INT: Just go back to HARRY POTTER [HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE]. A lot of it was visual effects, a lot of it was green screen. How is it, how do you direct Actors against green screen? 

MN: Well, they have to do a heightened form of what they do already, which is simply to become even more the storyteller than they would be anyway. The Actor is the storyteller, but in a normal show, in a non-CG show, they can swim in parallel with all sorts of other storytelling things like the script, the music, the this, the that, the other. With green screen, they become probably the only storytelling element in the picture at any one time when you're shooting. Then Jimmy takes it away and does his magic and along comes the music and the sound effects and this, that and that the other and it's all okay. But while you're shooting it, it has to be very alive. And so therefore along comes the tennis ball on the end of the stick, right? “And we all watch the tennis boy--ball, boys and girls. And we all go, ‘Ooh,’ at the top and we all go, [MAKES NOISE] at the bottom.” And "Look out, here comes the dragon. Ooh, ah, ooh, ah." And there's a bloke with a megaphone who is actually taking you through that. I remember asking Laura Dern, who'd just done… who's an adorable woman, who'd just done the Richard Attenborough movie, the, you know, the island of the dinosaurs [JURASSIC PARK]. And I'd said, "What was it like acting with a tennis ball?" And she said, "It was a breeze. I've had, you know, it was a lot easier to do than acting with a lot of Actors I've acted with. What caught me completely on the hop was Spielberg [Steven Spielberg] doing the noises." So there he was doing the [MAKES NOISE] noises, which, of course, he loved doing of course. He’s… all of a sudden.

INT: But do you find, do you think Actors try and compensate too much for the fact that they are the sole storyteller and maybe they push it too hard? Is that something you have to watch? 

MN: Yes, I should’ve… I don't know. If I were to be honest, I simply don't know. But I would think that that is a problem and… yes, is a simple answer. I think you could very easily step over a line there.

INT: I have a, one category we haven't discussed is editing, which is obviously incredibly important. How do you have relationships with Editors? And what is the working relationship you try and build with an Editor? 

MN: As the glove to the hand, I mean it's really intimate. You can pick an Actor up and put 'em down and walk away, and it'll be absolutely fine. You can do the same with a Cameraman, a Designer, all that kind of stuff. But somehow or another the Editor is going to keep it in his head for months at a time. And he will be evolving the material in much the same way that you will but not necessarily along the same lines. And so you have to love him. You have to be in love with him. I had a very unfortunate experience with the film I made for Jerry [Jerry Bruckheimer]... [INT: PERSIA [PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME]?] ...whatchamacallit, where he became completely impatient with our English Editors and required me to fire them. And I don't… Well, all I remember was saying to the one whom I most loved and had done, had worked with ever since DANCE WITH A STRANGER, on and on and on, film after film after film, saying to him, "Mick [Mick Audsley], I'm really sorry," I hope I said I'm really sorry, “last in first out. You came in last. I've gotta fire somebody. I can't get away with it anymore.” I'd had huge rows about this-enormous rows, screaming, eye-popping rages. [INT: With him?] No. [INT: Not with him?] No, what I said earlier was that Jerry doesn't like doing his own executions. He has a person who does them for him; at least he did then. And there was this person who required me to do that, and I had this particular row with him. But, like all of those, terrible, terrible, they exhaust you. You've been there. You know. You are completely exhausted by them to the point where you really have to go and lie down, and this was the case here. And what I should have done was what Denis Forman told me I should have done all those years before, which was to take exquisite care, and I didn't. And I fear that I've lost him as an Editor, and that I've lost him as a friend as well and I regret it. Don't see him anymore. [INT: Was it avoidable?] Sorry? [INT: It wasn't avoidable, though, was it?] The language was avoidable. That's what Denis meant. Denis meant, watch your language. You know, watch the manner in which you do the act. And I didn't take nearly enough... Sure, I was under some pressure, but that's not the point. If we can't take the pressure, Michael… [INT: Get out of the kitchen or something.] Absolutely. [INT: But it's a great relationship isn't it? I mean personally I never like to tell an Editor how to put a scene together.] No, nor me. [INT: Let them…] Absolutely right. Yep. They have to find the material themselves. Because if they do you, will see a version of the film that you never even imagined. That's exactly it. [INT: And generally you work well with Editors?] Yeah, because, you know, they are, they're one of the sort of two or three most important magicians on it. I mean everybody's got that to some extent. [INT: And especially as you have to sit in a room with 'em for about six months.] Yes. Yes. That's right. [INT: Complicated relationship.] Yeah.

INT: So if someone says to you, "You're a Director, Michael. I don't know anything about the business. What does a Director do?" How would you answer that? 

MN: He gets his own way. No, it's very important. It's really important. [INT: I'm laughing nervously here.] The point about the Director is that somebody's gotta be there every second of the time. Somebody's gotta be there at every decision. Somebody's gotta be there at, "We think that we could shoot the Island of Guernsey in Cape Province, South Africa." "Oh no we couldn't." Which was something I was talking about last night. And so therefore, to get your own… Well to start with, if you haven't got an idea for it, you know, there's all sorts of poncy ways of saying that if you haven't conceived it. But if you haven't got a proper idea for it, then you're in trouble and it's the first most important thing in the making of the movie, really. Sometimes the Writer, very occasionally the Producer, vanishingly small, the Actor, but that's what the Director is there to do. And that's what we fell in love with. So are we power freaks? Yep. And do we feel that it's our business to get our own way at every turn? Yes. [INT: But you have to be rational. I mean you have to be open to...] Yes, you do. [INT: ...good ideas.] That's right. Oh, utterly. You have to be receptive. You can't put up so strong a filter that nothing will get through it. No, that's not it at all. But what you will also find, in the middle of which I now am and in the middle of which you have been many, many times, we all have, is "Wouldn't you just consider if you were to do that?" And if that's a good idea, then with a bit of luck you'll say, "Yes." But very, very often it's not a good idea. Because what it is is people who don't actually know, who haven't got this kind of great big, throbbing red thread through the whole idea and who know that it's going to lead them from there to there. They don't have that. They have, "Wouldn't it, isn't it a good idea if she wore a yellow dress?" Yep.

INT: And the number of questions you [Director] have to answer, decisions you have to make on a daily basis, that's part of the-- 

MN: Yeah. Which is a glory. You know, we should be so lucky. It's the most wonderful thing. And at the same time it's territory that people get very jealous of. They would like to be in there saying... And that's why there are people, five miles down the road who are ripping the ears off something that I made... [INT: What's the issue with it?] There's no issue. It's very good. [INT: No, no. I mean what is, why are they taking it apart? What's their problem?] It's what they do. It's just what they do. [INT: So there's no apparent logic in it?] No. [INT: It's just excursing their power?] No, no, no. It's a sheaf of notes and then a sheaf of notes and then last night, yet again, a sheaf of notes. And by the time that you have said no to 50 percent of those, you nonetheless have said yes to another 50 percent because you're only human. And who knows what you've done. Whereas the first version out of the trap, as we all know, is the one that's worth paying attention to. [INT: Right. So you're in a difficult situation here. I mean, but this is American television for you. I mean they do good work on cable and stuff, but the whole postproduction and editing process is a disgrace.] Yes. Seems to me-- [INT: It simply disempowers the Director completely.] Yes. Seems to me to be. Well look at that thing about, we don't want you on the phone call. Yeah. Quite extraordinary. [INT: That's a phone call to discuss the changes and you're not allowed on it.] But that's, don't worry anybody 'cause that's only been happening since just after Christmas.

INT: I mean when you did CHOLERA [LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA], did you have to do a lot of research for that? I mean because it was a fantasy in a way or...? 

MN: Well, it was not well treated in reviews. [INT: The end product wasn't?] Yeah. I don't think that there was that much difference in the end product. I think it was Mick [Mick Audsley]. It was my beloved Editor before the falling out, and he would have stopped me making the grosser mistakes, I'm sure. It was an adorable Writer who wrote THE DRESSER. [INT: You mean who did the adaptation of the Márquez [Gabriel Garcia Márquez] novel?] Yes. Yes, who pleaded to be let off it because he couldn't do it and I understood exactly, but the Producer wouldn't let him off. But what was interesting about it was that there are all these buzzwords around Márquez, who I suspect was secretly immensely amused by how the people danced around him, and I think allowed a lot of that to happen. And so you read the book and you say, "Well, the great thing about Gabriel Garcia Márquez is magic realism, isn't it?" Well, je me demande, I wonder. There are books of his… He's a wonderful Writer. There are books of his where blood flows uphill and that is magic realism. But I think the Caribbean and those Caribbean states, when the novel says the cloud forests of the such and such area of, there's a place called a cloud forest. There it is. It's not magic realism at all; it's literal. And what I think he would encourage you to believe is that the behavior in his story is like the cloud forest. It's actually, it's real. It's there. And you have to learn how to make that real as a reader, in your head. And if I can be faulted, I’m sure, and I bet you I can be faulted, I'm sure that it would be that I haven't done that trick strong enough. It'll be the old thing about, "The ship's stuck on the stock, sir, what do we do?" "More force." In other words, push harder. And I think that's what--there was a great lesson in that film about that, about push harder. [INT: Which you should have done or you shouldn't have done?] I think I should have. I think I should have, yeah. I don't know what would have happened, but it was so romantic and dangerous. [INT: Really dangerous.]

MN: Well, I told you earlier, we made ships [for LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA]. And the way that we made ships, we had to make those great big Mississippi sternwheelers. We were thinking about actually sailing sternwheelers across the Caribbean, and then we decided that the weather would, you know, what would happen, you know, in a hurricane? So we built 'em. And what we did was we built, we took great big ocean going tugs, which would come off the ocean, and then up one of the great rivers of the country called the Magdalena, oh that river. And the pilot's house would be encased in sort of half-inch steel. And there would be bullet, pockmarks of bullets all around the slit through which the pilot would steer the ship. Quite a lot of the time, I expect, because some disgruntled farmer didn't have anything else to do on Sunday afternoon. But nonetheless, there it was. And there was a lot of that. And the helicopters wouldn't fly low enough and de, de, de, de, de, de. But it was a, it was sort of a lovely thing to do. It's really lovely thing to do. [INT: So those films--] It's you being asked into a place of pure imagination, which is, in the end, a recipe, inevitably, for failure. But good and nice to try.

INT: What's been the most life changing film for you? 

MN: BAD BLOOD. [INT: What?] That little New Zealand film, BAD BLOOD. Because I saw that it was possible to make only what you set out to make. [INT: That's great.]

INT: So lastly, I mean you look at your body of work and you think, Jesus, the range of it is huge. How could one person do all these different genres of films and pull 'em off? How does that happen? 

MN: Because they don't seem very different to me, and if there is a thing which links everything together, it's what we were talking about before lunch, which is whatnot and the Paycock, “Juno and the Paycock”. And the Paycock can't be funny unless Juno is tragic. Tragic's putting it a bit stiff, actually, but. And so each one of the things, it doesn't mean to say that they're necessarily successful, but would have this in common, that Hugh Grant in FOUR WEDDINGS [FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL] is a good man in a very bad jam, and Johnny Depp is a good man in a very bad jam, and so forth. And there is, in the end, a kind of a one sentence definition of, is the leading character good enough? Is the leading character interesting enough and broad enough and minute enough to fiddle about with? Because in the end they are not to do with genres, they are to do with character, only character. That's all.

INT: Have you got any more films in you? 

MN: Don't know. Might not have. [INT: Really?] Don't know. It's a heavy thing. I’m telling you. [INT: I feel the same.] I love working. And of course the difficulty, as we both know, it's not the working, it's the assholes. And as you say, you're mad if you don't listen, of course you are. But there are some people who, and the guy who produced DONNIE BRASCO is a man called Mark Johnson. He's a God-given Producer because he'll always make sure that you listen, but you'll never feel that you've had an arm-twisting. So I, honestly, Michael, I don't know. I don't know. There's a film, I mean there are a couple of films out there that I could make. That is to say that I have been asked to make. And yet at the same time there's something out there which, by a tremendous Writer… shit, what's his name? He's an American. He's a Writer-Director. He made... fuck! Mark... And he's done an adaptation of a real hoary, old Victorian, Edwardian novel called “Howard's End”, which is about social disruption. [INT: Is that E. M. Forster?] Yes. That's E. M. Forster. The Screenwriter is not E. M. Forster, who's dead, Michael. [INT: I know that.] When we were in Cambridge [University of Cambridge] he was still shuffling about actually. [INT: I once peed in the urinal next to E. M. Forster at Cambridge.] Ah, god have they got the blue plaque up? [INT: I think so.] Can't remember this guy's name. Anyway, he's done a four-part adaptation of this book and I loved the script of this TV show. I loved it, which is why it sort of gets up my nose that it's being so atomized, so kind of ground to powder. So yes, the, yeah. Come on. [INT: Well, this is a, this is just a little splurge, little, this is what's going on now will be over with and you'll move on. You'll recover from it and move on.] Yeah. Maybe. [INT: You have to, you know.] Yeah. [INT: We both like to work too much. Anyways.] Yes. I mean we've, how would you not? I mean we've been at it... [INT: I know over 50....] ...more than 50 years. [INT: Yeah. I know.] It's pretty good. Who could ever have thought... [INT: I know. Yes.] I remember having dinner with you on the train going back from Manchester to London when they'd given us the job. And I can't--there were three of us. I can't remember who the third was. Maybe it was Gordon. Having this filthy British Rail dinner, but thinking that the, Christ, the world was your oyster. I used to sit on buses in Manchester praying to be a great Director. And then I'd think, no, no, no. Too far. Just a good one. Just a good one. [INT: Stay employed is all one used to say.] Yeah. Right. That's right. [INT: Keep the job.] Show up. This is Woody Allen's great line is to, you, that's the job, is to show up.

MN: You've been a real… I've enjoyed myself. [INT: Oh good, me too. It's been good fun. It's the longest talk we've had for a bit.] Say again, honey? [INT: It's the longest talk we've had for a bit.] Talk we've had in years. [INT: But we're captive.] Yep. [INT: All right, thank you all.]

INT: My name is Michael Apted and today is April the 11th, 2016. I've just completed an interview with Mike Newell for the Directors Guild of America Visual History Program. We are at the DGA in Los Angeles, California.