Michael Apted Interview, Director Amazing Grace

 Posted by: Sheila Roberts

Movies Online sat down last week with director Michael Apted to discuss his new film, "Amazing Grace,” a moving and inspiring historical epic about the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce whose passion and perseverance changed the world. Written by Academy Award nominee Steven Knight, the film’s ensemble cast includes Ioan Gruffudd, Benedict Cumberbatch, Romola Garai, Rufus Sewell, Michael Gambon, Ciarin Hinds, Toby Jones and Youssour N’Dour.

Based on the true life story of William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd), a leader of the British abolition movement, the film chronicles his epic struggle to pass a law to end the slave trade in the late 18th century. A good friend of England’s youngest Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger (Benedict Cumberbatch), Wilberforce is elected to the House of Commons at the age of 21. He is entrusted by Pitt with the cause for the Abolition of Slavery in an era when the rumblings of social discontent were emerging and a time when reformers faced an uphill struggle to be heard.

Wilberforce meets intense opposition from members of Parliament who feel the slave trade is tied to the stability of the British Empire. Several friends, including Wilberforce’s minister, John Newton (Albert Finney), a reformed slave ship captain, urge him to see the cause through. Newton suggests that the best way for Wilberforce to serve God would be to fight injustice with his political influence. Inspired by Newton, Wilberforce quickly becomes the rallying voice in Parliament for a fragmented group of like-minded people to fight the cause and make the people of Britain, and ultimately the world, acknowledge the horror of the Slave Trade.

"Amazing Grace” follows Wilberforce’s career through his 20’s and 30’s, as he and his fellow humanitarians make the issue of slavery a talking point, not only in political circles, but also throughout the country. They wage the first modern political campaign, using petitions, boycotts, mass meetings and even badges with slogans to take their message to the country at large.

Director Michael Apted has enjoyed a career spanning film and television, winning recognition and many awards for his work in both media. He began working as a researcher at Granada Television and soon became established as an investigative reporter and television director of the news series "World in Action,” before becoming a drama director on the long running British soap "Coronation Street.”

In 1972, Apted made his directorial film debut with "Triple Echo,” starring Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed, followed by the acclaimed rock and roll drama "Stardust,” then "The Squeeze,” with Stacy Keach and "Agatha,” starring Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave.

In 1980, his first American feature "Coal Miner’s Daughter,” garnered seven Academy nominations, including Sissy Spacek’s Oscar for her portrayal of the country-western singer Loretta Lynn. He then directed John Belushi in "Continental Divide,” and William Hurt in an adaptation of the best-selling novel "Gorky Park.” In 1985, "Bring on the Night,” which chronicled the creation of rock star Sting’s Blue Turtles album and his subsequent tour, won Apted a Grammy Award.

"Gorillas in the Mist,” starring Sigourney Weaver, gained five Academy nominations. This was followed by "Class Action,” a court room drama starring Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, "Thunderheart,” starring Val Kilmer, "Blink,” a thriller with Madeleine Stowe and Aidan Quinn, and "Nell,” starring Jodie Foster, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the title role.

In 1996, Apted directed "Extreme Measures,” a medical ethics drama starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant, followed by "Always Outnumbered,” starring Laurence Fishburne, written by Walter Mosley.

In 1999 he directed the James Bond adventure "The World Is Not Enough,” which became the most successful film in the franchise to date, starring Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench and Denise Richards. This was followed by "Enigma,” a World War II drama starring Kate Winslet and Dougray Scott and "Enough,” starring Jennifer Lopez.

In 2004, Apted directed the three establishing episodes of the epic HBO drama "Rome,” which follows two soldiers from Julius Caesar’s army as the Republic collapses and the Empire begins.

Parallel to his feature film career, Michael Apted has made documentaries that have attracted awards, as well as critical and box office success. The most notable of these is the series which began with "7 Up,” following the lives of a group of 14 British schoolchildren from the age of seven, in 1963, visiting them every seven years to chart their lives. The most recent of the series, "49 Up,” aired in 2005. Other documentaries include "Married in America,” the "Rolling Stones Forty Licks Tour,” and "The World 2006,” following soccer and its global influence leading up to the 2006 World Cup.

Michael Apted is currently President of the Directors Guild of America, for a second term, and was recently awarded the International Documentary Association’s highest honor, the IDA Career Achievement Award. Here’s what he had to tell us about his latest film, "Amazing Grace” which offers a respectful treatment of the anti-slavery movement:

Question: The story is sort of new to us because we grew up with American history and slavery and Abe Lincoln. Is this better known in England or is it also the untold story of this facet of the movement?

Michael Apted: A little bit of the untold. It was part of a very famous period of English history. It was the British Revolution as opposed to the French or American. Our revolution wasn't blood in the streets, but it was a whole slew of legislation to transform society, to reform society, electioneering, electoral votes, industrial moves, education, everything. So we knew about the period but the details of this particular incident weren't widely known at all. Also Wilberforce has sort of been embraced by the faith community a lot so he's known more for that than for a lot of his political work.

Q: Is that why you did the movie, to bring this story to light?

Michael Apted: I've been trying to find a story about politics to throw some, as it were, to try and find some inspiration out of politics because I was disillusioned myself with politics and disillusioned with people's lack of interest in politics, the negativism and pessimism about politics, and I've been trying for years to find a story that would throw some light on what politics has the power to do. Then this story came to me in a slightly different way as a bio-pic, but I could see within the biopic there was this great story about the anti-slave trade which also demonstrated the other issue which is the church/state issue. How man's religious beliefs can inform his life but not stop him [from] being a real politician. Not just using his religion as a political weapon but use his religion for inspiration and then also deal with politics in the way that Mandela or Martin Luther King or Gandhi could do.

Q: Is there anything in Wilberforce that you see in yourself where you stood up for something?

Michael Apted: Well, no. I just thought it was such a great story from my point of view. I suppose what I get from it is in a sense, because I'm not at all religious I'm afraid, but just the sheer courage of sticking at it year after year after year. I tend to give up on things a bit. You take on a project and just end up being inane about my business but sometimes you have to hang in with projects and it takes years sometimes for things to get made. My inclination sometimes is more often than not let’s just move on. Let’s forget about it. Let's move on with other things. I think I was very taken by the power of someone's spiritual life. How that can really -- as long as it stays in that person -- I'm not big on people proselytizing I have to say, but just the sort of courage and strength that can give you and his courage and strength, just the sheer doggedness of him.

Q: How much license was taken in the actual events? Do you have a record of him taking people to the slave ships to see firsthand the horrible conditions?

Michael Apted: Yes.

Q: Is that written down in his own diaries?

Michael Apted: No. There's a ton of books written about him especially after his death. He was largely manufactured by his children so there was a lot of material about him. Some of the words are his too in the Parliament. Mr. Knight used some of the words. Obviously we take enormous liberties with compressing history and we found… I think the big stroke was to find that structure to tell the story, to tell it in some ways through that central romantic relationship. That became in a sense the little engine for the story and everything else kind of came off that. That was very helpful. That was kind of a serendipitous moment when we landed on that.
 
We also had to take characters out. We had to do that. Because we didn't have to worry, which I've had to do before on bio-pics I've done, is the laborious process of going all the way through it and having to take big chunks of dead air out of this part of someone’s life. By this structure of having it on parallel universes, having one section of the film in real time and just be able to cherry pick back into the past I think helped us not have to take too many liberties because we could just find an incident and use it and then move on. We were never stuck with linear problems.

Q: I'm also a little confused. Something was passed in 1807, but the final abolition didn't happen until 1833.

Michael Apted: No, the Anti-Slave Trade Act. The actual [bill to Abolish Slave Trade was passed in 1807.]

Q: What did that accomplish then?

Michael Apted: Well it stopped people bringing slaves into America because what happened was you would use slaves until they died. Then a new lot would come in in containers as it were. So it did begin to change the whole face of American slavery. So there's a big difference between...you're not alone in this misunderstanding this.

Q: Yes, 1833 was the......

Michael Apted: 1833 was the abolishing of slavery in the British Commonwealth.

Q: But if you already had a slave working for you, then that…

Michael Apted: That became illegal.

Q: That's the Emancipation Proclamation?

Michael Apted: Exactly. So this was just the slave trade, the shipping of these 11 million people from the African continent into the New World.

Q: I want to ask about Ioan but I also want to get into Benedict Cumberbatch and it's a completely different role. Where did you find him?

Michael Apted: He just came in to see me. I had a great casting director and he just came in to see me. It's kind of interesting for me casting. This is something you lot wouldn't get, casting the English class system. Because as soon as someone comes in, you know immediately. I had terrible trouble casting Mrs. Thornton, remember Mrs. Thornton, Sylvia, the woman where he goes to stay at their house, the woman who tries to set them up. To find people who have real breeding and not acting breeding -- as an Englishman you can spot it like that. When Benedict walked in, I just knew he had the intelligence and he was the real thing. He was blue blooded. You can't act that I don't think.
 
When you're dealing with the class system as you are a bit in this film, you know the difference between Wilberforce and Pitt. Wilberforce was a merchant and Pitt was to the manor born. He had a kind of breeding and a poise and a class to him that was I thought essential for Pitt. Pitt couldn't look like some middle class scrubber like me pretending to be posh. So that's how he came to me. I just met him. I met tons of people for that role because I knew it was going to be an unknown as indeed really with to a certain extent Wilberforce and to a large extent Mrs. Wilberforce because what I wanted was the generational thing.
 
That seemed to be one of the more attractive features of the story, kind of a Kennedy-esque thing. These young people taking on the establishment and I wanted to reflect that in the casting so it meant that the studio was faced with me saying to them the three leading roles could well be played by unknown people. And they said....but then Ioan came to see me and I thought he was great and then of course he had a big toe into the marketing system with The Fantastic Four so that was helpful, but then I had to guarantee to them that I would provide an all star British cast to play the other roles to boost up the name value of the cast.

Q: Doing period pieces obviously always has challenges but the British do so many. Is it easier over there to do these period pieces?

Michael Apted: I think it is actually. Someone was saying Ioan knows how to wear his outfits and I said ‘well, don't Americans?’ and he says ‘no’. We are much more interested in history for one is it surrounds us more and also it's all we have in some ways is our history. We are no longer anything like a major power and haven't been for many generations so our history is very important to us and I think we are more interested in it. It would be hard not to be really.
 
It's just in your DNA. I think it's much more in our blood than it is in America. America’s history is much more in motion, much more developing. Ours is not so. I think the English do wear frocks and wigs quite well. I could be wrong. Well, we'll see. Your HBO is doing this huge John Adams thing, although some of my cast are in that but there will be a lot of Americans in that so we'll see.

Q: What were the biggest challenges as far as shooting? The scenes with all the ships or....?

Michael Apted: Well that was all invented. I decided because it was kind of a talky script and very internal I decided I had to pick my moments for when I was going to get scale into the film. I wanted to get scale so one of the moments it seemed to me was the docks. So we found a little piece of Gloucester docks that was untouched and we brought four ships up and put them in there and spent a week shooting there and then we just computer generated the rest of it.

Q: There were at least four real ones though?

Michael Apted: There were just four real ones and about 200 invented ones. That wasn't a shooting nightmare. That's was a kind of post production nightmare. I just felt that I had to choose moments to put space into the film to try and convince people it was a real movie and not a TV film.

Q: Last Christmas they came out with all the James Bond movies again to coincide with their new one on DVD. Do you feel you're a part of that tradition or was that just a for hire gig?

Michael Apted: Well, you're always for hire but, on the other hand, you do leave your little tiny mark. I mean it's a very odd job. It's kind of exciting but you can't mess with the franchise. They messed with the franchise this time but that was the agenda. When I was doing it, you have to be.....when someone says to you ‘he wouldn't do that’ and you say ‘why?’ and they say ‘he wouldn't do that’ and then you have to say ‘alright, you know better than I do if he wouldn't do that’. You are for hire, yeah definitely for hire, but it is kind of fun. It's enjoyable but don't expect to....it's not exactly an auteur’s assignment.

Q: Martin Scorsese has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director. Is there someone that you're pulling for of the directors who’ve been nominated?

Michael Apted: No, I can't say that for a thousand reasons but no, I mean the thing about Scorsese is that he has made some wonderful seminal movies but it is unfortunate that he hasn't [won].... You know I'm President of the Guild (Directors Guild of America) and when he got his guild award he was very sweet about it. He said I never thought I'd be stood here for this film which I think speaks to…. In a sense if he does win it for this, he'll be winning it for other things as well rather than that [The Departed] which is kind of a pity in a way that he didn't win it when he should have won it.

Q: When you made this film, did you think about how this would be appealing to young people and how it would perhaps be an opportunity to teach history in a way that would be entertaining and interesting and more alive? Because you read this in a history book, it’s interesting, but it’s not nearly as vital as it is in this film.

Michael Apted: No. I don't know. It fills me with fear and dread the selling of this film and how it's going to be perceived by young people -- whether they have the remotest interest in seeing it or not. You just can't think about it. You sort of know that when people come in and see it, they quite like the fact that they don't know anything about it. It's a fresh piece of history and it’s not entirely unrelated to American history although it's kind of at arm’s length. I just dread to think....they doing a really good job and they also are doing a very civilized job.
 
They have their Amazing Change campaign which is saying to people ‘don't look at this film and think that slavery is a done deal’. We've dealt with that. They're saying there's more slavery now than there was in 1807, so they're trying to keep it alive and keep it relevant to the lives we live which is why I wanted to do the film in the first place. The thought of whether this film will attract an audience is ....I don't dare go down that road at the moment.

Q: Well, the strategic opening during Black History Month is interesting.

Michael Apted: That was good and also the 200th anniversary of that [the passing of the bill that outlawed the slave trade in Britain and its Empire] in Britain. That will have a bit more impact there than here, but....

Q: Is Black History Month just an American thing?

Michael Apted: Yes, I think so.

Q: I don't even know if that was worldwide?

Michael Apted: No, I don't think it is. I think it's an American phenomenon.

Q: You worked on HBO's Rome. Could you talk a little bit about that show and in particular the challenges of mounting it?

Michael Apted: It was a nightmare and I was astonished that it turned out. It was a nightmare because it was a very unusual thing for them to do. The way they work is they do a pilot and then they take the pilot apart and then figure out whether they want to go on with it. They take sometimes a year between doing the pilot and then commissioning.
 
They couldn't do that with this because they had to build a $15 million dollar set to do the first 3 hours of it. Also it was costing much more than they had anticipated so the whole thing was chaotic from beginning to end. It was brutal. The challenges were just excruciating. The challenges were unequalled in my career. I've tried to shepherd this thing through with a company that was in a profound panic about... It did end up costing twice as much as they wanted to spend on it which is why it will have such a short life.

Q: Do you have any plans already for the "Amazing Grace” DVD?

Michael Apted: Well, I've got deletions and I've got to do the commentary. I think Ioan and I are going to do it together, but I don't know what other extras they're thinking about. Is that what you're talking about?

Q: The extras. The deleted scenes?

Michael Apted: There's that. I don't know if they have any other plans for it.

Q: How soon do you have to begin work on that?

Michael Apted: Well they want it done by the end of this month which is ridiculous. I need to think about it a bit and prepare something for it. But the pressure now with day and date and reduced windows and all this sort of stuff, you almost have to do it simultaneously.

Q: Does it strike you as kind of silly that every single movie has a director's commentary now? Do you think that is something that should just be left alone?

Michael Apted: I don't know. You tell me. You probably listen to more than I do. I don't think I've ever listened to them. I don't think I do. Whatever sells. It's great if it's going to educate people – you know, people getting something out of it. I quite enjoy doing it. I'm not sure I enjoy listening to them, my own or anybody’s, but I do enjoy doing it.

Q: What are you doing next?

Michael Apted: I've got two things coming out, two documentaries, and I'm now looking for a movie to do which is a big agenda in my life because I need to do another movie.

Q: Could you talk about the documentaries?

Michael Apted: One is a sequel. I did a thing called Married in America in 2001 about nine couples who had gotten married that summer and I’ve just finished the second film on them and how they're all doing. And the other one is a very ambitious documentary about one of the passions of my life which is football. Not American football, soccer. I've always wanted to do a film about the game because I've always thought football can penetrate more cultures and more places than any religious or political ideal.
 
And so I wanted to do a film sort of loosely set in Germany in the World Cup but about the impact of the game in different parts of the world. I did the politics of South Africa and how football is closely intertwined there, Iranian women's rights, social empowerment in South America, slavery in Senegal, racism in Europe, and America being a country… a team without heroes without a country. No one knows or cares what happens to them.

Q: Is Beckham changing that?

Michael Apted: Well he’ll change it for a bit like it did in the 70's when Pele and Beckenbauer came to New York and to the Cosmos as it then was. It will change it for a bit but I don't think the game will ever take deep root because the other major sports are going to muscle it out. It just doesn't have a television....it's not really a television sport you know. It doesn't lend itself to television like American sports do and I think that's crucial for a sport to succeed in America, it has to be a television sport. That’s how most people get it and football [means soccer] isn't.

Q: Are all the married couples still together?

Michael Apted: No. No. That's for me to know and you to find out. (Laughs)

Q: What about the feature film you're looking to do?

Michael Apted: Well I've got 3 things in various stages of development. One is a football one, one is a Mexican border one and one is a kind of ecology one -- all in different stages of development. Whether any of them will end up being what I do next, I don't know. You never know. It's a hard struggle when you get... the sort of films I want to do to get them made is difficult. That market has been sort of evaporating. I like working very cheaply, too. At least 2 of these films will be very, very low budget, but I think that's the way it has to be these days. This film is very unusual. It cost $28 million. To spend that amount of money on this kind of film is very unusual and it was only because Philip Anschutz wanted to make the film. This is his pet project.

Q: You mentioned earlier that a lot of the smaller parts are played by pretty big names. Could you talk about getting all those actors?

Michael Apted: It was surprisingly easy really once they knew the film was being made because it is a heroic period. I used to send the cast to the National Portrait Gallery where they could see themselves you know all painted up. I've been trying to work with [Albert] Finney. I first offered him a film in 1973 and I never succeeded and now I've got him. People went to enormous trouble to be in it. Michael Gambon was in the middle of the nightmare of the ....what was it called?

Q: Harry Potter?

Michael Apted: No, no, the De Niro spy film.

Q: Oh, The Good Shepherd.

Michael Apted: The Good Shepherd which was just in complete chaos and he really…. he and his agent went through hoops to have him show up to do our little thing. It was really not difficult in the end. I thought it would be, but my problem was that some of the people they wanted in it was kind of ludicrous. Because it’s all well agreeing as I did to have celebrity casting, but you have to be careful. You can't have Robby Williams playing Thornton or something like that. You have to be careful. You would have to turn down ideas they came up with....’so and so is dying to do it, dying to be in it’. And you say ‘hang on a minute’.

Q: But if Robby Williams came in and said ‘Hey, I want to do this,’ would you turn him down?

Michael Apted: Well I don't know. I can’t remember whether I did or whether I just made that up but I certainly did have to pour cold water on some ideas. There had to be certain intelligence about who I had in it otherwise the whole thing would go belly up fast.

Q: There’s so many great issues you’ve tackled in the films you’ve made. Do you feel like that’s your mission as a filmmaker or is that just what you’re interested in?

Michael Apted: I think that’s what I’m interested in. I don’t sense I have a mission as a filmmaker. It’s just that this is almost two years to the day that I went in for my first meeting with Walden to try and persuade him to not do a biopic and to do this. You know I have to be talking about it two years later. I always want to do stuff that is going to engage me and interest me so it’s more that, I think, than I have some mission because I’ve done such a variety of work that it would be difficult to spot a mission in it. And also I never want to be accused of just trying to proselytize or educate people. I think people work hard enough and have enough going on that they don’t want to go to the movies to be educated.

Q: There’s so many great stories, human stories, in history.

Michael Apted: I think so and this was one that really came to me and so interested me.

Q: Philip Anschutz, David Hunt, and Patricia Heaton are very religious and egocentric. What was your decision not to focus on that?

Michael Apted: Well that was my major agenda for the last year after I finished shooting the film to preserve that tightrope, and Philip was very hands on with the whole thing. We had some quite heated discussions about the music in the film and stuff like this. That was a big issue. It was always very polite and good natured but we clearly each had an agenda and mine was to walk a very tight rope down the middle and not letting it go over into becoming a faith-based movie and also to protect the religious part of it because I thought that was very interesting, and Philip was extremely interested that I shouldn’t do that, that I shouldn’t undermine that part of the story.
 
So the devil was in the details. It was lines – this line, that line, this cut here, that cut there, whatever. It was a long haul because they decided not to put this film into the Christmas hamper because I think they thought it needed rather more careful selling. You know if you go into the Christmas hamper and you don’t come out early smelling like roses, you’ve gone. So I finished this film some time ago which is pretty bad news actually because it means they had lots of time to fiddle with it and revisit it and all this sort of stuff.

Q: So this is not your cut?

Michael Apted: Oh no, I’m completely happy with it. What I’m saying is I had to fight for my cut for months and months and months. (Laughs) There’s something to be said for having to get a film out there. Sometimes you have to get it out, you get it out. But when you have a film that’s actually been delivered – not finished, not scored and all of that – but actually cut in June and it’s now next February, it gives a lot of time for discussion.

Q: Talking about the kinds of movies you like to make, are you done taking big budget for hire jobs?

Michael Apted: No, no, I do that as long as I could see some point in being there. I would do that. I loved doing that film in the end. It was very overpowering and unnerving for a long time, but once I got the hang of it, it was fun. No, I’d do another one.

Q: Can you talk about some of the worst studio notes you’ve ever had or things that have just frustrated you, without dropping names?

Michael Apted: I can’t really. I’m not stalling you. But I’m not bad at it. I’m a little bit hot tempered, but I’m also fairly diplomatic. I do understand where they’re coming from. Did you read that article about David Fincher (director of "Zodiac”) in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times – you know, abusing and yelling at the studio the whole time? I’m well over that. I’ve always understood the importance of their voice. I suppose like the lessons of this movie, you only get things by engagement and by diplomacy and by compromise. I’ve never really ever done a film that hasn’t been the cut I wanted. It doesn’t mean I’ve won all the battles and I didn’t win all the battles on this, but I think I won the big battles on this. So I’ve never … I’ve always been very respectful of them, although I can get quite annoyed and belligerent and then immediately have to regret it and apologize.
 
I can’t even begin to tell you some of the notes – not that I’m stalling on you – but some of them are just mind boggling and you just wonder are we on the same planet. Then again, as long as you don’t say that and as long as you treat it… Whole bureaucracies in studios are built on people whose job it is to give notes and things like that, and you understand that it’s their job, they have to do that, and you have to live with it. You can’t pretend it isn’t there. You’ll only lose those battles. Only a few directors will have the ability to take on and beat a studio, you know, to torture a studio. The rest of us have to do the best we can. But this was interesting because there was a definite clarity here. I could see what I was doing and what Philip was doing. Sometimes you don’t understand what they’re talking about and you feel they’re just doing it for the sake of announcing their presence. They have to justify themselves so they give you all this stuff, all these pages and pages of notes. But with this one I could -- although it was very difficult for me -- I could see what the argument was, what the balance was, and it helped me a lot because by understanding it, I knew what I had to fight for and what I could give up on.

"Amazing Grace” opened in theaters on February 23rd.

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