I just wanted to know who he was … what was his story?
Apple launch the firstBlitztrailer tomorrow.
McQueen wasnt having any of what he calls cardboard cutout Brits inBlitz,which he researched thoroughly.
Elliott Heffernan & Saoirse Ronan in ‘Blitz’; Steve McQueen & Elliott HeffernanApple
Having conversations about their kit and buying stuff off the Americans, he laughs.
It was the first time, he believes, that I felt a sense of nationalism.
But it was the first time Ive had that feeling because we were together.
Elliott Heffernanand director Steve McQueen on the ‘Blitz’ set (Apple)Courtesy of Apple
We were from all over.
And, unfortunately, that sense of unity came from war.
He asks me to think of a child being around parents when they row violently.
Its the worst thing in the world that can ever happen to a child, he says.
So imagine a small child in war?
It becomes three times as amplified.
And he looks just like the kid in the photograph that had taken McQueens breath away.
The war is perceived through Ritas eyes as well.
Elliott was 9 when filming began two years ago, He was 8 when he auditioned, says McQueen.
So he was a little boy, and he auditioned because hed never done acting before.
As soon as I saw him, I thought, Oh, he is the truth!
He wasnt going to pretend to be a child.
He was a child.
Because for him, it was reality.
They had to learn how to hold a cup of tea and not a mobile.
McQueen says authenticity was paramount.
So with that, urgency affected their performance too, McQueen adds.
The filmmaker had to talk to Elliott about war.
I think its surreal, he says.
To normalize the atrocities of war is strange, isnt it?
And then we have to talk to a prepubescent child about what the world is.
How do we normalize nonsense?
He asks again: How do we normalize the extremes of reality?
How Elliotts George responds to these realities is what the movies about, says McQueen.
He says that what the young actor does in the movie is extraordinary, a view that I share.
Hes full of beans and derring-do is Master Elliott Heffernan.
He leaps off a train and risks his life in other ways., McQueen marvels.
McQueens clearly proud of the lad.
I mean, to some extent he carries this movie.
And I think whats important about George is that through him you see yourself.
The area back then still was scarred from bomb damage.
And people remembered, but they werent all prepared to talk about it.
They had endured unbelievably harsh hardships yet they still made time.
Bombs and sirens be damned.
A parachute mine blew up properties a hop and a skip away.
This movies in my postcode.
The refrain was Were all going to die tomorrow.
They had to live now, McQueen notes.
J.B. Priestley (An Inspector Calls), the playwright and screenwriter, understood that.
He was impressed with an East Ender by the name of Mickey Davies, who features in the film.
Hes portrayed by Leigh Gill (theJokerfilms,Game of Thrones).
Davies was a pint-sized local optician and community organizer known as Mickey Midget.
He encouraged shelterers to bring about order and cleanliness in the underground shelters in Spitalfields and thereabouts.
Priestley wrote how men and women like Davies with a gift for leadership now turn up in expected places.
Britain was being bombed and burned into democracy, Priestley claimed.
Locals long have wanted to have a statue or some other memorial by which to honor Davies legacy.
The scheme was scotched during Boris Johnsons time as London mayor.
McQueens movie picks up the spirit he felt in while stationed in Iraq.
The Blitz brought people together in a way that it had never happened before.
Extraordinary circumstances brought these people together.
Levine collaborated with McQueen onBlitz.
One real-life character mentioned in the book was E.I.
Ekpenyon, a law student from Nigeria who became an air-raid warden in Marylebone.
His name and story is fictionalized inBlitz.
Hes still an air-raid warden, but hes called Ife, translated from the Ibo language to mean love.
Theres a marvelous moment when Ife instructs George about race.
Hes called a Black and everyone around him isnt Black.
Thats what I wanted to do.
Its for audiences to discover what tumultuous events George endures.
McQueen tells me his movie is about cinema.
Its about how to be enthralled, to be entertained.
Its not necessarily there to educate, he says.
If you want that, then read a book.
He callsBlitza fairy tale, and a very dark one.
Its the Brothers Grimm.
And thats the journey that George goes on.
The Blitz was the beginning of sexual liberation.
The beginning of womens liberation in the Blitz, not the 60s, McQueen argues.
It was definitely the Blitz, although it was evident in the 1930s too.
The freedoms that we are living with now is directly from the Blitz.
They were not going to be subservient to anybody, says McQueen.
Ronans scenes with Elliott are touching.
The actors, including Weller, really bonded, says McQueen.
That happened spontaneously, and I say: Oh, no, no, whoa.
kindly do that again.
Beautiful, he says.
And as an artist, as a director, you look for that.
For McQueen, theres no better actress than than Saoirse Ronan.
Shes like Bette Davis, shes that good.
I mean, shes interesting, shes fascinating; she makes the ordinary extraordinary, the arbitrary fascinating.
There was a piano in the corner of the photograph.
Wellers good playing the authentic Londoner that he most definitely is.
Sohos clubland boasted three venues that were known as Black clubs.
The old Shim-Sham, for one, contracted Black musicians.
We experience these horrors through Georges eyes.
No child should see such things.
But this is wartime.
By having George see this, how can he make sense of it?
And hes not having it, says McQueen.
I will not take second best as an artist.
Its good or bad, thats how it is, he thunders.
The war is very much in the foreground there.
Conversely, in the UK it really isnt, he says.
The physical evidence of the Blitz is actually here, not just the emotional and social.
Look, he implores, open your eyes.
So many people could do a double take walking around the city once theyve seen this picture.
McQueens clearly sickened by war, but hes interested in the evidence of things not seen.
I wanted to make a picture which could reach all kinds of people.
And Im interested in cinema, he says.
Its like music, it can connect to everybody.
First time I sawBlitzwas back in June.
The first image startled me.
There were firefighters tackling a blaze in the aftermath of a bombing raid.
The hose kept jerking as if it were alive.
McQueen explains that the hoses were made of canvas and they leaked.
Equipment back then was terrible.
Thats what it was.
Next for McQueen is a project with Amazon.
Which he cant talk about.
And he wants to set anther film in London.
I want to use London the way Scorsese uses New York.
