{"id":2794,"date":"2016-05-20T22:26:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-20T22:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/"},"modified":"2016-05-20T22:26:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-20T22:26:22","slug":"high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/","title":{"rendered":"High-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who"},"content":{"rendered":"

Space \/ Jon Doyle<\/em><\/p>\n

If British director Ben Wheatley isn\u2019t on your radar yet, you haven\u2019t been paying close enough attention. After making a splash with a series of micro-budget shorts, he moved into television and advertising, before graduating to feature films with a string of striking, divisive, and occasionally shocking indies: Down Terrace<\/em>, Kill List<\/em>, Sightseers<\/em>, and A Field in England<\/em>. While these films failed to cross over into the mainstream, Wheatley emerged as a critics\u2019 darling, earning acclaim at festivals all over the world. Having also earned the respect of prominent actors and producers, he managed to attract a bigger budget and some major stars (Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Elisabeth Moss) for High-Rise<\/em><\/a>, a challenging and unconventional adaptation of JG Ballard\u2019s 1975 novel about the escalating tensions in a British apartment building. A devoted cinephile, Wheatley spoke to us about his many cinematic role models, his impressions of Hiddleston, and the value ofDoctor Who<\/em><\/a> boot camp.<\/p>\n

Space: You directed two episodes of Doctor Who<\/em> right before shooting High-Rise<\/em>? How did that prepare you for the experience?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Ben Wheatley: I\u2019d taken the Doctor Who<\/em> thing on for two reasons. One, I was a massive fan of the show and my son was 10 at the time and I wanted to do something that he could see. The other reason was that I kind of wanted to get up to speed. I treated it a bit like boot camp. I knew that the production was going to be fast and furious\u2014I think it was like an eight-week shoot for two episodes\u2014but at the same time quite high budget, so building big sets, lots of expensive kind of Louma Crane stuff, and lots of costumes and things, so I wanted to basically just sharpen myself after doing something that was a little bit more low key like A Field in England<\/em>, which was a twelve-day shoot all in one location with no lighting. It sharpened up my ability to block actors on the spot, make decisions fast, that kind of thing.<\/p>\n

How did you know Tom Hiddleston was the right actor to play Lang?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I\u2019d watched his stuff. The first time I saw him was in The Avengers<\/em>\u2014I didn\u2019t even see the first Thor<\/em>film to be honest\u2014and I just thought he was so brilliant. It immediately made me seek out all his other movies. I was joking with Tom that I think The Avengers<\/em> is titled wrong. It should be called Loki<\/em>because it really is the story of Loki. Everyone else is just bit parts and then there\u2019s his particularly venal, pathetic attempt to kind of get back in with his dad. So he\u2019s great. And then I\u2019d seen the Joanna Hogg movies (Unrelated<\/em>, Archipelago<\/em>, Exhibition<\/em>) that he\u2019d made and they were brilliant and I started to look at his career and I thought, \u2018God, he does all these massive big Marvel movies, but he\u2019s also doing a lot of interesting indie work and there\u2019s no contradiction there.\u2019 He can happily bounce backwards and forwards between making these very subtle films and then making these big bombastic Hollywood movies. You can see he\u2019s smart, you feel that onscreen, but also there\u2019s a kind of edge to him, a kind of neurosis almost. But that mixed with a kind of film star pose, poise, and good looks\u2014that all just made me think he would be the perfect choice for Lang.<\/p>\n

Like the novel, your film is set in the \u201970s, but its social critique also applies to the present. What\u2019s your general sense of the period we\u2019re living in now and how did that inform your take on High-Rise<\/em>?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are many things that are similar, in terms of the political situation, terrorism, and the kind of ecological worries of the two periods except, oddly, in the \u201870s everyone was more worried about an oncoming ice age\u2014which seemed to be a real threat at the time\u2014and the problems with acid rain. The terrorism is obviously ideologically completely different, but at the same time, the net effect is the same. Just small amounts of people making everyone else feel terrified. So yeah, I think it\u2019s very similar and then you\u2019ve got the financial collapse and those kinds of issues. Sadly, I find that it\u2019s a kind of binary thing: we\u2019re either living through a \u201970s or we\u2019re living through an \u201980s and it\u2019s taken me this amount of time to have seen several\u2014or at least two\u2014go-rounds of the political system in the UK to see that the left and the right aren\u2019t particularly different from each other and that the whole thing is very cyclical, so something that was set in the \u201870s, sadly, doesn\u2019t seem any different from now.<\/p>\n

Your producer Jeremy Thomas was friends with JG Ballard. Was he able to shed any light on Ballard or his intentions with the novel?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

What Jeremy was saying and what you can see in interviews with Ballard is that he\u2019s very generous toward the adaptations of his stuff and he knows that there\u2019s a difference between the literary world and the film world. It\u2019s really difficult to say whether he would be happy with the adaptation, but Jeremy seems to think he would have been and certainly Bea Ballard, his daughter, has said the same\u2014and other people that were close to Ballard, but it\u2019s not for me to say really.<\/p>\n

Nicolas Roeg was planning an adaptation of High-Rise<\/em> with Jeremy Thomas back in the \u201970s. Do you have any sense of how that might have compared to the film you ended up making?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

From what Jeremy was saying about it, there isn\u2019t any paperwork or any sense of what it would have been. They went on to make Bad Timing<\/em>, so I guess it would have been in the same vein. That was where Roeg and Jeremy Thomas\u2019 heads were at that point, so I guess that\u2019s the closest clues we\u2019ve got to what the film might have been. It\u2019s a film I would have desperately loved to have seen. It\u2019s a really sad thing that it didn\u2019t happen. It\u2019s a great lost movie, up there with Jodorowsky\u2019s Dune<\/em>, the Kubrick Napoleon<\/em>, and things like that. But I don\u2019t know what it would have been like and I can\u2019t draw comparisons because they would not be flattering to me I don\u2019t think.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve referred to Roeg, Ken Russell, and John Boorman as your \u201choly trinity.\u201d Now that you have some distance from High-Rise<\/em>, can you see their influence on the film?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Yeah, I think so. It\u2019s really difficult because I don\u2019t specifically make references in films. I try not to. Maybe there are little bits here and there, but it\u2019s not a general scheme. It\u2019s not how I work. And yet when I look back on the movies, I can see them much more clearly over time. I think the style of filmmaking I have is influenced by every film I\u2019ve ever seen, but certainly there\u2019s a conversation that they were having in terms of how you deal with time and how you edit, which I guess kind of started with the French New Wave. It\u2019s a conversation that you see in the Scorsese stuff and in Spielberg\u2019s early movies as well, but that also goes back to Eisenstein. You can trace these things back and back. Also, there\u2019s that kind of kitchen sink realism thing that people see in my work, but that also goes back to Italian neorealism, so these things don\u2019t ever really come from one spot.<\/p>\n

High-Rise<\/em><\/strong> has many parallels to the work of Stanley Kubrick: the \u201870s futurism of A Clockwork Orange<\/em>, the confined location of The Shining<\/em>, there are some Wendy Carlos flourishes in Clint Mansell\u2019s score.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The Kubrick stuff\u2019s more surface because I think that Kubrick himself, you can do shots that look a bit like Kubrick, but his outlook and his politics and his story construction are unique to him and you can\u2019t really get anywhere near it. Using wide angle lenses and occasionally tracking down corridors may look a bit like Kubrick, but it\u2019s not a direct thing. To be properly influenced by him is a much more complicated thing. And I don\u2019t even know that you could do it because he\u2019s not just a filmmaker, he\u2019s almost a genre of his own.<\/p>\n

But there are a few moments in the film that seem to derive their meaning from a reference. I\u2019m thinking specifically of the moment after one of the characters falls from the building. The way sound is used and the building is framed gets the viewer thinking about the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I think you could say that. I don\u2019t know if we thought about it at the time, but there\u2019s something about the way he looks up and the shape of that building. It also performs the same function in the film that it does in 2001<\/em>, which is that it\u2019s a moment of epiphany and it\u2019s a moment of change within the movie. It\u2019s the moment that they all join together and decide that there\u2019s going to be a change in their behaviour, but it\u2019s also a kind of unsaid human thing, which I quite like because as soon as you become literal about this plot, it becomes ordinary and easy to pick apart.<\/p>\n

High-Rise<\/em><\/strong> also has several connections to the films of David Cronenberg: J.G. Ballard, Jeremy Thomas, Jeremy Irons, all kinds ofShivers<\/em> parallels. How has Cronenberg influenced your approach?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve always loved Cronenberg\u2019s work and I think that, as a filmmaker who came from both the avant-garde and genre at the same time, watching his career path is incredible. That he was able to make mainstream movies that were so incredibly weird at the same time and not really compromise that vision is really very inspiring. He casts a massive shadow.<\/p>\n

Martin Scorsese came out as an outspoken fan of A Field in England<\/em>and he\u2019s now an executive producer on your next film, Free Fire<\/em>. What kind of interaction have you had with him?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I\u2019ve met him quite a few times and talked through the project. It\u2019s quite the thing to meet Scorsese for me and for anyone I guess who loves film. For me, it\u2019s as close as you get to meeting a film god.<\/p>\n

High-Rise<\/em> opens today in Toronto, Guelph, and Vancouver. For a list of additional Canadian cities, gohere<\/a>\u2014and be sure to watch the trailer below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Space \/ Jon Doyle If British director Ben Wheatley isn\u2019t on your radar yet, you haven\u2019t been paying close enough attention. After making a splash with a series of micro-budget shorts, he moved into television and advertising, before graduating to feature films with a string of striking, divisive, and occasionally shocking indies: Down Terrace, Kill … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHigh-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who - Thunderbird Entertainment<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"High-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who - Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Space \/ Jon Doyle If British director Ben Wheatley isn\u2019t on your radar yet, you haven\u2019t been paying close enough attention. After making a splash with a series of micro-budget shorts, he moved into television and advertising, before graduating to feature films with a string of striking, divisive, and occasionally shocking indies: Down Terrace, Kill … Continued\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Thunderbird Entertainment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-05-20T22:26:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/social-share.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"633\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gearbox_admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gearbox_admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/\",\"name\":\"High-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who - Thunderbird Entertainment\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-05-20T22:26:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-05-20T22:26:22+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#\/schema\/person\/41eb8208032d7ee9602156e61d6f6c41\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"High-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/\",\"name\":\"Thunderbird Entertainment\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#\/schema\/person\/41eb8208032d7ee9602156e61d6f6c41\",\"name\":\"Gearbox_admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/239363dc97071e1a4eb9d0cc6971f646?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/239363dc97071e1a4eb9d0cc6971f646?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gearbox_admin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/author\/gearbox_admin\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"High-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who - Thunderbird Entertainment","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"High-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who - Thunderbird Entertainment","og_description":"Space \/ Jon Doyle If British director Ben Wheatley isn\u2019t on your radar yet, you haven\u2019t been paying close enough attention. After making a splash with a series of micro-budget shorts, he moved into television and advertising, before graduating to feature films with a string of striking, divisive, and occasionally shocking indies: Down Terrace, Kill … Continued","og_url":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/","og_site_name":"Thunderbird Entertainment","article_published_time":"2016-05-20T22:26:22+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1200,"height":633,"url":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/social-share.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Gearbox_admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Gearbox_admin","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/","url":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/","name":"High-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who - Thunderbird Entertainment","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-05-20T22:26:22+00:00","dateModified":"2016-05-20T22:26:22+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#\/schema\/person\/41eb8208032d7ee9602156e61d6f6c41"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/2016\/05\/20\/high-rise-director-ben-wheatley-talks-hiddleston-kubrick-and-doctor-who\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"High-Rise Director Ben Wheatley Talks Hiddleston, Kubrick, And Doctor Who"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#website","url":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/","name":"Thunderbird Entertainment","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#\/schema\/person\/41eb8208032d7ee9602156e61d6f6c41","name":"Gearbox_admin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/239363dc97071e1a4eb9d0cc6971f646?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/239363dc97071e1a4eb9d0cc6971f646?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Gearbox_admin"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/thunderbird.tv"],"url":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/author\/gearbox_admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderbird.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}