On the Release of High-Rise :: An Interview with Ben Wheatley

I’ve just realised, On the Release of High-Rise is a very misleading title. It sounds like in this interview, Ben Wheatley is talking about High-Rise. He isn’t. This interview took place eleven years ago. Sorry. I’ve accidentally (and then, I guess, deliberately) misled you. Oh well.

So, in April 2005, I went to Brighton to meet a female blogger and ended up weeping in her bed. Those were the days. The very next day I met and interviewed Ben Wheatley. It’s not a great interview — which is totally down to me, by the way — but it is kind of interesting…

…

Now in their early 30s, Mr and Mrs Wheatley have been together since they were teenagers. But they aren’t married. They are Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump, and the stuff they make for the web goes here. [Sadly you can’t see the stuff they made for the web, as nothing prior to November 2012 remains on the site. Shame.]

They also have a sweetly toddling little boy, who was with Ben when I met him in Brighton recently, and whose hood made a perfect receptacle for my Dictaphone as we sat outside some coffee chain near the Pavilion pretending it wasn’t cold and chatting about things.

Ben was born in London. When the time came to study, he went to Brighton and studied Fine Art Sculpture. After which, he and Amy returned to London and dossed about for a bit, wondering what to do. Then Ben found a good job. Then he lost it. ‘I was working as a creative director for a marketing communications company, which went into the ground at about a thousand miles and hour after dotcom. And I found myself completely unemployable, which was quite startling, you know, after thinking I was hot shit.’

This was followed by ‘a year just pissing about’ and working on a lot of animations and films which would later appear on the site. Generally speaking, Ben concentrates on the animation and graphic design, whereas Amy is more concerned with the writing and editing. They have been very busy over the past couple of years, and you’d probably be surprised at how many of the viral animations that turn up in your inbox have something to do with them.

One of our favourite Wheatley creations is Karl Parsons. Karl lives in Worthing 2, is pals with Jeremy Clarkson and buys his weed from Jeremy Irons. Karl also shares a passing acquaintance with Jude Law, who in one strip uses the threat of Ray Winstone to claim Nicole Kidman back from God (cancer). If this all sounds rather infantile, that’s because it is. It’s brilliantly infantile and it cheers me up no end when I’m feeling blue.

[Again, Karl Parsons is gone, erased from the internet. But why not watch this instead…]

The mention of Jude Law causes Ben to become rather agitated. ‘What kind of a world are we in where Jude Law is a film star, you know? It’s just fucked. I don’t know if it’s just getting older, but the culture seems to have taken a real nose-dive.’

Jude Law will do that to you, if you let your guard down.

Thank God then, for the internet.

Ben and Amy had always made funny stuff for people to see, but the problem was finding a means of distribution. Then, about two years ago, they launched their site. ‘I didn’t understand the web before,’ says Ben, ‘even though I’d been working in it for years. But then as I sat there and saw the traffic going backwards and forwards and saw what was popular and what wasn’t, I started to have a bit more awareness of the — without sounding wanky — the global audience that’s out there.’

One of the most popular features on mrandmrswheatley, which has so far had going on two million views, is a very short film of the Wheatleys’ mate Rob jumping over one car, then being horribly squished by another. [Again, sadly disappeared from their own site, but the tiny film Cunning Stunt can be watched here.]

‘Not surprising,’ says Ben, ‘that slapstick without any dialogue is going to travel further than silly, complicated animation with loads of English humour in it.’ They also received a lot of emails asking to know how they’d done it, citing hi-tech applications and the latest computer wizardry. Turns out it was just a stool and a swipe. You can even see the shadow of the stool if you look very closely.

Just the other day, Ben bumped into a friend of his who used to run an annual film festival in London. This was an Exploding Cinema type of thing, which would allow young film-makers the opportunity to show their work to a real audience. Apparently, his friend had worked it out: ‘The equivalent of the amount of people we get through our site in a day would take him 120 years of shows.’ Which is about as clear-cut an illustration of how ‘the amazing interweb has democratised comedy and art’ as you’re ever likely to find.

Global audiences are all very well of course, but if they don’t convert into good, hard income, then what’s the point of them? Thankfully, the Wheatleys seem to be doing OK. The success of their site has led to work on all manner of ads, extreme sports channel idents and viral marketing campaigns. Plus, as well as farming out their skills as storyboarders and editors, there is also much talk these days of pitches and pilots for a number of TV projects, some of which can not be mentioned — not because they’re particularly hush-hush, but because if they don’t come off, Ben is worried he’ll end up ‘looking like a cunt’. Whether they come off or not, the future looks busy, and, as the following words testify, incredibly rosy:

‘Really, as far as I can see, all that happens in the commercial world is that you fight your way back to being able to do what you were doing for nothing. It’s like being on the dole — it’s brilliant; then you get a job and you’re fighting your way back to the lifestyle you had when you were on the dole, which seems crazy. I think I probably have the most creative freedom I’ll ever have at the moment.’

A version of this interview first appeared in The Friday Thing on 29 April, 2005.

Originally published at karlwebster.com on March 18, 2016.