Film Directors From England

"Ollie's projection of emotions like frustration, agitation and shyness was masterful, and so was Stan Laurel's conception of the harried, ineffectual soul."

"Stan's influence decided me to go into show business in the first place, and his influence molded my point of view, my attitude about comedy."

"A real craftsman. He knows what consistent comedy characterization is. The only criticism I have is that once in a while he holds after his laughs too long. He milks those holds on occasion and he shouldn't."

"So terribly funny. He can still make me laugh like crazy after all these years."

"Something rare these days—a wit."

"I wish they’d re-release '... I guess maybe I’d like to see it again because it has one beautifully funny sequence that I’ve never seen in movies, either before or since. We had an army of knights in a chase sequence. There were over three hundred of them working with basket horses… the circus-clown type horses, with the men’s legs extending beneath the little papier-mâché horses built around them. It was hilarious, like some of those circus routines. There were a lot of routines we did in those days that have been forgotten today. Comics today rely too much on the line gag and not the visual gag. I think that Hollywood comics these days are talking too much and not doing enough."

"[He can't stand to watch their old comedies on TV because] because they're so cut up. [...] I wish I could have edited them. They seem too slow nowadays. That was because we had to leave time between the gags for the audience to laugh. You don't need that spread in TV."

"I don't see many people anymore. It's a long way out here to . And I can't go any place. I have and still haven't completely recovered from the stroke I had in 1955, so all I can do is stay in the apartment here and watch the ocean and television. About the only visitor I have, except for my family, is Jerry Lewis. He's been after me to work as a comedy consultant on his movies. Once he came out here and stayed seven hours. We had a lot of laughs. But, as for working again, I can't. I'm all washed up in this business."

"He was forever leaving home, away for two or three days at a time. He refused to explain where he had been when he returned. [...] And he frequently told me that I could not get a divorce fast enough to suit him. I decided life with a film comedian was anything but funny."

"All mimes in the world owe much to Stan Laurel. To them, Stan Laurel is a maître. He is of the mime that goes back through history to the very oldest days of the juggler and the comic troubadour. In those days they did not need much of a story. What they had principally was lazzi—or comic tricks. These perhaps look simple—like bumping into someone you don't see at first and then backing off in surprise and fear—but these things are not easy to do and do gracefully and do funnily. [...] Now, there are many people who can do these things in a funny way but it is only a master like Stan or Charlie who can do these things in a very, very funny way to make us laugh out loud, heartily. Stan comes from the same school as Charlie—the music hall. And so many great artists come from there. They all speak the universal language of the movement of the body. They can be both comic and tragic, sometimes at the same moment. Both Stan and Charlie have different styles, of course, and Charlie developed more into social comedy, but they are basically the same kind of comedians if you watch them closely."

"Chaplin, [[w:Charles Dullin|[Charles] Dullin]], [[w:Jacques Copeau|[Jacques] Copeau]], [[w:Jean-Louis Barrault|[Jean-Louis] Barrault]] and Stan Laurel have shown that it is possible to combine the best of tradition with modern and individual approaches."

"Laurel is now one of 's stars, and his comedies have given him plenty of room in which to sparkle. The Laurel brand of screen nonsense is a combination of fine burlesque and pure [[absurdity]. In three of his recent two-reel subjects he built up screamingly funny travesties of well-known feature productions and appears to have entered into a field in which he has no competition. Laurel's keen sense of values has made possible a new and welcome type of motion picture comedies. From time to time burlesques of current screen successes have been brought out, but no comedian but Laurel has seen the possibilities in this line of work. For general all-around nonsense Laurel easily wins the palm. It may not appear strikingly original to hitch a horse to a sulky, wrong end to, but as it is done on the screen in a comedy to be released soon [Wide Open Spaces] it is a high point of fun. Laurel's personality and his utterly inane grin have much to do with "putting over" such bits of business and it is to these two possessions that he undoubtedly owes his success."

"He keeps imitating himself, but he has much talent and I think in time he will do first rate comedy. I hope so. But he he's going to have to learn artistic discipline."

"When Stan passed away, his little desk there was awash with fan mail that had been pouring in from all over the world as it had been for most of his later life; he insisted on sitting there, at that little portable typewriter and answering every one of them, personally, and of course he was so far back—months and months behind in the answering, but he wouldn't give up. He never gave up on anything; he never gave up on life and most of all, he never gave up that God-given mirth that he had."

"I remember one time Charlie [Chaplin] and I were walking over to the theater all dressed up, hanky up the sleeve, spats, double-breasted coat, carrying canes—and on the way there we became aware of Nature's urgent call. Now, public conveniences are a regular part of English life, but they certainly aren't in America. We searched high and low and couldn't find accommodation. Finally, in desperation, we asked a cop where the nearest public convenience was. "The nearest what?" the cop yelled. We asked again, very politely. He finally got our drift and said very loudly, "Aw, hell, you'll have to go to a saloon, mister!" Mind you, we were now in a pretty anxious state. We got to a saloon and started down the aisle, as it were, when we realized that we hadn't purchased anything to warrant our use of the facilities. These polite Englishmen. So, tortured as we were, we marched up to the bar very bravely, ordered a beer and sipped it for a few seconds before we flew away."

"We had different hobbies. He likes horses and golf. You know my hobby—and I married them all."

"The only thing worth remembering about it, I guess, is that the part of the whimpering butler that I played in it gave me the first real mannerism that definitely became a part of my later character when I was teamed with Hardy. In the film, I was a very timid chap, running around and reacting with horror to everything that went on around me. To emphasize this, I cried at one point, screwed my face up—and have used it ever since. Funny thing about that cry, though; it's the only mannerism I ever used in the films that I didn't like. I remember years later when we would be improvising something on the set and we came to a pause where we couldn't think of anything to do—or had a dull moment—Roach would always insist that I use the cry. It always got a laugh, and it sure became a part of my standard equipment, but somehow I never had any affection for it."

"We never tried to use funny clothing. Of course, there were times when we would wear odd garments for a special humorous effect, but as far as our two characters were concerned, we never tried to get very far from what was real. We always wore a stand-up collar but there wasn't anything unreal about them, especially in the twenties and early thirties. Stand-up collars were formal and slightly different, but never too obviously so. They gave us, together with our derbies, a something we felt these characters needed—a kind of phony dignity. There's nothing funnier than a guy being dignified and dumb. [...] The derby hat to me has always seemed part of a comic's make-up for as far back as I can remember. I'm sure that's why Charlie wore one. Most of the comics we saw as boys wore them, so I guess you'd say that's one item that's strictly in the public domain."

"Another 'great,' and I use that word very carefully, not the way Milton Berle uses it. One of the reasons I love Buster so much is because he lives comedy as well as practices it. Some of his things are better than Chaplin's."

"One of the ironies in social climbing is that if you are successful, your children will ultimately belong to a different class from yours. There is something sad in that this was your ambition, yet if you achieve it, you have in a sense alienated yourself from your own children."

"I've thought of firing myself multiple times."

"Either he’s legally insane or madly in love!’ I pick madly in love – and you can quote me on that."

"I think doing a documentary is one set of your muscles and doing a drama is another. You can learn from both of them -- how to place material, where you build it. I learned those lessons doing both documentaries and drama. Both of them helped the other; how to keep things interesting on camera when interviewing them, the same way you keep the actor of a drama alive and not just doing it by numbers. The dramas I do are usually character-driven. It’s very similar to doing a documentary; in a drama you’re always trying to build to something. I say to documentary directors to look at more dramas, to give it more wit so you don’t put one great thing at the beginning; structure the documentary to keep the audience’s interest. I learned a lot in documentaries about how to cut performances in dramas and to keep the audience on their toes."

"It is risky, in this cynical and mocking age, to make a determinedly traditional biopic … a film willing to focus on the good that men do."

"A lot of the challenge with TV, as opposed to making movies, is that you have to leave room for the characters in the story to tell themselves. Sometimes you don’t know where a character is going to go and what’s going to happen to them until you’ve seen the actor take that part and make it their own. Then, like novelists say, the book starts to write itself, and the characters start to tell their own story. And then, we know where they’re going, as opposed to mapping it out, step by step. We have broad, general strokes, but you’ve got to leave space for these characters to live and breathe."

"The evil of storytelling is you’re trying to make the audience complicit in murder — Kill the guy! Jump him! And then once you’ve done it, it’s like, I’ve killed this guy, now what? If you do that kind of violence in a show like this, you have to bring the audience along with you and then question their judgement."

"There are plusses and minuses on both sides, really. You gain in the quality and get a really nice depth of field, but you kind of have to readjust your thinking when you're directing as to how you can get the shots that you want. But it's fine and we've all got used to it by now. It's much easier to post-produce, obviously in online edit suites, but it takes more time on the floor when you're setting up shots and all the checks that you have to do and the management of all the data."

"If you can schedule two pairs of animators to work parallel on different sets for the same issue, you can make up a lot of time. Rather than slavishly produce episodes in eight weeks, it is much nicer to be able to do occasional ‘specials’. Some films are basically chat shows, but then the full action ones give the animators scope to extend themselves and scheduling restores the balance."

"It’s not as if we’re specifically thinking of jokes for adults and jokes for children. We think of jokes, and occasionally we’ll think of an adult one, but it’ll detract from the story. People will say ‘I don’t understand that, what’s going on’. So if that happened, we probably wouldn’t use it. There’s the occasional joke that kids won’t get, but it if doesn’t interfere and it’s fun, then that’s fine."

"We use the word authenticity, it’s about being honest and uncynical. We strive to make the characters true; they believe the world they are living in, however ridiculous it is. We know how to make the films, but getting the story to land absolutely spot on – that’s the hardest bit."

"When you write a project your imagination just flows! You usually have some idea about budget and schedule but still try to write freely and honestly. Then when you get the budget and you do have to compromise, but this is part of the process."

"There’s a problem when you write for Hollywood in particular, they only read the dialogue. They call it reading down the middle. They have 10 scripts to read over the weekend, so all the bits that are in block prose, they won’t look at. But that’s the important stuff in the cinema. A cinematic script… they always say that you can watch a good film with the sound down."

"I think if you’re true to yourself then it will have a universality to it, that’s my belief."

"I like the process. It’s a very comfortable world to work in. I like the people as well. I’m surrounded by great artists and craftspeople who do it. Really experienced people. Finally, I’m really happy and proud to do something different. There’s a million CG movies out there and it’s good for the audience to have something different."

"Once you start thinking about what kids will find funny it’s very dangerous territory and you’ll end up with a film that lacks sincerity."

"I'm not one for the trappings of success. I drive a one-year-old Citroën Xantia and I hate shopping. I did have a share in a glider - that is as far as it goes."

"You know, I'm not at all against CG. I really admire many films that are made, especially when they have such great design sense to them. I think that's so important, whichever medium. You use a medium for a reason."

"My understanding is that it derived from an age-old habit: in Nigeria – and elsewhere in Africa – it was common for parents to send their children from the village to a town, to an extended family member or even a stranger, because it was thought that child would have more opportunities. The problems began with people like my parents because it was a foreign country. I think it was seen as a status thing – and there was an element of ‘white being seen as right’. Mostly they wanted us to get an education and learn to speak good English."

"I wanted to assimilate and go back to the abnormal normality I knew. I wanted to wash off the experience of Africa but obviously I couldn't because that's who I was. As much as I wanted to deny it, it was plaguing me, and I was reminded by the images coming through the TV, people on the streets and in the end my family in the house."

"It felt like a kidnap…and it rendered me mute for about nine months. I couldn't speak the language, and if I spoke English I was abused for it. It was quite a culture shock: brutal. I was so traumatised and afraid that I stopped speaking and my [birth] parents thought there was something wrong with me, thought I was possessed…"

"There was no way of getting love. If all you have experienced is humiliation and rejection, and your foster father forces you to fight back or get a beating from him, you look for any kind of lifeline. There were only two options: fight, or become a victim. I tried the victim option for a long time."

"Barry came up with the idea of the two families – one working class, the other lower-middle – and what their lives were like. Sheffield seemed a good place to set it, and Barry knew it well. It was bang in the middle of the country, and a good way from London. Strategically, it also made sense: there were industrial and military targets nearby. Both of us were interested in the idea that none of these characters would ever have a god’s-eye-view of events, and never find out what was happening outside their immediate experience, certainly not outside Sheffield. That seemed to be the way most people would have to deal with a nuclear apocalypse, with most forms of communication vaporised."

"What worries me at the moment is President Trump and many in his administration are using the same kind of language about winnable [nuclear war and] bloody-nose strike against North Korea without realizing the consequences of that. [...] They have a failure of imagination. They can not believe that it could be anything other than surgical. The lesson of everything in nuclear policy through the Cold War is that we’ve come so close to so many times to stumbling into war by miscalculation, by not knowing what the other side is thinking."

"What we’d depicted and its implications stayed in the minds of every actor and crew member for a long time. I’m sure there were some nightmares. There are some things so far outside our experience or comprehension that they are unthinkable. Nuclear war is one."

"From the point where the bomb happens, the whole nature of the movie changes. In the first half of the movie, I hope, you have a very full soundtrack. You have all the soundtrack of TV broadcasts and radio broadcasts, the sound of birdsong in the country, the sound of musical things happening, the sound of traffic and city noises. And from the moment that the bomb drops you don't have anything. You don't even have the teletype, all these things, they just type out in silence, and all you hear is wind. [...] You hear voices of people screaming, coughing or whatever. You hear wind, you hear no birds. [...] It's gone. That world is gone."

"He did hate doing it. It was alien to his nature. He reluctantly let himself be drawn into this thing, thinking what he would have done would have been a very passionate politicised scream of emotion, and what he was being pushed into was this box he didn't feel at all comfortable in."

"This sense of things...getting out of control very quickly is a lesson that we’ve forgotten. [...] I hope we don’t learn it in the wrong way. This is what you’re risking when you talk about fire and fury."

"That period had seen Reagan starting the Strategic Defense Initiative, the downing of the Korean Airliner by the Soviets, and [Reagan] calling the Soviet Union the Evil Empire. [...] It was perhaps the most dangerous time for the world since the Cuban missile crisis and...there was this feeling that BBC wasn’t dealing with this in any way. Everyone was very paranoid. The world was on the brink of nuclear war and no one knew anything about it."

"It is unthinkable for most people. Nuclear war is so outside your everyday experience it’s hard to get your mind around it. And if you can’t get your mind around it, you can’t talk about it and have a meaningful debate."

"The idea was to take a movie which was about death...and use the iconography of life to tell the story."