Mike Leigh just premiered what he thinks will be his final film, Tender Loving Care.

I'm seeing it this week at TIFF.

And it's got me thinking again about some of the things I learned making a book about his filmmaking process that changed how I look at films that have nothing to do with Mike Leigh.

When I saw Peterloo at TIFF in 2018, I couldn't understand how Leigh could fill a scene with people and somehow make every one of them feel like an individual rather than an anonymous crowd.

So I asked him: how did you do that?

Every time I asked some version of that, he pointed me toward his collaborators.

Most interviews with Leigh focus on what he does — or talk to actors about what they do.

So we did something different: we didn't just speak to Leigh and the lead actors.

We also talked to those collaborators that Leigh kept bringing up.

I came away with questions I hadn't known to ask — and new things to look for in the films I watched afterwards:

• What if historical accuracy isn't the be all and end all of historical costumes?
• What does “period accurate” skin look like — and how do most films get this wrong?
• When you see someone's home and believe they've lived there for 20 years — what goes into making you believe that?
• What if the elaborate shot choices you admire in a film aren't just about the cinematographer's craft — but what they can expect from their editor?
• What if a film's politics aren't just in its story or what the director is trying to say — but in the decisions being made by the costume designer, editor, cinematographer, production designer, and makeup designer?
• What if what makes Leigh's characters feel so lived in isn't just what he does or what the actors do — but how those characters are built with everyone else behind the camera?

These are just some of the questions Mike Leigh and his collaborators answer inside Peterloo in Process: A Mike Leigh Collaboration.

I didn't know most of these were questions worth asking before we made the book.

Inside Peterloo in Process, you can read the conversations my co-author Orla and I had with Leigh and his collaborators that led me to these questions in the first place.

We talked to Leigh, actors Rory Kinnear and Maxine Peake — and the cinematographer, editor, costume designer, production designer, and makeup designer who made Peterloo.

And since many of those collaborators have worked with Leigh for decades, there's a lot in there about his other films, too.

​Get Peterloo in Process for $29.99 →​

Alex