Michael Winterbottom is no stranger to controversy. His new film, The Killer Inside Me, is just the latest of his works to get people riled up. And he’s not stopping now.
Talking to Winterbottom last week in West Hollywood, I found out that his next project is just as likely – if not moreso – to piss people off as his new Jim Thompson adaptation. The film is The Promised Land, and it’s about the battle against Jewish terrorists in Palestine in the 1930s. You can see already where this would get people on edge.
Said Winterbottom:
“It’s set in the 1930s and it’s about two British police chasing Abraham Stern, who is one of the leaders of one of the underground groups in Israel… Palestine, as it was at the time. It’s a really exciting period. A lot of people don’t know how involved Britain was in the formation of Israel. It has parallels to what’s going on in Israel today but also to Afghanistan and Iraq in the sense that the British are there sort of policing it. Not really being political and sometimes favoring one side over the other – sometimes being seen as the Jewish people as favoring the Arabs, sometimes seen by the Arabs as favoring the Jewish people.
“Then we discovered this story, this real story, about these guys in their 20s who were running anti-terrorist division for the British/Palestine police, chasing Stern. They captured him literally two days before the beginning of the Second World War. They were all released on the understanding that they would no longer fight the British, but Stern didn’t agree with that and wanted to keep on fighting the British. It became a cat and mouse chase between the police and Stern. In the end the two British police caught up with him and assassinated him, and one of the police was shot.”
I had to ask him: “Do you think this will piss people off?”
He smiled. “Probably,” he said cheerfully. But he explained that pissing people off wasn’t the end result he was after, just what happens along the way. “Films, books, plays – part of it is making people see things different ways, and part of that is provoking people.”
Look for the entirety of my interview with Winterbottom soon.
38 comments
Good luck Michael.
Europeans have a weird bone of contention against Israel. This film just screams that to me.
Yeesh. Is it too much to ask that there be ONE actually good "just the facts" movie about the foundation of Israel – which IS a legitimate fascinating historical topic – before a glut of innevitably-politicized (one way or another) bits about how it relates to "the situation now?"
This guy is a total Anti-Semite. 10 million jews did not die in the Holocaust so that we could read this crap today.
Cohen, i wonder whose side you're on.
No respect unless the film touches on the Grand Mufti of Jeruselem and his dealing with the Nazis during the same period. Oh, by the way, same guy you trace Iraqi and Syrian Ba'athism of today to.
Why does the film have to do X, Y, and Z? What will that satisify, especially if it isn't essential to the film's narrative.
And how do you have a film about Israel that ISN'T political? We're talking about the founding of a sovereign nation, which is an inherently political entity.
@Cohen: How predictable!! Israel acts like fascist fucking assholes and you cry the race card! What a surprise! Let me see, what does Gaza remind me the most of? Pack an ethnic minority into a tiny urban space and bomb the shit out of them. I'll take the Warsaw Ghetto for $200, Alex.
Answer me this, Cohen: what's it like becoming the thing you hate the most?
@Cohen, How is he an anti-semite for depicting actual history? Ridiculous claim. Anytime anyone says something negative about Israel, they are labeled an anti-semite. This actually happened, moron! But the bashing of Muslims is accepted and encouraged. That's the American way, right? My son's mother is a Jew but she realizes that no one is perfect, especially Israel. If you don't like truth with your history, you are probably from Texas. Change the books, right?
Hey Cohen, this has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with anti-semitism, or the Holocaust. But then again, I'm sure you'll call this comment anti-semetic, because no one can say anything even remotely critical against Israel or Jewish people without being called an anti-semite. Oh, and I dare you to find anything wrong with what I just wrote…
What's funny to me is that anyone would get angry by someone presenting history. I mean it's not like he's making up a story to support his own beliefs he's clearly basing this on historical events so why should anyone get angry.And to get completely insane and call him an anti-semite is so pathetic. That's like saying someone who makes a movie where white people kill native americans obviously hate white people and think they are evil. It's ridiculous.
Uh– "Cohen" was probabl being facetious. (10 million??). Interesting, though (and depressing) to see people's knee-jerk reactions. Or maybe that was his point.
Hey Cohen you assfucker you genocidal bastard you.
@ 2 Js Partisan "Europeans" oh boy – you liike to be called "Americans" so you are on the same line, like mr. Chavez. please using brains is allowed.
@#4 – and the trolls are out again. my guess is that "cohen" is about as jewish as charlton heston. don't get your panties in a wad people… probably just some 17-year-old in bumfuck indiana, thinking he's cool for stirring shit up on the interwebs.
@Js Partisan
Depicting historical events is now against Israel, is it?
vegetable and mineral have solid alibis for the time in question
Who knew chud.com was the breeding ground for so many Jew haters and Pro hamas supporters?
Any word on whether or not this will be in 3D???
This Seth Cohen bashing needs to stop now! When is someone going to make a movie about how the Ottomans kept the peace between Christians, Jews, and Muslims for centuries? If anyone started a fight, they would come in and kill everyone, sooooo no one worthwhile started fights. Historically, this has come to be known as the "Don't start nuthin', won't be nuthin'" school of govt. cultural management ala Big Willie (and of course Chris Evans in Losers).
If it is history, there is no problem portraying it as real history. But on the flip side, anti-semitism is rampant. To one "jewish terrorist", you have thousands of arab/muslim terrorists. Give Cohen a break. Lets be real, the media most of the time manipulates any story about Israel on the negative side.
Just to show you how history doesn't like to be shoved into easy compartments and how this movie could stir quite a bit of discussion: the Stern-lead wing of the Jewish Zionist movement actually proposed an alliance…with Nazi Germany to drive out the British.
Hey, Michael, stick to hardcore-porn-in-the-guise-of-artistic-movie movies, buddy. How about a "9 Songs" sequel? There's nothing better than realizing that a director has just convinced an honest to goodness actress to have actual sex in a movie. You da man! By the way, if you really want to be "brave", Michael? How about making a movie about Muslims stoning a woman to death for showing ankle. What, you scared or something? Bitch.
"Lets be real, the media most of the time manipulates any story about Israel on the negative side. "
Do you live in the US? Because that's certainly not the case here.
it's BEFORE the war! therefore it's cool – there's still loads of jews and everyone else isn't walking on eggshells….
18 guys out of what 1 billion and you stigmatize a whole religon. guy wants to make movie about the freaking founder of a nation based on facts and you say its unfair without even seeing anything yet….
i don't mind a little israel bashing for once.
shame of it is, no one watches winterbottom films.
There needs to be a way to tell the story of the oppression of Palestinians without people feeling like it automatically discounts the oppression Jewish communities have faced. People in the US, by and large, know nothing about this stuff. It is hard to articulate because people identify Jewish as an ethnicity, a nationality, as a political entity, a religion, a culture, and peeling the layers apart to look at the few people in government in both Israel and the US who have committed modern-day atrocities on top of the history of colonization of both US and Israel makes it tougher.
#26, right, there are only 18 Islamic extremists in the world.
So, you criticize Israel for defending her right to exist. How would you defend your family in their legal home from rocket, sniper and suicide bomb attacks? Israel gave Gaza to Palestinians in 2005. In return for this generosity, Palestinians have used Gazan land to launch more than 4,000 rockets at Jewish women and children in cities and town inside Israel. These terrorists then hide behind Palestinian civilians, to generate the highest possible collateral causalities. They prefer the death of their own people, just to show the world how "terrible" Jews behave. Palestinians mistake generosity for weakness. The charters of Hamas and Hezbollah openly call for the total destruction of Israel and the death or expulsion of every Jew. And you criticize Israel?
Charles. Israel does just about the same. Use the holocaust as an excuse to do whatever the fuck it wants. It basically goes like this to Israel. If an Israeli is killed he is an innocent victim but if a palestinian is killed he is a casualty of war.
Great, make some movies no one cares about, Michael Winterbottom.
@comment 31- Israel spends millions of dollars on aid to the Palestinians, in spite of the rockets shot into Israel all the time. Try reading some facts and not just repeating what you've heard from the idiots.
#4"Cohen" – quite clearly not jewish nor Israeli – his comment reeks of cynicism with a hint of holocaust denial.
Of course all Muslims – All 2 billion approx. of them are extremists. By this same logic as majority of people in prison are black, all african american's have a crime problem. Or all poor people are potential criminals?There is an inherent stupidty in this labellling that most of America doesn't get. Terrorism didn't start with 9/11 and with Muslims despite what Hollywood woudl generally like you to believe. And of course we know Israel never ever hits civilians or is at best casual with Palestinian lives right? This'd be a good movie except no one in America will see it because if it ain't an Arab terrorist and heroic joint US/Israeli bad ass commando team its all fiction right? The arrogance and stupidty is kind of sickening.
Charles, I couldn't have said it better myself. While there is certainly fault to be found on both (or rather, all) sides, the truth has been distorted as of late to try to show Israel as some kind of brutal oppressive force, rather than as a nation trying to survive amidst many others who wish to see it destroyed completely (and who have repeatedly tried to do so these past sixty-some years).
For those of you upset about the situation of the Arabs/Muslims and how bad Israel is, look up some history (this takes more work then reading biased snipets) and find out HOW the occupied territories became"occupied".
Israel agreed to the original British 2 state plan but the Arabs resoinse was ti attack in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982. They lost each time and they lost some of that land THEY decided to reject in favor of terrorizing Israel. Wonder what an Arab country would have looked like if they had done what Israel did and build a strong democratic country that excells in science and technological advances in the world. What do the Arabs states contribute? And they have a great defense system because they HAVE to.
This doesn't make Winterbottom an anti-Semite. But it DOES constitute him portraying a distorted depiction of history. The Stern gang was the most radical of resistance groups and denounced by the other Jewish fighters. He's making it seem like that was the norm, when they were the exception. The irony of it all, is that the British started this $hitstorm to begin with, by reneging on promises made to the Jews in order to appease the Muslims. Sound familiar? It should–see modern day Britain.
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