Ben Wheatley Quotes

I genuinely try to make movies I’d want to go and see, movies that are a bit more challenging.

Sometimes my scripts get so dissolved, and they’re so different from when I wrote them originally, that I find it hard to find what I wrote in it.

I’m very superstitious about going on other people’s sets. You have to ask permission of the director; you shouldn’t just turn up and skulk about in the background. It’s very rude. You have to ask them personally. It’s like a vampire being invited into a house.

Doctor Who is pretty dark, I think. Generally its dark; its always been dark.

I think CGI is interesting, but it’s too expensive and limiting in terms of what you can do shot-by-shot.

Film is more of a dream when you’re younger. I found it almost impossible to see how you would get into the industry having no connections, nobody in the family being anywhere near it and never meeting anybody that had been on a set.

If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you’re missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.

Lots of crime films are about work. Free Fire could have been about a company of plumbers doing pipe-fixing and stuff. But the plumbing film is not so exciting.

It’s part of developing the whole state of how cinema is; everyone is looking out and engaged rather than it being just a financial thing or sitting back, waiting for scripts to turn up.

I like that confusion when people are speaking in the same language but still can’t understand each other. It’s also usually my experience of being in America – when I speak no one can understand what I’m saying.

The reality of any location in Britain being used in a TV program of a film is that something bad is going to happen! That’s the nature of drama. Most of the things that get made or basically grisly detective shows about murders, accidents or medical dramas.

If an actor commits properly to a role, they do a bit mad during a shoot. If they’re going to do that, they should balance themselves by doing a role as a yoga teacher.

The only genre I have any problem with is musicals, but that’s just my own tastes it’s nothing to do with the films.

There’s no way you can shoot low-budget stuff on lots of locations. It’s just a practicality thing because every time you move, it costs time and money.

You can muscle your way to the top as long as you’re part of the production, which I am. I’m knitted into the money, so it’s very hard to extricate me from the decision-making dynamic.

You really have to be careful with the clues you lay into the film – if they’re too heavy-handed, or you’ve pandered to a slightly stupider audience, then you’ve spoiled it for the people who are even slightly smart.

The whole idea of genre and categorising films is a critic’s construct. For me, I just try and make stories and see where they go, but there’s nothing wrong with horror; there’s nothing wrong with romantic comedies.

The things that inspire people to think are what keeps a film alive.

If I’d been offered ‘Spider-Man,’ I probably would have done it. I don’t think it’s bad to go and do those things.

‘Doctor Who’ is pretty dark, I think. Generally it’s dark; it’s always been dark.