For a director, James Marsh is the owner of the ultimate calling card. It's a little gold statue that sits atop a tall cabinet stacked with DVDs at his home in Copenhagen. "It’s out of my eyesight so I don’t see it, because it’s not there to be looked at," he says. "It’s kind of there to watch over me and make sure that I keep doing good work." The British-born filmmaker is of course referring to the Academy Award he won in 2009 for directing the engrossing documentary Man on Wire, about Philippe Petit's dumbfounding sky-walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. The film—which blended actual footage with staged reenactments—was a hit in every sense of the word, and Marsh was given all the clout he needed to craft a career directing movies in Hollywood. But rather than chase a payday, Marsh has chosen to remain a personal artist who makes movies that appeal to him. His latest is 1980, the second installment of the British crime trilogy Red Riding, and it's a powerful piece of filmmaking (watch the trailer here).

('’)Red Riding is a British television adaptation condensed from author David Peace's Red Riding Quartet, and IFC is making the audacious move to release the dense, decade-spanning trilogy—1974, 1980, and 1983—simultaneously in the U.S. The fictional saga unfolds over the backdrop of the real-life Yorkshire Ripper murders that paralyzed Northern England during the seventies and early eighties. This mixture of fact and fiction suited Marsh perfectly, who himself jumps from documentary to feature films. Yorkshire during that time was a brutal, decaying place, and Marsh has crafted a confident noir thriller that acts as twisted homage to his childhood home. And more than the other two films, it works as a stand-alone story. We recently spoke with Marsh about recreating Yorkshire circa 1980, what's right (and wrong) with American filmmaking, and reliving Oscar night.

How would you sell the Red Riding trilogy to American audiences? I think it’s a modern interpretation of film noir, which is an American genre. And I think the beauty of David Peace’s novels is that he found an organic British way of telling these very rich crime stories, that in a sense are influenced by American crime fiction, American conspiracy theories, and film noir.

Did your background in documentary inform how you made 1980? I think so. I think the reason that the book so appealed to me is it has the most overt references to real events. The whole story of 1980 is premised on a real-life serial killer case in the north of England, the Yorkshire Ripper. I was very aware of it as a child and a teenager, so that was definitely a good starting point for me. The film opens with a news archive sequence, and we use a tape that was around at the time, that would unveil a notorious and misleading piece of evidence that the police were obsessed with. That tape is really kind of spooky and I remember hearing it when I was young and it just really gets to you. What David Peace did was take a massive amount of research and take a series of real events and weed out of those events something that is entirely fictional, but with these anchor points within the real world.

You nailed so many little details that captured a town gripped in fear. The background of the story is there is a general paranoia of a killer at large. The women and the children were gripped with a collective fear that they were vulnerable and not safe. We heard tales of collective fear. This woman told of how her husband would make her wear a crash helmet when she went on the streets at night, because the killer’s M.O. was to come up behind people and hit them with a hammer.

Now that Ridley Scott has announced plans for an American remake of Red Riding, do you think the U.S. has a counterpart to Yorkshire? Can you imagine where the American version would take place? I don’t really care to be honest. It is what it is. My interest in the material was because of the time and place and a place specific to an England that I grew up in. So I don’t have much interest or comment to make about what might happen to these stories, the scripts, these films as they’re reinvented here. Who cares?

Is there a trick to adapting British material for American audiences? We sort of have a well-established tradition of great TV work in the U.K being customized for American film audiences. Edge of Darkness, which is about to open, was an amazing conspiracy thriller from the eighties. In a sense it speaks of the great strength of UK filmmaking that really has been as much in television drama as has been in feature films.

Do you notice that trend happening here, where quality dramas are kind of taking over television? I think in the last decade you could offer up maybe half a dozen feature films that really stand the test of time. For me The Wire and The Sopranos were the great monuments in American filmmaking in the last decade. Those two drama series I think surpass anything we’ve seen in American cinema in the last decade. I think The Wire is an absolutely monumental work of genius from start to finish and it can only exist within the compass of television, with the time that those writers and those filmmakers had to explore those characters. The achievement is just mind-bogglingly good, I can’t tell you how much I admired that series. It’s way more adventurous than any mainstream American film I can think of at least in the last 10 years.

Anand Tucker, who made the third part of the Red Riding trilogy 1983 went on to directing the romantic comedy like Leap Year. How do you account for such a disparity between projects? I’m not the right person to answer that, but one could say that that’s what the marketplace supports here in the U.S. I can’t speak for Anand, but I can never find a place for myself in American film culture and that’s why on the back of Man on Wire I headed back to Europe, because I could have better opportunities and more freedom to do the kind of films as I want to do. It seems almost impossible to gain any traction whatsoever in the American film industry even with a great film like Man on Wire. It’s not possible, at least at the moment, to do really bold films in American movies. Of course there are exceptions like David Fincher, who works in his own system and gets his own work made. Zodiac is a truly subversive movie and really holds up well. By and large it’s not really a very exciting time to be working in American films, and therefore I found myself going back to Europe to explore lower budget movies and documentaries that I could make with my own creative freedom. Man on Wire was turned down by almost every American company we went to try and find funding for. So even that film, which is audience-friendly, struggled to find any part in America. It’s very hard for a director like me to work here—nearly impossible.

What does it mean to be an Academy Award-wining filmmaker both professionally and personally? On a professional level it didn’t make very much difference for my prospects in America, but in Europe it really did make a difference. I think the film did really well in Europe, particularly in the UK. The worst thing about being a filmmaker is you’re judged on your last film. Its success allowed me to move straight into writing and another future documentary that I’m working on as we speak. But the bane of my life is to not be able to get the next film made, and that seems to have changed with Man on Wire. On a personal level, I never had any ambition to win an Oscar so to win one is both part hilarious and brilliant at the same time. I mean, it was never my expectation to win one

What went through your mind when they announced Man on Wire as best documentary winner? I guess I was gripped by some euphoria. You’ve got to get your shit together and not make a fool of yourself. And I think in that respect it went pretty well. I wasn’t expecting to win, but at the same time we were favored to win so I thought about what I had to do if I go up there. And it’s the most amazing moment—I guess you are king for a moment, you really are.

And called Philippe on stage it turned into one of the more memorable moments of the evening. Yeah, I think it was the right thing to do. It was his story that got us there, and essentially he is the star of his own film, and to not have him there is completely wrong. He had to fight his way up there, but no one was going to stop him. He was the man between the two World Trade towers, so they weren’t going to stop him from the Oscar—no way. He pulled out an amazing trick once he was up there and that created what was a very memorable image. I think of that night and it was all quite lovely, the best night of my life.

Do you keep in touch with him at all? Yes, yes we became very close friends. It wasn’t always an easy ride and of course we both admit to having passionate disputes with the other while the film was in production. But at the end of it all, there was a sense that Philippe felt that I’d made the film I wanted and he was comfortable with that.

Other than winning, what was the most memorable part of that night for you? The award is like the nicest thing you’ve ever had, and you’re just kind of holding this thing and you can’t put it down anywhere nor would you want to. You have access to pretty much anything you want with that in your hand. And I don’t have a really specific big star-fucking moment that’s memorable for me, but I met all kinds of people and had a really good conversation with Josh Brolin, which is really great because I just think he is such a great actor and he obviously enjoyed the film. It was a spectacular night. I know if I was younger I’d be like ‘who cares’ but now that I’m older I realize that this is a good thing, just enjoy it while it lasts

What’s going to win Best Picture this year? That’s a good question. I live in Copenhagen so I’ve not seen a majority of the films nor do I have a strong desire to see a lot of them. But I really thought The Hurt Locker was a really powerful and important movie. It’s a very visceral experience and you hope that that’s the kind of movie that wins. There’s recognition about its quality and its brilliant filmmaking. So that was the one American film that I really liked. I also really liked the Michael Haneke film The White Ribbon, though that probably won’t win.

Have you had a chance to see Avatar? Not yet. I think it might give me a headache.

A man in Taiwan was taken to the hospital right after he saw it and he died 11 days later. Oh really? I hope that doesn’t happen to me. I want to live. I’ve got more work to do. If Avatar killed me I’d feel very cheated.

Speaking of more work to do, is it true you’re directing a film called The Vatican Tapes? I’m in discussions about that project and just seeing where it goes. I mean, the one genre that feels like there’s still a possibility to do work is in fact the horror genre.

What is your latest project about? I’m working on a feature documentary that is put together and produced by the same people I worked on with Man on Wire. It’s a life story of a chimpanzee who is acquired the moment he is born from his mother and brought up to be, as much as he can be, a human being. It’s a journey into human society and it’s an extraordinary story and that should be done by the early summer. It’s really an amazing story and you never know where it’s going to end up, and I’m not going to tell you. You have to watch the film.