“I have never felt accepted as a director”: Lindsay Anderson interviewed in 1989

Lindsay Anderson: I have done hardly anything for television before Glory! Glory!, except for one play, what they call a television play, The Old Crowd [1978], from a script by Alan Bennett. I had a very good time working on that with Alan, but it was received with great hostility by almost all the critics and I was labelled “the only man who had ever made Alan Bennett unfunny”. I think that was because we really went out on a limb and made a film which was satirical and a bit surreal, in places a kind of homage to Buñuel, and that isn’t at all the kind of thing people expect to see on television. It was really gratifying that it created such a stir and was so disliked, though when it was shown again recently nobody took any notice of it at all.

The only result, unfortunately, was that I wasn’t invited to do anything else for television in Britain. So when this invitation arrived from America I was particularly intrigued, because the script had a kind of satirical energy and edge to it which seemed unusual for television, and quite close to many contemporary issues, I am happy to say, notably in its satirical view of TV evangelism. The Canadian writer Stan Daniels, who is experienced and very good – he has worked on The Mary Tyler Moore Show – did a script which was more intelligent and hard-hitting than you might expect. The reason, I think, is that Glory! Glory! has been taken on by Home Box Office, American cable, rather than a network, and HBO are anxious to produce the kind of work that can’t be seen on network. They are happy that we should be a bit trenchant or outrageous, and there has never been any suggestion that the edge of the film should be blunted.

I had been going to do The Admirable Crichton in the West End, but my negotiations with the producer fell through. So I was at a loose end when this offer arrived out of the blue. It had to be undertaken quite soon, so there wasn’t any of that tiresome business of having to work for ages on the script and argue over it with the producers or the sponsors. I thought, “Well, it’s time I had a go. Maybe it’s time I sold out!” I haven’t sold out yet, and I’m getting tired of being labelled as someone of great and rather boring integrity – so let’s have a go. And that’s how I got into it, and came to Toronto to film it.

I understand that HBO wanted you to shoot this three-and-a-quarter-hour film in 35 days, which on the face of it seems an impossibility. How did you cope with that?

I didn’t have any preconceived plan; in fact, I was extremely doubtful that I would be able to do it. The only wise precaution I took was to ask [cinematographer] Mike Fash to join me. I worked with him on Britannia Hospital [1982] and The Whales of August [1987], and he has now emigrated to America and has also done a lot of work in Toronto. He knows people here, he knows technicians, he was able to pick a very good crew, and I insisted that he should be the cameraman. If they hadn’t got Mike, I might well not have done it, because I would never have been able to shoot in 35 days. I am not a very slow director, but I’m not a lightning director either. However, I was very lucky: our unit was extremely good; we had an excellent first assistant and on the floor the organisation was first class.

There is a great admiration in North America for British films which are said to be made for television, whereas the American made-for-TV film only has a reputation for cutting corners.

In Britain, Channel 4 has helped to finance films and then has the right to show them, either before or after their cinema screenings. But the films have not exactly been made for television – they have been made for Channel 4, if you like, and that is a different thing. Though if you take My Beautiful Laundrette [1985], the interesting thing is that it was made for television and was shown in cinemas really quite by chance and at first somewhat to the alarm of the director, Stephen Frears, because he said, “Well, I only made it for television.” I think the real difference is the kind of subject liable to be financed by Channel 4, which leads to some of the new British films being a bit lacking in the ambition one associates with a cinema film. There is a certain restriction of imagination or idea, rather than the feeling that if you make a film financed by television you have to restrict it in terms of technique or style.

Glory! Glory! is somewhat different. Plainly, although the spread of the story is quite great, it’s not possible in 35 days to give it the kind of wit you would have in a movie. If we were making it as a movie, we would certainly have had at least a week or ten days in Texas to shoot some locations. Here we have had one day shooting at York University and that has been our exteriors. My approach to it has been completely pragmatic – to get the script on to film as inventively and expressively as possible. When you take on a subject like this, I don’t think you indulge too much in theory.

How far did the schedule force you into different procedures from those you followed on The Whales of August?

If we had been making The Whales of August for television, I imagine it would have been done on a four-week budget, and it wouldn’t have been shot in Maine but in a studio with a few exteriors. It would have been a different kind of film and it would have been much diminished. I think the fact that we were making a movie creates a psychological difference. I know that some of the American technicians on The Whales of August expected us to shoot it like a television movie. They just expected us to give it an overall lighting and then go in to shoot all the sequences. But, of course, we didn’t. We shot it with the care that goes with making a movie. But that is true of this film also, and how you have to look at it, if you like, is that the restrictions or economies are present in the script.

I’ve had the producer say to me once or twice, “Oh, it looks a bit claustrophobic,” and I have to say to her, “Well, since you gave me one day to shoot exteriors, and since we never had a particularly convincing exterior location for the headquarters of this evangelist movement, what more do you expect?” But, of course, the trouble is that the better the film turns out, the more they begin to judge it as though it was Gone with the Wind. I have to repeat “35 days” and, of course, they forget about that.

When you are filming overseas, do you keep in touch with what is going on in the world, or in the film world? Is that important to you?

It’s absolutely unimportant: I don’t keep in touch. Occasionally I look at the British papers on a newsstand and I even think of buying one. But when I look at them, I see they are just the same trendy, devitalised rubbish as when I left. When you leave home, and you are away even for a month, you somehow expect great changes to have taken place, and it’s so dispiriting to read the Guardian or the Independent or the Times and to see that nothing has changed. It’s nice just not to have one’s nose rubbed in it every day of the week. As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing to keep in touch with, and it’s a nice change to see only the Canadian papers, which contain practically nothing, and indeed to be cut off from all the media nonsense.

How important is it for you to know what other filmmakers are doing?

Not important at all! It’s interesting on a personal level to read that my friend Karel Reisz may be directing a script by Arthur Miller in America. But I have to admit that as one gets older one is less interested in other people’s work, and I don’t really go to see films much. I often feel that I would like to see something, but the business of getting to a cinema and going in and seeing it is so tiresome. Somehow, I do think that after a certain length of time one begins to feel one has seen everything already. It’s rare to get stimulus from anything that is being made contemporarily. And that’s because one is more concerned with what one is doing oneself: when you are making a film, that’s the only film that really exists. If I go and see a movie while I am making a film, I often feel I’m watching the wrong movie. So, maybe when I get back and have had a bit of a rest, I might venture out and see something. On the other hand, I might stay at home and put my video library in order.

Do you rent films on video?

I’ve hired two or three films to have a look at here. At home, I don’t think I have ever hired a video. I enjoy recording films on video from the current television programmes – the classic films, that is. But going to see films in the cinema is generally rather a gruesome experience. I have the impression that they are a bit better in Canada, but in Britain cinemas are depressing places to visit. The exhibition side of the industry is quite largely responsible for the wholesale decline of British cinema, which is just symptomatic of the whole national spirit. But I mustn’t go on saying things like that, because it makes me unpopular!

You started doing documentaries, you have directed features, you have filmed plays, a rock concert, commercials, you even did a music video, you’ve worked in the theatre, and now you have done television in the American sense, what they call a miniseries. Looking at all this, you must feel a certain amount of satisfaction?

I am more conscious of the fact that critics, journalists and producers find it difficult to pigeonhole one if one has done such a variety of things and in different styles. The essence of media success, as you know, is to be pigeonholed, and if I am put in any slot it is as a result of If…. [1968], O Lucky Man! [1973] and Britannia Hospital [1982] as a difficult, ironic, satirical and not exactly popular commentator on the ways of the world. That means I have never felt precisely accepted as a contemporary director, chiefly because people don’t quite know how to define what I do or what I have done.

None of that matters a great deal, except that with a reputation for being difficult, which actually means being demanding, one finds oneself not the first choice on many people’s lists. It may be significant that the last two things I have done have been in America. 

Not characteristically American, not Hollywood productions, but not British either. I don’t think I would ever have been invited in Britain to direct something like Glory! Glory!. It has been a stimulating experience, an extremely exhausting one, and I am looking forward to completing it. What will happen next – I haven’t the slightest idea.

I’m surprised, however, that I have made as many films as I have. I never thought that I was particularly difficult and I’ve always had a feeling that I could do many different kinds of films, but 

I can see how I certainly have typed or seemed to type myself. I also realise, looking back on things, that I have always been lacking in career dynamics. That’s due to a certain laziness that is within me. I’m not lazy when I’m actually working, but I’m like many people who are very obsessive when they work. When they have finished a job they become extremely lazy and don’t want to do anything, because they remember how awful it was.

Really, considering the kinds of demands I have made and the kinds of films I have managed to complete, I think it is quite extraordinary that I have made as many as I have. I count them up sometimes – I can’t remember how many there are – and I’m certainly pleased, after a rather choosy career, to end up with an American miniseries. At least it shows that I have had it in me to make, I hope, a popular film. I’ve always thought the films I’ve made are going to be popular, but they almost never turn out to be. This one, which I’ve had great doubts about, I’ve been told by one or two people is going to be popular. So I hope they are right: it would be a good way to bring an erratic career to an end.

Journalists and critics seem to expect every filmmaker to make two a year. But in fact, while needing, if you like, to make films of a certain personal quality, I have also very much enjoyed working in the theatre. Film people hardly acknowledge the existence of the theatre. They don’t go to it, they know very little about it, so that side of my career is generally not at all marked by film writers. I only wish that some of the productions I have done could have been recorded. It’s sad that experiences and achievements of that kind vanish into thin air, and we are left with the often extremely inaccurate accounts of writers and critics. However, there they are – they have mostly gone, but they have represented a considerable part of my life and one I am proud of.