Mike Newell - Director HARDtalk

weapons. My guess today is one of the most

successful film directors and the world. Responsible for box-office

hits like Four Weddings And A Funeral, Harry Potter and the

Goblet of Fire, Mike Newell could make almost any film he wants. So

why did he choose his latest movie? It is the remake of the classic

Charles Dickens's novel Great expectations. What more is there to

add when they have been so many adaptations?

Mike Newell, welcome to HARDtalk. It does seem odd that you choose

Great Expectations and there have been already more than a dozen

adaptations. What are you adding with this one? That one Mac had a

particular love of as a student. I was a great Charles Dickens. They

redefine themselves. If it their age. On a regular basis. How many

years can you do in the year? Each time you go and find the big

stories. They will all reveal something different. This story was

a lens on at least two things. There was money and there was

passing drug. Down from generation to generation. One man said it is

one of the most faithful adaptations to the book. It seems

to be trying to go back. You might say that. That is almost impossible.

He also says that this particular novel is told in the first person,

so that is removed. A movie is going to be in the third person.

That massive sense of the force of the book belonging to what you're

seeing on the screen is taking away. You have to find other handles on

the story. So what have you added? I think perhaps what to do is to re

calibrate. You emphasise. I think that what we have looked at very

carefully is what money does. That is a very contemporary team. -- and

Dean. What we have also looked at is how charred wood is passed on to

adult could with disastrous effects. They are featured very largely.

the centre of the story we have this character who, from nothing,

suddenly comes into a lot of money. He presumes it is coming from

somewhere. Let us have a taste of him. Well you never take women?

Give your affections of that man. Can you help it? No, but you can.

But you must care! As worthy and boorish. This is a man who has

nothing to recommend an except money. I cannot help him. To give

that man the looks and smells that to give to me. Yes. Yes. Him and

many other men. All men except for you. How one did to him to the

demand for the Karel that he would just stir around what it is luck to

be 18, 19 years old. And of course, the erotic charge

was enormous. It is not the same for her. I think what happens is

that the story teases you with the notion that it may become so.

Perhaps you might feel that it may become so for her. She has perhaps

been worse spoiled and used, more or messed up. We have talked about

the things to try to add to this. The reviews have not been great.

The Telegraph says that at best it is a middle of the road cover

version it never threatens to eclipse it and sister. -- its

ancestor. You harkened back to that. Is it better than yours? It is a

sacred text. I will not get in the way of a sacred text. It is also a

sacred text? It is. And she couldn't bear to read? I tried very

hard. D du? I did. Have you made a better move the? I feel that I have.

I feel very strongly that I have. One of the things that is not in

that movie is any form of sexual charge between the characters. That

is very important. There is a kind of niceness to the character. He

does not take a lot of emotional or psychological damage. I think he

should. And yet there are other things that you have done. You

basically still some things from the old movie. Why not? It is

wonderfully done. It is a great sequence. It is a lot longer than

the sequence in my tongue. -- film. It was not just because it was

cheaper? Go cheaper? Gos of doing it cheaper. But we do not do

that. He is a great editor. It is a simple sequence. Everything is in

the right place. You feel the steam reproach and, you feel the peril. -

- steam were approaching. It is wonderfully done. One thing you did

changes the ending. You would have loved to search set it somewhere

like Harrow. -- set it somewhere like Cairo. You believe it should

have been in Cairo. I did. I believe the last ten minutes suffer

from a lack of money. I do not believe otherwise that it does. But

it is difficult to get past. It is versions and a year. It is

difficult to get past a version that has an hour screen time more

of them a feature film would be allowed. You have been doing this

eight awful long time. Will it be a success? Not ever. At any rate, not

me. I'll be sitting and watching and thinking this is the most

dreadful storytelling that I have ever seen. Once you saw the

finished film, you thought it was rubbish. If I did no I did no

rubbish. I thought it was boring and flat. You're supposed to see it

commit laughed

laughed for the first 30 seconds and they did not stop. There you

have something. The way there to watch a movie, much longer than you

think you can bear to, you see these tiny changes happening. You

do not know if you are making any real difference. After a while it

becomes a very technical thing. When you watch four Weddings And A

Funeral with an audience for the first time, did you know it was a

success? It was an American audience. I found it funny, but did

not think they would ever pick it said that if I was ever to be loved,

it would not be for four Weddings And A Funeral. Did I say that?

is why I am curious. Do you think it was not a good movie? It is

probably something very odd indeed. It is a very good movie. I will

tell you what it absolutely is. It is the most wonderful script.

Cameron said, of the industry, and we're talking about the British

film industry, that it needs to aim higher and support commercially

successful films. You are one of the most successful, commercially

successful British directors ever. I wonder if he is right. I think it

is nonsense. I think that, does he suppose that we set out not to be

successful? Everybody sets out to be successful. Even the toughest,

they aim to make films that people will come and see in great numbers

as they can. It is not an exact science. The only thing that was

ever written better make sense about the making of this particular

article was an American book in which it was said of producers,

nobody knows anything. But it is not just luck. There is a formula

that we know that works. Hollywood is very good at it. Yes, of course.

Hollywood does not produce surprises. Here is how it works. In

this country, what to do is you make a film with a very meagre

resources. You develop a belief in it. You can say to the audience, I

made this, I very much hope they to do, here it is. If it makes an

impact on them, fine. Hollywood takes out that insecurity.

Hollywood says, here is the film that we're thinking of shelling. We

are now going to give you formulas to fill up. We're going to have

focus groups. They give the public what they want. What is wrong with

that? Nothing whatsoever. But you will not get surprises that way. He

should be able to for a Brit tracks. Hollywood does that as well. A

There are some very eccentric Hollywood movies. I am sure that

they would police the producers. The ad that we set out to not make

success, to not attract audience, is nonsense. A for to sit back in

1995 that the British film industry would be better without subsidies

and to make a comparison with the Americans saying that we are more

hit and miss. But now we are learning the hard way that there

are movies that people want to see, rather than self-indulgence stop.

Do you want to know if I still believe that? I presume you do.

The self-indulgent stuff can produce some gems? Of course it can.

It sounds like a skewed question to me, but there we are. It goes to

the question about her youth and the industry. Or not. -- how you

find the industry. The argument that you're making is to remove the

subsidies and gaining market. talking about a time when the

subsidies had been removed and therefore we had to live in a

different way. Subsidy can, perhaps once was, in invitation to

indulgence. It is not any longer. There are not as many subsidies as

they were. That was all to do with... You saying that a film like

Great expectations, would ever No. We Make by a very, very successful

director with a very successful cast, should that get a subsidy?

do not think I should get subsidy, known. So you end up in a Berkshire

field. I know you are dissatisfied by that when you watch it for the

final ten minutes. Yes, but I do not think I deserve subsidy. I do

believe the people are -- there are people who do and should be helped.

You have thought about the difference between making films -

the Casula history, you started out in British television and you sound

like there are bits that you love and hate about birth. The parts

that you hate is that you hate being told what to do. Yes,

absolutely. Is that what it boils down to? Partly. But I also hate

playing to somebody else's average. And what that process, the big

screen, the $250 million budget route, what that does is to say

that if we are going to get out $250 million back, we have to find

out what the average audience wants because only by a attracting an

average audience will you get the kind of numbers and everything

follows from that. Did this happen to you on Prince of Persia or?

It happens to you on every Hollywood movie. It will have that

pressure on it. The only time that he did not happen to me was Harry

Potter, when the man running Warner Brothers was so relaxed about what

he was producing, it was number four and he knew he had an audience,

that he acknowledged that it was a little too violent and a little too

long, none of which he cared about. He was prepared to let it all

happen because he had an audience. If you said about that film that

making a pot film was like fighting the Battle of Stalingrad. It is a

huge thing. Because you're constrained you are battling --

constrained. You are battling against what other people want.

is Stalingrad because it takes a long, because by the end of it all

of your personal reverts are popping and probably the

production's reverts as well. Anything as large as that is going

to be a severe test. I think that's all that meant. A Test there you

alternately enjoyed... I did enjoy it... But not in the making of it?

No, there was some sequences that I absolutely loved. I loved them. I

loved the kids. I adored the children. I had this theory that

children are anarchists. They are seen whether their anarchy can in

fact... They are anarchists and they are seen whether there and 80

billion fact breakdown the authority that is set against him.

-- whether there and a key can in fact. The bit that I do not like

his, you have described the Hollywood boss - the temptation to

go back and making programmes from television because you do not get

that thing from television -- film producers. There is a pressure

there and you can get a certain - there are films that I have wanted

to make in the past couple of years that have been constrained by

casting. They have been put out of business by casting. The budget was

just too large and that means that the people who will put the money

up - and remember this is commercial money, this is people

expect to have it back - they want a certain kind of cast, which

seemed to me to be disastrous and so in the end I did not make the

film. But there was a film that you wanted to make, the story of

Alexander vinegar, who was poisoned. What happened to that it was that...

Be it was a true story of a Russian spy who was poisoned in London.

was murdered for all sorts of reasons, which the script

speculated about. I think a very large part of the reason that that

did not get made was that people were frightened of it. It was a

scary story and it might have been a very troublesome story. But he

you're, you have had tremendous commercial success and have made a

film set have been big of Box Office fits -- box office hits, can

you not choose what you want to make now? And no, I do not think

you can. When you get a rush of blood to the head, when you get

something that you really love, then what you do is you put

yourself on to that particular market. You put yourself up for

something like that. And you simply take away any barrier that your

presence might present to the project. You do not need to pay me

or pay me very much. Yes, I will work out of a shoebox in a rat hole

in solo. I didn't care about any of that stuff, but I would love to

make the movie. You can open doors on the Rhone... And are you doing

that now? Are IBM. What is the project? It is about Reagan against

Gorbachev in Reykjavik in 1986. Here are at around 70 and a saying

you're not get paid and living in a shoebox. I am not have not going to

get paid, but I'm not going to get paid the Collingwood pays. Purely

because this film is worth it? is tremendous. It is fun and it is

exciting. You thought you knew the story and you didn't. In the end

you say, why do we need another great expectations? Well, I needed

it because I wanted to come home. I wanted to be back where scripts

like this get written. Scripts like Great expectations? But also rated

it. Scripts like Quaker Beck and scripts like, for instance, an

American writer who wrote the story about the poise and Russian.

there are plenty more film so you want to make? Yes. The one that I

couldn't make because the casting just didn't quite come up to

scratch was a British film by a British writer. That will yet be

made? It could be. Difficult. Because of what - it is beginning

to become difficult to shake many of the Budget to get it down to a

point where... He began to this question of the budget and whether

you are getting new creative and inspiring ideas. But it is the case.

I cannot do it because I am too old and I am too stiff. But you can

make a film on your-and lots of people do. -- iPhone and lots of