I Discover What My Film Is By

I Grew Up Looking At... Going To The Movies A Lot, As Much As They'd Let You. I Grew Up In Manchester In The North Of England In The '40s And '50s. I Saw A Lot Of Movies. They Were All Hollywood And British Movies. I Didn't See A Film That Wasn't In English Until I Was 17 When I Went To London To Be A Student.

I Try And Create For The Audience Something That Relates To Real-life Experience. When You're Meeting Somebody For The First Time, All You Have To Go On Are Your Preconceptions And Your Stereotypes And Whatever Else, But Gradually As You Get To Know Them, They Change. They Become More Three-dimensional, And You Start To See Them In Layers.

It Creeps Up On You And Becomes An Obsession. It Comes Out Of Watching A Million Movies.

I Try And Create For The Audience Something That Relates To Real-life Experience.

I Hate Period Films - And There Are Plenty Of Them - Where They Say, "let's Not Do Contemporary Language Because The Audience Won't Understand It;" "let's Not Make The Girls Wear Corsets, Because It's Not Sexy" And All That Sort Of Thing. Gradually It Disintegrates Into A No Man's Land: You Don't Really Believe It's A Period Scene And It Doesn't Feel Like It's Now Because It's Not Now. You Don't Feel It's Quite Real And You Don't Believe In It.