Interview with Mike Leigh

This chapter presents a distillation of a series of interviews conducted by the author. Two of these took place in London in July 2004; the third took place in New York City in October 2004. Topics discussed in these interviews include Mike Leigh's views about generations of film movements based in certain countries, such as Italian cinema during and after World War II, or German cinema in the twenties; three clear clusters in British cinema; whether he has ever felt the urge to be more literal about being a northern filmmaker; how he turns improvisations into a story; how the visual, or cinematic, enters into his process; if there is anything he misses about working in television; and the issue of closure in his films.