Ben Wheatley discusses his love for the 90 minute movie
Coming off the back of the brilliant Kill List and Down Terrace, filmmaker Ben Wheatley is considered to be one the most promising directing talents in the UK, and it appears he has delivered the goods once more, in the critically-acclaimed Sightseers – and we had the pleasure in sitting down with the talented director and discussing his latest project.
Set for release on November 30, Sightseers tells the story of hapless romantics Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe) who begin a brutal killing spree when away on a humble caravanning holiday. As the lead stars also co-wrote the screenplay, we asked Ben what it was like taking on somebody else’s project for a change.
Wheatley also discussed his love for the 90 minute movie, and his temptation in bringing one of his favourite actors and regular collaborator Michael Smiley on board…
How did you get involved with Sightseers?
After Down Terrace, I got a call from Big Talk, which is Nira Park’s company, who produced Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. And I had a meeting with them and they really liked Down Terrace and they felt that that was the kind of tone that they – and they knew about the comedy stuff I’d done for TV as well, for Ideal and the sketch show stuff I’d done – so they thought that made sense then, for Sightseers, for the approach that they’d imagined for that. And I knew Alice and Steve and I knew of the short film version of Sightseers as well that Paul King had directed, so I’d seen that a few years before. So I thought, ‘Oh, that’s good’ and it fitted with what I wanted to do next, because I knew I wanted to do a comedy – I’d already written another comedy, actually, called I’m An Acrobat, which we’re still trying to get made – to be the next film after Kill List, because I didn’t want to do another horror, I wanted to change it up again after, so do a crime film, a horror film and then a comedy and then a historical drama, which is the one that’s coming up next [A Field In England]. So there was that and then I really fancied doing something that was fast and loose and kind of improvised and working with comedians who had an improvisation background was really interesting. That was basically how it came together and then Kill List had to happen and basically the money came together to do Sightseers as the press came out on Kill List, so that was a bit more of a make or break moment and then the funding came through.
What did you like about Alice and Steve’s script? Was it the full script at that point or just the bones of it?
There was a full script, yeah. I liked it because it made sense to me with the other two movies and I liked the fact that they were – that initially Chris’ character was quite anarchic and breaking out from his constraints and then encouraging Tina to do it and then Tina breaks out and goes even further and I liked that, them kind of leap-frogging over each other and influencing each other and also I just liked the sweetness of the romcom elements of it and I wanted to do something that would make people laugh and be sweet rather than make people unhappy.
Did you make any significant changes to the characters that they wrote?
No, I think the characters remained the same. I mean, there’d been a lot of different versions of the script and different endings and stuff and they’d kind of written versions – different drafts of the script had started at different parts of their relationship, so like in the original short film version they’re middle-aged and they’ve been doing it for years. And Amy Jump, who co-wrote Kill List as well, did a pass on the script and we kind of took elements of it that we really liked from their version and then kind of added characters in and sharpened it up and brought what we’d learned from doing Kill List and Down Terrace to it to make sure the structure was a bit more concise.
Alice called Sightseers her baby – did you feel any pressure, taking on something that was very close to them already and that they’d been working on for several years, to do justice to their story?
No, not really. No. I mean, it’s always tricky working with writer-performers and making sure that that side of it isn’t – you don’t ride roughshod over it, but at the end of the day, as a director you’ve got to be in control of it and as soon as you start asking people permission about stuff, you’re done. The main thing about this thing is having a consistent voice within it and the experiences that I’ve had making movies are not the experiences that they’ve got, so they needed that to bring it through. And some of those elements weren’t in the script and needed to be put in and once Amy and I started authoring it, then we were basically in charge.
Alice and Steve stayed together in a caravan to get into the characters. Did you, or any of the crew stay in caravans as well, to live the experience?
It was a beautiful dream that we were going to drive round in caravans and film it like that, but I was naïve about the ins and outs of what caravanning is. I don’t know if you know about how it works but there’s tourers and statics and all this kind of stuff and there’s just not enough touring spaces to do that and I think the cost of it would have been huge, in comparison to just going in coaches and staying in B&Bs.
Were you under any pressure to deliver a 15 certificate film?
No, I mean, from the beginning we said it was going to be a 15, because it’s an economic thing, but it doesn’t need to be an 18 and I’d agreed with that at the start. So there was a bit of nervousness about some of the scenes in it but I was reasonably confident that it was going to be a 15, from what I understood a 15 to be. Which is now, basically, a 15 is like an 18 was, or a Triple X was back in the day. You can’t believe some of the stuff, I mean the 12A has some of the most violent things I’ve ever seen [laughs]. I think as long as there’s not grotty, sexual violence or loads of scenes of people jacking up heroin, I think you can get away with most things in a 15.
Alice did mention last week that she was a bit surprised at some of the gruesome scenes. Did you enjoy shocking her with those?
Yeah, no, I always said that that’s what we were going to do. I don’t think she could have been too surprised – she was there when we shot it, after all. Yeah I that was important, the more gruesome elements were important for me, on a vaguely moral level. It’s slightly dangerous to go Wile E Coyote on people and bash them about, when you never see what happens to them – it ends up like the A-Team or something. People are real, you want the audience to believe the people are real, and when violent things happen to them you should see that, you know. And understand the consequences of what these characters’ actions are, which are funny but also abhorrent. It’s part of the ride of dealing with Sightseers – going from laughter to feeling guilty and then back to laughter again.
You mentioned before about balancing the comedy and the more dark side of the film. Obviously you’ve done it brilliantly in your past two films, but do you still find it quite difficult to make a film that is equally as funny as it is dark and intense?
I don’t know, that kind of stuff comes reasonably naturally to me! It’s just taste as you do it and cut it, and you’re going “that’s a bit grim” or “that’s not really working”, “that’s a bit over the top” – over that editing process you just kind of massage so that it works. With editing – a film talks to itself up and down the movie. A scene at the beginning will talk to a scene at the end thematically or visually and there’s lots of elements across the whole film, and that process is tuning all these moments so they all sing the same tune, or the right tune, across it. And if you put stuff in where they’re being – some of the scenes that came out were because of that. The original assemble edit of this film was 4 hours. And then whole bits of it came out because they don’t fit within the scheme of it.
Were you consciously working towards a 90 minute target?
Yes, I’m a big fan of 90 minutes. Or even 85. And it’s to do with my own experiences of cinema seats being a bit uncomfortable, and I don’t know why movies are so long anymore – it confuses me. And there are plenty of brilliant 90-minute movies sitting inside 2-hour movies. As someone who stopped watching The Lord of the Rings after they threw the ring down Mount Doom, I can testify to that.
You dabbled in a bit of pure horror, with zombies in the Frightfest short, and I believe your ABCs is a Vampire-based one? Could you ever see yourself doing a pure old-fashioned horror?
It’s difficult because they’ve kind of played out for me, a lot of those genres, but at the same time I desperately want to do them. I’d love to do a zombie film but they’re just done, they’re over and you’re in the shadow of giants (and other giants as well, nearer giants as well). So I can’t really see it happening. I really jumped at doing the Frightfest thing specifically and the ABCs thing because I at least got a chance to play there a bit. Obviously this’ll be dug up as I horribly contradict myself in 5 years’ time doing a big zombie vampire film!
Sightseers has been critically acclaimed across the world, and has done so well at festivals – do you see this as potentially the film that could boost your reputation and profile in America and allow you to move over there and make a film in the future?
I don’t think I’ll be moving over to America, but eventually I’d like to make a studio film or something like that, but it’s certainly not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. – it’s just another type of filmmaking. But it’s not in my hands.
I’m curious as to how big an influence Mike Leigh is. I know Down Terrace drew comparisons with Mike Leigh’s work, and there are strong echoes of Nuts in May in Sightseers. How much of that were you conscious of?
Well I’d seen a lot of Leigh’s stuff but I hadn’t seen Nuts in May until about 2 weeks before we shot, so I looked at that and went “Oh, ok!”. So we took a lot of stuff out that was too similar to it. But you know, Steve Oram says there are only 2 camping films – that and Carry on Camping, and they all look the same, they’ve got tents and people with beards in! There’s a certain bit of class stuff that may be a bit similar to it, and he’s a bit anal about how he travels around, and she’s a bit of child-person to start with. But beyond that, they’re not massively similar, and Leigh’s stuff is, I dunno, it’s set in England, mainly. But it doesn’t loom over me heavily.
So you’re not a big fan then?
I like his stuff, I’ve seen lots of it – but it’s not an influence in terms of thinking “Ah yeah, I’ll get in line with Leigh”, I like to think I’m making stuff about the environment I’m in and not necessarily about other filmmakers because I can, you know. The next film I’m doing is Alison’s Party [Laughs].
Steve does look a little like the lead role in Nuts in May…
He does yeah, but what can I do? It’s just the way he looks!
Is shooting quickly and being prolific, and moving from project to project an integral part of your process? Do you see yourself slowing down?
I like shooting fast because I think it’s part of the process for the actors, to keep them in the moment and make them concentrate about the performances. At the end of the day no-one really cares what it looks like if the acting is bad, you know. So with a low-budget that’s your biggest asset you’ve got; the performances. Not to say it doesn’t look good, we could have lit all of Sightseers but would it have made it look any better, I don’t know. It would have taken longer to do, also the more modest budget it has the more chance it has of making money, and then the more films I can make. That’s the business I’m in, being able to make more stuff because that’s my job. If I spunk loads of money on something then it makes the chances of me making another film more remote, and that’s not good. Slowing down maybe, only out of exhaustion, because you need to take stock and think about what you’re doing a bit, but it doesn’t look like it’s happening anytime soon.
Michael Smiley is going to be in A Field in England – tell us about his role in it, and what it is you like about him as an actor?
In Field of England he is a kind of charlatan/magician, and all round bully-boy, but he’s also a kind of prototypical cowboy, it’s quite interesting what he has got up to in that. The reason I like Smiley is because he’s, apart from being brilliant to have around – which sounds weird but it’s how I cast a lot of staff, because I like people – he is very soulful and he’s lived a life and you can tell, it’s all in his eyes and he’s very sensitive about how he performs. A natural, so that’s why I like him.
Were you tempted to entice him with a cameo in Sightseers?
I dunno, I mean there wasn’t anything that was in it that made sense for him, otherwise I would have done, yeah. Or for Maskell. We got Tony Way in from Down Terrace. We were joking about having them crossing Jay and Gal in the car from Kill List at one of the service stations because they pretty much drive around in the same area where Kill List was shot, but we thought “Yeah… what are we doing?”
You mentioned that you like working people based on getting on with them – can you see yourself doing what Shane Meadows has done and keep quite a close-knit group of actors and keep working with them often in the future as well?
Yeah I think so, I tend to think of them when films start coming together and how actors fit together and music and stuff, and then the stories come out of that. I’d like to see MyAnna in something again, what would it be? A lot of film stuff for me comes from out of daydreaming and walking around, running ideas over in my head and listening to music, going “This would be a great scene for this type of film, what would it be…” So yeah, I hope so.
You feel like a very British filmmaker, is it quite daunting planning this US production?
I react to what’s around me, I don’t know if I’m particularly British in that respect, you start doing stuff about things that are close by. I’m not daunted by it, but it’s tricky. I’ve resisted doing like comedy in the States because culturally they’re very different, lots of stuff like high schools and all that stuff they always go on about like cliques and you just go, “What the fuck is that? I don’t know what that is.” I got a script ages ago that was all this stuff about the American class system and I just don’t understand it, I’ve never lived through any of this and have no clue to it, so that side of it I wouldn’t leap in both boots on, but I think the genre American film is a different beast because it’s like the genre version of America is not the America that everyone knows.
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SIGHTSEERS IS OUT FRIDAY NOVEMBER 30