The story was inspired by your own visits to LA. Do you feel the need to immerse yourself in these worlds?
Yes, I think if you're going to try and tell a story with someone else's lives you've really got to try and spend time with them, try and see life from their point of view, and understand what choices are open to them. I think a great deal of writing is listening. Trying to understand people's situations, trying to figure out how they see it.
The strike itself has gone from being ignored to headline news.
Yeah. The janitors were illegal, they didn't speak any English, their own trade unions said "F**k you!" and they said "We're going to have to do it ourselves!" Now, everybody is looking at the janitors. That's been done by people knocking on doors, making the arguments, and stopping the traffic. They have real political support now. Even Al Gore jumped on the bandwagon.
How is your working relationship with Ken Loach?
It's all quite organic really. For "Bread and Roses", I wrote to Ken, as I thought all the issues thrown up would touch him. And he was very interested. I like to get things down on paper, because they vanish in your mind. Usually, it's a rough idea of character and narrative. Then we talk about it and argue it over. Finally you have to create these fictional characters. You must find the person within it. Finding Rosa for me was the key into this. She is the most complex and interesting of the characters. Then I wrote the script and it came full circle, because I introduced Ken to all the people I met, and then he had to steep himself in it all.
How did you originally get together with him?
I just wrote to him. I sent him an idea about a Scottish bus driver who goes to Nicaragua. Five years later we had "Carla's Song".
Read an interview with Adrien Brody, one of the stars of "Bread and Roses".
