Michael Apted began his media career in the early '60s as an investigative reporter and spot producer for British television, while simultaneously directing episodes of the soap opera Coronation Street. Through his career as a feature filmmaker and documentarian, the 60-year-old has followed that pattern, alternating probing sociological journalism with mainstream entertainment, although his seemingly breezy movies do often have a political edge. He's had hits with such overt social dramas as Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorillas In The Mist, and Nell, but his best fiction work may be mature genre pictures like Class Action (a legal drama featuring a blunt critique of corporate largesse), Thunderheart (a taut action mystery with a hefty subplot about the American Indian Movement), and Extreme Measures (a pulpy thriller featuring a fairly intriguing discussion of medical ethics). Even Apted's stab at the James Bond franchise (1999's The World Is Not Enough) took a left-wing stance on energy scarcity. In the documentary world, Apted is best known for the Up series; he began working on the project as a researcher in 1962, then took over as director in 1969. Every seven years, Apted and his crew catch up with the lives of a handful of British citizens, who were first interviewed in 1964, at age 7, for the British TV special 7 Up. The series began as a study of the rigidity of the British class system, but has since evolved into a portrait of the anxieties of modern life, as shared by people of all classes. Apted's latest installment, 42 Up, was completed in 1998, and has just been released on home video and DVD. Michael Apted recently spoke to The Onion A.V. Club about the history and future of the series, and about the strengths and limitations of his process.
The Onion: A lot of DVDs have commentary tracks, but yours is unusual in that 42 Up actually has narration.
Michael Apted: Yeah, it was strange. That's why I tried to talk around it. There's nothing much to say about what you're looking at. In a documentary, you can't talk about what they're thinking about, because you're interviewing them. I thought the idea more generally is to talk about the process and the history, the revisions from film to film, and the theme, which are things that I think would be interesting to hear about.
O: At one point in the commentary, you mention a TV station in Australia that ran all the Up films in succession over a number of nights, and you say, "There's an idea for DVD." Was any thought given to creating some kind of super-edition?
MA: Yeah, but I can't get anybody interested in it. I've been trying to do it for a decade. I would think it was a no-brainer. There's a lot of interest in the films in educational circles, as sociology. It wouldn't be a huge seller, but it's guaranteed to sell a certain number. But there's no interest. Not enough money in it, I suppose.
O: In the beginning, the project was specifically about the class structure in the U.K., but you've said that the focus has changed over time, and that each film is different. Are you aware when you're making an installment what the focus of that installment will be?
MA: No. I mean, I know that the focus is not so much on politics as on humanities issues, but I never know what the focus of each particular episode is going to be until me and [co-producer] Claire Lewis and [editor] Kim Horton start to assemble it. I'd say each film is about 80 percent different from the one before.
O: How do you decide how to sequence the film, which interview to put where?
MA: I suppose I just go from up to down. Because people vary from generation to generation, some can be very interesting in one generation and not in another, so I suppose I just try to keep the interest going by putting people who are strong against people who are weak. Those decisions change. I usually start with Tony [Walker] and end with Neil [Hughes], but in between it's based on who's very interesting and who's not so interesting. I just try to keep a balance, so that I don't shoot all my bullets in one section of the film.