Sir Roger Deakins, cinematographer

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:46My cast away this week is the cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins. He's arguably the greatest and most influential cinematographer alive. His extraordinary 50-year career has shaped the evolution of modern cinema. 1984, Sid and Nancy, The Shawshank Redemption 1917, Fargo, Skyfall and Blade Runner 2049 all bear the hallmarks of his artistry behind the camera He's known as the Master of Light and his talents have been acknowledged with a knighthood five BAFTAs, two Oscars and 14 more nominations but his passion for cinema began a world away from the glamour of Hollywood in the sleepy seaside town of Torquay After losing his mother at a young age he was desperate to avoid the job in a bank that his teachers had suggested when he applied to art school.

1:32He says, I could never have imagined having such a rich life when I was 10 years old and thinking life's a bitch. You don't give up because life leads you on a path. If you take the opportunities, it's amazing what can happen. Sir Roger Deakins, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you, thank you. You've said it all right there, haven't you? Well, listen, we've got a lot to talk about today, Roger, especially your attitude to your job because there's a contradiction at play with you isn't there you describe yourself as quite a private not very confident person not much of a people person but you know there you are on set leading huge teams on on gigantic projects how easy has it been to find your groove in doing that to kind of find a way to own that i've always felt most confident when i've had my eye to the eyepiece of a camera your wife james who works with you today One said that looking through the lens removes you from reality, Roger.

2:26Is that something you agree with? Yeah, you're escaping in a way. The reality is now through the lens. It's slightly distanced maybe. Maybe you're a bit of a voyeur and the rest of the world disappears. You know, it is. There's a certain distance, I suppose, from what you're looking at. A sense of protection, even though it might be illusory. So how do you deal with nerves on set then? I mean, you have said that you feel terrified when you first walk onto a film set. I do. It's new people and a new situation. Until I get comfortable with the people, I find it very difficult. But on the other hand, if you didn't feel stressed and you didn't feel that kind of pressure, then I don't think you'd be trying to do your best, you know.

3:12It means you don't care. Yeah, because that's what it's about. I want to feel in myself that I've done something that I feel is part of me. And to what extent are you thinking about the audience and your responsibility to them when you're working? I'm not directly thinking of the audience at all. I'm thinking about the story and I'm thinking about the director's needs and wants for the story. and I kind of see around me a lot of images that are purely eye candy. They're not really servicing the story anymore. They're just kind of there because they're individual beauty or something. So you've got to beware of an aesthetic then?

3:56I think so, yes. I think there's a danger in that, as get carried away in a sort of camera move or a certain kind of glossy sort of lighting and that's not necessarily what is best for the story. And let's go back to that idea of the eye to the lens because that's very literal for you. You like to operate the camera yourself and I think that's quite unusual rather than handing it over to a camera operator or director. Why does that work for you? Why do you prefer to do it that way? I just like the connection with what's in front of me. I like to be the one responsible and I'm the one to blame if I don't like the shot.

4:38I mean, and I can see the limitations of the lighting and I can work the lighting in balance with the frame and the camera move. Does that mean that you can't work with certain directors? Does it rule certain people out? Yeah, without mentioning names. I've had wonderful interviews and conversations with some directors and at the end we've said, yeah, well, it's not going to work, is it really? I read that you're quite good friends with Ridley Scott, but this meant that the two of you, you couldn't work together on a project because of that. Yeah, he was somebody that talked to quite a number of times, but that one particular interview was, yeah, yeah.

5:13He was operating at the time, so that was even more of a rift between us, really. He was operating and, yeah, and shooting on zoom lenses and, yeah, you know, all the things I don't really like. Let's get started then with your first. Tell us about disc number one. Well, Leonard Cohen I first heard, I guess, when I was a teenager in Torquay. And most of the music, early music I heard, was on Radio Luxembourg, which was very strange because my brother and I, we'd come back from school and we'd sit by the radio waiting for Radio Luxembourg. I think an hour of rock music came on at 6 o 'clock. But before that, it was interesting.

5:59there was a guy called Garner Ted Armstrong would talk about the apocalypse. It was a religious programme. Well, I mean, pseudo-religious. So you go straight from that to an hour of Leonard Cohen? Yes. So we're talking about the kind of in the middle of the Cold War and we're all worried about being bombed, you know. You turn on the radio and this guy is talking about Armageddon starting on the plains of Israel. It was all very bizarre. And then we went into rock music. So I think that's where I probably heard Leonard Cohen for the first time. And the album would have been The Songs of Leonard Cohen.

6:39And I think the most well-known track is Suzanne. But I really like the track One of Us Cannot Be Wrong because it's just so wry and kind of amusing. And, yeah, I love the lyrics. I mean, I like stories and there's a real story behind this. I lit a thin green candle To make you jealous of me But the room just filled up with mosquitoes They heard that my body was free Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night I put it in your lips Leonard Cohen and One of Us Cannot Be Wrong. So, Roger Deakins, you were born in Torquay, Devon, in 1949, the youngest of two boys, two, William and Josephine. I know that your parents met during the Second World War, so tell me about them.

7:40Let's start with your mum. She was a London girl originally, wasn't she? Yeah, I mean, I quite honestly don't know that much about her life, but I know she was standing for Anne and Eagle on the West End stage. I know she appeared in a film and she was a model. And I know she met my dad on an army base where they had a party and they decided to get married just before my dad went back to the war and he was working under Paddy Main and the SAS and they went to Germany at the end of the war and then my dad and my mother got married when he came back. So they settled in Torquay where you were brought up and I know that your memories are affected because you lost her when you were just nine?

8:35Yeah, I think I was nine or ten. So what do you remember of her, your own memories? I don't remember much. I remember when she was when I was a bit younger when she was a little better you know she went through stages She had MS didn't she? Yeah she had MS It was diagnosed actually the year I was born so that was kind of strange I don't think there's any connection I hope not Anyway but I remember us going to the beach and I remember my dad having to carry her to the beach and carry her back to the car at the end of the day I remember sitting on a bed and drawing dinosaurs and she used to draw and paint the birds that came to a feeder that Dad had put outside the window so she could have something to look at.

9:27Yeah, it was kind of a traumatic time really. It must have been tough. It must have been really tough. I mean, especially as... So she'd been a model and an actress when she was younger. How much have you found out about that subsequently? Have you seen the film that she was in? No, I don't want to see it. I kind of like... I keep seeing photographs of her. There's a very famous photograph of her taken on a funfair in South End. Sometimes it's advertised as a shot taken at the end of the war and these girls celebrating, but I believe it was taken in 1939, just before the war, and she's on this funfair ride with a skirt up and she looks like Marilyn Monroe, you know.

10:11I recognised that image straight away when I saw it when I was doing the research for this programme. I can't believe that's your mum. So she's kind of on this, it looks like a rollercoaster and the wind's blowing her skirt up. She's pushing it down and laughing, but you can kind of see her suspenders. And that picture, as you say, it's become a classic image, really. Have you seen it as it popped up in your life? Oh, yeah, the last, well, I've seen it since. But one of the times we saw it, we were working on Skyfall up in Glasgow shooting on the dockside there. And we went for a trip to the coast, had lunch in a pub and we sat down and right next to us on the pub wall was this photograph of mum.

10:50I couldn't believe it. So I see it a lot of places. But otherwise, I don't really know that much about her. And I'd say the last couple of years of her life, probably I didn't really see her much at all because she was in bed. And she was really, yeah, it was sad. She had a really hard time. She had a real hard time with it. And I think partly because the life she started to have before the war and what she'd come to, it's so sad, so sad. Do you remember about how you dealt with what happened?

11:30Not very well. I think my dad at one time told me later that he thought they were going to take me to a specialist, a mental specialist. Yeah, I didn't deal with it very well. Yeah, of course not. Were you able to go to a funeral? It kind of wasn't allowed, I think, yeah. It's time for your second track. What have you chosen? June Tabor. I just love everything she does. So I've chosen a song called Aqaba. It's partly June's voice, it's partly that kind of idea of... It's basically about Lawrence of Arabia and the Battle of Aqaba and there's something really haunting about it and the way she sings it.

12:19Out of the silent wastes No friends, no quarter The blood is up, the senses race A last dawn is breaking over the sleeping host The unsuspecting shadows grim as a desert ghost The pale rider waiting

12:52Aqaba, all my life turns on you All my life returns to you Aqaba, June Table. Sir Roger Deakins, you just said to me that that track makes you think of your father, William, and his war story, which is pretty incredible. He was an explosives expert with the Royal Engineers and he served under Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Mayne. Now, many listeners will have seen the fictionalised version of him in the BBC's SAS Rogue Heroes. What did your dad tell you about his experiences? He used to tell me stories, actually, when I was in the bath, mainly as a very young kid, and he would tell me stories about Northern Africa of being behind German lines.

13:48But I think the most dangerous was that my dad was part of a group that landed in Sicily in the middle of the night to climb the cliffs and blow up the guns, and this was before the Allied invasion of Sicily. And he said they blew the guns up and they sat on the clifftops and watched all these ships coming in. But the most harrowing part, he said, when they were in the landing craft going towards the shore, a lot of troops were going to go in by glider and they'd all missed the land. So the sea was kind of crowded with broken wings and dead soldiers that had been going in by glider. So I'm imagining you as a little boy hearing these stories and wondering what that did for your sense of who your dad was.

14:43I mean, this mythic kind of hero. I mean, well, I just think he was one of so many. I mean, he was like early 20s, taken from a small town in South Devon and suddenly he's there behind German lines in a totally different world, you know. And your relationship, the two of you, were you close to your dad? Probably in truth, not so much. Was that just a generational thing, do you think? He's obviously affectionate and wanted to share his stories with you and tell you what he'd seen and what he'd done. I think he was a very traditional country man. But I think the whole experience with mother, I think, was bad.

15:29Very difficult for him. And then he got remarried not so long after my... Well, it didn't seem like very long after my mother died. And that did not go well. What happened? she was there for about a week and disappeared i don't know whether it's because my brother and i did not like the fact she was in the house i i don't know it was not a very nice time your dad must have been under a lot of pressure so he ran his own business as a builder how did he manage bringing up the two of you making ends meet after losing your mum um well he put himself into his work. I mean, I don't think his business was, you know, hugely successful.

16:10It was a little, you know, painting and decorating company, really. And he had a little ironmonger shop. And he put a lot of effort into that. So yeah, he'd drop us off at school in the mornings, but we might not see him then till eight or nine at night. And especially if I went fishing, because I'd come home from school and just go straight down onto the rocks fishing. You know, that was me. So that was a passion for you from the beginning? Yeah, it might have been my way of escaping it all, really. And I think your dad introduced you to film as well, didn't he? Well, he did in a strange way.

16:45Yeah, this was when I might have been four or five, five or six. Dad had brought back a little projector, I think, from Germany at the end of the war. You know, they brought things back. And you could rent little reels of cartoons from the local post office. It was really strange. I think they were like nine and a half millimetre reels of, you know, there was Popeye and there was Felix the Cat. And there was, yeah, Mickey Mouse, early Mickey Mouse cartoon. So where did he have it set up? Oh, he had it in the attic of our house when we lived. This was when mum was still alive, in the attic of our little house in Wellswood, which is on the outskirts of Torquay.

17:28Or was the outskirts then, it's all one thing. but yeah it was a dusty little attic and there was a little wooden ladder that went up to it it was quite frightening but yeah we'd watch my favourite was Felix the Cat you know we watched that reel so many times it was like just made up of splices I think because it kept broken in the projector yeah It's time for some more music Sir Roger Deakins your third choice today what's it going to be and why are you taking it to your island? OK, 20th Century Schizoid Man. Oh, wow. This is going to be a noisy one. From the court of the Crimson King. I think when I first heard this album, it really got to me because it was kind of the anger and the feeling of the world falling apart.

18:16But it was so unconventional, the song at the time. How old were you when you heard this? I must have heard it when I was at art college, really, because what year did it come out? I think late 60s, very late 60s. 69, yeah. Well, I was at art college by then because I went to Bath Academy of Art in Cauchon. And was that what you felt? You felt angry? You felt that things were falling apart? Yeah, I mean, both personally and in terms of the world, you know, and I think it's really relevant today.

18:57Boys and girls, 21st century schizoid man.

19:18King Crimson, 21st century schizoid man. now Roger after your mum died I know that your your dad moved you and your brother further out of Torquay where did you go where were you living? Tiny little bungalow but out overlooking Tor Bay more or less at the time by itself and now it's surrounded like it could be Florida or something you know with great big mansions but it was a little bungalow and it was quite a long way from town. How was it for you living out there somewhere so isolated but with amazing views presumably Yeah, amazing news and it was really close to the ocean so I could go fishing in the mornings before school and after.

19:57But it was quite a long walk home from school. Dad would drop us off at school and then we would walk home. It was a pretty wonderful, idyllic place to grow up. But on the other hand, I think socially it was awkward because I think my dad cut himself off from the rest of the family at that time. and why did he do that yeah I wish I could ask him but I you know it was just I think a reaction to my mother's death and uh it was just strange I've never quite figured it out myself but it was just like a way of him protecting himself I think but it meant you know we were quite isolated and when we were living in Wellswood I'd go up and help deliver newspapers with a post office or something like that, you know, little things.

20:50But, yeah, then that all dropped away. So I became, yeah, became a bit more of a lonely person then, I think. So that interior world is all kind of coming together at this point for you. What about the rest of the time? Did you make friends? I did. I had a couple of friends that we would go out drinking at night. Yeah, a bit too much drinking. And I had some friends I used to go fishing with. And honestly, I spent most of my time on myself and preferred it that way, especially when I was fishing. And how did you let off steam? You mentioned the anger that connected you to King Crimson later, but that must have been there since you lost your mum.

21:31How did that impact your teenage years? You said you were drinking too much. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I don't think I've ever become an alcoholic or anything like that. but I certainly wasn't particularly stable as a kid, no. I was very angry but it all went interiorly, you know, so, yeah, I was kind of seething inside. Oh, that's even worse in a way though, isn't it? Yeah, really. I guess obviously now I think, well, if it had been somebody that I could have vented to or something, it would have been maybe different but no. I know that cinema became a big passion in your teenage years. Was that an escape for you?

22:11yeah I think that was very much an escape yeah there was a little film society opened up when I was I guess 17 just before I left school and talking in the windows back then and probably now it's very very quiet place so I went to this film society with a friend all the time and we would see kind of amazing films like you know Alphaville and last year at Marion Bad I think I saw there many, many wonderful films, but particularly Peter Watkins' War Game, which actually really affected me, not only because we were all at the time afraid of the Cold War and a bomb dropping, but just the fact that you could make an angry film like that about kind of a real political, social issue like that, I thought that was really phenomenal.

23:00Wasn't that film banned? How did you see it? Well, it was funny because it was shown at film societies and film clubs for a few months and I actually won an Academy Award for Best Documentary, right? But yes, the BBC banned it and I could see why because the screening in this little... It was the gas showrooms and they had a little portable screen and projector, this film club. And in the front row was two little old ladies who'd come in because it was raining and they thought maybe they'd see something like The Sound of Music. And halfway through War Game, and when the bomb dropped and everything, people get blown away.

23:38They fainted, both of them. But what was your reaction? So you're behind these two fainting old ladies watching this thinking what? I just thought it was amazing what cinema could do, you know, what you could do with, yeah, fictional creation of images like that that give a sense of reality that was so powerful, you know, and make a comment on the madness of the world, much like King Grimson, you know. Roger Deakins, it's time to go to the music. Your fourth choice today. What's next? Yeah, well, this is probably a song that I heard much later in life by Lucinda Williams. I love Lucinda Williams, American folk, country rock singer.

24:22And this song's called Soldier's Song. And it's very much about a wife and kid back home and a soldier at war and their sort of dual realities. I met my enemy today

24:39Baby sends a little one out to play Enemy shot, two of my buddies down Baby rides a little one on the merry-go-round

25:05A soldier's song, Lucinda Williams. Roger Deakins, you retained the artistic streak that your mum had encouraged in you as a kid, but as I mentioned, your school had other ideas. My career guidance council said I should get a job in a bank locally and I'd do all right because I was quite good at maths and academically I was quite good. But I just didn't want a nine-to-five job. You know, I was angry. I didn't want to be part of society as I saw it. You know, I was angry. Yeah. So I kind of refused to go that direction, didn't know what I was going to do. Spent the summer after school fishing. Dad would say, oh, university, you know.

25:53And by the time I said, OK, it was too late to apply to university. but there was a chance to apply to art college, the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham at the time. It's now part of Bath University. Yeah, so I got in there and went there for four years. It was really good. And was your dad supportive of that decision? He was. I do think he thought, well, I would just get it out of my system, the anger out of my system, throw some paint at a wall or something and then come back and work with him on his business but that was never going to happen. So tell me what did happen. You discovered photography at art school.

26:33I did. I mean, I wanted to paint. I wanted to do fine art, but I didn't know. But they put me in the graphic design program. Why was that? I have no idea. But I started taking photographs just to record, you know, objects for design programs. But then this photographer, Roger Mayne, came to do a few days teaching. And he's quite well known. Roger Mayne was the first real street photographer. He's known for doing first photographs of the streets of Notting Hill. And the first thing he said, he said, I can't teach you how to take a photograph. He said, just get out there on the street and do it.

27:17So I would hitchhike to Bristol or Bournemouth. I love the seaside. So I remember going to Bournemouth and spent the Saturday and Sunday. I slept on the beach and started taking photographs. And when we got back, I developed them in the darkroom. I had a key made for the darkroom so I could work in there at night without anybody knowing and bothering me. And we all put, well, the students in the class put photographs on the wall. And I remember Roger coming over and said, who took that? He pointed at this photograph and I was so embarrassed. I said, I did. He said, that's almost a perfect photograph.

27:59I wish I'd had the guts to ask him why almost. What was it? What was the image? It was an empty beach with a pile of stacked deck chairs and there was one lonely little figure, an old lady, walking along the shoreline. And just the balance was, I thought, really nice. But I wanted to know why it wasn't perfect. But you were too shy to ask. I was so blown away that he liked it at all, you know. In 1972, you got a place at the National Film School in Beaconsfield. You'd applied the year before but didn't get in. Why not? When I got rejected, I went to London and I met with Colin Young, who was the principal who was starting up the film school at the time.