Hanif Kureishi Q&A

The novelist, playwright and screenwriter talks about his new film, 'Venus'.

Jan  5 2007

'Venus' – the story of an old man (Peter O'Toole) who falls in love with a teenager – is the eighth feature film written by novelist, playwright and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi. Here, he talks to filmmaker Don Boyd about his work in the cinema.

Whichever director you work with, whether Stephen Frears ('My Beautiful Laundrette', 'Sammy and Rosie Get Laid') or Roger Michell ('The Mother', 'Venus'), your voice shines through. The film is as much authored by you as the director. How do you protect your position as a writer?

When I was 18, I went to work at the Royal Court Theatre as an usher and to read scripts, and I generally hung around the theatre until, later on, it became my workplace. And one of the reasons I wanted to work there was that I was aware of the relationship that has always existed there between writers and the directors. Whether it be Tony Richardson and John Osborne or Bill Gaskell and Edward Bond, these were partnerships. And, of course, Stephen Frears comes from the Royal Court and so does Roger Michell. And these partnerships enabled the writer and allowed his voice to be heard.
But of course, it could only be heard through the director. So these were equal relationships and proper collaborations. So that's the tradition I come from. The director didn't swamp the writer. When I worked for the first time in movies with Stephen Frears on 'My Beautiful Laundrette', I guess our partnership would have been something like that. Stephen saw it as his job to realise the world which I brought to him: the Asian immigrants, south London and the relationship between all those bits and pieces. I don't think Stephen, for instance, saw it as his job just to take my work and make his movie.

That's very interesting, as in the world of cinema, the director usually possesses the work. It's a director's medium in that sense – unlike, say, theatre.

But that was never really the case in, say, the tradition of British television. When I watched Dennis Potter plays on television, whoever it was directed by, or when I watched Alan Bennett's plays – his television work was mostly directed of course in those days by Stephen Frears – great television was really the theatre transposed onto the telly, wasn't it? So that's where I came from, you know? I really didn't become aware of Fellini or Kurosawa until much later on.

It's normal in the theatre for a playwright to be on the stage during rehearsals, or in the auditorium. But in cinema, writers tend to be told to stay well clear.

Stephen Frears always wants the writer to be on the set because he's used to the writer in the theatre. He likes you to be sitting there, so that he can talk to you. Whereas Roger Michell for instance, doesn't want me hanging around, getting on his nerves.
But Roger and I would have already worked together for a long time, talking about the film. So when he goes to shoot the film, he's got the whole movie installed in his head as you do; you carry it between you, so it's a shared project.
I've never had a situation where I've felt the director was working against me. I mean there wouldn't be any point doing anything I'd written if you wanted to be like that. If you wanted to go and make your film, go and hire another writer. If you work with me, you get a particular kind of thing, which is my voice.

Do you accept that these relationships with directors are a luxury?

Look, all films are written by somebody, even if they've got the signature, as you say, of Truffaut or whoever. Truffaut didn't write 'Jules et Jim' – it was written by a novelist whose name of course I forget [Henri-Pierre Roché]. And so were Fellini's films. They were all written by somebody and they all have a style, and the characters were all thought up by some unfortunate writer. Why were you saying it's a luxury for me?

It's a luxury in comparison to those writers who get screwed over by the director.

If you walk down to the cinema today, you'll see two films, 'The History Boys' and 'The Queen'. Both are British films, both successful, one written by Bennett and one written by Pete Morgan. They've got strong voices and they're very well-directed. But that's the British way of making films, isn't it? It's much more theatrical, and less visual than the French or Spanish or Italian cinema, for instance.

When you had a crack at directing [Kureishi wrote and directed 'London Kills Me' in 1991], you said then that although you'd wanted to direct, you soon decided that it wasn't for you.

I realised that it would have been impossible for me to be in love with writing and be a film director at the same time. And I realised that I would never be able to be as good a director as I was a writer. And I didn't have the time to learn, I didn't want to spend ten years learning to be a film director. I didn't want the stress of being on movie sets. I couldn't deal with being in authority. I found it really hard to tell other people what to do. Having authority over other people causes me much anguish, because I'm a kind of '60s kid and I'm anarchic, and I like to be the naughty boy, so suddenly on a film set I have to be the father and I get uncomfortable because I want to muck about. And you can't.

When you made 'London Kills Me', was it a miserable experience? What was it like getting up in the morning, thinking: I've got to get up and do this?

Well, it was miserable in so far as I realised after a bit that I didn't have the experience. But it wasn't a miserable experience. I just saw that this wasn't the job that in the end I wanted to do. And I could see that a lot of other people could do it better than me. Whereas as a writer, I had a voice and I had also a point of view, because I came from an immigrant background that gave me material that most other people didn't have access to at that time. I could write about stuff that was just beginning to be thought about in this country. And that's what I had to do.

Is there one director that's really excited you?

Well there are lots of directors that I like, obviously dozens of them who I could point to. I might go and watch a Hitchcock film, and worship Hitchcock, but I wouldn't be able to do anything like that. It wouldn't influence me in any sense, I guess.
I think what you have to do as a writer and as a director is find your own area of preoccupation, which is really to do with your unconscious. And finding that, and beginning to speak through your unconscious as a writer and an artist is when you begin to develop your own voice.
When I wrote 'My Beautiful Laundrette', I was thinking about lots of other people. I was thinking about 'Mean Streets', for instance, these kids rushing around the streets, but you couldn't shoot 'My Beautiful Laundrette' like that. In the end, you have to find a style or voice or a way of working that suits the material you've got.

I want to ask about politics in cinema. Do you think that's something that should have more of a foothold in our culture? Because we seem to be very good at that in our literature.

All of culture and politics are very closely tied together all the time (and obviously I include cinema within culture). Particularly when you think of a place like the Royal Court, for instance. These two are always linked, and in Britain literary culture is always oppositional.
I mean people like John Osborne and Pinter, for instance, are right rabid haters, you know, and really like being part of the scene. It's slightly different to, say, someone like Sartre in France, or Norman Mailer in the US or whoever. Lindsay Anderson, who's the godfather of all of us, he believed that it was very important to engage all the time with our society – to be in the middle of what was going on, intellectually and politically.

Yet if you ask people whether Britain at this time is pre-eminent artistically in relation to a left-wing political ethos, they'd probably say no.

Well, I'd probably say that it was. It would owe itself to the left in so far that it was a class that was critical. Critical of the establishment, critical of Blair, critical of the Iraq war, of the royal family, of the way things go on here, because culture and politics have always been closely allied.
Look at Ken Loach's work or Dennis Potter's work or even Pinter's work. Politically, Pinter's work has got more political as he's gone on. That's the way our culture's going to grow, because it's engaged in the same issues that ordinary people are engaged with all the time. Even though ordinary people may not be aware of the intricacies of Loach's work, or what exactly he's saying, his work is right there in the middle, and that's why it's alive in this country. And the one thing you've noticed in American culture in the last five years is that it's moved to the documentary. Since 9/11, we've had a real thirst among the public for films that are about the way we live now.

Don Boyd is the producer of films including 'Scum' and 'The Last of England' and the director 'My Kingdom' and 'Twenty-One'. Hanif Kureishi is the author of novels including and 'The Buddha of Suburbia''The Black Album' and screenplays including 'My Beautiful Laundrette' and 'Sammie and Rosie Get Laid'. 'Venus' opens on January 26.

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