Quotes

I don't particularly like the idea that there's an arc to the story and that therefore in this scene you have to convey this bit of information or emotion. I like more the feeling that, of course, there is a shape to the story, but that each scene should feel right, should be true at that moment, and that gradually you accumulate these moments of truth until you get enough of them together that it becomes a story that's interesting.

[on 9 Songs (2004)] Cinema has been extremely conservative and prudish. I wanted to go to the opposite extreme and show the relationship only through sex.

When I was at university, the film club always showed In the Realm of the Senses (1976) at the start of a new year to get people to join. It was full of explicit sex, yet you can buy it in HMV now.

Why can a writer engage in sexual imagery with no restrictions and yet a film author can't do the same?

[on his cinematic influences] The New German Cinema during my years in the [Oxford university] cinema club. Fassbinder [Rainer Werner Fassbinder], Wenders [Wim Wenders]. In shooting Butterfly Kiss (1995) I thought of their way of filming places that weren't cinematographic in and of themselves, of their sense of the atmosphere of a place. [from: "Michael Winterbottom: Interviews", 2010]

[on why he doesn't believe in rehearsal] If you rehearse and miss filming something real, you might not get it back. If an actor is going to have to perform in a room full of crew, why rehearse without them there? Why not film everything and increase your chances?