The Big Picture - 'Free Fire’ Director Ben Wheatley | The Big Picture (Ep. 10)

Episode Date: April 21, 2017

Ringer Editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey sits down with director Ben Wheatley to discuss his latest film, Free Fire (0:10), getting sought out by star actors and directors like Armie Hammer and Martin Scorsese (6:40), and striking a balance between entertaining and traumatizing an audience (14:40). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hello and welcome to a Channel 33 podcast. My name is Sean Fennessy. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Ringer. I'm joined today by the writer-director Ben Wheatley, who's made seven feature films, including The Horrifying Kill List, The Psychedelically Violent Field in England,

and The Dystopian Satire High Rise. Is that accurate, Ben? Well, I think it's six, but seven if you count the theatrical release of Deep Breath, the Doctor Who episode. I do count that. Good. His new movie is a 70s shot shoot-em-up that takes place almost entirely in a warehouse. It's called Free Fire. It stars Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, and Cillian Murphy. Ben, thanks for coming and chatting with me.

Oh, thanks for having me. So Ben, you make movies with common themes, but they are often operating in different genres. So you've made, let's say, science fiction dystopia. You've made a crime thriller. You've made movies that seem like one thing, but often go in the other direction. Are you always thinking about genre when you're writing your movies?

I think I'm thinking about what kind of films I want to see. And I like genre films. So I kind of go to that as my happy place. Did you feel like you just hadn't seen a great action movie in a long time? Is that why you went to this? Yeah, I wanted to make one one i like action movies a lot and i felt that the the world of um the contained relatable action you know where where you you understand what physically you could do these things and if you're in this situation you might do it that way kind of action which i don't think we've seen that much of it's kind of now action is more it the spectacle side of it is so huge and the kind of um scale of these things are so huge that you just feel you watch it and go what i found specifically i was watching

movies i was going this is amazing if i'd have seen this when i was 10 this would have been the greatest film ever and yet now i care not so much and why is that why is what's happened to me well maybe i'm just an old grumpy old bloke and i don't like it like movies anymore or is it that the films i saw as a kid that there was a connection um emotionally to those characters and and and scale wise which i kind of could relate to more and i don't relate so much anymore so we should just say for the listeners the movie is about ostensibly an arms deal that is happening in Boston in the 70s. Though it specifically doesn't say it's in Boston, so that I won't get hung up and drawn and quartered when I go to Boston

and they go, these accents are ridiculously wrong. Well, we don't know if there are any Bostonites. It just could be in Boston. Yeah, or it could be near Boston. It might be in the state of Massachusetts, but that's about as close as I want to get. My boss, Bill Simmons, is from Boston, so I'll run it by him afterwards. But I'm curious about what comes first.

Does the sort of puzzle box setup of the arms deal come first, or does I want to make a movie in a small space that has a lot of action in it come first? I think what came first with that is wanting to deal with action in a procedural and close quarters way. So that was, I think, was the first thought. And that would have been in the mid-90s. And I was like, oh, I'd read this crime report about a shootout in Miami that the FBI were involved in. And there was a whole thing was, you can find it online, you know, like a forensic report. And I'd read that and I was like, that's really fascinating because it's nothing like any shootout i've ever seen

on on in a film but it's also um incredibly tense uh and fascinating and like a short story in itself so i kind of i read that and i thought well that why you know what is the reality of what is a reality of being in that situation? And the tropes that have been built up over years of movie making have kind of led us far, far away from any kind of reality of what it might be like. So you make movies that are often very intense, often lead to a sort of chaos.

This movie, I think, is your funniest movie. You've made a comedy in Sightseers, but there are a sort of chaos. This movie, I think, is your funniest movie. You've made a comedy in Sightseers, but there are a lot of laughs in this movie. Was that a difficult thing to try to weld that action and that tension that you like to do with some of the comedy? No, I think they go hand in hand. The creation of tension and the creation of laughter are different sides of the same coin you know so it's

um and a lot of it is about we knew going into it that it would be about a series of crisscrossing stories and the stories not necessarily like stories in the grand sense of you know of plot but more of like of physical stories of things that were going on um and that which is a fancy pants way of saying gags right so so there would be gags set up physical gags and payoffs backwards and forwards throughout the whole thing which would be visual gags and then there would be another layer on top of that which would be the banter and conversation between the characters which is a layer of of like characterization jokes is that something you try to work in all your movies because you obviously it's been talked about a lot.

You have a background in viral videos 10 plus years ago. You worked in advertising. This is a new thing that it's 10 plus years ago. It used to be when I started, it was like a thing. It was like a new thing. And now it's like a thing from the past. I feel sad about that now. When the filmography gets longer, you know, the years go by.

It's a thing that happens. I'm not getting any younger. But are you always thinking about those gags? You've talked about like Max Senate movies and things like that. Yeah, but I think that's what action cinema is as well. Action cinema is a series of gags. They're just not always funny. If you look at the Terminator movies, they're definitely a series of gags.

But some of them are really gruesome and horrible. And I think there's there's a storytelling a way of storytelling that goes across all those types of cinema. Is that something that you and Amy talk about a lot when you're working on your movies too? Are you saying like we want to have homage to things that we've seen in the past? It's not homage, it's more that

it works and it's fun and you want to make sure that the audience is in certain certain whatever movie you're making you've got different goals you know and this film was to to for it to be good fun and to be a laugh and and to to carry the audience along um and to see if we could do it as well you know that was the challenge of it coming off of a movie like high rise which is a bit more cerebral and kind of um talky and and abstract you know to kind of go, right, we'll go back the

other way now. We'll do something that's more audience pleasing and that you could ride that feeling of an audience of hearing them laugh and seeing how many of these gags will pay off and work for people in the room. There are a lot of movie stars in this movie. You know, there were some movie stars in your last movie, High Rise. Is that different at all from the first three or four films that you made working with sort of above-the-line talent like that? It doesn't seem to have made any difference on the floor, on the making of the things,

because there's nowhere to hide in front of the camera if you're no good. And whether you're massively famous or not massively famous as an actor, that's just, you've got to be able to bring it on the day. So outside of it, it's all been fine. And I certainly never had any kind of horrific diva-ish performance behavior from anybody. Everyone's been really super sweet. Not even Armie Hammer? No, not even Armie Hammer.

Armie Hammer is a despicable person because he's nine foot tall, incredibly good looking, and really nice. It just makes me so sick and young. As I said to you before, I saw the movie in Austin and you guys did a Q&A afterwards. And I think a lot of people weren't sure if he was just doing a put-on. He seemed unnervingly funny and earnest, and he's just strikingly handsome. Yeah. doing a put on he seemed like unnervingly funny and earnest and he's just strikingly handsome yeah yeah i think i i i certainly had the um i had a mental picture of who he was that was not who he was before i met him and i thought oh no he's gonna be you know some kind of weird

humorless um supermodel type character and he was just so funny. A thousand apologies. I hate it when people are tardy. This is Ord. It's good to meet you boys. Thanks for coming out. I'll be later. You didn't masturbate before you got here, did you?

What? I told you I don't want to work with anybody who's carrying a loaded weapon. It's nice that I was wrong. I read that Killian Murphy sought you out to work with you on this.

Is that something that's happening more frequently for you now? Do you find that people are just ringing you? Well, bits and bobs of it, yeah. And it's always great when actors reach out like that. And certainly from the Killian Murphy point of view, he's a guy who's looking at what's going on and who's coming up and he's interested in cinema in itself.

It's not just sitting in a castle somewhere waiting for offers to come through. It's like looking out, going, what's going on and he's interested in cinema in itself and not, it's not just sitting in a, in a castle somewhere waiting for offers to come through. It's like looking out going, what's going on, who's around, you know? Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah.

And I think, and I think the best actors kind of do that and they're always, and certainly I was kind of heard a story about, was it Ridley Scott the other day? And they, there's obviously not an actor story, but the same thing for directors where he'd been, he'd been talking to someone

to do some art direction for him on a movie and when he went for the interview Ridley Scott knew every film he'd done right down to the lowest budget movies

and he realised in that moment that Scott was probably watching everything Wow and you know at the top of the game and they're not

they're you know these guys are totally studying what's going on around from the smallest movies up and that's really interesting and the same thing happens with actors i think the smart ones are kind of looking around going well that that's an interesting movie maybe i could work with them and i'll you know my my films could become more interesting in the world

so speaking of film legends this movie is executive produced by morton scorsese i've heard that he saw kill list and was impressed. Yeah. And how does that actually come to be where he's a part of this movie? Well, I'd heard he liked Kill List and I kind of got, I talked to my agent and said, can I get to meet him? Is that possible? You know, does a world, a reality exist where that can happen?

And they went, oh yeah, we'll talk to him and see. So I went and saw him and just chatted to him and it was you know for me for first and foremost i started as a fan a massive film fan and i got into cinema through watching uh taxi driver and you know and then spending an enormous amount of money buying books about scorsese and and large coffee table books with photographs and all this kind of nonsense. And so to finally get to meet him was just mind-blowing for me. But what he brings to the film is obviously an unimpeachable kind of understanding of all of this kind of cinema

and a person who's quite hard to argue with in if he disagrees with you did he have some serious notes for you no it was fine you know he's kind of um he was very generous about the whole thing and kind of um i think we showed him a cut of it before any of the music was put on so that was it was in its rawest state you know and and that was really interesting and he was just saying about bits where he couldn't quite grasp what was going on and maybe to look into the clarity of dialogue and cleaning stuff up like that. Interesting. But he just, you know, I had two hours with him just laughing about it

and quoting the film back at me and Andy Stark, the producer. And that was, yeah, that was pretty much the pinnacle of my career. Do you try to film nerd out with him do you try to say well like after hours that's the one that people don't understand man well i think the thing is with him which is kind of hard is that if you you know my all my knowledge of film is from reading books and from my anecdotal knowledge of films reading books on the internet and when you talk to someone who actually lived it it becomes very hollow you know as you as it comes out of your mouth you go i shouldn't even be saying this

because it's you know i don't know what the hell i'm talking about yeah you know so you know when you're making a movie like this obviously it's very precise and i read that you actually designed it inside of minecraft before you started storyboarding it. Yeah, well, actually, I storyboarded it first and then I built a version of it inside of 3D in Minecraft to have a look, just to walk around in it. Had you done that before, worked inside of a video game environment to set up your movie?

No, but this was such a specific film. I'd never done any kind of anim animatic stuff before that either but storyboards are really tricky because they they'd lie you know because you can draw them any way you like and you can bend the laws of physics to make framing work and also you know the way that a lens acts is very different to how storyboard artists draw drawings you know they don't you know so they're very convenient the way that things fit together and certainly in a movie when it's in real time and in a real space there's no it's very hard to to cheat time and distance so you really need to to see it to walk through it so that was a kind of a useful tool and for someone you know it takes it's too much time and skill and effort for me to learn like a proper 3d program but minecraft is

about you know i guess 20 years ago i might have built it out of lego or something like that but yeah but you've talked before about not going to proper film school and that sort of resourcefulness that you have seems to have really helped you actually executing more ambitious ideas well i think the thing is about film is that technology changes all the time. You know, it doesn't matter what training you got. It's all gone by the, you know, within two years, it's all completely different. And that, and mine, the using of,

the only thing that's novel about what I did with Minecraft was that it was from a game. You know, they've been pre-visiting stuff for 20 years, you know, but it's just expensive. Right. What was the hardest thing once you were on set making this to do every day um i mean it was tricky because there was um we were running the action sequences quite long so they've run for like four or five minutes

sometimes so there's a lot going on and it it was kind of shot like a kind of halfway house between documentary and live television. So there were sets of cameras all over the place because we only had a six-week shoot. So if we shot it in a traditional Hollywood way, we'd still be shooting it now because there's so many shots. So we were shooting between two and seven cameras at any one time and the hardest thing was just keeping track of all those cameras and making

sure that they weren't just being tucked away somewhere that you know everyone thought they'd done their job but when you see the rushes back it's all just a waste of time and you've only concentrated on the on your main two cameras and the other four cameras are just just recorded the corner of someone's ear or something like that. So you're trying to think and holding that all in your head at the same time, you know, it was hard. I imagine it was incredibly loud. There are thousands of rounds of gunfire in the movie. Was it, was it actually, did you have to have earmuffs on the whole time you were shooting? Yeah, yeah. Ear defenders for everybody on a health and safety level i mean it's it's far too loud um and it makes you sick i mean it's like the the um percussive wave that comes off those blanks if you're in the path of

it can um really mess you up you know and i had it one time i didn't have near defender on and i had it like just onto the side like that because i've been talking to someone didn't put it back and it was down range of army hammer firing one of those AR-70s. Yeah, and I was sick for like, felt like I was going to throw up for about half an hour after it. It was incredible. So you actually have the ability to make a viewer's queasy. That's like one of my favorite things about your movies. Ever since I saw Kill List, I've been curious about that, that ability to sort of wend in the dread with telling the story. And if that's something that you even to sort of wend in the dread with telling the story and if that's something that you even feel conscious of when you're making a movie i think it's taste and it's

how prepared you are to go there you know and it's and i think the thing is in the films that i've made that they they have these kind of schlocky um effects elements in them which most people wouldn't go to you know or or but also they've got these genre elements in them which most people wouldn't go to you know or but also they've got these genre elements in them that you know because i enjoy those types of movies i'll go there but it's also art house at the same time so i think it's a kind of the dreaded element to a degree comes from not knowing what's going to happen or where you're being wrong-footed all the time you're not sure and it's about kind of trust whether you trust the filmmaker not to show you something really

appalling do you think now given your reputation that that's something that you have to build into every movie is there an expectation you feel to create that sense no i think it's you just have it's a thing that you control you know you kind of go there's a version of um free fire which is incredibly gory and violent and bloody you know you could make that film and you would might lose the audience you know like 10 minutes into the gunfight just might be just too horrible and so i understand that and i know what the edges of that are for making films like kill list you know and i've seen it in the sat in with the audience and physically feel how upset they are and how hard it is for them to process story after they've been

thoroughly upset yeah you know so there's a sliding scale there and then you just kind of you're moving you're operating within those parameters of like how much can you how much can they take how much of it's entertaining and how much of it's just punishing i i always wonder i was re-watching sightseers and kill us this week and i always wonder if there's there was a time when you were making those movies where you felt like something that was too far or did you write something that was too far and you didn't do it no i think that you know you operate within the parameters of the films for starters sightseers was a comedy so it wasn't ever going to be really really vicious and you don't you don't see them being sadistic you know in a way that you kind of do in in kill list so i never

i never felt that there was something I desperately wanted to put in, but producers stopped me. That certainly never happened on all the films that I've done. Or that I probably would more self-censor in that respect. So it's like saying with Free Fire,

there's not loads of massive gouting, exploding wounds in it and stuff like that. Right, no flying limbs. Yeah, which you could have done. Though, to be fair, on the research I did, it's not realistic at all. The whole world of peck and parry, blood squirty stuff is just not what happens.

Does that matter to you? Does it have to be grounded in reality? It does up until the point when I break those rules. Do you worry about, you know, each of your films have gotten a little bit bigger, they've gotten a little bit wider release, they've been more visible, you are increasingly a name brand, for lack of a better term. Do you worry that as you go to the next thing,

that there will be producers that will say, no, you can't? Well, I kind of, it depends what the project is, you know, and I've done stuff like I did Doctor Who, and certainly in Doctor Who and the TV work I've done, I don you know don't sit there and go i'm going to do what i want you know i i know what my role is right you're an employee in that scenario right yeah or or more that no understanding what the structural production is you know you go you know in in in my films i'm kind of at the top of the pyramid of control. But in TV, I'm in the middle of the pyramid because it's a writer and producer medium.

So you just don't, why would you fight that? Because you're only going to become sad. And in the same way with adverts, I can never understand these guys who kind of become ad directors and then shriek about art when they're shilling butter or something like that. You know what your role is and you've got to do, or something like that you know it's kind of you you know what your role is and you've got to do you there's plenty to do and it's kind of and

it's super difficult but it's not it's certainly not you know it's not necessarily massively art do you feel like all of that stuff is behind you or could you see yourself doing an advertisement or doing an episode of television i'm still doing ads ads and I'll probably do some more TV as well at some point. I talked to a lot of filmmakers here and inevitably they always, at some point we get to a conversation about making a TV show because so many filmmakers are moving towards TV shows. Is that something, do you feel a pressure to create something that is a little bit wider than a sitting theater experience at any point in your career? I think there's opportunities to do it, and I do enjoy television when I watch it.

But there's something about TV and film as medium. It's like the film is like an album. TV is like a radio station, and I think that's the problem, is that why does a TV series end? Usually because it has to because it's run out of viewers station and i think that's the problem is that that why does a tv series end usually because it has to because it's run out of viewers when it gets wrapped up and it never ends at the peak of when it's great because they can't leave it alone so they have to keep going with it but a movie is like a finite thing unless it's the other way around which is the new the new cinema now which

is the the way that marvel works which is like a like a mega tv series that you're buying a pass for every like four months to go and see this continuum yeah yeah you're seeing like four episodes of tv basically you're you know as a movie like a big chunk of it and then it all glues together as a as a super season doesn't it so i think it you know there's there's two different ways of looking at it also the other the other thing is that as a medium, television isn't to be underestimated, and it's not just because you film stuff with people talking in rooms doesn't necessarily mean it's the same.

You know what I mean? It's like the transition between the two of them doesn't immediately mean that there's expertise between the two of them. You know what I mean? It's like in the same way that people make the mistake of thinking comics are films and they're not. Yeah, so that's interesting. The reason I erroneously said seven films in the intro

is because I was thinking of Freak Shift, which is a movie that you're making in the future. And that's something that feels like it has some of the elements of comics and science fiction and maybe some things that you enjoyed growing up just based on what I've read.'m wondering though if there's a an interest for you and things like those ip based movies you know those that superhero universe that is there a way for you to do your thing inside of an experience like that i don't know i mean i'm developing a thing i'm doing um i'm writing a script for hard-bo, not the John Woo thing.

Oh, the Frank Miller book. Yeah, the Frank Miller, Jeff Darrow thing. So that's kind of a step towards it. But, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think that the world of the Marvel side of stuff or the DC universe is back to TV where it's producer-led and it's controlled in that respect. I don't know. I don't know enough about it. And I'm not, you know, I know as much as you

from reading the internet. So it's like, I have no insight or, um, uh, kind of industry inside knowledge of any of that stuff, you know? Yeah. So is that something that you do? Do you feel like you are as up on movies as you were 20 years ago? Do you feel like an, a participant in that culture? I know it's hard for a lot of filmmakers because they're making movies all the time um i i think that i had a period of watching films intensely which i i'm through you know so it's not as obsessive as it was when i was in my kind of mid-20s to to mid-30s do you miss it um well you know it's having the? Um, well, you know, he,

he's having the spare time to do it. You know, you have to commit a lot. It's a big commitment. Do you miss spare time? Yeah. But then, you know,

it's, so what Amy says to me all the time is like, you know, you've only got yourself to blame. You know, it's like, we brought this on ourselves. We wanted to make films and now we're making them.

So we can't. And I, and it's something, you know, I get asked why, you know, why do, do so much work? It's just like why why wouldn't you you know, you don't I don't want to let go of it. Mm-hmm, but um

I've seemed to have an enormous Blu-ray and DVD collection, which is mostly unwatched which I think is Possibly saving up for a time when I'm not allowed to make films anymore and I'll have spare time to consume it all could you see yourself being like Scorsese being 80 years old and making the Wolf of Wall Street or trying to make the Wolf of Wall Street oh geez I'd like to be 80 years old to start with I mean I think that that it you know to make that film at that point was a minor miracle you know and and that for me that was kind of his style you know developing and developing and developing to a point where no no one's touching and you get kind of people making scorsese-esque films but they're scorsese from 20 30 years ago not the you know not this thing but i think he's very rare because he's

kind of a so you know they talk about mashup culture now or they did 10 years ago so behind i am but but the idea of like him coming from you know classic hollywood um french new wave and uh documentary you know all these things and he's great love for italian cinema as well but it's like it's all those things kind of smashing together and certainly with him and schoonmaker as well. But it's like all those things kind of smashing together and certainly with him and Schoonmaker as well with the editing where you're watching his movies and they're half, you know, they're half classic Hollywood and then they're half like some crazy,

you know, documentary made by teenagers. I just saw before we sat down that Michael Ballhouse just passed away. Oh, right. Yeah, who had made so many films with his. It's a very incredible visual style. Before you go make a movie like Free Fire, do you go re-watch Mean Streets or The Friends of Eddie Coyle or something like that?

No, I don't. I mean, I kind of, we had this conversation, Laurie Rose and I, the DOP, and it was, you know, should the Free Fire be shot on film? Should it be, you know, should we go and get a load of antique lenses? But in a way that would just be, you know, we've come up through doing digital, shooting on digital, and the language of the films that we've made has been developed through working in that way and if i'd have shot free fire on film i've been fired on the first day

you know the amount of footage i shot yeah and all of these movies i mean the sightseers was 120 hours of rushes there's just no way you'd be able to it's more than than warren beatty shot on reds you know there's just there's no way you'd be able to do it and also the way the camera moves is not a 70s style you know it's like it's a lot of technocrane and and steadicam and lots and lots of handheld stuff so it's kind of i think you have to be true to the to the language that you've developed you know and it's not it's you know trying to make sure that it's not a pastiche of those movies that's it's an interesting way to describe it i never thought of i mean it's 70s set but it doesn't this doesn't rip off the look of a 70s movie or anything because and also that it's

like being a band in a band who wants to play like wants to be the rolling stones from the 60s isn't it right but the 60s don't exist anymore it's gone that and that and that commercial imperative is gone that kind of thing can't exist now so it's a different it's different so you know that's and that's where i find myself on the whole you know the film shooting on film versus digital kind of front as well whereas you know i think that technically as an acquisition format film is superior to digital on the highlights if I'm going to be dull about it. But without digital, you hold back a whole generation of filmmakers who basically, to say that film is the only way to make movies is wrong, I think.

Is there a technical achievement or a trick that you've been wanting to do but you haven't yet been able to do because of budget or circumstances or story? Flipping a car. Flipping a car. That's a good little end cap on, I think, a cunning stunt, right? The first, the thing that got you a lot of notice.

Well, I think it's like a bucket list of shots and you go through them. I think in Field in England, there was a shot where someone fired a musket and then there was a puff of dust. And that for me was like a big tick. I'd never done anything where,

you know, something, some, you know, like that's good. But flipping a car is important, you know, cause that's still love seeing films with cars get flipped over.

We'll keep an eye out for that in freak shift. Oh yeah. There's definitely gonna be some car flipping in freak shift. So Ben, I like to always end this chat with uh asking you what's an interesting thing you've seen recently that really knocked your socks off well in in the spirit of full disclosure this is being re-recorded because i completely got it wrong but um this is your fault though this is not the filmmaker's fault no no this is not the filmmaker's fault no i'm it's um kenji fukasaku's uh battles without honor and

humanity which i have some kind of a wound in my head which doesn't allow me to ever remember his name or the or the thing properly but yeah i got it as a box set from arrow uh which is like four or five movies and which which kind of shows this yakuza various yakuza clans in nagasaki and tokyo and stuff over over like a 10-year period and the ins and outs of all their battles and stuff and it's brilliant and uh yeah it was just it was a weird one because it it felt like it felt incredibly fresh it felt very modern but it um but it had all the kind of stuff that you'd i'd seen in mean streets like freeze frames and and and names under names with the titles,

Johnny Boy and all this kind of stuff. But then it was kind of a few years before or kind of almost simultaneous. So it's not something that's been lifted from American culture. It's very specifically Japanese. And I like the fact that it was kind of a local, a big local hit that became this big old saga. The other thing about them which I really like is that the violence in it is so chaotic

and there'll be these kind of these big gang fights where they're all even the coolest characters are all kind of cowering and running about and shrieking and stuff and it'll be really over in a moment and they'll go away and hide and stuff. It's well worth checking out. Hard to imagine what you identify in those movies. I can't think what it was.

That's why, you know, it was a real treat. It was like a whole box set which i just sat and watched over like three or four days well we'll never forget kenji fukasaku again no i will though i'm so sorry japan thank you very much for being here today and chatting with me cheers thank you Thank you.