Steve Oram and Alice Lowe talk Serial Killers and Knitted Underwear

For Steve Oram and Alice Lowe, Sightseers is something of a passion project, as a film comprising of two characters they had been developing for a number of years. Now, at long last, they have put together a screenplay, and we sat down to discuss the festival hit with the co-writers, and stars of the film.

Oram and Lowe play Chris and Tina, respectively, two new lovers who decide to go away on a caravan holiday across the Midlands. However, the vacation soon becomes rather messy, when the pair decide to go on a merciless killing spree of local nuisances.

Sightseers – out on November 30 – is directed by Ben Wheatley (Kill List) and Oram and Lowe discuss their delight at working alongside such a talented filmmaker, their research into serial killers, and knitted underwear…

Why the Midlands setting? 

Alice Lowe: We’re both from the Midlands originally. That’s how the characters came about, as we started talking about our families and the family holidays we used to go on. We started improvising these characters quite spontaneously, this couple who were murderous.

Steve Oram: Yeah, it was to do with our past really. It comes from that and affection for the area, and wanting to celebrate it. Brummie serial killers on film, not many of those, right?

Alice Lowe: We knew they couldn’t be Londoners as well, they had to be regional. There’s this bit where Chris says he wanted to be invisible, and growing up in the Midlands there was this sense that the Midlands doesn’t have this strong identity. It’s not like, ‘Oh you’re from Manchester, that’s cool.’ Growing up the midlands, it’s like… ‘Oh.’ You can’t even have the north/south argument! It was kind of born from that as well. There are a lot tourist spots in the Midlands, and you would go on weekend trips to go kestrel flying in a castle or something.

Are you expecting more tourists to go to the Midlands after seeing Sightseers?

Alice Lowe: More people escaping from it, perhaps!

Steve Oram: Yeah, Crich Tram Museum, that’s a personal favourite. We want to celebrate these places – show them for what they are – really interesting and brilliant and beautiful as well. Those lakes, man.

As for the inception of killers on screen – is there something moral there, or whether you think it’s funny?

Alice Lowe: I think it was the juxtaposition really, this idea of the stereotype of Britishness, and British tourists, which is this polite veneer, very friendly ‘Oh I’m sorry you trod on my toe’ thing. We wanted to do something that confounded that, and that translated  really well to a film idea, extreme spikes of very normal characters but in a very extraordinary situation! It’s very filmic as well: murder, sex, violence, all of those things. The meat of drama.

Steve Oram: There’s no real moral message. It’s just showing people honestly as well. We did loads of research into serial killers, and we wanted them to feel like realistic serial killers.

Alice Lowe: We knew that they had to have realistic psychologies for you to even go half way to understanding them, or you wouldn’t empathise with them, and you wouldn’t want to spend time with them on this journey. You’d be disgusted by them, and we knew there had to be some psychological reason why they were the way they were – they had to be damaged people. What had led them to this particular scenario, and their coming together had obviously triggered something as well. That’s the whole concept of the movie – two people coming together and becoming more than the sum of their parts.

Steve Oram: We had a responsibility I think as a filmmaker to not treat these things flippantly. It happens and it’s horrible.

Alice Lowe: We didn’t want to make a light, Carry On-style murder comedy, we wanted it to have some psychological veracity to it. And to challenge people – I don’t think you watch the film and feel they get off scot-free. They are punished in the end for their transgressions in quite a classical way.

Steve Oram: It all goes tits-up in other words!

What aspects came from research into serial killers?

Steve Oram: It’s stuff like Fred West doing DIY for his neighbours, and being a bit of a character. People liked him on the street, which is astonishing when you think of what he did. I met someone who went for a drink with Dennis Nilsen, in a group of friends. Just thinking that they’re around us, everywhere.

Alice Lowe: The repression thing, on the surface being all polite and friendly, and there’s this tension bubbling under the surface. You can take the film in a metaphorical way if you wanted to; these killings are a metaphor for the relationship going wrong. It’s also quite cathartic – I wonder if people are enjoying it at the moment as it is two people who are outsiders and failing in their life and they get to do what they want to do. It’s the worm that turned kind of element to it. There are fantastical elements to the film as well.

Steve Oram: He’s got that morality, but it’s total bullshit. When you look at serial killers they’re just really into themselves. They’re very “me” people. They think they’re playing God, and they’re just making up the rules.

Alice Lowe: And then Tina as a serial killer is much more creative in that way; she genuinely wants chaos. That totally fucks around with Chris’ world, but also adds an excitement element. He decides he would rather not be alone, and would rather have a partner in crime if that person loves him. There’s an element of pathos to Chris’ character – he does love her. That’s the redemption to both these characters – they are in love.

It was deemed too dark for television, so having Ben Wheatley on board is a match made in heaven...

Alice Lowe: I was so obvious he was the right person for the job. We met a few people, and he’d just made Down Terrace which we love, and we knew the tone was really close to what we wanted to get. He agreed to do it, and then we saw Kill List which just blew us away, and there was this Pagan element to it which we were really interested in, with the stone circles.

Steve Oram: The naturalistic stuff at the start, and the bickering couple having an argument. We thought we had to do it with Ben.

Alice Lowe: We actually thought he wasn’t going to do it. He did Kill List and we thought, right, he’s going to be off to Hollywood now! So we were pleased he stuck by the project. I think he got quite excited by how he was actually going to shoot it.

Steve Oram: He loves killing people on camera.

Alice Lowe: We were like, ‘Are you going to show that then?’ He was like, ‘Yep!’ We were pussyfooting around showing the killings, which is probably a legacy of us writing for TV. Don’t make it too dark!

Steve Oram: They don’t like killing on telly do they.

Are you surprised by the 15 certificate?

Steve Oram: I was a bit yeah. There’s stuff in there… Mary Whitehouse is dead now, so we’re all off the hook.

Alice Lowe: Steve killed her. I think there was stuff in there that potentially was worse and got taken out. That would’ve brought the certificate up.

What was Ben’s effect on shaping it?

Steve Oram: We’d written loads of drafts of the script, and we’d been doing it for five years. The characters were really what you see on screen. Ben and Amy helped us focus the script and just cut away all the crap.

Alice Lowe: And also bring back some old elements. After five years you can’t see the wood for the trees and you get so much feedback you end up losing faith in some of your early ideas, some of which are the best ones. We did have a version where we stole the dog, we got rid of that, and brought it back. Carol being a hypochondriac and keeling over – Ben thought that was so funny, and we had to bring it back. Ben is very much like, ‘we’ll just shoot it’. He’s so quick, and his DoP is so fast, they’re like ‘ We’ll get it, and we just won’t use it if it doesn’t work.’ It’s a brilliant way of working.

Have you seen Nuts in May?

Alice Lowe: We’re huge fans of Mike Leigh.

Steve Oram: His presence hangs over everyone in comedy, everyone who does character comedy.

Alice Lowe: He’s the godfather of character comedy. Can’t say we watched the film and said it’s got to be like that.

Steve Oram: We watched more serial killer films.

Alice Lowe: And road movies.

Steve Oram: Badlands. Our film has more in common with that, with the naive girl.

Alice Lowe: It was the kind of genre we were trying to make. The character development and improv we had quite a bit of experience, it’s the filmic epic with the exciting moments we had to learn more about.

Steve Oram: And getting serial killers right was a big challenge.

Are you worried about British humour translating to an American audience?

Alice Lowe: They’re distributing it, so some Americans liked it! You hope they might have a Shaun of the Dead take on it, where they think it’s cute – some British idiots doing a take on an American genre basically. You hope they might find that quite interesting. I always think of camping as being such a European things – the French and Germans do a lot of camping, so they really got into it.

Steve Oram: It’s a universal story though. We had to take a few things out, like we couldn’t say the word ‘Biro’. Gonks was another one.

Alice Lowe: People will learn what gonks are though.

How was the location shooting and how did the locals react?

Alice Lowe: It was October, so it wasn’t as busy as it could have been. We didn’t get that much contact, plus we looked so ordinary. We looked like tourists, so people weren’t really giving us a second glance.

Steve Oram: Tourists with a massive film crew!

Alice Lowe: The guy in the tram museum who blows the whistle and give the talk is a real guy from the tram museum, so it was nice to get real flavours. We wanted it to look as real as possible, and it wasn’t some huge Spielberg shoot where you had to clear the whole area. It didn’t really matter if people were around.

I believe a caravan holiday lent itself to the story…

Steve Oram: The single most important writing tool for us was just going out in the caravan and doing it.

Alice Lowe: Getting a genuine brochure from the campsite and camping, being in a box with that person.

Steve Oram: Yeah… having to do all the physical work while someone sits in the car and eats biscuits going ‘you’re not doing it right’.

Alice Lowe: Just inspiration from the landscape as well, which genuinely went, ‘Oh my god, if we could get this in the film it could be quite cinematic. And the dynamic between the two of us – we found the story by going on that holiday, by working out what annoyed us about each other. What is the crux of the story between the two of them? We found it out by being in a very small space together for a week! It was very intense. You’ve got to do it to feel it. Big Talk were worried we’d murdered our camera man. They wanted to pay him after he’d been on this trip, and he wasn’t available – they couldn’t get him on his phone, it was dead. Apparently he was just on holiday in Morocco! But they were like, what have you done with him?

Will you be collaborating again?

Alice Lowe: I think it’s tricky, because when you’re a male-female writing partnership you can’t just write more and more couples. So maybe we’d write something we weren’t in, or something where we’re brother and sister! [laughs] On another trip?

Steve Oram: A different dynamic. This was so personal this project, so it’s big shoes to fill.

Do you plan on directing one day?

Steve Oram: It’s in early stages really, in development, writing and getting them made at the moment. It’s a watch this space kind of thing.

Alice Lowe: Basically, both of us had a massive learning curve just watching Ben and what he does. Both of us had made short films for years, and and it is that having complete control over what you’re doing, and doing it for very little money as well. We waited for a long time to get this made, and to a certain extent you realise if you just have confidence and you have actually done it, you realise much more what goes into it.

Steve Oram: And you don’t need much money to do the stuff we do, you know, which is essentially just titting around in character. Ben’s totally inspiring – he did Down Terrace for eight grand basically.

Alice Lowe: And now he’s making a film a year and he doesn’t want to stop. It is that desire to keep ploughing on.

Steve Oram: It’s a can-do attitude.

Alice Lowe: And an organic attitude as well, as I think so many scripts go through years and years of picking it apart. The script is a huge part, but the making of it is a huge part and is going to change the film completely again. And the editing is a huge part and will change the film completely again. Unless you’re allowed to get on those stages you’re not really making the film. There are so many scripts that get made that are amazing on paper but make a dull film. You realise there’s so much vitality by getting out there and making it.

Did you have to lose anything from the script?

Alice Lowe: Ben likes to have it an hour and a half, which is really good. It’s short and sweet. We wanted it to have a foot in both arthouse and commercial. We wanted it to be funny but have clever stuff in it, which is what Ben likes as well. Probably the first edit was two and a bit hours, which it was never going to be. There were huge chunks of the script that had to go.

Steve Oram: Ben edits it really quick, in terms of the pace. If you get bored, it’s got to go.

Alice Lowe: Not many directors do that.

Steve Oram: They’re precious about everything.

Alice Lowe: If you’re shifting in your chair and looking at your watch it’s got to go.

After touring the festivals with this film, are you excited it’s finally arriving in Britain?

Alice Lowe: We were massively nervous about the UK premiere, because so many of our friends and family were going to see it as well. To an extent it just felt surreal showing it in other places.

Steve Oram: It’s home. It’s a comedy as well.

Alice Lowe: People are very scrutinising of comedy.

Steve Oram: It’s so scary what our peers are going to make of it.

Alice Lowe: I did worry about my mum seeing it – I was like, I do like you mum! I don’t think this is you! But there are elements of her in there, she’s funny like Carol is. She does say hilariously rude things sometimes.

When collaborating with Ben, did you have any disagreements at all?

Alice Lowe: I think when it came to the edit we were really in agreement with all the decisions that had to be made.

Steve Oram: He showed us the first two cuts and we all gave notes. We’re just lucky it all worked out well with him.

Alice Lowe: I wasn’t sure about the knitted underwear! [laughs] Because I had to wear it! People really like it, and I concede that it is funny, but I wasn’t looking forward to wearing it particularly. We overlap quite a lot with our sense of humour and the way he works is so organic. He’s so trusting of the performers he works with, and he knew we’d be working on these characters for years. He usually writes for performers, so he wants to tailor it so the actors give the best performances they can, and it be as real as possible.

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SIGHTSEERS IS OUT FRIDAY NOVEMBER 30