if you like”, Linda’s sights are dead set for “snogging”, not on her sofa like kids, but upstairs in bed like real adults. Trevor, however, seems more concerned with “Jaws,” “Dracula,” and “Hello Dolly” -- not to mention real-life crib death. “There’s no short time in this business.” (British)
* * *
Is Alison Steadman’s red dress ready for simultaneous parties?
Abigail’s Party (1977)
“Not everyone can like everything, can they?” Beverly Moss (Alison Steadman) is wannabe voluptuous hostess who has her dream: “just to lie on a beach sipping Bacardi and Coke.” Husband Laurence (Tim Stern) is real-estate agent who enjoys light classical music, fine art reproductions and Complete Works of Shakespeare because they’re “part of our heritage. ‘Course they’re not something you can actually read”.
Together they host three Richmond Road neighbors for constricted cocktail party of stiff seduction. Drinking into oblivion with them are chirpy nurse Angela (Janine Duvitski) and her sullen husband Tony (John Salthouse), ex-professional soccer player now employed as computer operator. “Oh yes, he’s very quick-tempered. I think it’s because of his red hair.”
Joining couples is solo and troubled divorced mom of two, Susan Lawson (Harriet Reynolds), whose 15-year-old Abigail holds her own party next door. “You don’t know who you get at a party, and let’s face it, people ARE light-fingered.” (British).
* * *
Who’s Who (1979)
“Your work is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on earth.” Stilted stockbroker and celebrity autograph-hound Alan Dixon (Richard Kane) is “a professional man” who prides himself on his “royal refusals” and his “Tree of Great Britain”. Regularly, he pops round to Buckingham gates to catch glimpse of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, aka H.R.H.
“Well, what are your feelings about Petula Clark?” Alan’s idiosyncratic chinchilla cat-breeder wife April (Joolia Cappleman) prides herself on good grooming. “If you went round there Alan, and you saw the way she overcrowds her cat houses, you really would be shocked. Why I have only got to write a letter to the governing council of Cat Fancy and they’d be round there like a shot!”
Feline photographer Mr. Shakespeare (Sam Kelly) also takes his shots in the Dixon parlor. “By the way, did you know there was a famous writer called Shakespeare?” Meanwhile Alan’s coworkers Nigel Carlisle (Simon Chandler) is “so capable” in the kitchen that roguish roommate Giles (Adam Norton) plans Saturday night dinner party. “Now the seating’s all wrong!” Leigh’s hilarious and harrowing Stock Market potboiler simmers with Fur And Feather, Pak-A-Pet, “Rhythmic Roberto”, Newton’s balls and “This is Your Life”. “There’s no joy in being a plantation worker anymore.”(British)
* * *
Lindsay Duncan is dissatisfied physical education teacher
Grown-Ups (1980)
Cafe-waitress sister Mandy (Lesley Manville) doesn’t need to be told her home “could use a clean”. All she really wants is her own baby. But hospital orderly brother-in-law Dick (Philip Davis) “hasn’t got a great deal to say for himself”. Their new neighbor Ralph “Old Butler” (Sam Kelly) taught them both Religious Knowledge in high school, but now he owns private row-house next door. While his dissatisfied wife Christine (Lindsay Duncan) teachers physical education, all she really knows is: “I want sex. I want love. I want a family.”
Leigh’s latter-day Canterbury tale gathers rumbling grunts and tics that eventually gush in family scrum on Butler staircase to conjure “Life Before Man”, Loch Ness Monster, dinosaur nutcracker, Hoover uprights and “Good riddance to bad rubbish”. “There’s more life in my back garden than there is in Canterbury.” “Your back garden IS Canterbury!” (British)
* * *
Kay Stonham invites postman in for tea
Home Sweet Home (1982)
Postman No. 1: three-way two-timer Stan (Eric Richard) knows “my wife ran off with some geezer”, but he never bothered to get divorced – one fact not lost on his estranged daughter Tina (Lorraine Brunning). Postman No. 2: couch potato Gordon Leach (Timothy Spall) splits loggerheads with barrelhouse wife Hazel (Kay Stonham) who “was a big girl when I was twelve” and now is “just havin’ a good shakeout” while hubby whimpers “I ain’t fat! I ain’t fat!” Postman No. 3: impractical jokester Harold Fish (Tim Barker) is insufferable nitwit who can’t comprehend cuckold grip of cold fish wife June (Su Elliott).
“Did you hear about the Irish postman? He was looking for a round letterbox because he had to deliver a circular.” So who could blame Stan for “popping in on” his coworkers’ wives? “You know, Stanley, a lot of deviant behavior is caused by insecurity.” Oh, to sing I Did It My Way, not Lipstick on Your Collar. To Ask: “Does your wife get you up in the morning?” not “What’s the kettle for?” “Prince Charles is a postman: he’s The Royal Male.” (British)
* * *
Tim Roth and Gary Oldman make the worst of public housing
Meantime (1983)
“An anthill which can be as big as a man, as big as three men, begins as a single grain of sand, OK. Time passes .. the single grain becomes the ant hill .. It’s like repairs, ya know? Small things become big things. And what I’m saying is, it helps us if you tell us about the grain of sand, OK? Don’t wait to tell us about the ant hill, yeah.” “ … We got ants?”
Young East End layabout Colin Pollock (Tim Roth) “isn’t as daft” as he looks, but “can’t fry an egg, never mind decorate a bedroom”. His bitter brother Mark (Phil Daniels) is “too smart for your own good, you are.” And their unemployed ex-brakeman Dad, Frank (Jeff Robert) believes “It’s not my fault I ain’t got no job.” With all three men in her life on the dole, Mum Mavis (Pam Ferris) loses herself in Bingo to tolerate their London high-rise oblivion.
“You got to decorate, haven’t you? It’s no excuse to live in squalor.” Mavis’ well-to-do Chigwell sister Barbara (Marion Bailey) doesn’t “try to sound posh”, although her husband John (Alfred Molina) hasn’t “got much time for Mavis and her family”. Skittish skinhead Coxy (Gary Oldman) is “rude boy” who head-butts lamp-post and faces bleak future in tin drum. “Don’t talk to me about money, I used to work in a bank.” Leigh punctuates early Thatcher pathos with double-baked beans, rotten windows, billowing litter and perpetual pub haze of darts, billiards and beer. “Our job is to help you, yeah. And it helps us to help you if you help us, OK?” (British)
* * *
Irish wonder it was their country in the first place
Four Days in July (1985)
“We came from here, we went to Scotland and then we came back again. So it was our country in the first place! Ulster!” Three expectant first-time-fathers fidget in waiting room for they know “that’s women’s business” in delivery room. Outside, armed British troops scrutinize Belfast’s business in broad daylight. Expectant Protestant wife Lorraine (Paula Hamilton) is so big she “can’t reach the taps”. Her husband, Tenth Battalion Ulster Defence Regiment soldier Billy (Charles Lawson), keeps his gun on kitchen shelf and his hands on cans of lager. “I do wanna get full tonight, but I don’t wanna get full at your granny’s.”
Expectant Catholic wife Collette (Brid Breenan) knows it “will be a while before I can wear a grass skirt”. Her crippled husband Eugene (Des McAleer) is eternal optimist, although he has “more holes than a dart board” from three old innocent-bystander battle scars. “Stop boasting, Eugene.”
Although it’s difficult at times to decode these thick North Irish brogues, Leigh’s first “foreign language movie” provides stunning snapshot of not-so-Great-Britain’s very uncivil war. “Can’t you (males) all go live on an island without us?” “We ARE living on an island!”
Visceral view of lives overshadowed by oxygen mask and bonfire song, dueling flags and “The Patriot Game”, Falls Road baby carriage and “plumbers don’t like summers” -- although they can turn toilets into stills. “Like, one rat you can handle. But it’s the thought of a whole army of them that I can’t stand.” One of the most unlikely anti-war comedies of my experience. “You wonder how they did it, wouldn’t ya, in those wee houses.” (Ireland)
Full feature: unavailable
* * *
Ruth Sheen and Philip Davis learn you must speculate to accumulate
High Hopes (1988)
“What made this country great was a place for everyone and everyone in his place. And this is my place.” Feeling “a bit vague” as she faces 70th birthday, old Mrs. Bender (Edna Dore) “could be better”. Her long-term Bethnal Green council flat has become last bastion in gentrified row where class warfare is fought over “a lick of paint” and lost keys. “Working-class Tories, stabbing themselves in the back.”
Her scruffy messenger son Cyril (Philip Davis) is “scared of gettin’ bitter” and believes families “ain’t no use any more”. “The day they machine-gun the Royal Family, I’ll comb me hair and put a tie on.” His true love, park landscape worker Shirley (Ruth Sheen) only hopes “I don’t have a kid that’s a bit thick.” Cyril’s chortling sister, Valerie Burke (outrageous Heather Tobias), has been “having a breakdown for the last twenty years” and isn’t about to quit now. Her philander husband, used car and burger dealer Martin (Philip Jackson) is “the jerk in the Merc” who believes “you gotta speculate to accumulate”.
Mrs. Bender’s aptly-named next-door-Yuppies, The Booth-Braines -- Laetitia (Lesley Manville) and Rupert (David Bamber) -- patronize opera and donate wine to “mentally-handicapped-something-or-other” charity. “Oh, look what they’ve done to your coal hole, Mum!” Leigh’s caustic post-Thatcher satire strikes bullseye of brass banana, neon house-number, Karl Marx’ Highgate grave and “I said, it’s the top of the world.” “It’s amazing what you can do with a slum, isn’t it?” (British)
* * *
Timothy Spall plans nouveau menu from hell
Life is Sweet (1990)
“It just sits in a drawer. Out of the drawer, into the peas. Stir the custard, into the wash. Out of the wash, up on the hooks with all the other spoons. And all the time, just waiting for the fatal day when it’d drastically alter the course of a man’s life.” Chirpy Enfield working-class wife Wendy (Alison Steadman) is dance teacher, kids-boutique clerk, volunteer waitress and steadfast mother who’d“love another little baby”. Her still-at-home twins are polar opposites: Natalie (Claire Skinner) is “single and carefree” plumber who wears men’s shirts and dreams of Yank tour sans-Disney, while her “vacant” twin Nicola (Jane Horrocks) is bitter home-bound chocoholic anoretic who bathes twice a day, but knows “enough” about men. “You’d frighten the birds, you would.”
Plugger industrial-catering husband Andy (Jim Broadbent) still dreams of owning his own business while stalling all home improvements. “You wouldn’t see me for dust, I tell you.” Unemployed pub pal Patsy (Stephen Rea) sells Andy dilapidated scrapyard “Hot Snacks” van, while “mega-confident”kitchen “magician” Aubrey (Timothy Spall) opens Regret Rien with nouveau menu from hell – prune quiche, pork cyst, liver in lager, clams in ham, tongues in a rhubarb hollandaise and chilled brains (“They speak for themselves”).
“I want this restaurant to be built on a one-to-one, mouth-to-mouth reputation, y’know?” “Those tongues are a pain in the neck.” Leigh’s moving impression of families and food offers tea and sympathy, Piaf and accordions, orthopedic passion pit and “Bollocks to the Poll Tax!” “Ronald McDonald had to start somewhere, didn’t he?” (British)
* * *
Lynda Steadman and Katrin Cartlidge get the Bronte of everything
Career Girls (1997)
“If we could be a combination, we’d be the perfect woman, wouldn’t we?” Turning 30, two North London Poly chums and ex-roommates, both of them now office drones, reunite at Kings Cross for weekend of coincidental reminiscing. Snappy ironic Hannah Mills (Katrin Cartlidge) has remained in London while twitchy asthmatic Annie (Lynda Steadman) lives in Yorkshire with her mom. They “throw” Wuthering Heights like the I Ching.
“The Bronte sisters – we always get the brunt of everything.” Ex-roommate Clare (Kate Byers) and ex-lover Adrian Spinks (Joe Tucker) don’t recognize them. Tortured truth-telling ex-friend Ricky Burton (Mark Benton) still holds a grudge. “I’m not an idiot. I’m an idiot savant. I just haven’t found my savant yet.” They listen to The Cure, but can’t find one anywhere. “We’re all like the center of our own … attention.” “Well, that’s better than being in a detention center, which is where I could have ended up, let’s face it.” (British)
* * *
Furthermore
“The Improvised Play: The Work of Mike Leigh” - an account by Paul Clements - Methuen Theatrefile Books (1983)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005139/
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/461294/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Leigh
https://youtu.be/pLNcZArEqL8
https://youtu.be/gMwzvAt84P8
https://theflickeringmoment.wordpress.com/2014/10/24/hard-labour-1973/
https://lightsinthedusk.blogspot.com/2009/06/hard-labour-1973.html
https://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/2012/12/the_wednesday_play_nuts_in_may_1976.php
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/nov/02/abigails-party-nancy-banks-smith-review-1977
https://cinematrices.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/whos-who-mike-leigh-1979/
https://cinematrices.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/grown-ups-mike-leigh-1980/
https://worldscinema.org/2017/03/mike-leigh-play-for-today-home-sweet-home-1982/
http://thecinemaarchives.com/2019/11/03/meantime-1983-leigh/
http://anozuaday.blogspot.com/2013/05/mike-leigh.html
https://www.criterion.com/films/27982-life-is-sweet
No comments:
Post a Comment