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And that concern has only deepened since, to be honest.
I think the problem has only gotten worse.
But in a way, that led to me makingNews of the World.
What might that look like?
When I readNews of the World, I thought,Well, this is it.
But hes a little thread that starts to reconnect communities with local news.
Stories of the meningitis epidemic.
Funny stories that took people away from their lives.
I thought,This is very contemporary, oddly.
Also, I grew up on Westerns.
Id never ever thought I would get to make one.
I was one of the people involved withthat Netflix seriesFive Came Back, and I chose John Ford.
So I had sat for a month and rewatched and studied all of John Fords films.
He was very much in my mind.
And Paulette Jiless novel is sort ofThe Searchersin reverse, isnt it?
PostCivil War Texas inNews of the Worldis basically a failed state at this point.Right.
Not part of the Union at that point.
Texas First that was what the movement was.
Am I drawn to those?
I suppose every filmmaker has things they gravitate toward themes, characters, situations, genres.
And within those, they can work out their interests.
It was a riotous mix, but it was also a pretty rigorous program.
You were taught to go out into the world to its most extreme places.
And you had to come back with a film that made sense of it.
That was where I learned to shoot.
Thats where I learned to write.
Those are the lessons you learn.
You learn what violence looks like, what political chaos looks like, what tension feels like.
It was probably less of a big deal in America than it was in Britain.
I decided to make a program aboutLive Aid and ended up following Bob Geldof about.
But I was already feeling strongly that I wanted to spread my wings.
I remember Tara Prem, the producer, turning round to me in the car.
She said, So what do you want to do?
I mustve been about 29.
I said, Id love to make a film, but I dont know how to do it.
They said, Well, have you got an idea for a film?
At the time, I was writing secretly a thing calledResurrected, about the Falklands War.
And in the fighting, this young soldier, who was only just 18, went missing.
He was presumed to have been killed.
I mean, there is a straight line that runs from the Falklands to Brexit, undoubtedly.
But it was whipped up into this distasteful spasm of jingoism.
And what followed was a chain of desperate circumstances.
It was perfectly obvious from the beginning that this kid had …
I hesitate to saydeserted, but thats essentially what hed done.
He had, in his terror and fear, got separated.
And then probably he was too frightened to come home, and hed hidden out in some shack.
He became the poster boy for all this jingoism.
It went to the heart of what was wrong with how that event was processed.
It was given the wrong meanings.
And the way meanings are attached to events has been something that interests me.
When you describeResurrectedand the character of the supposedly amnesiac soldier, your Jason Bourne movies immediately come to mind.
Characters who are lost and found.
Yep, I think thats true.
But also whose very existence goes against the prevailing narrative.Yes, I think thats right.
Its probably quite a bit of me in there.
And thats wrapped up in the mystery of why filmmakers make films.
My childhood was not desperately unusual, I suppose, but I was troubled and unhappy.
I did find refuge at the movies from a young age.
My grandmother would take me on Saturday mornings.
My father would take me.
He loved David Lean movies.
I can remember what seat I was in.
I was very struck reading the David Lean biography, that Lean himself described some of these same things.
Suburban, aimless, vacant.
And he described seeing the light in the cinema cutting across the darkness.
These things then go straight into your cortex in this intense way.
And I think that filmmaking becomes a kind of attempt to re-create those childhood experiences.
But youre driven to try each time.
You were saying you were a troubled child.
How so?Thats maybe overly dramatic.
I got a bit lost in my teenage years.
I was rebellious and nonconformist and angry.
Britain was a smashed-up place.
I was a failure on a pretty epic scale until I was about 15.
Id been kicked out of school.
I was offered the opportunity to go to a very good school with a very benevolent teacher.
It was a school that had a wonderful art room where I learned to paint and draw.
Id be there until one or two in the morning.
It was my place where I could hide.
I pestered the art teacher: Whats this?
Can I get a bit of film for it?
I want to have a go.
Astonishingly, he got me a piece of film.
It would have been 16 mil.
And I made my first film when I was about 16, 17.
And then I look at your career as a filmmaker, where youre going off all over the place.
And then I think about your dad, who was a seafarer.
It seems like you were a very restless person from a restless family.I think that is definitely true.
My father, whos still alive hes 95 now he went to sea very, very young.
He left school at 15.
He wanted to go to sea and then the war came.
All ships were requisitioned.
You were all part of the Navy, whether you are on a merchant ship or warship.
And he came from a very devout Baptist family.
They were the Strict and Particular Baptists.
I mean, that is what theyre called:the Strict and Particular Baptists.
My fathers not at all religious.
Im sure one of the reasons he went to sea was because he wasnt religious.
But my parents were chalk and cheese.
It was a turbulent marriage, as many postwar marriages were.
So when they come back together, theres this colossal collision of wills.
But it occurs within a framework of deep acceptance of the life.
Ill give you an example of that: My dad might be away nine months.
One time, I think he was away 18 months.
In those days, there were not many telephones.
Youd get a letter.
What did your dad think ofCaptain Phillips?Well, Ill tell you a true story.
And I remember we had the screening, and he came.
And so, strangely, I am my fathers son.
That was really why I did it.
Afterward, he said to me, What the fuck are you talking about?
He said, I had a proper job!
We didnt have lunch in fancy restaurants!
He was being funny, up to a certain point.
I think he enjoyed that film.
You were just given tremendous latitude.
My first Northern Ireland film was 1980, I think it was, when the hunger strikes started.
One of them was a man called Raymond McCartney.
He was my age, or near enough.
I remember thinking,This is extraordinary.
So presumably, hed been listening to the same pop music as me.
Hed have been attracted to girls at the same time as me.
Hed have watched the same football matches as me.
I remember saying to the [World in Action]editor, What accounts for that?
And that became the start of a long involvement in making films in Northern Ireland.
They let me in to see [McCartney] when he was on hunger strike.
And it had the most profound effect on me as a young man.
There would be a card on each door: Name, date of birth, sentence.
It was 57, 54, 55, 59 all around my age.
By the way, Im not romanticizing what the IRA did at all.
Thats what the Dirty Protest was.
They took me to see Raymond McCartney.
I was allowed to be with him for three minutes.
Around the time when I started makingBloody Sunday, I actually went to see him again.
We spent the day together.
Hed done 25 years or something.
I asked him all the questions I wanted to ask him.
Hed put the guns away.
I want it to be part of peace-building.
We talked about the idea of healing, and even hope, inNews of the World.
For anyone who lived through those events.
And my involvement was peripheral in the extreme.
But I did go there a lot.
[Omagh] was the worst loss of life.
It felt like it was endless and going to last forever.
But in the end, politics came through.
But it took many, many, many years to rebuild the center.
And theres going to be a lot of dark days between now and getting to a better place.
But I am optimistic, because Im an optimistic person.
And because Im a parent, and you shouldnt be a parent if youre not optimistic.
Thats outlandish, isnt it?
Theres no film that it’s possible for you to make that can tell a story like reality can.
Bloody Sunday had been the cause of so many young people joining the Provisional IRA.
It was a rallying cry for them.
And a lot of lies had been told about it.
What did we think happened?
Lots is known, but lots isnt known.
It seems quite risky.
Did you worry about failing?I remember the first day of filming.
And there was this chasm between them.
It felt like it was all going to go horribly wrong.
There was just a terrible electricity in the air, a tension.
And Don walked up Ill never forget it.
Thank you very much for coming.
I really admire you for coming.
And before you know it, everybodys in the pub having drinks.
I remember Simon Mann, who played the commander.
He was very senior SAS; hed served in the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the Special Forces.
And one of the guys on the Bogside was [IRA second-in-command] Martin McGuinnesss brother.
They go down to the pub, and I introduce them to each other.
McGuinness looked him in the eye and said Aye.
He said, Yeah, and then again, just feels like yesterday.
