The Nerve Film Lounge: Q&A: Michael Apted


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In 1964, the BBC program World in Action selected fourteen seven year olds from the range of British society for a short film on England's class system. The result — a simple, forty-minute series of interviews in black and white — was the humble Seven Up!, an interesting document likely to be forgotten. But when Michael Apted, a researcher on Seven Up!, returned seven years later to check in on the children, some alchemy occurred; in Seven Plus Seven, the contrast of the fourteen year olds and their seven-year-old selves added nuance and meaning to the interviews — an effect that only deepened as Apted made his septennial visits a habit. Over the years, Apted has followed the subjects through triumph and disappointment; all the while, the old footage deepens and resonates with the new, often to great emotional effect. It never avoids tragedy; the contrast between Neil Hughes cheerily skipping down the street at seven and contemplating suicide at twenty-eight is wrenching. But a sense of compassion pervades the series, and the questions it asks are deeply resonant. The whole is perhaps the most profound examination of twentieth-century lives that documentary film will leave behind. And a new box set includes all the films, including the latest, 49 Up, and affords a chance for newcomers to absorb Apted's masterpiece. Nerve spoke with Apted to mark the occasion. — Peter Smith

Are you tired of talking about this series?

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Oh, I never tire of it. Believe me, my friend, I never tire of it.

What are you doing to prepare for 56 Up?
Not much yet, nothing yet. I won't start getting anxious about that for at least til about 2010. We'll do it in 2012, which is interesting, because it's the Olympics in London. I've always avoided putting it into a current context, because that dates it and it doesn't really seem to add anything. With 42 Up, I was shooting it when Diana died, and I asked them all about that, and they gave their answers, but it just seemed sort of irrelevant. I often get told off for not putting it into a context, but it really doesn't seem to work too well doing that.

What will you do in 2010 when you do start preparing?
We'll go talk to them first. With some of them it takes months of preparation to sway them into doing it. It's always a worry how many I'll lose, and then they like to torture me a bit and keep me hanging. I don't want to do it too early, because then they have too much time to think about it, but I don't want to do it too late, when it's a kind of an afterthought.

49 Up features a heavier emphasis on the effect the series has had on its subjects' lives. What led to that?
They brought it up. I try not to. I ask all my standard questions, but I try not to lead it, because it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Better for me to hold back, to try and be a blank sheet and let them take me where they want to take me. Which is easier said than done. But it was very much in their minds, largely because of reality television. They wonder, well, what are we? Is this just exploitation, and why aren't we making lots of money and where do we fit in to the whole scheme of things?

Do you regret anything you've exposed about them?
I don't think I have any bad dreams about that. I sometimes more wish I'd done better with them. If they're not really willing to cooperate, there's not much I can do about it. You can easily tell looking at the film who's prepared to be open and who isn't. But you know, I sometimes wish that I had stuck in more and tried to get more out of them.

But then you risk alienating them.
Yes, that's always the risk. One of the burdens of doing these longitudinal things is you've got to behave yourself — you want to be asked back. And if you lie to them or do things they ask you not to do, you're kind of stuck.

Most of them seem to feel warmly towards you, but some of them have certainly been prickly. John refused to take part in 35 Up unless someone else did the interviews.
Yeah, and in 49 — Claire [Lewis, producer] did the interview. He's not much interested in meeting up with me. I think he feels safer with her. I haven't questioned it, because I want him to do it under whatever terms he'll do it, so I didn't make an issue of saying, "Well, listen here, squire, this is my gig, so show some respect!"

Was it hurtful to you?
No, I was pleased he would do it at all. He didn't do 28, so to get him back on any terms that he wanted was fine by me.

Who are you friendliest with?
Ironically, I'm very friendly with Suzy, who I may have lost. I still talk to her, we're still in touch. When people come out [to L.A.], I usually put them up, and her daughter came out a few months ago on her way back from Australia. And Nick came to stay with his son for a week this summer too. Those are the two I see most often. But I'm very friendly with Bruce. I like the girls, the girls like me. I see Tony a lot. Most of them, we get on pretty well.

Is Charles — who dropped out after 21 Up and now produces documentaries for the BBC — actually going to sue you, as he's threatened?
No, he keeps trying. It's ludicrous. He keeps trying to get himself taken out of the film, which — I'm entirely happy to have him out while he's on his own, but I'm not going to give up that three-shot of those three boys, and that's what I'm hanging on for. Our lawyers tell us he doesn't have a case because he's been complicit in it for so many years, and whatever damage to his dignity has been done has been done many decades ago. So we just ignore him.

How does it feel to be sued by someone you met when he was seven?
The whole thing is a mystery to me. How someone who makes his living making documentary films won't take part in one is sort of outside my range of thinking. I think if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

You've said in the past that Tony, the cab driver, is the most popular with audiences. You had anticipated him ending up in a life of crime.
Yes, I did, when he was twenty-one. He seemed to be kind of hopeless. He was running the dogs and doing all that sort of thing, and he seemed to be in pretty bad company. He was doing the cabs and all that, but he had a lot of other things going on, and it seemed sort of more than likely. His dad had been in the nick and all that sort of stuff. So I made the mistake of getting ahead of myself.

Did he resent that?
No, he's funny about it. He says famously to me, "You can't judge a book by its cover." I think he's actually quite pleased with himself — he's quite pleased to have caught me out. I think he uses the story almost as much as I do.

What would you change if you started over now?
Clearly there were not enough women in it. The whole issue of career and family, the modern professional woman has to deal with, which to me is a fascinating dynamic. So clearly I missed the boat with that. I really missed the boat also — this was largely inherent in the project — with the middle class.

Because it started out as an economic study?
It started out as a self-fulfilling prophecy, so we really worked on the margins of society, the very empowered and the very unempowered. Which was fair enough for what it was — it was never going to be this long-term thing, it was going to be just one hard, tough-nosed look at the class system. So you were certainly going to try to load it up a bit. And of course, history has proved that the middle classes took the biggest battering with Thatcher and everything. People like Neil were in the middle classes and they really took the biggest hammering, and the margins of society haven't moved a huge amount. But again, it's easy to be wise after the event.

Are the participants friendly with each other? Do they ever see each other?
They do, they like all that. We did a big stunt on the last one — we brought them all into London to watch the film together and have some pictures. They all get on very well. I think there is a sort of bond there. We've all been through this together, and I think there is a family feeling about it all.

Which of the films was hardest to make?
I think they get harder. They're more personal, more intimate. I think that's a lot to do with the way the age difference disappears as you get older. When it started I was some distant adult, and then I became a father figure, then an older brother figure, and now I feel that we're on level territory. It makes for more intimate stuff, and when you're more intimate it's harder and it takes more out of you. When I'd done 49 I thought, oh, I can't go through this again, but I get over that.

What do you think you've brought to the Up series filmically?
I think my biggest contribution is just hanging in with it, always doing it simply and not getting carried away with it, because early on I got the response that my biggest card was going to be their faces and seeing these faces change in front of you, growing up and growing old. To dress it up in a sense with modern or clever filmmaking might not be the best thing to do. When you've got seven generations of twelve people, that's a ton of material, so the more simply it's presented the easier it is to make it make sense.

Have you ever been tempted to intervene in any situations?
Well, I would do. Someone needs help, or wants to come and stay or wants to borrow money or needs advice, wants to be recommended for a job, I can help. I don't think twice about it. I've given up any notion that this is an objective piece of filmmaking. It is what it is. We're part of each others' lives.

Was it difficult to see Neil in the eighties, at the depths of his mental illness?
Oh, yeah. It was always a worry whether you'd ever see him again — always a possibility. You worry about him, he's kind of fragile. He's getting much stronger, but he's still fragile.

When he was homeless, how did you find him?
Well, you know, we would write to him through social security. He got a social security payment, so they would forward letters to him. But he's very good, I think he really likes doing it, so he's not a difficult one to keep tabs on. He's very willing to be part of it all.

In some ways it's like somebody keeping you the best scrapbook that anybody could hope for.
That's true. Not everybody sees it like that, but. . .

Do you feel any kind of ingratitude there, from say, John?
I think he likes to have a go at it. All that stuff he said in the last one likening us to cheesy reality shows. But it was very interesting the response to this one. They all showed up, John and everybody. I just got for the first time a real sense of pride in it all. And then the next day they would ring up and find out what the ratings were and all that. As they've got older I think they've begun to value it more than they might have when they were younger, which is reassuring.

So they enjoyed watching it?
Well, I don't know whether they enjoyed watching it. [laughs] I wouldn't go that far. But I think they did find some value to it, that it was something worth doing. They took some pride in it.


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