Michael Winterbottom is England’s answer to Steven Soderbergh. Born less than two years apart, these two prolific directors have hopped from one genre to another—and from the independent scene to Hollywood and back—for decades.
After working in TV, Winterbottom moved into features with 1995’s Butterfly Kiss, about a pair of lesbian serial killers. Since then, he’s captured the Manchester music scene (24 Hour Party People), adapted Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me) and Thomas Hardy (twice!), and shot one of the most sexually explicit mainstream films ever released in the United States (9 Songs), bringing a piercing intelligence and a sly sense of humor to each.
His latest, The Trip to Spain, continues the shenanigans first chronicled in 2010’s The Trip and 2014’s The Trip to Italy: Actor/comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon travel to fancy restaurants, ostensibly for review purposes, but really so they can do dueling Michael Caine impressions and wax humorously on the foibles of middle-aged manhood. Winterbottom took time out from his vacation (in Italy, in fact) to have a chat.