The Press Box - 'Free Fire’ Director Ben Wheatley (Ep. 299)

Episode Date: April 21, 2017

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 Fennessey. 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 afield 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 him up, It takes place almost entirely in a warehouse. It's called Free Fire.

It stars Bree Larson, Army Hammer, and Killing 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 know, 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. I like action movies a lot, and I felt that the world of the contained relatable action, you know, where 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, the spectacle side of it is so huge and the kind of scale of these things are so huge that you just feel you watch it and go, what I found specifically, I was watching movies and 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 the films I saw as a kid that there was a connection emotionally to those characters 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 quarters 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 in a film. But it's also incredible. tense and fascinating and like a short story in itself. So I kind of read that and I thought, well, that, why, you know, what is the reality of, as a reality of being in that situation? And the world and the tropes that have been built up over years of, 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 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 it's they go hand in hand. You know, the creation of tension

and the creation of laughter, different sides of the same coin, you know. So it's, and a lot of it is about, we knew going into it that it would be about a series of criss-crossing 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. And which is a fancy pants way of saying gags.

Right. 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 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 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 know, you've talked about like Mac Senate movies and things like that. Yeah, but I think that's what action cinema is as well. you know, they might not, action cinema is a series of gags. They're just not always funny. You know, if you look at the Terminator movies, they're definitely a series of gags.

Yeah. But some of them are really gruesome and horrible, you know. And I think that's, that 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, you know, in certain whatever movie you're making, you've got different goals, you know, and this film was for it to be good fun and to be a laugh and to carry the audience long. 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 talky 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 really. ride that feeling of an audience of hearing them laugh and seeing if they're seeing how many of these gags will pay off and work for 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, um, 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. You know, they're all, and they're, you know, and whether you're famous. massively famous or not massively famous as an actor that's just you know you've got to be able to bring it on the day so outside of it's all been fine and they certainly never had any kind of you know

horrific divaish performance behavior from anybody you know everyone's been really super sweet not even army hammer no not even army hammer army hammer is he's a despicable person because he's nine foot tall incredibly good looking and really nice it just makes me so sick and young. Yeah. I saw, 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 like unnervingly funny and earnest and he's just strikingly handsome. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I certainly had the, I had a mental picture of who he was that was not who he was before I met him. And I thought, oh, you know, he's going to be, you know, some kind of weird, humorless. supermodel type character and he was just so funny.

A thousand apologies. I hate 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? You what?

I told you, I don't want to work with anybody who's carrying a load of weapon. It's nice that I was wrong. I read that Killian Murphy saw you out to work with you on us. Is that something that's happening more frequently for you now? Do you find that people are just ringing you? Well, bit some bobs of it. Yeah, and it's always great when that.

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, you know, and who's coming up and he's interested in cinema in itself. And it's not just sitting in a castle somewhere waiting for office 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 the best actors kind of do that. And they're always, and certainly, I heard a story about, was it Ridley Scott the other day? and obviously not an actor story, but the same thing for directors, where 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 realized in that moment that Scott was probably watching everything. Wow. And, you know, at the top of the game, and they're not, you know,

these guys are totally studying what's going on around from the smallest movies up. And I think that's really interesting. And the same thing has happened with actors, I think the smart ones are kind of looking around going, well, that's an interesting movie.

Maybe I could work with them and, you know, my films could become more interesting. 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'd like Kill List and I kind of got,

I talked to my agency, can I get to meet him? Is that possible? you know, is, there's 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, first and foremost, I started as a fan, a massive film fan. And I got into cinema through watching a taxi driver. And, you know, and then spending an enormous amount of money buying books about Scorsese

and large coffee table books with photographs and all this kind of non-stop. And so to finally get to meet him is was just mind-blowing for me, you know. So, you know, but what he brings to the film is obviously an unpeachable kind of understanding of, unimpeachable understanding of all of this kind of cinema and a person who's quite hard to argue with him if he disagrees with you. Did he have some serious notes for you? No, it was fine, you know, he's kind of, he was very generous about the whole thing and kind of, I think we showed him a cut of it before any of the music was put on.

So that was, he was in its rarist state, you know, and that was really interesting. And he was just saying about bits where he was, you couldn't quite grasp what was going on and maybe to look into the clarity of dialogue and cleaning stuff up like that. But he just,

you know, had two hours with him just laughing about the, 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, all my knowledge of film is from reading books and from my anecdotal knowledge of films from reading books and the internet. And when you talk to someone who actually lived it, it becomes very hollow. You know, 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, it's storyboarded first, and then I built a version of it inside of, in 3D and Minecraft to have a look just to walk around in it. Had you done that before, worked inside of a video game environment to make it, to set up your movie? No, but this was such a specific film that it had, you know, I'd never done any kind of, um, I'd never done any kind of, um, anamatics stuff before that either. But storyboards are really tricky because 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 cheat time and distance.

so you really need to see it, to walk through it. So that was kind of a useful tool. And for someone, you know, it takes 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. 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've got. It's all gone.

You know, within two years, it's all completely different. And the only thing that's novel about why I did with Minecraft was that it was from a game. You know, they've been previewsing 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? I mean it was tricky because there was we were running the action sequences quite long so they'd run for like four or five minutes sometimes

so there's a lot going on and 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 normal in a traditional Hollywood way,

we'd still be shooting it now, you know, because there's so many shots. So we were shooting between two and seven cameras about 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 your main two cameras and the other four cameras are just recorded a corner of someone's ear or something like that. So it was trying to think and holding that all in your head at the same time.

It was hard. I imagine it was incredibly loud. There are thousands of rounds of gunfire in the movie. Was it, was it actually, do you have to have earmuffs on the whole time? Yeah, yeah. Air defenders for everybody on a health and safety level.

I mean, it's far too loud. And it makes you sick. I mean, it's like the percussive wave that comes off those blanks. If you're in the path of it can really mess you up, you know.

And I had it one time I didn't have near defender. one and I had it like just onto the side like that because I've been talking to someone and 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 viewers queasy. That's like one of my favorite things about your movies. Ever since I saw Killist 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 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 I think the thing is in the films that I've made that they have these kind of schlocky effects elements in them which most people wouldn't go to, you know, 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 at art house at the same time. So I think it's a kind of the dread 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 Free Fire, which is incredibly gory and violent and bloody. You know, you could make that film. And you would, my lose the audience, you know, like 10 minutes into the gunfight, it just might be just too horrible. And so I understand that.

And I know what the edges of that are from making films like Kill List, you know, and I've seen it in, 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, you know. So there's a sliding scale there and then you just kind of, 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 always wonder, I was re-watching Sitesyers and Killis this week, and I always wonder if 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. Siteshers was a comedy, so it wasn't ever going to be really, really vicious. And you don't see them being sadistic, you know, in a way that you kind of do in Kill List.

So 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-sensor 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. Flying limbs. Yeah, which you could have done.

Though to be fair on the research I did, it's not realistic at all, you know. The whole world of like 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, you know, so. 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 an increasingly named 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, And I don't, you know, don't sit there and go, I'm going to do what I want. You know, I know what my role is. Right, you're an employee in that scenario, right?

Yeah, or more that, no, understanding what the structural production is. You know, you go, you know, 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, um, with adverts, you know, 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, it's kind of, you know what your role is and you've got to do, there's plenty to do and it's kind of, and it's super difficult, but 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 and I'll probably do some more TV. as well at some point. I talk 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. 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, you know, but there's something about the, there's something about TV and film as medium. 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. Right. And 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 cinema now, which is the way that Marvel works,

which is like a, 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 know, as a movie, like a big chunk of it and then it all glues together as a super season, doesn't it? So I think it, you know, there's two different ways of looking at it. Also, the other thing is that they're not, 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 of 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, you know, 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. I'm wondering, though, if there's an interest for you in things like those IP-based movies, you know, that superhero universe, 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 writing a script for hard-boiled, not the John Mu, Mu, but the Frank Miller book. Yeah, the Frank Miller-Diff-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 much, it's 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 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 a participant in that culture?

I know it's hard for a lot of filmmakers because they're making movies all the time. I think that I had a period of watching films intensely, which I'm through. So it's not as obsessive as it was when I was in my kind of mid-20s to mid-30s. Do you miss it? Well, you know, it'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 it's something, you know, I get asked why, you know, why do so much work? It's just like, why wouldn't you? You know, you don't want to let go of it.

But 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, you know, to make that film at that point was a minor miracle, you know, And for me, that was kind of his style, you know, developing and developing and developing to a point where 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 mash-up culture now.

Or they did 10 years ago. So behind I am. But the idea of like him coming from, you know, classic Hollywood. French New Wave and documentary, you know, all these things. And he's great love for Italian cinema 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, who, you know, documentary made by teenagers. So, you know. I just saw before we sat down that Michael Bauhaus just passed away. Oh, right. DP, 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 for the Friends of Eddie Coil 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 and but in a way that would just be you know we've come up through doing digital shooting on digital and we've 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'd been fired on the first day you know the amount of footage I shot yeah and all of these movies I mean the site sees was 120 hours of rushes there's just no way you'd be able to it's more than one 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 technocrine and, and steady cam 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, I'm trying to make sure that it's not a pastiche

of those movies. Mm-hmm. It's an interesting way to describe it. I never thought of it. I mean, it's 70s set, but it doesn't,

This doesn't rip off the look of a 70s movie or anything like that. And also 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? But the 60s don't exist anymore. It's gone. 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 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, you know, without digital, you hold back a whole generation of filmmakers and basically, you know, to say that film, 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 N-cap on, I think, cunning stunt, right? 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, 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, you know, like pichon, and I thought, that's good. But flipping a car is important, you know, because that's, I used to love seeing films with cars get flipped over. We'll keep an eye off for that in Freakshed.

Oh yeah, there's definitely give me some car. freaking and freak shift. So Ben, I like to always end this chat with asking you, what's an interesting thing you've seen recently that really knocked your socks off? Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, this is being re-recorded because I completely got it wrong. This is your fault, though. This is not the filmmaker's fault. No, no, this is not the filmmaker's fault. No, it's Kenji Fukasaku's 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 thing probably. But yeah, I got it as a box set from Arrow, which is like four or five movies, and 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 yeah, it was just, it was a weird one because it felt like, it felt incredibly fresh, you felt very modern, but it, but it had all the kind of stuff that you'd, I'd seen in streets like freeze frames and and names under the with the titles johnny boy and all this kind of stuff but but then it was kind of a few years before or kind of almost simultaneous so it's not 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 they that became this big old saga the other thing about them is 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 character are all kind of cowering and running about and shrieking and stuff. And it'd 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. Yeah. But 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.