“Michael was a compleat man, in the traditional sense of that spelling. His knowledge was vast and his curiosity unending. “One of my favourite memories was the technical recce for The Doctor Falls [2017]. Steven Mo. at had written a Western-style façade to the farm and we weren’t able to . nd that traditional look within the Welsh stone world. We’d located some interiors that might work, but I was wavering… On the scouting mission, I was bending myself into a pretzel, trying to explain how we could put all the pieces together - bits of rooms here, reverse shots in other places.
“Producer Peter Bennett - a genius ally - said, ‘Give me a moment. Let’s get lunch.’ We stopped at a traditional Welsh pub and while the crew ate their . sh and chips, Michael rethought the entire approach, sketched sets and the exterior façade on a napkin or two, and threw together some budget estimates, while Pete rescheduled the show. No fuss. We had a new plan within 30 minutes.
And that’s what we . lmed. This was, as I remember it, less than a week before we started shooting.