Going right back to the beginning, how did you come to be employed at Granada? It’s a curious accident and quite simply the most fortunate thing that has ever happened to me. I was in my last year at Cambridge, reading English, and a chum of mine from Halifax, where I grew up, said, “I…
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Leslie Woodhead on how in Granada’s early days, ‘we were having to make up a thing because it didn’t much pre-exist’
I wondered if certainly at the beginning of your career, was there a sense that for most of you, you were kind of novices and learning as you… Yes. And that wasn’t just for you personally. All of us – and I guess that was what was exhilarating about getting involved at the moment I…
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Leslie Woodhead describes the production trainee scheme at Granada in the early 1960’s
At that time, on a faintly regular basis, Granada ran this production trainee scheme, during which they would grab half a dozen graduates from around the universities and put them through a nine-month immersion into TV, which I then discovered what this meant. Partly it was because of the very tight union situation at Granada,…
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Leslie Woodhead remembers his first encounter with the Beatles – and Brian Epstein in 1962
Denis Forman had hired a young filmmaker called Michael Grigsby with a promise to make documentaries, but while we were waiting. Sidney deeply distrusted film. He didn’t want film to happen on Granada’s premises because he rightly thought, “Once I’ve got one unit, I’ll have to have 12.” And he was completely right – quite…
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Leslie Woodhead talks about his role on World In Action in the mid-60’s
But (David) Plowright – who I should have mentioned, since he was always an immensely important person in my life, and remains so – he had been the second producer on People and Places, and he had then gone on and I had worked for him on All Our Yesterdays and What the Papers Say…
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Leslie Woodhead recalls some of the memorable World In Action programmes he worked on in the late 60’s
In that late 60s period, we began to do… well, first of all, Plowright’s idea was that he wanted to pair… the change that he made from Tim Hewat’s time was to try and make it a more filmic series. In other words, he was interested in films that looked like films, as well as…
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Leslie Woodhead on making a documentary about the artist, L.S. Lowry
I had done some early directing on People and Places and on What the Papers Say, and on All Our Yesterdays, I wasn’t particularly seized by studio direction, and I also directed the party conferences that tended to put me to sleep. But I was then yanked out of all that, just at the moment…
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Leslie Woodhead on how World In Action was part of the wider cultural changes in the 1960’s
I think it’s very hard to estimate how fundamental the change was. Certainly we were part of a wave that was going on, which included rock ‘n’ roll and included fashion, and included new theatre and cinema. We were involved with all of that; it wasn’t an accident that the Beatles’ office was only across…
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Leslie Woodhead describes filming ‘The Stones in the Park’ in 1969
The Stones in the Park came about because Jo Durden-Smith, my long-standing chum who was doing these rock ‘n’ roll documentaries, got a call from Mick Jagger himself – he said, “Hey, Jo – you guys have got great cameramen – why don’t you come and film our concert in Hyde Park?” – this is…
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Leslie Woodhead describes how he moved into drama-documentaries
By then, I had moved on from World in Action, I can’t remember the exact dates, but I discovered that I really… I had this 18 months as co-executive producer of World in Action, and it was really useful that I did – because I discovered something important for me, which was that I didn’t…
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Leslie Woodhead recounts his ground-breaking work in drama-docs at Granada
From 1970 onwards, I also got involved with doing drama documentaries, which was another territory I was utterly inexperienced in – I had never directed an actor in my life! Wallington got hold of a smuggled transcript of a trial in a mental institution in Russia, under which a dissident Soviet general who had challenged…
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Leslie Woodhead on Disappearing World, the most intriguing thing he has been involved in as a documentary maker
The main strand, as opposed to individual documentaries, was Disappearing World. That, like most things for me, happened kind of by accident. Was that programme already in existence? Yes, it was. Before I worked on it… Brian Moser started Disappearing World, again, Denis Forman… it was very much Denis’ obsession. He had become very keen…
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Leslie Woodhead describes how easy it was to get the go-ahead for programmes during his period at Granada
It was possible to go through one door and talk to one man and get something okayed. I remember going to talk to Plowright about that Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia film, and saying, “Here it is.” “Okay, go and do it.” I thought, “Really?” I mean, that was over a quarter of a million pounds.…
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Leslie Woodhead discusses the benefits of working with the same crews
And presumably the kind of experience you are describing about Disappearing World, where there is a small group of people together for 24 hours a day over a period of weeks, really accentuated that. (a sense of share purpose) Absolutely. I mean, in the Disappearing World I did, the crews I worked with over the…
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Leslie Woodhead on the way in which Granada faced editorial challenges
The other thing you’re asking about, the down sides, I remember that Sidney was… there came a moment, just about when I was starting World in Action, they did a film about Freemasonry, which Mike Hodges, the then feature film director, made – and it was one of the very, very few programmes that Granada…
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Leslie Woodhead on why he decided to leave Granada TV
When did you leave Granada? November 1989. I remember… I left at that time because of something Boulton said to me. By then, of course, change was very much in the air and it was plain that Granada wasn’t going to stay as it was. So what kind of things? How did you discern…? Most…
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Leslie Woodhead on the importance of Granada being in Manchester
How important do you think it was that Granada was based in Manchester? How significant do you feel that contribution was to the North West? I think for Granada, the separation from London was terribly important. I mean, rather like the arrogance we felt about being young producer/directors on World in Action, they felt about……
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Leslie Woodhead describes what he believes was the ‘defining texture’ of Granada
Also I think there’s one of your questions about the defining texture of Granada, and I think… I have thought a lot about this. First of all, an awful lot of us worked together for a long, long time. I mean, some of my colleagues over there all those years were people I had worked…
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