Moving On Up

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As filmographies go, director Michael Apted’s is among the more bewildering—or healthily diversified, depending on how one looks at it. In his role as the film festival’s first “guest director,” Apted the fiction film director will present his new film Amazing Grace and his 1992 film Thunderheart. Also to his credit are films as varied as Coalminer’s Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist, Gorky Park and even a James Bond flick, The World is Not Enough.

Still, the film—or ongoing series of films—he will go down in history for is a radical project involving the word "Up." In 1964, the British director made a television documentary 7 Up, studying the lives, thoughts and feelings of a varied group of seven-year-olds from London’s East End. Every seven years since then, as if provoked by an itch and now by a process that refuses to stop, Apted has revisited the same people and checked in on their lives

2005’s 49 Up, which screens at the festival as part of Apted’s residency here, was one of the strongest installments yet, colored by the settling force of life on the brink of 50, and also questions about the probing, existential nature of the project they’re all caught up in—Apted included.

We caught up with Apted on the phone from his office in L.A. recently. His conversational manner, which fans of the Up series know, is warm and engaging, but resistant to easy sentimentality.

You have had a very diverse filmography. Has its twists and turns along the way surprised you?

I’ve always struggled to keep the two strands of it going, with the documentary and the fiction side. But otherwise, I’ve just rolled with the punches. I’ve tried to do stuff that I want to do, rather than stuff that financially I need to do. I can’t think of many occasions when I’ve had to suck it in, think of England, and do something.

When I’ve made decisions, they just seemed natural, whether it was to come to America and stay in America, or do a James Bond film. That’s one of the more startling entries on my C.V., but I’ve just always been on the lookout for things that I haven’t done before, that are challenging and keep me learning rather than repeating myself.

I wonder if that isn’t a healthier way to go about a career in film, as opposed to being a cunning careerist with set goals.

I don’t know how people have set goals, because it’s such a volatile business. If you do set yourself goals, I don’t know how you cannot be disappointed by that. As far as I’m concerned, I think I had a pragmatic decision about the way it would go.

Your new film is Amazing GraceWilliam Wilberforce, about the 19th century British abolitionist . What led you to become interested in that piece?

I’ve always been interested in politics and have always wanted to do a film about politics. I never could find one in the contemporary world, because they’re difficult to do. The reason I wanted to do one is because I felt that politics had become totally discredited, which I felt was an unhealthy thing for it to be in society. I was interested in trying to find a story that was optimistic and positive. But it was hard to find one on the modern menu.

This project came to me in a slightly different form. It came to me as a biopic on William Wilberforce, with very strong religious connotations. Wilberforce, other than being a great politician, was also an evangelical Christian. That didn’t hold much interest for me, but his politic history did, and particularly his campaigning against the slave trade. Here was someone who was a man of great principle, who managed to keep his principles but also operated in the political world, in the world of give-and-take and compromise, and liaisons and whatever.

I thought it would be interesting to have a look at that. That’s really how this was born.

In the States, he is now well-known…

No. That’s putting it mildly.

I wonder why that is. He seems like a fascinating figure.

I don’t know. I suppose it’s not seen as that important. The sugar industry and the slave trade as a huge part of English power and society. The actual passing of the slave trade was just a step in the final abolition of slavery as we understand it in America and the Caribbean. I suppose there are more important things in American history, as people started addressing destroying slavery rather than just the slave trade.

He’s definitely a very crucial figure in English history, but you’re right—he’s barely known here at all.

This film could take steps to correct that, couldn’t it?

Yeah, if people warm to the film, then it will put him and what he stood for on the map. It’s a good story. One of the other interesting things is that he and his mate William Pitt, who worked hand and hand with him, were incredibly young. Pitt was Prime Minister at the age of 24, which is hard to imagine. Wilburforce was in Parliament in his early 20s, too, so this was a real Camelot story, a real Kennedy story. It’s the young men taking on the older generation and stuffing it to them.

It’s interesting what you were saying about wanting to deal with politics, but not in the modern age. Is that because the stories are still in flux, or that it’s hard to find heroes in the 20th century forward?

Maybe every generation feels this way about politics, but there does seem to be an astonishing negativity about it, I must say. Politicians are simply viewed as liars and thieves. I have a feeling that it’s moreso now. I don’t remember when I was growing up in the ‘60s having that feeling about the Kennedys. I think there have been moments when people felt positive about politics, but maybe Watergate changed that. I don’t know.

Speaking of history, and history in the making, 49 Up seems to have reached a new height. Do you have a strong feeling about this one?

It was the most emotional of all of them. It had a lot to do with my relationship with them. Sometimes, it gets volatile, but definitely we’re closer. I think the age gap between us, which is fifteen years, gets smaller and smaller as we get older and older. So I sense greater bonding, and greater intimacy. Maybe through that, we get more emotional stuff out of it.

In a confrontational scene between yourself and Jackie, she commented on your having the ultimate say, in the editing room. This is true of all documentaries, but this one in particular: it’s a massive and sensitive editing project, isn’t it?

Yes, colossal. I remember having long discussions, sometimes violent and in public, with my friend Albert Maysles. He held the position that there was something pure about the documentary genre, rather than the fiction genre. I told him that was a complete load of bollocks. Editing a documentary is someone’s judgment call, unless you just point the camera at the Empire State Building for eight hours and say 'that’s it.' You’re involved every step of the way.

I’ve always felt that, that it’s easier to manipulate people in documentaries than in fiction sometimes. You’re going into a documentary with a certain sense of trust in the audience, that they’re going to see something real. It’s easy to abuse that trust.

While you were talking about your career and rolling with the punches, this series has provided a structured grid in your life, hasn’t it?

Yes. It was also a colossal piece of luck for me. It happened by accident. The whole series happened by chance. It was only going to be one film, made in 1964. But it proved so popular and so resonant that it was decided we’d go back and see how they’re doing seven years hence. From then on, I think we all sensed that we were onto something, something fresh and unusual. I fell into it, really. It was a pure piece of luck.

I suppose my contribution to it has been to keep it going. Although I haven’t lived in England for a long time, I manage to get at it every seven years and keep it alive. But it was a colossal piece of luck to at least fall into that.

Have there been moments when you wanted to get off the bus?

Not really. Definitely, for a couple of weeks after this one, I thought "I can’t go through this again. It’s too much." But I got over that, and now I’m as anxious as ever to keep it going and see what happens. I will keep it going. As long as I have my marbles and can persuade enough of them to be in it, it’s certainly worth carrying on with. It would seem a pity just to sort of stop it.

We’re getting into a fertile area now, obviously with mortality and grandchildren and health and those kinds of things. It speaks to the drama of life, and to what we all have to live through and go through.

And it also says something about the uniqueness of the medium. What, beside film—and television—could convey what this series does, in the linear sense?

Yeah. Someone said to me a few days ago that it’s the history of film emulsion (laughs).

The early ‘70s documentary series An American Family was shot here in Santa Barbara, chronicling the adventures of the Loud family. Your project set the stage for that, didn’t it?

Yes, I suppose, unwittingly, yes. I’m also accused for setting the stage for reality television, although I think it might have happened without me.

That was one of the issues, really, and why there was so much interest with the people in the film to talk about being in the film, because reality television wasn’t something that existed in the 42 Up, while it’s very much in evidence now. I think they were somewhat disconcerted by it all, wondering if this wasn’t reality television and if they were part of some cheap, sleazy form of entertainment, or whether this had higher ambitions. What really is the difference between reality television and a documentary?

These were the questions that, in a sense, provoked them to be so verbal about being in the film.

Reality television is a radically different beast than cinema verite, wouldn’t you say?

Indeed, which I took great pains to point out to my subjects. I think I persuaded most of them.

Do you feel that the Up series has had a notable influence on your fiction work?

In a broad sense, I think that documentaries have a huge influence on my fiction work. I think I approach my fiction work with a documentary soul. That’s the way I get some jobs, but it’s just the way I do anything—even James Bond. I believe the truth is stranger than fiction, and if I have problems with the script or something, I’ll be more likely to research the reality of it rather than trying to invent something. Also, the way I shoot and the people I put in films—it’s all informed by the documentary soul.

As you say, because the Up films are the grid of my documentary life, I suppose it’s had a huge effect, and vice-versa. There are lessons in structure that you have to learn to do fiction work, and they are very helpful when you do something like the Up films, where you’re trying to present characters from a huge amount of footage and complicated people in a very short time. The structural lessons you learn are very valuable.

So it’s a two-way street, which is one of the reasons that I enjoy keeping those two strands of the career going.

What are you involved in at the moment? I see soccer projects on your recent resume.

Yeah. I’ve done a couple of documentaries about soccer. One was something I’ve been plotting for a long time, which is to do a film about the impact of the game on the planet, the idea being that football probably penetrates more cultures than religious or political ideas. I found a way to do that via the 2006 World Cup, by taking stories from different parts of the world, and bringing an element of each of them to Germany during the World Cup.

While I was doing that, I also did the official DVD of the World Cup, in my spare time.

I don’t get the sense that you have ample spare time.

I do like to keep at it. I’m usually happier when I’m busy working. But it’s not always easy to find good stuff to do.

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