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May 10, 2013 Web Exclusive By John Oursler

British director Ben Wheatley has made a name for himself on the festival circuit with Down Terrace and Kill List, films that explore murder, cults, and a bit more murder. In his newest, Sightseers, the director branches into more comedic territory while maintaining his signature flair for the sick and twisted. On a road trip through the English countryside, young couple Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe) let loose by taking out their aggression on everyone and everything that betrays one of their pet peeves. The result is a hilarious black comedy that only Ben Wheatley could deliver.

Under the Radar met with Wheatley in NYC on the heels of IFC Films releasing the film on May 10th. Prior to this, we saw the film at the Toronto Film Festival in the fall of 2012, where an enthusiastic crowd greeted the director and star/writer Alice Lowe with a feature-length soundtrack of laughter followed with a spirited Q&A.

John Oursler (Under the Radar): Has the reaction to Sightseers been different here than in the U.K.?

Ben Wheatley: It came out there before Christmas. I dunno. It’s a weird one for me. The other two movies (Down Terrace and Kill List) premiered in the states so my first interaction with an audience was with an American audience. But I haven’t had that on this one or an experience with an audience yet here. From what the Twitter reaction is like, it seems pretty positive.

When I first saw the movie it reminded me of Chevy Chase and Vacation. I would go on these trips with my parents and my dad would get really angry at everyone and everything. I just knew he wanted to kill people.

That’s where it comes from originally. Alice and Steve, independently when they were kids, come from the same area in the Midlands in the U.K. and they’re performers and standup comics. They would talk to each other about going on holiday with their parents and they realized there was a lot of common ground.

This is lighter for you, I guess? Planning on romantic comedies next? Are you a fan of tackling particular genres?

Yeah, why not? Whatever comes up, really. You have to be kind of careful with what you do and the order in which you do it. I have different agendas of stuff I want to do, some technical things that I’d like to do. I don’t want to end up doing the same thing twice, so that influences the decisions. There’s lots of cinema, lots of interesting parts to get into.

So Freakshift will be a big endeavor for you?

For me, yeah. It’s not big by big film standards, but it’s big for Down Terrace standards.

What’s the schedule for that like?

It’s all budgeted and ready to go and financed. Just have to get the actors together. So it’s that dance of going to actors and saying, “What’re you doing? Are you around?” and matching them with a budget so it can be made. Hopefully it’ll go this year. That’s the dream.

HBO is coming up in the pipeline?

Yup! That’s a bit more of a long-lead thing since I have to write it first, then the development process with them. Then it goes to pilot and then it might get picked up. So in two years’ time it might be a series, you never know.

You started in TV. Do you think it’ll be different working here in the states?

It’s totally different, yeah. But I’ve done comedy, and comedy and drama are totally different in the U.K. anyway. It’s weird, it’s even different pay structures. The directors get paid differently and the DP gets paid differently so I’m kind of open to it. I understand it’ll be different but I don’t know what flavor of different yet. I think we’re gonna shoot in the U.K. anyway, so that production side will be something I know.

There’s been a lot of talk about how film is dead and TV is the next cultural medium that people rally around. What do you think?

Well, there’s different stuff. There’s no experience in TV that’s as good as seeing something in the cinema-even with your home system it’s not the same. The types of films I make are like cabinets-very hand crafted with specific running times with a beginning, middle, and end. Television isn’t like that in a long-form series. I love the long form stuff, but it’s a bit like a tease that you can’t quite ever end until it’s got so bad that it has to end. That is weird. That’s not what normal storytelling is like. If you gathered around the fire and somebody is telling an incredibly exciting tale, then you don’t spin it out forever until everyone gets bored, then wrap it up really quickly and then it goes off to a box set. That side of stuff is different, but I think the beauty of the long form is that the characters get much more room to breathe and you get to know them on a deeper level.

Alan Cumming said in an interview a few months ago that in TV it’s the writers who get the final say and the bulk of the credit, whereas in movies it’s the director who is universally hailed while the writers are sort of relegated.

That’s TV. It’s a producer-led medium as much as anything else. Then it trickles down to the writers and they’ve got the main stake because they have to get the stuff out as quickly as possible, and if the writing’s not good then the show gets cancelled. The thing about TV, or at least my understanding of it, is that the director’s power is weakened because you have to have consistency across a lot of different people. So having an individual in charge is bad. In British TV, when I’ve worked as a director, you’re really low down the list of people who get talked to. More like an old school Hollywood director where you’d be in charge of the actors and the DP is a power unto themselves. But everything isn’t made the same. Ads are made different than TV.

Black comedy. Is it tricky to achieve tonally?

Taste, isn’t it? Is comedy hard? Yeah. If it’s not funny it’s bad and if it’s funny it’s good. I go with my own sense of humor, so that makes it easier for me.

Think you’re a dark guy?

Yeah. I’m the guy who directed Kill List so I guess that answers your question.

“Tainted Love” is great in the film. How’d you get involved with getting that?

I talked to Edgar Wright and he said “don’t be afraid about using pop music on the film,” after he’d seen an early cut that had all the German prog-rock stuff but didn’t have any of the bigger tracks. I’d not put them on because, coming from low-budget filmmaking, I didn’t want to cost a ton of money. I thought long and hard about what I was gonna use, and though I had to use music that I like. There could have been a version of this [film] that used horrible, ironic tracks that’s taking the piss out with bad ‘80s music. But I like “Tainted Love” a lot. It’s on my iPod and on my Spotify “Walking Playlist” so I thought, “fuck it.” It’s a stone-cold classic and it hasn’t dated like a lot of the other ‘80s stuff has. It feels clean. When you hear it makes me happy. It announces itself. I remember it from being a kid. It fits with the characters, as they’re sort of like arrested children. We got the rights to it and I was really surprised it wasn’t the same budget as the film.

Did Alice and Steve improvise a lot of the stuff onscreen?

There was a script and it was good. Then we shot it and would shoot other stuff. I shoot quite fast and relentlessly so we should 120 hours or something like that. It allowed them to play and then in the edit we’d look at the stuff that was improved versus the scripted stuff and they’d fight it out in the edit. There were elements in it that were looser.

Is it different directing material you haven’t helmed yourself?

On a practical level you can’t just look at the script on the day of shooting and go “I don’t like this scene, I’m taking it out,” which I can do with my own material. It was to and fro, but nothing that would constitute a falling-out. Just conversations. Amy Jump did a re-write of the script. What I wanted to bring to the screen was what we learned from doing Kill List. Those guys hadn’t written a script before. There was loads of great stuff in it, but it didn’t have the shape at first to become a film. You either shoot what is there then shape in the editing room, or you write the shape into it a little bit more.

You’re always working. Does that pace come from your TV background or is that just your preferred style?

I like film and I like being a director. I don’t wanna let go of that. I spent a lot of time not being a director and I don’t want to go back to that. I’m four films in, but I’m 41. I’m always thinking of stuff that I’d like to be making and I don’t mind taking a lower-budget route to get things done as long as it makes me work that year instead of hanging around. It’s the hanging around that kills me. It’s a waste of time that doesn’t make the films any better. It just makes the gaps between them longer.

You mentioned Twitter earlier. Do you follow reactions to things at fests and screenings?

I’m interested in that, and I read everything basically about the film. If I’ve done an interview, I’ll read it. If only to make sure I wasn’t a dick during the interview. I’m interested in Twitter because you can see why people might say something is good or bad, which is interesting.

Any favorite road trip movies?

The film we looked at before this was Grey Gardens, actually. It’s spontaneous and the camerawork is inquisitive and interested in its environment, and the editing is kaleidoscopic. It feels real. It’s about being trapped in a space with a relation that you don’t like, which was great for this. Primary by Pennbaker was another influence. I could say Kalifornia or Natural Born Killers, but the similarities are very basic.

Would you ever want to try a documentary?

Yeah, I would. I watch them a lot. I’m interested in documentaries about filmmaking. There aren’t enough hour-long conversation-type documentaries with directors. A lot of these guys are getting old and you think to yourself, “No one’s probably talked to them.”

I’ve always wanted to see a documentary about every actor who worked with Stanley Kubrick. You know they have amazing stories.

Exactly. Room 237 could have been 9 hours long and I would have watched all of it. I thought it was fantastic.

ifcfilms.com/films/sightseers

(Sightseers opens in theaters May 10 at Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema in New York and Landmark’s Nuart in Los Angeles. It is also available on VOD May 13.)