Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach Page #2

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Basically, we were saying that the working class people had sex.

I mean, that's all right if you're doing...the aristocracy.

I mean, they're allowed to.

But the working-class people were having sex and enjoying it,

and they weren't even married.

I mean, this was... In 1965, this was horrifying.

Every week, there were 18 to 20 million viewers.

You knew that people were writing stuff

about the people you came from.

Quick, get the clobber!

You know, they weren't plays with cucumber sandwiches

and French windows. You know, they weren't.

I would have cut my arm off to have...

..got that film made...

..because of the backstreet-abortion scene of Ruby.

It was during the war, during the bombing, my mother got pregnant.

They didn't want another child.

Abortion was illegal, so it had to be...

..an amateur.

And something went wrong with it.

And she died a few days later

of what they called galloping septicaemia.

I was five.

Sometimes a film's an accident, you know,

and sometimes it comes from a moment or a character or an incident.

You know, Ken has been talking about

hanging up his football boots.

Excuse me while I laugh. Yes, hanging up his football boots.

Now, the job centre...

Again, we want it... If we're doing Newcastle, we want city centre...

And of course, after the Tories coming back in again,

with these welfare cuts and the sanctions,

you could just see his anger rise again,

and so I didn't think it would be long

before he was on the hunt for another story.

Cos, I mean, in this scene,

it's just the sense of people waiting and wakening up,

so it would just be the reception and the...

Paul wrote a character, a very simple character -

a man in his late 50s, early 60s who's trying to get back to work

after caring for his wife and dropping out. He was a carpenter.

Just the hurdles he faces, the difficulties he faces,

the world that he faces.

When the thing kicks off with Rachel and the two kids...

Any film-maker who says,

"I can change your mind," with absolute confidence -

you just don't know.

If we as human beings are touched by the story, and we do that well,

then you've maybe got a chance of touching other people.

That's what gives you the motive to actually do the damn thing,

because there's something inside you that burns to do it.

We lived in Nuneaton, which is in the middle of the Midlands.

My dad was one of ten children.

He did an apprenticeship as an electrician in the mine,

and then he got this job in a machine tool factory.

He worked seven days a week.

He would go into the factory at six o'clock every morning,

and be back at six o'clock at night.

He did quite well, he became in charge of the maintenance

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