Mike Newell may not immediately strike you as the vanguard type. He’s the first one to say that he’s not really an auteur. But a closer look at his quietly solid resume reveals a concentrated work ethic and an inordinate number of strong films—Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Donnie Brasco (1997) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) among them —with very few clunkers. This skilled 65 year-old craftsman learned his trade making British television dramas. One of these, The Man in the Iron Mask (1977), received a U.S. theatrical release, and his career has steadily risen ever since. His latest, Love in the Time of Cholera, will be released this fall. He receives the Vanguard Director Award June 16 at 2 p.m.
Have any of your films come out exactly the way you intended?
No. That’s not the way it works. It’s a huge collaborative effort. You can get very, very good ideas from the tiniest, least important of the extras as you can from the writers or the producers. The trick is to find the kind of independent life for the thing, where it just shows you what it wants to be.
How much freedom did you have working in television?
I got a fantastic education. I don’t know how I feel about the auteur theory. I don’t think I am one. If you are an auteur, then perhaps television is too constraining. But for me it was a fantastic education. There were no such things as film schools then. There was nobody to teach you about how to write a scene or make a shot. There was nobody to teach you how to say “good morning” to a powerful actor with a bad hangover.
There were people whom I still remember with great affection who taught me wonderful things about how to get something done. I think television was very liberating for the English. The films we were making were not good. TV had such an influence in England and all of—absolutely every one of my generation of directors—came out of the BBC or Granada Television or both. That’s where you learned how important the writing was. The writer was more important than anyone else. We learned how to read a script, and we learned how to build off the reading into a film. That’s a huge thing. You turned these shows over very fast. I would do eight of these things a year. You can’t actually think it out. You exercised your instincts.
You’re good with actors and you’ve worked with a tremendous range of them. Any that stand out as particularly troublesome?
Yes. But I’m not going to tell you who it was. Actors are tricky things. You can’t do it without them. There’s this great Ingmar Bergman quote: You plan something, you write something, you hone the script, you design the sets, you hire the cameraman, you find the location, you make up your mind on what the lighting is going to look like, and everything is down pat, and then the actors come in. I think it’s a good idea to rule with a very light rod. Speak softly and carry a big stick. I’ve tried shouting and it didn’t work.
What about the Harry Potter kids? Are they spoiled?
They’re not. You’d think that they would be, and that everyone would spend a great deal of time covering that up. But they’re not. Somebody asked Dan Radcliffe if he knew he was going to get killed in the last of the novels. He said: “Oh, God, I hope so.”
Is there a theme that runs throughout your career?
I think there is, but I think people find it pretty hard to perceive it. What I will first get interested in is a character, and I will then get interested in a good character in a bad jam. The stories that I tend to enjoy making are about people with terrific life challenges, Donnie Brasco or Harry Potter. They’re sort of humane; they’re about humans.
Did the enormity of the Harry Potter movie teach you anything?
It was much harder than I thought. I was much less able than I thought. There was a load of stuff that I simply didn’t know, techniques that I didn’t know. I had to learn on the job. It’s very hard. We shot for 193 days. Huge. Enormous. Plus you’ve got at least two other units going nonstop beside you. I spent 2-1/2 years on mine. Plus the book is 700 pages, so you have to choose what kind of film you want to make. I chose to make a Hitchcockian thriller, like North by Northwest. The hero doesn’t know who’s chasing him, he doesn’t know who the villains are. He finds these things out as he goes. And once you find that, then you’re on your way.
In Four Weddings, why on earth would you put Hugh Grant in those awful shorts for his pivotal scene with Andie MacDowell?
It was absolutely necessary to remove all dignity from the character when he puts his heart to the love of his life. And those shorts were a wonderful way of removing dignity from him. You couldn’t take him seriously.
How did you build the camaraderie between the friends in that movie?
That, of course, was what the film was actually about. I think everybody in the audience had a point of attachment to the film. Everybody in the end regards themselves as uniquely blessed by their friends. Everybody has friends. You may be the lamest, most dysfunctional person in the world, but there will be somebody else who is just as dysfunctional as you are, and they will be your friend.
You made An Awfully Big Adventure, immediately following, and it failed, presumably because people expected it to be another Four Weddings.
There were too many juicy things in the story for me not to make it. If you’re going to be healthy, you’ve just gotta make it. I thought all of those things through, and I discussed some of them with my agent. And he said, “It’s a bit late because I’ve sold it.” But I’ve never made a movie that I’ve been sorry that I’ve made.