In the U.K., working-class lives are depicted with the characters' humour, but in the U.S., people with difficulties are often depicted with pious or simply dreary lives.
The classical writers... playwrights, Jacobean, Elizabethan playwrights, all showed areas of all classes and how they live and painted them pretty authentically.
If 'Married With Children' hadn't come out when it did, would we really be looking at 'Roseanne,' 'The Middle,' and 'Raising Hope' and being, like, 'Look at how stereotypical they are to lower-income white people!'
There was the 'Cosby Show' in America in the 1980s, which was a doctor in a beautiful Brownstone middle-class house. We just haven't created a role like that in the U.K.; it's always gangs and crime. We need to be brave.
I have a little bit of a pet peeve about how the middle class is depicted in movies. I feel like they tend to be either depicted in a very sentimental way, where everybody has a heart of gold except for the villains you're supposed to hiss at, or there's a sort of indie-style version... When it's done well, it's brilliant, it's 'Blue Velvet.'
I had great memories of growing up in a working class estate. I remember it being sunny all the time. So we're putting that on screen. It's not people wallowing in degradation.
I challenge the idea that films about rich people are escapism and films about working class people are dour and sad. I find the opposite's the case.
I don't see that many movies where people are depicting middle-class suburban life in a more textured way. My feelings about the suburbs are not so wonderful, so my movies tend to be a little melancholy.
