# Michael Winner

Michael Robert Winner (30 October 1935 – 21 January 2013) was a British film director and producer.

## Quotes

* A team effort is a lot of people, doing what I say.
** quoted by Alix Palmer, The Sunday Times (London, 5 April 1970), cited in his autobiography Winner Takes All: A Life of Sorts (Robson Books, 2004), p. 313
* I think with less accomplished actors you often have to play tricks [...] You may actually want to upset them to make them look upset on the screen so they carry that forward.
* [To extras dressed as London policemen] You're just standing there! DOING NOTHING! Why should I pay you for doing nothing? I want you to run. You understand run! [...] R-U-N? RUN?
* [From the section entitled "Winner Talking" in a personal booklet] Lunacy is a very important quality for a successful director. Most top directors are quite a bit batty. That's what makes them great. They can conceive fantasies beyond the normal mind. Another quality is just keeping alive. It is quite remarkable that no director has been murdered in cold blood on the set.
* So when I'm directing now, you see, I'm thinking of myself, I'm projecting myself in five weeks' time, sitting in a little room with two assistants, saying, "I now need a piece of film when Mr. Caine does this, or Mr. Moore does that." And if I haven't got it, I say, "Damn it, I should have gotten that." So all the time I'm imagining myself in that little X-time hence which is why I can shoot a very complicated pattern without any pre-planning. Because I'm two people. I'm Arnold Crust, the editor, and I'm Michael Winner, the director.
** "In 'Bull's-Eye!' the Aim Is Laughter", The New York Times (14 January 1990).
** See Bullseye! released the following November.
* I think the lesbians have come over with considerable dignity and you have come over as an arsehole.
** On Richard Littlejohn Live and Uncut (local programme broadcast by ITV contractor London Weekend Television on 8 July 1994), as cited in "Television: Oases amid the Troubles", The Independent (9 July 1994)
** In response to journalist Richard Littlerjohn's interview of two lesbian mothers, one of whom was the radical feminist Linda Bellos.
* If I could go back, I would spend much more, earlier. No question. This sounds absolutely crass, but I would have taken private planes earlier, would have had a chauffeur and better cars earlier, I'd have bought better paintings earlier.
* [On his mother, Helen] Nice, little, white-haired lady. She was a killer. If she decided she wasn't happy about something, she was acid.
** From an interview, as cited in "Too sensitive for his shirt", The Guardian (6 May 2001)
* An OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross station.
* I really don't care if I get anything or not. [...] I'm very glad that they recognise my considerable skills as a toilet cleaner.
* But when you look at the rubbish who are getting these awards and the absolute non-service they have given to the nation other than financing or working for political parties, you say, "What company am I in?" At least if you go straight to the House of Lords you can wear fancy dress and have a giggle.
** On turning down an OBE for his work in campaigning for the National Police Memorial in The Sunday Times, as cited in "Winner shuns 'toilet-cleaner OBE'", BBC News (28 May 2006).
* I don't want to do something for the sake of it. I am prepared to wait. If I wait until I am buried, too bad.
** On regularly being asked to re-make Death Wish, as cited in "Winner's Death Wish 'most copied'", BBC News (5 September 2006).
* I ALWAYS LIKED MR STALIN
** On being asked who his favourite Communist dictator was .
* [On the Swiss Dignitas assisted dying clinic] It's not a walk-in death. You don't just go in and say, "Here I am, do your worst". You have to go through a whole series of papers and re-examinations just to die. You have to fill in forms and things and go have to fly there, go back twice.
* If you’re dead, you're dead, so who cares.
* [Marlon] Brando was my best friend, [Robert] Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, even though he tried to kill me three times.
** From an interview, as cited in "Michael Winner: Dignitas is not a walk in death", The Times (4 October 2012)
* So this is it: goodbye. I’ve been writing this column for nearly 20 years and I don’t want a carriage clock or a gold watch. I am trying to get rid of stuff, not collect it.
** From his last restaurant review in The Sunday Times (2 December 2012), reprinted in The Times (21 January 2013) and "Geraldine says it's time to get down from the table. Goodbye", Winner's Dinners website
* Money has no value unless it is spent. (undated)
* I think if I had my life again I would not be so utterly self-satisfied. (2004)
** Quoted in "Michael Winner" (obituary), The Times (22 January 2013)

## About Michael Winner

* He can be a generous host and a most entertaining companion but he can also be rude and a bully, as if it amuses him to confront the world in the guise of a self-made shit. It's hard to understand why this should be so. It can't be financial disappointment because God knows he has made enough money. Perhaps what gripes him is that he wanted to be a great director and never became one. Not enough for him, I suspect, that as a producer he has few peers among his contemporaries in the British film industry.
** Barry Norman And Why Not?: Memoirs of a Film Lover, London: Simon & Schuster, 2002, p. 211