Notes on Michael Winterbottom; plus, a new book

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by the fine folks at Shooting People, the world’s largest social network for independent filmmakers. They’d heard that the University Press of Mississippi was about to publish my new book, Michael Winterbottom: Interviews (part of their “Conversations with Filmmakers” series) and wanted to know if they could distribute copies to the top-ten prize winners of their monthly film competition, which was being judged by SP patron Winterbottom. (Full disclosure: Shooting People’s creative director is a business acquaintance of mine, and a friend.) They also asked if I might like to post a few entries on the director to their house blog, which I readily agreed to, though I wasn’t really sure what angle to take for an audience of creative practitioners who might or might not be cinephiles. What eventually came through in the writing was a weave of first-person anecdote, observations on the British director’s style and approach, and indications of why his methodology would be important for burgeoning indie filmmakers to take note of, if not emulate. Below are the three mini-essays I generated, ordered by the date they were posted.