A place to think deeply about movies
On the podcast, we discuss the recent BFI restoration of Mike Leigh’s 1993 classic Naked, starring David Thewlis. We also discuss our favourite Mike Leigh films. Podcast hosts Alex Heeney and Orla Smith are joined by regular guest Lindsay Pugh.
On this episode of the podcast, we discuss Mike Leigh’s Peterloo and Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You. These are two very different films with a strong political commitment to the need to improve the lives of the working class.
Although Ken Loach and Mike Leigh are both British filmmakers who make social realist films, they have very different approaches to storytelling and filmmaking. In the episode, we discuss how Loach and Leigh approach politics, character, and much more.
This episode features Editor-in-Chief Alex Heeney, Executive Editor Orla Smith, and Associate Editor Brett Pardy.
Sorry We Missed You, Ken Loach’s most recent film, focuses on the exploitation of the gig economy. Loach tells the story through the lens of a working-class family’s struggle to meet everyday expenses.
Peterloo, Mike Leigh’s most recent film, portrays the events leading up to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre. During the massacre, British soldiers killed 15 and injured as many as 700 people protesting for parliamentary reform.
This episode also draws from research we did for our ebook Peterloo in Process: A Mike Leigh Collaboration.
Here is a preview of our interview with Peterloo hair & makeup designer Christine Blundell from our new ebook Peterloo in Process: A Mike Leigh Collaboration. To find out more and to purchase the book, click here.
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In our interview with Mike Leigh on Peterloo, he stated, “Ideally, you have no makeup, but that’s alright within very narrow parametres. When you need makeup for all sorts of reasons, then you need someone who’s very good at making things real. Christine Blundell is fantastic in that.”
It surprised us to hear Leigh bring up his makeup and hair designer, Christine Blundell, as such a key part of the process, simply because her work does look so real. You forget these characters are wearing makeup at all. What we learned from talking to Blundell was illuminating: doing the makeup on a historical film like Peterloo is an incredibly delicate process, even if the characters themselves do not wear makeup within the world of the film. Blundell researched how the diets, living conditions, and medicine of the time would have affected the appearance of the characters’ skin so she could paint their faces accordingly.
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As well as Peterloo, Christine Blundell has worked with Leigh on makeup and hair on every one of his films since the 1990s — in fact, Life is Sweet (1990) and Naked (1993) were her first ever jobs as a hair and makeup artist on film. Since, she has gone on to work on huge blockbusters, such as Wonder Woman and the upcoming Aladdin remake.
But her work with Mike Leigh remains her most rich and detailed, even winning her an Oscar in 1999 for Topsy-Turvy. On each film, she works with Leigh and the actors months before shooting begins, devising how each character might choose to express themselves visually. Topsy-Turvy earned her awards attention because the makeup is more pronounced, as she was designing characters who would be performing exuberant parts on stage. But Blundell’s job is important even for more subtly designed characters in modern films. Her work may often be invisible, but it is essential.
Here is a preview of our interview with director Mike Leigh on Peterloo, from our new ebook Peterloo in Process: A Mike Leigh Collaboration. To find out more and to purchase the book, click here. To read a review of the book, click here.
After falling in love with Peterloo at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, I knew I had to interview Mike Leigh, who was in town. I was so enamoured by the film’s blocking and Leigh’s skill in directing so many rich scenes featuring multiple characters — possibly the greatest challenge for any director. In a film with so many minor characters who, collectively, play a major role, I wanted to know how Leigh captured all of them so distinctly and memorably, with never a false note. I expected this to be tied to his background in theatre, which privileges supporting actors — theatre is the actor’s medium, and film is the director’s’ medium.
Instead, I discovered that Leigh’s approach would be radical on stage or screen, that his rehearsals are physical and personal in the way that most stage rehearsals are, but otherwise, they bear little resemblance to theatre work as they are focused on invention and discovery rather than on understanding, perfecting, and setting individuals scenes.
Take a sneak peak at Peterloo in process: A Mike Leigh collaboration, our forthcoming ebook on Mike Leigh and how he made his great new film. This is the foreword to the book. You can get the ebook here.
[Read more…] about Peterloo in process: A Mike Leigh collaboration ForewordEpisode 11 of the podcast celebrates our new ebook, Peterloo in Process: A Mike Leigh collaboration. Authors Alex Heeney and Orla Smith are joined by Brett Pardy to discuss how conducting and reading the interviews with Leigh, Rory Kinnear, Maxine Peake, and key department heads deepened their admiration and understanding of Peterloo.
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In this episode of the podcast, we discuss Peterloo, the latest film from the legendary Mike Leigh, portrays the events leading up to the Peterloo Massacre, where British soldiers killed 15 and injured as many as 700 people protesting for parliamentary reform.
Our new ebook, Peterloo in Process: A Mike Leigh collaboration, pulls back the curtain on how Leigh builds films in which every frame feels real and full of life. We’ve interviewed all of Leigh’s central team, not just the actors, but also the heads of department he’s collaborated with for years. We uncover how Leigh’s process involves rehearsal and improvisation, historical research, and collective brainstorming across all departments.
Visit mikeleighbook.com to pre-order the book and receive a bonus edited audio file of the interviews with Mike Leigh and Dick Pope.
This episode was edited by Edward von Aderkas.
Listen to episode 32 , in which we compared Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You to Mike Leigh’s Peterloo, and discussed the similarities and differences between Loach’s and Leigh’s filmmaking approaches.
Listen to episode 26 , in which we discuss Seventh Row’s 2019 and how our book on Peterloo shaped our next three ebooks, and what we learned from writing them all.
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With Peterloo in Process, uncover the magic behind Mike Leigh’s working process
as told by the man himself and the people who work with him.