Stephen Daldry

BALLET TEACHER:
And pirouette and down!

JEREMY VINE:
Not bad for a first effort. Billy Elliot was Stephen Daldry's debut as a feature film director. The boy who chooses ballet over boxing, to the fury of his father, a striking miner.

BILLY'S FATHER:
You, out! Now!

VINE:
Daldry has long been the golden boy of British theatre. As artistic director of the Royal Court, he oversaw its stunning transformation. Before Billy Elliot, An Inspector Calls. Daldry made his reputation with his revival of that JB Priestley play. At the tail-end of Thatcherism, it was an assault on the view that there is no such thing as society. What has made Billy Elliot so successful?

STEPHEN DALDRY:
It became a project that was very special to everyone working on it. It has been a real surprise to us, the audience's reaction, not just here but around the world. The first large audience we showed it to was at Cannes Film Festival. That was the first shock, of "they're laughing at our slightly ludicrous jokes and finding it as moving as we do". It was, and is, a real surprise. It's thrilling, but a real surprise.

VINE:
Some people have been negative about it. Time magazine described it as "emotional pornography". When you read that, does it strike a chord?

DALDRY:
No.

VINE:
In the sense that it works so well off the audience's emotions. It's almost clinical in the way it does that.

DALDRY:
I hope it is an emotional ride. I think that, given the age that we're living in, that is ironic and we love to deconstruct. We live in an ironic age, people do react against the film because it is perhaps the emotional journey feels manipulative. When we were making it, we didn't intend it to be manipulative.

VINE:
Looking at your career, Sheffield University, Socialist Workers' Party in the '80s, so the profiles say. That must have been fun?

DALDRY:
One of the great things about going to Sheffield at that particular time, it did describe itself as the People's Republic of South Yorkshire, was that I got a political education, which was fantastic. One of the great sadnesses about a lot of young people going to university now, is they don't get a political education. It feels like that's a great loss.

VINE:
How does your Socialist Workers' Party phase in the '80s inform where you are now?

DALDRY:
I suppose that period of time at Sheffield University, and getting the political education I got, indeed, straight after university, the miners' strike happening, that one became, inevitably, firmly on the left. I think, as time's gone on, it's very difficult to describe how I am now. I suppose you would call it the liberal left, along with just about all my other friends.

VINE:
There's a danger for people in the theatre, particularly those who want to make a political comment, that it's lost a sense of matter and anti-matter in politics now, there isn't the sharp division that inspires people to write plays and films.

DALDRY:
I think there was a time when there was a coherence to the nature of dissent of whatever form it is, and most serious work is rooted in dissent of one sort or another. And if there was a single voice of dissent rooted in a socialist ideology, obviously that, on the whole, isn't there any more. But it has been replaced, and what it should be replaced with, is a chorus of dissent. That chorus can be as valid and powerful as a single voice.

VINE:
You can find politics in unexpected places. You did that with the revival of An Inspector Calls, which is a great success. How did all that come together?

DALDRY:
I had always been fascinated with the idealism and the hope and the aspirations of 1945. If there was a time that I wish I could have been around, it was at the end of the war, with that particular government, and the creation of that new consensus. It seemed to me a radical new consensus, which lasted right up to Thatcherism. The play was written for 1945. In a sense it's agitation and propaganda. It is a play that is focused on one speech that the inspector makes, saying we need to move forward and create a different sort of society, and not return to Edwardian values. We did it at a time when Margaret Thatcher was saying that her intent was to destroy the consensus of 1945 and return to Edwardian values.

VINE:
Is it losing its pertinence now, do you think?

DALDRY:
Its literal narrative pertinence stays. One of the great moments was when there was the row about single mums, and, of course, the whole play is about who should look after a single mum and her child. Is it the state's responsibility or the family's responsibility? I think that the idea of the whole play being basically a romantic play talking about the notion of change, the notion of possibility, the notion that we do need to buy into a new society, that we need to keep moving it forward, is something that remains pertinent at a time when people have become cynical about politics.

VINE:
You're not thinking as a director, having done Billy Elliot, suddenly, "There's an easier way to do this"? You hire a cameraman, you hire some actors, release it into cinemas around the world, and you've got an audience of millions?

DALDRY:
The quality of experience in the theatre and the quality of experience in the cinema are very different experiences. The idea that just because one reaches many millions more than a piece of theatre, doesn't undervalue the quality of experience you'd have in the theatre, or the impact that theatre can have.

VINE:
Have you, since Billy Elliot, came out, walked past a cinema and think, "I will go and see my own film?"

DALDRY:
I've nipped in a few times to see how it's going down, and to check the quality of the print. It's particularly nipping in abroad, you think, "I'm here in Berlin, Paris, or something.", and you think, "Gosh, I'll nip in and see how it's going." What's so astonishing is people laughing in the same places, that's the thing I find most startling.

VINE:
Stephen Daldry, thanks very much.

DALDRY:
Pleasure. Thanks for having me.