I have no idea what he’s talking about. I was only just warming up. Good job he never worked with Oliver Reed…
Winterbottom seems chipper, given that two projects have recently collapsed. One was A Beautiful Game, about gangs in Manchester. The other was Murder in Samarkand, based on the memoirs of the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who accused Tony Blair’s Government of connivance in torture. The director rattles through a long explanation involving difficult locations, some creative differences with the screenwriter, David Hare, the pitfalls of making a black comedy about torture and, not least, the phenomenal amount of vodka he and Eaton had to absorb on their reconnaissance trips. “We were drunk the whole time. We thought, ‘Our bodies can’t take this any more. Three months of it and we’ll be dead’.”
So now the name on the Director’s chair has been changed to Julien Temple. If he could work with Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious…