Michael Winterbottom On ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, Income Inequality, And The Rise Of Russell Brand

When I saw The Emperor’s New Clothes back in April, the comedian-turned-political activist behind it, Russell Brand, had yet to reverse his “don’t vote” position, to endorse Labour leader Ed Miliband in the British elections.

The disastrous result, both for Miliband and for Brand (who later expressed regret for getting involved at all), was still in the future as I sat with Michael Winterbottom, the film’s prolific and equally political filmmaker, at the film’s premier at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival. So too was this home-grown parody, ridiculing both the comedian and the soon-to-resign politician.

Picking on Russell Brand has become something of a favoured past time, no matter what side of the political chasm you happen to reside in. A frequent target of the British tabloid press, he also manages to be derided by many who share at least some of his political views;  Johnny Rotten, for instance, has called him “idiotic”, while a Guardian columnist dismissed him as “vain and destructive.”

I believe this is an example of what the kids today are calling a #burn. @PrivateEyeNews on @rustyrockets pic.twitter.com/VyTUS9MetW

— Peter George Owen (@pgo1980) May 14, 2015

Should a self-declared egotistical comedian be pontificating on serious political issues? Is Brand more help than hindrance to the left? Michael Winterbottom seems to think so.

“Russell gets attacked because he’s a public figure and he’s got left-wing views, radical views,” the director tells me. “But actually he helps by bringing attention to issues like housing, that don’t really get that much attention.”

Although it’s based on Brand’s book Revolution, any call for an actual political revolution is muted in this film. Gone also are the spiritual musings for which Brand is known, and often mocked. “When I live in the illusion of a separate self, the part of me that knows I am at one with all phenomena feels starved and bereft,” he writes in Revolution — no doubt the kind of statement that led Hadley Freedman to declare him the real-life incarnation of Zoolander’s dopey Hansel, who spouts what she calls “spiritual baloney.”

What’s left in the film is the core of Brand’s political ideology: that too few hoard too much of the wealth. An important observation, but hardly a revelation. As such, the film comes across as safer, less polemic than the book — a suggestion that appears to make Winterbottom bristle.

“I think it’s still polemic,” he objects. “It’s just a little bit narrower in focus. There are so many things on going in the book.”

That may be true but, in contrast to both Revolution and Brand’s Trews channel, the objective here seems more about repairing the current economic system than it does replacing it. One of the ways Winterbottom narrows the focus is to centre the film around the meagre amount of tax paid by the wealthy. The idea, clearly, is to make people mad as hell so they can’t take it anymore. “If you’re not angry enough to kick a pig in a ditch,” Brand intones to the camera at one point, “you’ve misunderstood the problem.”

“There’s a huge amount of people all suffering from what is going on,” Winterbottom explains. “The key is to get as many of those as possible actively involved to try and change things. Unfortunately, all the money and power goes in one direction; the only balance to that is actually the number of people.”

Brand’s book makes no secret of the fact his intended audience are those very same “huge amounts of people”, especially the ones who normally wouldn’t engage in politics. Winterbottom is equally adamant: “Without grassroots pressure, you’re not going to change anything.”

From The Shock Doctrine To Russell Brand

The Emperor’s New Clothes picks up where Winterbottom’s previous economic documentary, The Shock Doctrine, leaves off. That film, made in 2010 and based on Naomi Klein’s book of the same name, identifies Chicago School economics and the big banks that adhere to its ideology as the cause of the Global Financial Crisis. The Emperer’s New Clothes asks why they are still permitted to benefit at everyone else’s expense.

Is it frustrating that five years later so little has changed?

“It’s baffling,” Winterbottom sighs. “Everyone knew what that problem was and the effect it had. And yet the 2010 [British] election was structured in a way that [claimed] public debt comes down to too much public spending, and our solution to that problem is to cut back on benefits to students and people with disabilities.”

Although Winterbottom stresses he is speaking from a British perspective, he could easily be talking about Australia. Recall Joe Hockey’s grave warning that the “Age of Entitlement is over,” and the front page of one of our own tabloids denouncing those on disability pensions as “slackers.”

“It is frustrating. It’s incredibly frustrating,” he continues. “There’s no good answer [to explain] how, in the space of two years, we managed to forget the financial crisis was down to the bankers, and all that anger against the bankers was somehow transferred to people on benefits.”

All of which, says Winterbottom, makes the importance of a mass, grassroots movement even more profound. But what would such a movement look like? “Everyone should get involved [at the] local level, community level, there should be democracy in factories.

“In workplaces, you have no kind of democratic control, it’s completely top-down — [but] that sort of collective, that group involvement is how democracy works. That’s not an alternative to voting, it just means you can’t just sit at home for five years, then cast [your] vote and somehow that will turn into democracy — because clearly, it isn’t [working].”

“I personally do vote,” Winterbottom clarifies, in reference to Brand’s then anti-voting stance. “But even if you do vote, it’s still clear that Westminster is a farce, it’s still clear that just voting once every five years is not enough to have democracy.”

The filmmakers’ vision of a more robust democracy and a fairer economic system is certainly admirable, but so much of both the film and Brand’s activism revolves around his own undeniable charisma. With so much of The Emperor’s New Clothes driven by Brand’s personality, I wonder if his celebrity could overshadow the film’s objectives.

“He’s popularity can be used against him,” Winterbottom concedes. “But it’s one of the weapons he has as well. When we were filming in Essex, he had people running up to him, wanting their photograph taken with him, hugging him, kissing him. There is an audience that responds to him.

“Russell can get people to listen to what he’s saying or think about what he’s saying who wouldn’t normally think about it. They don’t necessarily agree with him, but at least they hear it.”

Those final words proved to be more prescient than Winterbottom intended. The common people may have been lining up to take a selfie with Brand, but that couldn’t translate into enough political engagement to deny the Tories another term in government. For now, it seems, the emperor’s new clothes remain resplendent as ever.

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The Emperor’s New Clothes is screening early next week at Sydney Film Festival, before a national release on Thursday June 11.

Also on Thursday June 11, Junkee is hosting the Australian premiere of ‘Brand: A Second Coming’ — a documentary about Russell Brand’s rise as political activist, directed by Ondi Timoner (Dig!, We Live In Public).

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Ruby Hamad is freelance writer, whose work has  appeared in Daily Life, The Guardian, The Age, The Drum, Crikey and more. She splits her time between New York and Sydney.