The Trip

Michael Winterbottom: ‘Studying English at Oxford University was a mistake’

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The director, 62, tells Michael Segalov about vertigo, risk aversion, shouting to get attention and how Steve Coogan makes things easy

By Michael Segalov
I grew up in a small bungalow on a big housing estate on the edge of Blackburn. My mum was a teacher; my dad was a draftsman in a factory that made television sets. Everything about my childhood was ordinary.

Blackburn’s Unit Four cinema was a scruffy place. In my teens, I went to its fortnightly foreign-language film screenings religiously. I was always desperate to escape, and these films briefly transported me all over the world.

During a childhood swimming lesson, Mum noticed I was lying on the bottom of the pool. A teacher pulled me out of the water. I don’t remember anything, but after that, Mum obsessed about me never venturing deep. I still don’t find swimming in the sea relaxing.

Constant pacing is an awful habit of mine, so my family says. I regularly march around the house while dragging my fingers through my hair and talking to myself.

I left school at 17 and travelled abroad for the first time – I went to pick grapes in the south of France. One night I went to a concert with a German colleague who rode a massive motorbike. Driving us back, I realised he was off his face at 100mph. I clung on for dear life, and haven’t been on a motorbike since.

Steve Coogan makes directing far too easy. We’ve worked together a lot. Naturally, he’s constantly doing things that are both funny and interesting. You can just point a camera at him and leave him to it. I’ve never had more fun than working together on 24 Hour Party People.

Studying English at Oxford University was a mistake. I loved reading, but I wasn’t committed to the rigour of it. Halfway through my studies, I came across a cinema workshop in the city. There and then, I knew what I wanted to do.

I suffer from a particular type of vertigo. I’m fine on planes, or whenever someone else is in charge. But if I’m in control? Even short ladders make me feel vulnerable.

Don’t make a short film, make a long one. That’s the advice I give to young filmmakers. Go out there and shoot something yourself. Not lots of 10 minute things, but a proper one. The only way to learn is to do it.

Generally speaking, I’m risk averse, my mum was over-protective of me as a child. I was the same with my kids in the playground. Caution was bred into me, and it’s far too late to change.

If you get a chance to eat, then you should eat: you never know when the next meal is coming in my business.

People say I have a temper. I certainly do shout a lot. It’s not out of anger, just a way of trying to get attention.

Political extremism pushes people to the edge, and violence sees opposing sides become further polarised. My new film, Shoshana, explores this in Palestine under British colonial rule, but it’s still true in the region today, and around the world. In the past 10 years, those divides have deepened.

The film industry wasn’t accessible when I started out, and it’s still not today. Back then it was a union closed shop. Your career hinged on knowing people. Of course, that remains helpful. Now the best way to start is to go out and start shooting yourself, or to work a lot for free. Either way, that requires big money.

I’m entirely unsurprising as a man. Everything about me is, I think, rather obvious and straightforward.

Shoshana + Michael Winterbottom Q&A plays as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival 2023 which takes place in London cinemas from 9-19 November, with a national tour taking place from 9-30 November and a selection of films available online from 20-27 November

 

Source: Michael Winterbottom: ‘Studying English at Oxford University was a mistake’

The best TV shows on BritBox to watch now

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The streaming service boasts an impressive line-up of British television to choose from.

BritBox has stolen our hearts during lockdown, with the relatively new streaming service providing a healthy dose of nostalgia and a mix of comedies and serious dramas.

The streamer is a collaborative effort between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, and it brings together the best content from those broadcasters for the price of £5.99/month.

Shows available to watch as boxsets include the likes of Downton Abbey, Midsomer Murders, Gavin & Stacey, Wolf Hall, and The Vicar of Dibley, with more shows set to join their ranks on the platform.

Read on for the best BritBox television picks from the RadioTimes.com staff, from Love Island to Miss Marple.

The Vicar of Dibley

This sinfully funny sitcom was one of our top Lockdown Binges earlier in the year, and with good reason – Dawn French answers all our prayers as Geraldine Granger, a left-leaning vicar and bonne vivante who rocks up to the sleepy village of Dibley and turns it upside down.

The series first aired back in the mid-90s when female vicars were still a novelty, but new viewers will find that the show still provides laughs aplenty, alongside sneaking in some still-prescient messages about sexism and body positivity.

The sitcom also features a cast of memorable and eccentric characters. Watch on BritBox.

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The Trip to Greece Is the Final, Most Despairing Film Yet

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Amid all the decadent food and Michael Caine impressions, the four-part series has always had a darker edge.

By Bilge Eberi  / Vulture

My grandfather, who died several years ago at the age of 98, was a Turkish archeologist who specialized in ancient Hellenic ruins. He spent almost half a lifetime digging up a long-forgotten Greek town on the Aegean coast of Turkey, a site that happened to be right next to a coal-mining facility. It both tickled and saddened him to see the old world juxtaposed with the new, timeless Greek columns and graves framed against huge piles of black, black coal. He wasn’t much of a romantic, but he did love the poetry and majesty of myth. When I was a child he’d glance out over the horizon, at the ships and sailboats passing in the blue distance, and tell me about how through these very Aegean waters had sailed the navies of Paris and Menelaus. He loved to enliven the everyday with evocations of the ancient world.
(He was obsessed with Troy, and spent years writing a book about it.) I, a snot-nosed kid for much of this time, paid only scant attention to his stories.
Only later did I realize what a gift he was giving me.

So, weirdly, I was reminded of my grandfather as I watched The Trip to Greece, the fourth and final installment of the film and TV series following Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as they make their way around the hotels and tourist spots and fine-dining establishments of the world. This film (which actually begins in Turkey, in the area around Troy) opens and ends with words from The Odyssey, and at various points evokes the stories of Odysseus and Aeneas as Coogan and Brydon eat, joke, imitate, and niggle their way through Greece. The parallels are inexact and rough, and to director Michael Winterbottom’s credit, the film doesn’t try too hard to adhere to any kind of mythic structure. But what does remain at the end of this final and most despairing of the Trip entries is a sense that the past is never quite done with us, that today’s heartbreaks and passions and tragedies are merely variations on ancient patterns.

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