Master humanist filmmaker Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty have covered ground from the Irish revolution to Nicaraguan death squads to working-class heroes of every stripe in films such as Carla’s Song, Cannes fest-winning I, Daniel Blake, Bread and Roses and The Wind that Shakes the Barley. KVIFF honors their teamwork this year with two Crystal Globes for Contribution to World Cinema and their films Land and Freedom and Sweet Sixteen screen in the section 30 Years of the European Film Academy.
What’s your collaboration process like? Who comes up with the script ideas?
Laverty: A lot of piss taking.
Loach: We talk about it a little bit first, then Paul writes it, starts with a blank piece of paper and a pencil. Then I make stupid comments.
And who generates the ideas for your films? They cover such diverse subjects, eras, people...
Laverty: It’s all very organic, discussions and talks. We see each other all the time. Every project is different. It depends what comes up and what happens. It usually just comes out of discussion. There’s no master plan.
But you’ve said you decide to explore areas, or the worlds most people know very little about in which fascinating characters live.
Loach: Yeah, like, ‘Let’s do something about such-and-such’ and then Paul will write a character or two characters.
Laverty: For example in It’s a Free World, we just knew that there was a viciousness in the way the economy was working and the way that immigrant workers were treated. So we spent a lot of time just digging around, talking to people who were harvesting, people who were working, people from Eastern Europe. We worked our way from the north of Scotland to the south of England. But it was told from the point of view not of the immigrant worker but from the point of view of someone who was exploiting them, a single mom in a very precarious position. It gave us a way of examining generations. So you have to examine that world, do that investment in work. The reality in the world nourished the characters.
You can read the whole interview in today's Festival Daily.
