Leigh makes the occasional small fortune from advertising. At first he was unsure if it was ethically acceptable to direct commercials, so he turned to Ken Loach who makes plenty of them. The advice was revealing. ‘Somebody is going to take money off those capitalists,’ said Loach, ‘it might as well be you.’ Substitute ‘consumers’ for ‘capitalists’ and you have exactly the piratical motive that the hard Left most reviles in the free market.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Hollywood has never courted Leigh. The bean-counters couldn’t accommodate his approach, and he’s equally dismissive of theirs. ‘Endless armies of backers, producers and other meddlers confuse the thing out of existence.’ Leigh is so proud of his intensive research methods that he still smarts at the recollection of his one and only howler. In Topsy-Turvy, W. S. Gilbert reacts caustically to Sullivan’s suggestion that they compose a grand opera. ‘I suggest you contact Mr Ibsen in Oslo. I’m sure he will be able to supply something suitably dull.’ Reminded of this line, Leigh almost goes pop with shame, ‘We were gutted. It was a stupid mistake. A gaffe. A blunder.’ Later he calls it ‘a tragedy’. What tragedy? In the 1880s Oslo was called Christiania. Leigh is, if nothing else, a steely-hearted perfectionist and this book is a hugely enjoyable introduction to his art. For anyone interested in theatre or film-making it’s a must.
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