Making a Movie Sexy
An Interview to Hanif Kureishi

The Mother, the latest movie you've written, tells the story of a 60-something woman who has an affair with a 30-something man, who happens to be sleeping with her daughter. Were you trying to be shocking or, perhaps, romantic?

Some of both, probably. A while ago, I was at a restaurant with my mother, and she fancied the waiter's hands. She said to me, I worry that I will never be touched again, except by the undertaker. I kept thinking about that, how, as you get older, age and time become more and more interesting. The idea for The Mother involves sex of a scandalous nature, and I realized that would be a good starting point. But it was the undressing of her dignity that moved me.

Most of your work has used sex as a point of departure. In the film Intimacy, which was based on two of your short stories, a couple meet weekly for anonymous sex; in your novel, The Body, a man trades his aging vessel for that of an Adonis; and so on.

I'm very excited by people liking each other, really falling for each other. Sex is a metaphor for me: it's a good way of meeting other people. Sex can speed up any relationship. In my work, the characters have reached the point when they hopefully meet the wrong person. It changes your life when you meet someone completely wrong.

It's rare to find sex in the movies actually sexy. Do you find it compelling?

When I was a young man, there was no sex in movies. You had to see Last Tango in Paris to see sex, and it was thrilling and confusing and psychological. Now, of course, there's too much sex. What I'm interested in is minds. With sex, you are vulnerable and crazed and disrupted. That is interesting, and you can't get that in porno films. And it's always wonderful to see people kissing. A kiss remains intimate in the movies.

In My Beautiful Laundrette, you crossed all sorts of boundaries: it was an interracial, interclass gay love story.

When I wrote that, I felt very desperate, and some of that lingers in me. It was not my intention to be noble, but I did want, early on, to write about race and class. Growing up, I was lonely and isolated. I thought writing would stop me from going mad.

Did you expect My Beautiful Laundrette to be a hit?

A love story between a gay Pakistani and a skinhead? In those days, you didn't see men kissing on screen. Now you can't get away from it. But, actually, I did have a sense about the movie's potential. On the way to Edinburgh for the first public screening of Laundrette, I turned to Daniel Day-Lewis, who played the skinhead, and said, Our lives are about to change. And they did: we became popular. And that mended a lot of wounds.

Have you ever considered moving to Los Angeles?

I went to meetings at the studios in L.A., and I realized that London is my city. It was self-interest that kept me here. I'm smart enough to see where my material is. Can you imagine Ingmar Bergman in Hollywood? It would have been a disaster.

But Hollywood would love you -- you have a great sense of plot.

I like having the idea. The initial idea is like falling in love - the beginning of any relationship is thrilling. Unfortunately, that's the best part. When you enter into an actual relationship, the mood changes. That's why I'll keep an idea for a long time before I begin writing. The Mother started as an idea. It took two years to turn that idea into a story. [Pause.] I wrote a short story yesterday.

What was it about?

A woman and a baby are running across a field, and they are eaten by dogs. They don't survive. [Laughs.] My therapist said, You must be feeling very hungry.

Were you pleased with the story?

It doesn't matter if I like it. You just put them out there. It's like dreaming a dream, and then the audience gets to dream, too.

The New York Times