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People have been very resistant to giving me more than the standard amount of money. So I keep making films on a similar scale. Which is fine, but also frustrating.

Mike Leigh

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Mike Leigh
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 20
Actor
Author
Film Director
Playwright
Screenwriter
Television Director
Theatrical Director
Writer
Also
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Giving
Films
People
Amount
Resistant
Fine
Frustrating
Making
Scale
Keep
Similar
Money
Standard
Film
Scales

More quotes by Mike Leigh

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Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.
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The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.
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It's important to be true to the events, but the most important thing is to get to the essence of the experience. Not to be bogged down in an academic way by a notion of the truth. First of all, the truth is an illusive and spurious concept.
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The main problem is that the Hollywood system has already made the film before the director shoots a single frame.
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The kind of acting that's wholly literary or cerebral is wrong. It's useless for me to have actors so much in their heads that they can't be organic.
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I can't negotiate and collaborate with a character to create a distilled dramatic investigation of the raw material. I need to work with an actor. That stuff about actors who stay in character all the time is nonsense.
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The delineation between the actor and his part is a practical matter. When the camera runs, you want the actor to be the character.
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Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it, but you know, you can also make choices. It's about spirit and generosity and all the other things, too.
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One of the reasons the whole Hollywood way of making films wouldn't work for me is because the way I operate would be anathema to anyone who wants to hold a job down in Beverly Hills.
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I wonder if I would have been capable of producing anything if I worked in a more conventional way with a prewritten script, because I'm of the procrastinator class.
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My job apart from anything else is to build an ensemble composed of actors who all come from a secure place so that they can all work together to make the film.
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Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.
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Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.
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There have always been and there always will be the peripheral sideline activities which are a form of entertainment, which is to say you pay a couple of cents and you see something freakish. That is what reality TV is.
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But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.
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Very occasionally I hire an actor and get it wrong. The actor just doesn't trust the process or me as fully as I thought they would. In this case, you can be quite sure that if an actor is untrusting, it's got nothing to do with me or the process.
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It creeps up on you and becomes an obsession. It comes out of watching a million movies.
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Given the choice of Hollywood or poking steel pins in my eyes, I'd prefer steel pins.
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As a general habit and general tendency, I prefer not to bog a piece down with a great number of transitory, contemporary references, because in the end, I'm concerned, not in an abstract way, but an actual way, with creating a world which has a universality to it - even though what goes on is made up of texture and detail, contemporary detail.
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My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky either your relationship works or it doesn't.
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