Films > Film Reviews

Interview with Ben Wheatley

Cinema City

28/03/17

 

Ben Wheatley? Famous British film director, co-creator of such modern classics and incredible works as Kill List, Sightseers, High Rise and A Field In England? Actual Ben Wheatley coming to speak to fans at Cinema City right here in Norwich?

Our minds were blown when we heard the news - we love that Cinema City offers fans these meet and greet opportunities - so we made sure we had ten minutes with the man himself to have a word about his new movie Free Fire amongst diverse other subjects.

Such a lovely man, honest and humble, tired but enjoying meeting fans and seeing a lot of cinemas on his 25 date tour before the film comes out on the 31st March. Read our review of the movie here, and dive in for a taste of Huw's chat with Wheatley below..

 

Each film you make is vastly different to the last. Is there a reason for this? I know there’s murder in all of them..

They’re different because cinema’s such an interesting world, and why would you make the same thing again and again and again if you could help it? It was a conscious decision after making Kill List, which was quite a heavy statement in terms of a horror movie, and I got the slight fear that if I made another horror movie after that I would only ever make them for the rest of my life so Sightseers was meant to be an antidote to that, a comedy. Then we started basically ping-ponging back and forth between different things after that. I’ve just been really lucky really.

There seems to be a folklore theme running through Kill List, Sightseers and A Field In England – where did that come from?

If someone had come up to me at the beginning after I’d made Down Terrace and said you’re going to make a load of movies about ancient England I would have been very surprised! They just kind of came out, and Amy and I just followed that path. I always make films about things I’m interested in so I’m not surprised it came out but there’s no plan for any of this stuff.

What’s your creative process for a new film?

You know, I think about a movie and feel it forming in my head– it could take years – and it usually forms around the edges of playlists and music and walking around in the streets, thinking about what could be interesting. It’s a torturous metaphor but it’s like a ball of clay rolling down a hill and gathering things around it, and then eventually a kind of structure comes out of that and I write it down. So it’s very difficult to put your finger on exactly what the creative process is – it comes from so many different places. But the neatest way of saying it is that I love genre movies, and I watch them a lot. I think about what I want to see, and if I can’t see it, I write it.

So you’re really making films for you?

Yep, and by extension an audience that’s like me.

There’s undoubtedly an audience that absolutely loves your work.

Well, that’s very kind. There seems to be, and long may it reign!

How was Martin Scorsese involved with Free Fire? I know in the trailer it makes quite a big deal of him being Executive Producer.

I read in the newspaper that he’d seen Kill List and I thought that was really odd and I’d never have made that connection. I couldn’t let it go so I talked to my American agent (whose office was two doors away from Scorsese’s agent) and asked if I could meet him. They sorted it out, God bless them – it was the best thing they ever did for me! I got to meet him in New York. We had a chat and got on alright, and that led to being involved with his production company and that in turn led to Free Fire.

What’s it like, meeting your heroes like that?

Well it’s always a bit nerve-wracking! I’ve met a lot of people that I really admire over the past few years – I met Nick Roeg and that was amazing. But I’ve met other people who haven’t been as amazing to be fair! Ha ha! It’s always a bit of a roll of the dice. Scorsese was brilliant, exactly how you’d expect him to be – a walking encyclopaedia of cinema, with a genuine passion for it, and the scary thing is he knew all about the films I’d made. I guess every film director he meets he knows all their films because that’s just the kind of guy he is, but in that moment I was overwhelmed by that.

It’s strange to think that someone like Scorsese who makes so much work also has time to watch so much as well.

Yeah but I think all those guys at the top of their game watch everything, cos they need to know what’s going on. You’re a fool if you retreat into an ivory tower, not wanting to see what’s going in world cinema, in every country, because there’s all sorts of stuff you can riff on top of. Otherwise you might just end up repeating yourself, you know.

It’s nice to see Michael Smiley back in Free Fire, as you didn’t use him in High Rise. You seem to have more recognisable actors as you move forward in your career. How does it feel to work with this moving crowd?

Actors are actors, so whether they’re recognisable in Japan on big posters for the next Marvel film or whether they do rep in Islington over a pub, on the day when they’re in front of a camera, that’s the leveller. They all have to do their job so my process hasn’t changed since day one in that respect – the crew is basically the same and the way I work on set is the same so I’ve been lucky in that respect.

Given that Free Fire takes place all in one warehouse, how do you think that small space affected the actors?

It affects them because it’s like being in a play. They’re in every day, there’s no down time for them to go to their trailers and look at Facebook or read other people’s scripts for other movies! It was very intense for them, particularly as the set was a 360° set so there was no looking out into a craft area or an empty studio – everything they see they’re in the moment. I’ve had that on all the films I’ve done – it’s immersive, and it really helps them get into the moment.

I got a real sense in High Rise that the building was a character – do you feel that carried forward to Free Fire’s warehouse?

Yeah. I think all the environments in movies should be a character to a degree. That’s what clever art design is, to make sure that the DNA of the film is in the environments as much as possible, and even if that’s in the dressing, or the location, or the colour of the walls or in every fibre of a space if you have complete control over it like we did in Free Fire and in High Rise.

How do you feel about the scale of action in movies? Your films are quite small in scale, but Hollywood movies are quite big, and seem to be getting bigger and bigger.

I think that it doesn’t really matter how big things are if there’s no connection between the characters and the action. It’s like if you blow up the universe, which is the biggest you can get, it all depends on where you film it from. If you film it from very far away it’s just a little white dot that flickers on and off, but if you film it up close it’s very different. It’s a bit facetious but there is a problem with wide shots and mid shots, in terms of cinema – if you go too wide it’s boring and it doesn’t matter the detail of what you blow up, it’s uninteresting. But if you go close, which is what Free Fire is all about, the audience start to understand what’s at stake. If you show someone stubbing their toe or dropping a brick on their foot audiences can relate to that feeling of pain, but they don’t know what the pain is of a universe exploding! The interesting thing about Free Fire is that when someone gets shot in the head no one really cares but when they get pronged on a needle or something the audience go “oooh” because they know how that feels. That’s part of that conversation – if you get too far away from the human experience then you become less interested in what you’re seeing and it’s not a spectacle any more, just mechanical.

You’re married to your long term collaborator and writer Amy Jump. What’s that like for you as a couple? I’d personally find that very difficult!

It’s fine, and what it means, fundamentally, is that I get to spend lots of time with my wife which I wouldn’t be able to do in any other job. When I worked in an office I would go spend nine hours with my ‘office family’, and then go to the pub with them and come home, and wouldn’t see anything of your actual real family, and that’s really bad. So if there’s a bit of stress through doing things that’s way, that’s fine, because the benefits are actually massive.

How do you feel your background in animation has affected your subsequent work?

I think that B3TA was a place in which enabled a lot of people to make stuff and work on their own stuff and now care about what other people said. Also it was like a massive shot of adrenaline in terms of a need to make stuff. I’ve had a few spurts of work in my life – in an art gallery in the 90’s, then the B3TA years I made more work than I’d ever made in my life, just creating images and animation and stuff, and then more recently this film production stuff has been the most consistent amount of work that I’ve done since B3TA. The main thing I got from B3TA was I’d seen other people do terrible drawings and put them up online and not care. At that point I was very precious about drawing and thought I had to do it right or it meant I was a failure, but when I saw other people not caring I suddenly didn’t care and I grew to love my own work and I think that was massively important – once I loved my own stuff I could produce tonnes of it, but before that I was really uptight about it. Becoming looser as a maker of stuff is key, and I think that’s what holds a lot of younger people back is that they’re too uptight, scared of failure and of making of fool of themselves.

 

See Free Fire at Cinema City from 31st March. Tickets here