Winning shots (Part 1)

It was always going to be one of those strange encounters - a bit like arriving on time at the dentist, only to be hurried into a small room and forgotten. Except it is not a dental surgery, it's a Dublin hotel room, and we are left standing in awkward silence while two men, already seated, barely register my arrival with the photographer and continue their conversation. Lots of mutual laughter is exchanged, these guys don't appear unduly bothered by anything. They are involved with the film company and its distributors. The small room becomes smaller. A lone Carry On type poster on the wall advertises Parting Shots, Michael Winner's latest quasi-comic romp. At least we've come to the right place.

Minutes pass, a small pain begins above my left eye. The delay, we are told, is due to Winner having to write his newspaper columns. He's very busy, is our Michael. It is also reassuring to hear, "He might write about you next week". Great.

The publicity person returns, holding the card key as if it were a sacred talisman and leads the way to another room, remarking in the hushed, reverential tones of a tour guide, as we approach the door, "the Princess Grace Suite". Outside, a little box of chocolates wrapped in gold paper has been left on a small table. There is a card inscribed "Michael Winner" in small, nervous handwriting. The Death Wish director, denim jacket, open shirt, denim jeans, neatly rounded Hobbit belly and small, youthful hands, waits inside; the coolest granddad in town - except, despite the patriarchal aura, he has never had children, has never been married. I must look surprised when he says this, as his narrow eyes narrow further.

Benign malevolence best describes his facial expression which seldom shifts to register either direct annoyance or simple joy. There's no doubt his is a great face to photograph, but it is a very dificult one to read. Winner by name and apparently by nature, he is personally less winning than one might expect. It is as if Peter Ustinov at his most petulant is over-playing the part of a streetwise Eastender. Come to think of it, Winner himself, with his caricature "I know my dear" London accent, could easily be a character in one of his own movies, playing a part he would probably cast Bob Hoskins in. Having made the mistake of asking Winner what he writes about in his News of the World column, he says: "Oh," long, weary sigh, "You don't read the News Of the World. Never mind darling, the public does. All four and a half million of them." What a beginning.

Having exposed "darling" as a middle-class bore, pathetically ignorant of one of Britain's great national newspapers, Winner goes on to explain: "It's a political column. It has everything, we've even got a `Twit of the Week' slot. It's really about me having a go. It's about this and that. Life," he gestures ceiling-wards. "Whatever strikes my fancy." The column began after Winner had stood in for Lord Gray and scored such a success - "I had about 400 letters" - he was given his own weekly spot. He also has a restaurant column in the Sunday Times. "I have about 12 million readers, AB readers. That's a seri- ous newspaper. You have heard of it?" he asks with mild concern. Winner's Sunday Times column, with its Cecil B. de Mille-like cast of thousands, is less about the expensive food he eats than the people he knows, loves, likes, detests; the friendships he wants to celebrate, the scores he wants to settle.

Ending the first of many pauses, it seems opportune to ask him whether he feels his journalistic involvements and celebrity status affect his reputation as a film-maker. "No. Why on earth should they? Making movies, darling, doesn't mean you can't do anything else. Lots of directors do other things. Some of them act. Sydney Pollack is always appearing in his. God's sake, can't keep himself out of them."

The buddha-like Winner radiates complacency, if not quite happiness, and is shrouded in self-belief with no interest in being interviewed by a dimwit, though he does establish a rapport with the photographer whom he refrains from addressing as darling. Dismissing bad reviews as "stupid, irrelevant, silly" notices, written by "stupid, irrelevant, silly idiots", Michael Winner appears to have met more than his fair share of "idiots" in his time. The Cambridge he attended in the 1950s was, apparently, full of them, tutors included. Having been refused entrance to Cheltenham College where his parents had wanted him to go - "they were told the Jewish quota was full and my mother, who always had a good turn of phrase, said that had been the story of the Jewish throughout history" - he went to a "useless" Quaker school. His interest in cinema had rendered him illiterate, at least according to academic authorities. The resourceful young Winner secured a crammer for himself and sat the Cambridge entrance exams which he passed. And so he entered Cambridge without an A Level to his name - a fact of which he is as proud as he is of not speaking posh.

His Cambridge does not emerge as an Arcadia; he edited the varsity magazine and soon announced he had no intention of going to lectures and tutorials, nor of paying for them either. He read economics and law and says he enjoyed law "because it's about people in conflict". Sounds a bit like his movies. He graduated with a Third. He may not glamorise his years there but, egalitarian image aside, there's no mistaking his snobbish pride in his pedigree. On being asked, did he actually like Oxford, his reply is a sharp, "Cambridge, darling, Cambridge".

Anyhow, here he is as busy as ever, in the middle of a round of interviews - and on his way to Belfast to do a chat show. He is angry with the people at his hotel. "We wrote to them and told them Mr Winner needs a writing machine here when he arrives, he has work to do." But on his arrival at 10 p.m. the previous night, "ready to settle down into work", no machine. The hotel had forgotten the arrangements. "At the moment I want to kill the hotel manager," he says reasonably. Though his rage falls short of Shakespearean, Winner is not philosophical in the face of hitches. Action, cameras, take one - it is easy to imagine the column he is going to write about Mr Winner's absent writing machine.

It takes about three seconds to grasp the fact that he is not quite like anyone else involved in the arts. Suffice it to say - this is not a tortured artist. During his career to date he has at times received reviews which would have crushed a lesser man. As one critic wrote of the controversial Dirty Weekend: "Michael Winner aims low and half misses". Still, he has continued making movies and points out that A Chorus of Disapproval (1988) won first prize at the Cologne Film Festival.

Based on Alan Ayckbourn's play and starring Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Irons, it is one of the few films Winner has made which did not originate with a Winner story. It is funny and well acted - if it has a weakness, it is in the directing which is, at times, heavy handed. Winner's talent is for the comic moment. But say that, and he is quick to remark on the action films and thrillers he has made. His career began with with a short, This is Belgium, which ended up being shot in East Grinstead as the weather in Belgium forced the crew to return to Britain. Comedy dominated his early work with films such as The Jokers, I'll Never Forget Whatshisname and You Must Be Joking. A terse western, Law- man (1970), starring Burt Lancaster and a strong cast, marked a coming of age for Winner. He then teamed up with Charles Bronson for the Death Wish series.

It must be said he does have a violent imagination. "I'm not a violent person, but yes my imagination is violent, but I think that's true of a lot of people." Violence is an integral part of cinema. "People enjoy it," he says. "Snow White is very violent."

At a time when the myth of director has taken over theatre to such an extent that actors have been reduced to secondary personages, film directors seem to have become less enigmatic. Winner seems intent on debunking the cult of the film-maker.

"Everyone makes good movies and bad. I remember Orson Welles saying he would like to make another good film before he died." Winner is alert to the dilemma of the man whose masterwork, Citizen Kane, was completed before he had reached 26. "Hitchcock made good movies, he also made terrible ones and Billy Wilder's made some appalling ones. Even one of my favourites, Carol Reed." It is possible that Winner, a natural pragmatist, has never been ravaged by twinges of artistic temperament - he's too practical.

When he speaks about movies, the word entertainment dominates. Asked about the state of the British film industry, he underlines "industry" and uses it as a way of describing film-making as a business. When asked if he sees it more as an business than an art, he replies: "You were the one to use the word `industry' darling, so I answered in the context of it being a business." He appears to have little time for what he calls "message movies", dismissing them as "arty stuff made to impress commissioning editors from Channel 4 and intended to suit minority tastes".

Clearly unimpressed by British cinema and all those message movies, he prefers the American style. "They invented it didn't they? I've always liked it better there. My work has always been appreciated in the US, they know cinema is about entertaining the masses. It is about people having a good time. It is very difficult in this country, I mean England, where there's more neurotics and jealousy than anywhere else. Look at Alan Parker, he knows. He left." Aside from not asking if I liked Parting Shots, his new movie, Winner doesn't even ask if I've seen it.