Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach

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If you say how the world is,

that should be enough.

Just the sense of simple connection between people.

Just being.

If you make films about people's lives,

I think politics is essential.

It is the essence of drama, the essence of conflict.

Ken wants to make films about how the world is actually run.

There are two powerful forces at work in society...

..and they are enemies.

Like all of us, he's a contradiction.

Ken appears to be so respectable and well-mannered...

..he doesn't seem to be a danger to anyone, does he?

He could be at home at a vicar's tea party.

But there he is, the most left-wing,

subversive director this country has probably ever had...

Perfect gentleman.

Ken's acted brilliant.

Bastards.

You might be able to find something here that would work for...

- ..the working flat.

- Oh, yes.

You know what I mean?

Because suddenly you're in a whole different...

Yes, it may take a while...

We're almost at the mouth of the Tyne,

so the River Tyne is just down there,

then there's the Fish Quay area and...

Today is, what, the 10th of July?

And we'd like to start shooting the film on the 5th of October.

That's three months.

That's tight.

It's all quite manageable, isn't it?

Scale-wise.

I had the phone call from Film Four,

who were saying that they can't fund the film.

They just don't think it would be a good enough investment for them.

But I'm also talking to the BBC.

My fear with the BBC is that, politically,

the film may just be too tough for them to take on.

It's quite iffy, really. It's quite edgy.

God knows why I'm doing it, really.

I must be mad.

All things considered, it would be nice to be on that side,

because then it'll be in shade.

There's something quite...

..well-kept about it.

'You do have to be on your game.

'That's the fear, isn't it, that you just let people down

'and that you're just not sharp enough.'

You miss a trick,

and if you miss too many tricks in the course of shooting,

then you don't do justice to the story.

That's the...

That's the danger

of employing an old director.

HE CHUCKLES:

Hmm.

I think I should keep taking the...

Keep the ointment and the pills

and the elastic stockings and...

..all the support mechanisms in place...

..for the antique director.

As they're approaching the bell tower,

the noise is getting louder and louder...

The rope's fairly long, so they can move about a bit.

I first met Ken when I acted for him.

He didn't direct the actors at all.

I mean, I rehearsed for a week and we sort of barely met.

I remember he was quite stroppy,

and I did have second thoughts about casting him,

cos he asked questions all the time.

He looked sort of like a bank clerk, really.

He made no impression on me.

So that was my first impression of Ken -

he made no impression.

In the early '60s, the BBC was changing.

They were expanding to BBC Two,

so a number of working-class ruffians like...

us got jobs,

which we would never have got in the BBC before.

We had one morning entitled What To Do With Your Cameras.

There wasn't a rude reply, as you might imagine,

but we were given a tour of a TV studio,

but no kind of instruction at all.

All right, very quiet now. Ready.

BBC drama was photographed stage plays

with clumsy electronic cameras in a studio.

The working class were not represented...

I do hope that the price for dropping this charge

is not only a high one...

18. Two next.

..and posh actors could always play down, as they said.

"Oh, I'm going Northern."

It was a class-ridden English society,

and we came in wanting to change it.

We were asked to produce a series of contemporary single dramas

about the world as it actually was.

So, that was our brief,

to stir up a bit of trouble.

It was a magical medium to work with, and so that's compulsive.

Because you're not only dealing with drama and actors

and performance and telling a story,

you're also dealing in images and light and movement.

I mean, all those things.

I moved to Battersea because I didn't like Chelsea.

I got a job in a sweet factory, packing chocolate liqueurs...

..and bought a little cottage for 700.

There was always a big queue for the bath.

And also, a telephone -

there was always a big queue for the telephone.

They had one queue for the bath, the other for the telephone,

cos I think I was the only bath in the street.

That's where I was,

and so I wrote about what was around me.

# I wanna be loved by you

# Alone, scoop-boop-be-doop. #

Where do think you're going, all dressed up like the Queen of Sheba?

Ken found the book,

and he was just aching to do it.

They were just absolutely what I was looking for, because they were

little events, little moments, little relationships.

Get him worked up, give him a love bite, that'll do it.

The lads taking the girls on the motorbikes and going round

an empty house - it had an energy and a kind of febrile...

..scent of danger.

They became a script very quickly with just a little editing, really.

He told me what HE wanted.

He told me what he wanted, and I tried to do it.

The problem was it had to be shot on location.

And I put it through the works at the BBC, as though it were a

studio show, so that there wouldn't be any alarm bells going off.

Hey-hey!

Ken had the lovely Tony Imi stripped off,

with his camera held high above his head,

filming these girls leaping in the water.

Basically, we were saying that the working class people had sex.

I mean, that's all right if you're doing...the aristocracy.

I mean, they're allowed to.

But the working-class people were having sex and enjoying it,

and they weren't even married.

I mean, this was... In 1965, this was horrifying.

Every week, there were 18 to 20 million viewers.

You knew that people were writing stuff

about the people you came from.

Quick, get the clobber!

You know, they weren't plays with cucumber sandwiches

and French windows. You know, they weren't.

I would have cut my arm off to have...

..got that film made...

..because of the backstreet-abortion scene of Ruby.

It was during the war, during the bombing, my mother got pregnant.

They didn't want another child.

Abortion was illegal, so it had to be...

..an amateur.

And something went wrong with it.

And she died a few days later

of what they called galloping septicaemia.

I was five.

Sometimes a film's an accident, you know,

and sometimes it comes from a moment or a character or an incident.

You know, Ken has been talking about

hanging up his football boots.

Excuse me while I laugh. Yes, hanging up his football boots.

Now, the job centre...

Again, we want it... If we're doing Newcastle, we want city centre...

And of course, after the Tories coming back in again,

with these welfare cuts and the sanctions,

you could just see his anger rise again,

and so I didn't think it would be long

before he was on the hunt for another story.

Cos, I mean, in this scene,

it's just the sense of people waiting and wakening up,

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