Winner acceptance speech by Mike Leigh for the BAFTA Fellowship
Winner acceptance speech by Mike Leigh for the BAFTA Fellowship
Mike Leigh: This is very nice indeed. And I have never appeared on this stage before. How lucky we all are to happen to have been born in this magical age of cinema, and what a stimulating evening we have had celebrating this wonderful diverse medium. To be able to capture life and to share with it audiences, not to mention the joy of the camera and sound and the craft and technology, it is glorious, isn't it? Isn't it? (applause).
I know some people expect me to be rude this evening. Well I am sorry, folks, but you are in for a disappointment. To speak plainly we are delighted and grateful that our film had four nominations tonight but personally I do not mind a bit there were none of us, you BAFTA ‑‑ I nearly said BAFTA which rhymes with dafter ‑‑ you BAFTA are a democratic gang and your taste is your prerogative. What is important to me is that you have awarded me this fellowship for which I am truly grateful and for me this is a sign of your respect for an off beat, alternative original idiosyncratic personal kind of popular cinema. An independent cinema. What is an independent film? It is a film that has been made free from all censorship or interference by governments, backers, producers, script editors, or committees of any kind. It is a film made with the same genuine freedom as enjoyed by novelists, dramatists, poets, painters sculptors, song writers and other artists.
As chairman of a London film school, one of the great joys in my life is to savour, regularly, the unfettered independence, freshness and originality of our graduate films. Pure independent cinema by the film makers of the future. It is great to share this stage with a number of truly independent films but especially tonight's winning film Boyhood, a definitive independent film for which Dick Linklater and his team can be justly proud.
I have been extraordinarily lucky over the years. I have made 20 full length films all starting without a script and none of them has ever been interfered with by anybody at any time. Had that not been the case, I would not be standing here now. So thank you, thank you BAFTA for this great honour and thank you to everybody I have ever worked with on both sides of the camera, in production and in post production. Not least my producers, especially the late great much missed Simon Channing Williams. Many times we have gone to potential backers and we have said, there is no script, no story, no casting, we can't tell you what it is about, just give us the money. And they may have said: great, here is the dosh, make the film or they have told us to get lost. So, to those backers who said yes, including those administrating lottery money, a big loving thank you. But to those boneheads, philistines and uninspired skinflints who said no, a big thank you to you too. For had you said yes, you would have interfered with the movie, insisted on inappropriate casting, changed the story, you would have screwed up the editing and generally made a pig's ear of the whole thing. So to you lot, thank you for keeping away and may you all rot in hell.
