Director Ben Wheatley on His Gun-Blazing Action Thriller Free Fire

You’ve received a lot of praise for the authenticity of the shoot-outs that act as a spine of Free Fire, from the impact of the injuries down to the sound of the bullets – how important was showing that realism to you when compared to the way shoot-outs are usually portrayed in modern cinema?  
I don’t tend to make films in opposition to other films, or at least I try not to – but that’s maybe contradictory to what I’ve been saying to be fair. It’s more to capture that experience of what it’s like to be in close proximity to weapons, which seems to have been kind of stylized in movies.  

There are a lot of tropes around guns being quite quiet and not that scary – people seem to be able to just pick them up and use them and they’re not really that complicated. I did some pump action clay pigeon shooting in the States and just pumping the gun in the right order is difficult – if you do it wrong, all the shells fall out the bottom. You never see that in the movies. You need training to be even halfway competent.

You seem to focus specifically on the minutiae of the shootouts, how important was it to emphasise those small details?
We didn’t want to shoot people through major organs because it would have just been really grim, and then the character would be out of the film because we didn’t want them to be superhuman.  In terms of pain, a small caliber pistol wound to the arm is apparently like being stabbed with a knitting needle. It’s fucking painful, but it’s not going to kill you. So, there was a lot of stuff like that. We just had to be careful how we managed it, otherwise they would have all bled out or spent half the film crying, which wouldn’t have worked.

As the film is set in such a confined space, every small action and injury seems to be magnified and very visceral for the audience.  One moment in particular with a syringe got a particularly vocal response from the audience…
That’s impactful because it’s an injury you understand as a human. You’re unlikely to have been shot. But I found that from Kill List – the stuff that we have knowledge of, we find much more painful than the more abstract stuff. Moments like Sam Riley getting hit with that cog on his head makes you react much more strongly than someone getting winged on the shoulder.

I wanted to keep reminding the audience of that pain, and how dangerous that environment was for the characters. It wasn’t just a load of mattresses on the floor – everything there could and would hurt them.

That definitely made the characters more relatable, as did the fact that there were no clear-cut ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’.  Was that something you were conscious to do during the making of the film?
I just don’t believe in that. In life, it’s really rare to have proper full-blown villains, it doesn’t really happen at all I don’t think. There are some people that are really dark, and do terrible things – but a lot of the time it’s just people going down a bad road. Even the worst people have families and lives, and it’s just easier for us to make out like they’re not like us somehow, and push them away.

Does having ambiguous characters help you increase the tension as a director, as the audience isn’t necessarily used to not knowing who will win or lose?
Yes definitely, but also because as an audience you invest in characters and when they do these terrible things it makes you question how you feel about the whole situation and wonder what pleasure you are taking from it. I’ve always made movies like that, I’ve got an odd relationship with genre – I like it, but I’m not sure why I like it.

Why did I want to make a film that was just a long gunfight? What happens when you do that?  What feelings do you feel and why is it exciting?  With screen violence as well, you feel like it should always be exciting, but it should also be sickening at the same time – going backwards and forwards between those two positions questioning why you’re enjoying it.

Considering the recent history of action films, how aware were you of audience expectations from the genre, and how did that help you shape the film?
I think about it in terms of the film itself being a series of gags, payoffs and small adventures. And it’s meant to be entertaining, so if it doesn’t get to those moments the audience will drift off or become bored. But that’s the same with a Bronte film or whatever, with people sitting around chatting. They still have to have a series of setups and payoffs. That’s how I approached it, just trying to make it entertaining for the audience.

There’s a precedent for those kinds of movies, not necessarily gunfights, but more kind of Three Stooges, Evil Dead or Tom and Jerry. That was the rhythm I was after, that you would keep coming back and remembering bits. I find that a very satisfying type of cinema that has kind of gone away a bit.

I remember watching Avatar, and it feels old-fashioned because characters look at what they’re looking at, then you get a cutaway of that thing, and then the character picks it up – you know how everything works. James Cameron is at the slicker end of the street for the kind of stuff; when you watch Terminator, there’s nothing in it that doesn’t make sense – it’s all very carefully put together.

But then the modern action movie, which has basically been developed by Tony Scott as far as I can see, and then taken on by the likes of Michael Bay, has become more of an experience of textures rather than a hard-won, slapstick storytelling style.

The violence is often cartoonish (in the most complimentary way possible), did that make it difficult to strike a balance between that and the more dramatic scenes?
Tonally, it moves backwards and forwards between different positions, and that’s something I’ve always done in the films I’ve made. Life is like that – it doesn’t announce when it’s going to go sad, it just suddenly happens. It’s part of the strategy of trying to make it more relatable and human.  Even in the darkest situations, you end up making a joke out of it – or at least I always have done.  That’s more human than the kind of angsty misery of a lot of movies that don’t really reflect real life. Things can be bad and sad, but they’re not just complete misery as you see with characters that never smile and never joke. When there’s a mixture of those things, it just feels more real.

Both Armie Hammer and Cillian Murphy’s characters seem very experience and controlled initially – how much did it help having a character like Sam Riley’s to throw into the mix?
There’s something I really like about Sam Riley’s character, because he’s just an agent of chaos.  There’s an energy to that which is great, no matter what he’s done. You want that mix of characters. It’s like the best laid plans of mice and men. As controlled as Armie’s character is, if everyone else is being reckless and stupid, it doesn’t make a difference and it’s going to drag him down.

Armie Hammer has said in several interviews that he was very keen to work with you due to your reputation as an actor-friendly director.  What do you think it is about your style that attracts big name actors?
I think it was after High Rise. My whole strategy for directing is about creating an atmosphere rather than telling people what to do. If I don’t get what I want I have to get involved, but generally I’m the first person watching the movie as it happens, and if I’m enjoying it then I’m happy.

My job a lot of the time is in making sure the casting is right, and then Amy (Jump – Wheatley’s writing partner) will rejig the script to suit the specific actors to make sure they can’t go too wrong.  Then it’s about experimentation and having fun on set.

A lot of the time, actors just get told what to do, and I’ve always found that really weird. I’m not an actor, so if I tell them to do something and demonstrate it, then they have to do it, they’re just going to do a version of me, and I’m shit – so it’s poison in the well straightaway. I see the actors as part of a palette and you’re just trying to corral all that talent in front of and behind the camera into the right position, rather than tell them. If you wanted that much control, you should just act in the film yourself.

When I interviewed you for High Rise, you talked about the algorithms involved with getting specific big name actors and the amount of funding that unlocks for you. How much did having an ensemble cast of well-known faces help with getting Free Fire funded?
Basically it just doesn’t happen if you don’t have the cast, it’s as simple as that. There’s a ceiling of about £2million that you can get together without needing international sales, and then you can cast pretty much whoever you want. But, over that amount, without international sales and extra financing, you just won’t be able to make your film.

That’s why you get movies like Kill List that are low budget and more of a free reign in terms of casting, but as soon as you hit High Rise it’s like, ‘Oh well, if you don’t have a certain name you can pin it around, you can’t make your film.’ But the casting process hasn’t changed – I still always pick the best people I think will work for the roles. If you can get to know some of the bigger name actors, or they contact you – which was what happened with Cillian Murphy – then you can start to construct it in a way that doesn’t feel like a fait accompli.

How did that meeting with Cillian Murphy come about?
Cillian is similar to Tom Hiddleston in that he’s interested in film, and which filmmakers are out there. He’s not sitting around waiting for someone to come to him with projects. He’s a Producer as well on Peaky Blinders, so he’s involved in that process. He contacted my agent to say that he liked Kill List, and asked what projects I had coming up.

That started the conversation, and I had a similar thing with Reece Shearsmith – it’s great and definitely the best way to do it. After that, you can start thinking of specific actors and put together projects with a certain cast in mind that will secure x amount of funding, which is pretty much what’s been going on in Hollywood since the sixties.

Did Brie Larson’s recent success help?
It doesn’t hurt. It’s weird because it looks like the film she decided to make after winning the Oscar for Room, which it isn’t. But I remember this from the past, when you see an actor who has won something big and you think to yourself, ‘Well, that’s a smaller part than I expected.’ But that’s kind of what’s happened with this. She’s not the star of it, which people are assuming.

Is it a similar thing with Martin Scorsese as Executive Producer? To what extent did he help out with the film?
Executive Producers come in different flavours. Television Executives would be all over the process, as would a Studio Executive. I’ve been Executive Producer on a few projects, like The Duke of Burgundy and Greasy Strangler, and my involvement in those films is light – I don’t send notes, I just watch the cut and support the film as much as I can throughout the process.  

Martin Scorsese supports the film and helps push it out because he likes my other work. We showed it to him and he really liked it – he first saw it without the music, so he was really interested and told us to make sure the sound mix was clear. His main thing on this film is support, and it obviously makes a big difference to casting because actors see his name and want to be involved.

How did he get involved?
I read an article where he talked about what he’d been up to during the making of Hugo, and he said he’d been watching local filmmakers. He mentioned Kill List as one of the films, so I thought I’d try and meet him. I got my agent to set up a meeting with him in New York when I was there doing press for Sightseers, which was obviously great.

Even at the level you’re at now as a filmmaker, that must have still been pretty incredible…
Absolutely! But then if you talk to Scorsese about meeting Billy Wilder, it’s the same. You only see it through your own eyes. I’m a massive fan of his work, and it’s very surreal meeting him. He’s the greatest living filmmaker, as far as I’m concerned. I remember chatting to him in New York and thinking, “Fuck, he met Kurosawa, he met everyone. Everyone!” It’s just incredible. That’s not to mention his own history. It’s pretty full on.

As an independent British filmmaker, does that make you feel more of a part of the industry in a larger sense? Obviously growing up, we all see America as the cornerstone of filmmaking, and there aren’t many bigger names than Martin Scorsese…
I don’t know. It’s not up to me to put myself in it – I only ever really work in the moment, and to push forward with whatever we’re doing. It’s a bit like a high-wire act – you can’t look down because you find yourself in the world of expectation, and you can get scared. I do get a twinge out of it, thinking that I’ve gone from renting Taxi Driver on VHS to actually meeting Martin Scorsese and having him attached to one of my films. But they’re still just people.  

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