Ben Wheatley is one of Britain’s most promising directorial rising stars, following up a downbeat take on the lower tiers of organised crime in DOWN TERRACE with the thoroughly uncomfortable and intense KILL LIST. This month sees the release of his latest film SIGHTSEERS, a murderous odyssey into the Yorkshire wilderness. Last week I spoke to Ben Wheatley and SIGHTSEERS leading man Steve Oram at the Manchester Cornerhouse.

Patrick Fowler: Steve, when you were travelling around the North before you began filming SIGHTSEERS, did you have a strong idea of where you wanted to go, or was it very much just following the road and seeing what happened?

Steve Oram: Alice and I did a research trip a few years ago, when we were writing the script, that was designed by my dad who is knowledgeable about British tourist places et cetera. We knew we wanted a trip that took us through different landscapes, and that would take in as many good tourist places as possible. When we went caravanning together, Alice and I with a cameraman, it became obvious which places worked well for the characters – the Viaduct, Pencil Museum and Crich especially. But yes, it was pretty well planned out before.

PF: Did you and Alice spend a lot of your time in character while travelling, or was it more of a research task, considering that you’ve already been developing Chris and Tina for a while?

SO: We were in character for the whole week, pretty much.With me as Chris hooking up the caravan and doing all the leg work, while Alice as Tina sat in the car eating biscuits and telling me I was doing it wrong! The research trip was the single most useful part of development as being in character at these different places really gave us a sense of what scenes might happen where, and who might get knocked off where.

“Dinner parties I’ve been to, people say awful, terrible things and they just don’t care…”

PF: How do you go about promoting a healthy atmosphere for improv?

BW: Not a miserable atmosphere. On a film like SIGHTSEERS the important thing for me is making an atmosphere where the actors feel like there isn’t anything they can do wrong, and that they can experiment, and that there’s an arena to do stuff.

SO: It’s always totally relaxed, Ben knows you’re capable as actors and trusts you to just be able to do it.

BW: We basically shot a lot of footage.

PF: How much did you end up shooting?

BW: We shot an APOCALYPSE NOW’s worth of footage.

PF: So we can expect a huge Redux down the line?

BW: No,  you’ve seen the director’s cut, there are no deleted scenes on the DVD. That’s something that digital brings, you can keep shooting and shooting and you’ve got loads of material that you can dig out and I think that’s really important for comedy. I had lots of sad little moments, fragments you don’t get to see. There were actors that don’t make the final cut that were really brilliant.

PF: People nowadays tend to just associate holidays with airplanes and going abroad, do you think it’s sad that people have begun to neglect Britain as a holiday destination?

SO: Caravanning is a fad, it’ll come back around.

BW: I don’t think it’s lost, you go there and these places are full of people. I think it’s very much an age thing.

PF: In KILL LIST you forced us to watch two awkward dinner parties and there’s another in SIGHTSEERS. What is it about this motif that interests you?

BW: Because they’re always awkward. There was actually a gruesome extended one we cut out of this film. They’re moments when characters can put their hearts on the table. It’s a moment for people to lay it out. Dinner parties I’ve been to, people say awful, terrible things and they just don’t care. Bad things happen afterwards.

SO: They’re an arena of horror.

“the only time you get annoyed with trailers giving things away is when you’ve seen the film[…] it’s a necessary evil”

PF: Ben, your trailers for DOWN TERRACE and KILL LIST were very stylised – minimal dialogue with an overbearing score. Do you play a big role in cutting these together?

BW: I cut the trailers for KILL LIST, DOWN TERRACE and SIGHTSEERS and then I give them to the trailer company and they re-cut them. Originally I cut a very impressionistic trailer for this, but I came round after a few iterations, my thinking being that the only time you get annoyed with trailers giving things away is when you’ve seen the film; before that, you’ve no idea. So in a way it’s a necessary evil, especially if it’s a comedy because if it’s not fucking funny you’re not gonna go and see it.

PF: Do you plan on continuing to use Chris and Tina onstage now? Perhaps a tour might be in order if the film succeeds, eh?

BW: Ha, yeah, the tour of death! I don’t know, it would probably be strange going back to the live stuff as it has a different tone to what you see in the film. Much broader. But I dunno, could do a couple of O2 arena dates, see how it goes!