No point hanging around...

"It’s a privilege to get to work on something that’s so completely absorbing. It’s terrifying, too. I have to get out of bed every day to make something happen. I wonder if I would have been capable of producing anything if I worked in a more conventional way with a pre-written script, because I’m of the procrastinator class. I could see myself waking up saying things like 'Today I’ll just have a reading day,' 'I think I need to see a movie today,' 'I’ll do the shopping first,' or 'I’ll just make another cup of coffee.' But because of the way I work, once the film goes into rehearsal, I’m out of bed and on site by nine o’clock every single day. There’s no point hanging around. I have to make it work for the actor. And when the project takes off it becomes immensely stimulating. It’s tempting, when the rehearsal process drags on for months, to think we’re doing all this work and have nothing to show for it. But at the end of the day, we create great material. It’s a powerful, gregarious, collaborative process."

Mike Leigh in interview with Believer Magazine (2009)