Michael Apted, maybe the most versatile director ever, approached all his films in the same way — do some research, figure out the story that he wanted to tell, then get it on film or video.
That held true for features, from biopics like “Coal Miner’s Daughter," “Gorillas in the Mist†and “Thunderheart,†the crime thriller set on the Pine Ridge Reservation. It also was true for documentaries, like his acclaimed “7 Up†series and “Incident at Oglala,†a companion piece to “Thunderheart†about the case of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, also filmed primarily in South Dakota.
The English director, who died last week at age 79 at his Los Angeles home, talked about how he approached his pictures as an outsider when he made a 1993 visit to Lincoln to appear at the Great Plains Film Festival, using “Coal Miner’s Daughter†as an example.
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“I came in to deal with country music and the white trash in the Appalachians and I didn’t have an attitude about it,†Apted told me. “I come in and learn what I see. I acquire opinions from my research.â€
Sissy Spacek won the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance as country singer Loretta Lynn in the 1980 biopic. In 1988, Sigourney Weaver got an Oscar nomination for her work in “Gorillas in the Mist,†another Apted biopic. And in 1994, Jodie Foster also got an Oscar nod for “Nell,†cementing Apted’s reputation as an actress’ director — a Hollywood rarity.
The versatile Apted even made a James Bond movie, 1999’s “The World is Not Enough,†with Pierce Brosnan, and the children’s picture, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,†in 2010, which turned out to be his second-to-last feature.
That’s because Apted spent the last decade of his life directing episodes of TV series, like “Ray Donovan†and “Masters of Sex,†in addition to making documentaries.
Apted’s greatest achievement is capped, appropriately, with his final film, 2019’s “63 Up†the ninth picture in a documentary series that began with a British television look at a bunch of 7-year-old schoolchildren from across English society.
Apted worked on “7 Up,†going as far as picking some of the young subjects, and became the series director on “14 Up.†Now widely and rightfully praised as the greatest documentary ever by the likes of Roger Ebert, Apted told me that it took four installments before the “Up†series got good.
“It really only, frankly, got really good toward the end, when all that youthful confidence that 'we’re going to run the world’ disappeared,†Apted said. “At 28, people become much more accessible because the problems these people have to deal with are problems everyone can identify with. I think now it gets richer and richer as it goes along.â€
Apted made those prescient comments two years after he’d released “35 Up.†He made four more films in the series that will, now, I assume, end with “63 Up.†The series is now seen, to some measure, as a precursor to reality TV, albeit more serious and far less staged, and a telling exploration of race, class and gender in England over six decades.
As someone who’s about the same age as the “Up†subjects, I also found it to be an absorbing look at peers that I came to know over the years, some appearing in all the movies, some coming and going, comparing their lives to mine and those of my American friends.
The Ross Media Arts Center, and its predecessor at the Sheldon Museum of Art, showed the “Up" series, save for the final movie, which went directly to television. That let Lincoln see the movies as they were intended and also provided one of the reasons to bring Apted to town.
It's nearly 27 years since Apted was here. But I’ve never forgotten the interview and the time I got to spend with him during the visit.Â
Apted, who was never Oscar nominated but won nearly every other directing award, never became a household name. Few directors do.
But for those who love film and appreciate its makers, he made his mark by being one of the few who could step behind the camera and make a great film in any genre.