In our October issue, DISCOVER reviewed the movie 49 Up, the latest in a series of documentary movies widely known as the 7 Up series. In 1964, 14 seven-year-old children from the U.K. were asked questions about love, work, race, and their future for a television show. Every seven years since, Academy Award–winning director Michael Apted has caught up with these subjects on film. In a Web exclusive, DISCOVER editor Susan Kruglinski interviewed Nick Hitchon, a subject of the film series who was raised in the Yorkshire Dales on a farm, attended Oxford University, and became a physicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

No. It's completely untrue. He doesn't show us anything. He's never shown me anything. No way. And I mean, I can't believe he said that because he's very clear on this. I don't expect him to show us. It would completely wreck any integrity the thing has.

The film aimed to show that people are locked into a class system. You seem to be the only one in the film who crossed over from one so-called class to another [from working class to upper class]. Would you say that is true?
As far as English people's expectations about how somebody from my background should turn out, then I am an exception.

What do you think about the audience's reaction to you in the films?
When people see me as a little kid, they assume I'm stupid. In the little village school I went to, we were unsupervised in this playground. We all were fighting, and I hated it. In the film I say that I liked to sneak up on people when they're not looking and hit them. Now, I don't actually think that was true. I think that my six-year-old mind thought this was a funny thing to say, God knows why. It sounded clever to me at six. They ask us questions that they don't normally ask six-year-olds. And we weren't used to responding to it, so we're going, "Duh." When I was answering these questions, I was winging it. So people look at this film and they make assumptions about the child. And one of the things that's really clear is if you're from a social background that's different from that of the person asking the questions, the questions don't make sense to you necessarily.

One way to think about this series is that it demonstrates how people answer questions at different ages. Certainly we've learned that young children respond to questions with answers that they think the adults want to hear, not necessarily with what they know to be true. How a person answers questions at 14 or 21 is also probably unique to that age.
That's true. Even if it's not quantifiable, there's a lot of interesting stuff in this series because it is an observation of the human condition. There's a lot you can get from looking at this if you care to.

Has this film affected your professional life at all?
I don't think so, except insofar as it made me inclined to try things that were riskier in terms of getting into college. You know, this is a weird experience where these people turn up for seven days every seven years, and it's like you've stepped into an altered universe. But when the seven days are over, you step back into the regular universe and you just get on with things as if it was a strange dream.

How well do you know the other subjects? Do you keep in touch?
Not terribly well. There were three of us who were at Oxford at the same time [Nick, Bruce, and John]. So I would chat with them at the time. But I haven't kept in touch with people apart from that. It certainly hasn't been facilitated by the filmmakers. And you know, I think they've in some ways tried to prevent it.

And how much are you in touch with Apted in between films?
I might send him an e-mail a couple of times a year, and he might reply. They're not all that interested in that, except when it's time to film, and then they go bonkers.

And do you worry that this film is being taken too seriously?
No. I don't think anybody's taking it very seriously at all.

And you'll do it again?
I should think so. I mean, it's very painful, but I actually think there's a lot of value to it for some of the reasons we've discussed. And it's a piece of history now. For me to refuse to do it would be very petty at this point.

You express very clearly in the films that this is painful for you to do.
It's very, very painful to do it because you're sitting there being asked these questions, and sometimes they're intruding on feelings that you just don't normally examine. And afterwards, after chatting to him [Apted] about it, I spend the next two days in this incredible funk. It shakes my emotional foundation to an enormous extent. It really forces you to confront things that even if you have confronted them before, you're going to confront them again intensely without a break for two days. What I tend to do is pretend that once the film is made, nobody else is seeing it. It's over. I pretend it's not out there. I try not to watch it, but this time round, I was forced to watch [because Apted arranged a screening with the subjects in attendance], which made it even harder.

You've never watched it before?
I try not to.

The "cast" of 49 Up at age 21. Nick Hitchon is at the far right.

Click here to read Susan Kruglinski's interview with the director of 49 Up, Michael Apted.

Click here to read Susan Kruglinski and Jocelyn Selim's review of 49 Up itself.