#seeing all the festive dash icons and stuff makes me wanna be here more
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Kinda tempted to drop all my threads and start over
#seeing all the festive dash icons and stuff makes me wanna be here more#but ughhh......i've only really had the mental energy for discord rp#i think if i start some fresh plots here and force myself to let go of old ones i'll feel a little more motivated#new year new me and all that#i might...also add the Sortas(tm) once i finish kh3 bc hoo that brainrot#i've been writing roxas on discord and he's fun#but i can't really do what i'm doing with sora being at my point in gameplay#bc where i'm at in game rn roxas is...in sora's heart LMAO#so i'll probably just wait until after i finish the series to write roxas (and maybe ven)#but yeah i think i'm gonna just drop everything#except for like one or two starters i haven't answered#i'll let you know if i'm keeping smth but otherwise consider it dropped#unless you wanna keep a thread in which case dm me!#â ooc: shut up neg.
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Life in Film: Ben Wheatley.
As Netflix goes gothic with a new Rebecca adaptation, director Ben Wheatley tells Jack Moulton about his favorite Hitchcock film, the teenagers who will save cinema, and a memorable experience with The Thing.
âThe actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. Thatâs enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of it.â âBen Wheatley
Winterâs coming, still no vaccine, the four walls of home are getting pretty samey⌠and what Netflix has decided we need right now is a lavish, gaslight-y psychological thriller about a clifftop manor filled with the personality of its dead mistressâand a revival of one of the best menaces in screen history. Bring on the âMrs Danversâ Halloweâen costumes, because Rebecca is back.
In Ben Wheatleyâs new film adaptation of Daphne du Maurierâs best-selling 1938 novel, scripted by Jane Goldman, Lily James plays an orphaned ladyâs maidâa complete nobody, with no known first nameâwho catches the eye of the dashing, cashed-up Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer).
Very quickly, the young second Mrs de Winter is flung into the intimidating role of lady of Manderley, and into the shadow of de Winterâs late first wife, Rebecca. The whirlwind romance is over; the obsession has begun, and itâs hotly fuelled by Manderleyâs housekeeper, Mrs Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas, perfectly cast).
Each adaptation of du Maurierâs story has its own quirks, and early Letterboxd reactions suggest viewers will experience varying levels of satisfaction with Wheatleyâs, depending on how familiar they are with both the novel and earlier screen versionsâmost notably, Alfred Hitchcockâs 1940 Best Picture winner, starring Laurence Olivier Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson.
Why would you follow Hitchcock? Itâs been 80 years; Netflix is likely banking on an audience of Rebecca virgins (the same kind of studio calculation that worked for Bradley Cooperâs A Star is Born). Plus, the new Rebecca is a Working Title affair; it has glamor, camp, Armie Hammer in a three-piece suit, the sunny South of France, sports cars, horses, the wild Cornish coast, Lily James in full dramatic heat, andâcontroversial!âa fresh twist on the denouement.
A big-budget thriller made for a streamer is Wheatley coming full circle, in a way: he made his name early on with viral internet capers and a blog (âMr and Mrs Wheatleyâ) of shorts co-created with his wife and longtime collaborator, Amy Jump. Between then and now, they have gained fans for their well-received low-to-no budget thrillers, including High-Rise, Kill List and Free Fire (which also starred Hammer).
Over Zoom, Wheatley spoke to Letterboxd about the process of scaling up, the challenge of casting already-iconic characters, and being a year-round horror lover. [The Rebecca plot discussion may be spoilery to some. Wheatley is specifically talking about the du Maurier version, not his film.]
Armie Hammer and Ben Wheatley on the set of âRebeccaâ.
Can you tell us how you overcame any concerns in adapting a famous novel that already has a very famous adaptation? How did you want to make a 1930s story relevant to modern audiences? Ben Wheatley: When you go back to the novel and look at how it works, you see itâs a very modern book. [Author Daphne du Maurier is] doing stuff that people are still picking up the pieces of now. Itâs almost like the Rosetta Stone of thrillersâit tells you everything on how to put a thriller together. The genre jumping and Russian-doll nature of the structure is so delicious. When you look at the characters in the book, theyâre still popping up in other stuffâthereâs Mrs Danvers in all sorts of movies.
It remains fresh because of its boldness. Du Maurier is writing in a way thatâs almost like a dare. Sheâs going, âright, okay, you like romantic fiction do you? Iâll write you romantic fiction; hereâs Maxim de Winter, heâs a widower, heâs a good-looking guy, and owns a big house. Hereâs a rags-to-riches, Cinderella-style girl. Theyâre going to fall in love. Then Iâm going to ruin romantic fiction for you forever by making him into a murdering swine and implicating you in the murder because youâre so excited about a couple getting away with it!â
Thatâs the happy endingâMaxim doesnât go to prison. How does that work? Heâs pretty evil by the end. Itâs so subtly done that you only see the trap of it after you finish reading the book. Thatâs clearly represented in Jane Goldmanâs adaptation that couldnât be done in 1940 because of the Hays Code. That whole element of the book is missing [in Hitchcockâs Rebecca]. But I do really like this style of storytelling in the 1930s and â40s that is not winky, sarcastic, and cynical. Itâs going, âhereâs Entertainment with a big âEâ. Weâre going to take you on holiday, then weâre gonna scare you, then weâre gonna take you around these beautiful houses that you would never get a chance to go around, and weâre gonna show you these big emotions.â
After High-Rise, you ended up circling back to more contained types of films, whereas Rebecca is your lushest and largest production. How was scaling up for you? Free Fire does feel like a more contained film, but in many ways it was just as complicated and had the same budget as High-Rise, since itâs just in one space. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead is literally a contained film, thatâs right. What [the bigger budget] gave me was the chance to have a conversation where I say I want a hotel thatâs full of people and no-one says you canât have any people in it. You donât have to shoot in a corner, so that scale is suddenly allowed.
Elisabeth Moss and Tom Hiddlestone in Wheatleyâs âHigh-Riseâ (2015).
The other movies I did are seen as no-budget or, I donât even know the word for how little money they are, and even though High-Rise and Free Fire were eight million dollars each, theyâre still seen as ultra-low budget. This is the first film that Iâve done thatâs just a standard Hollywood-style movie budget and it makes a massive difference. It gives you extra time to work. All the schemes you might have had to work out in order to cheat and get around faster, but now itâs fine, letâs only shoot two pages today. We can go out on the road and close down all of the south of Franceâdonât worry about all the holidaymakers screaming at you and getting cross! That side of it is great.
You had the challenge to cast iconic actors for iconic roles. What were you looking for in the casting? What points of reference did you give the actors? I donât think we really talked about it, but [Armie Hammer] definitely didnât watch the Hitchcock version. I can understand why he wouldnât. There was no way he was going to accidentally mimic [Laurence] Olivierâs performance without seeing it and he just didnât want to have the pressure of that. I think thatâs quite right. Itâs an 80-year-old film, itâs a beloved classic, and weâd be mad if we were trying to remake it. Weâre not.
The thing about the shadow that the film cast is that itâs hard enough making stuff without thinking about other filmmakers. Iâve had this in the past where journalists ask me âwhat were your influences on the day?â and I wish I could say âit was a really complicated set of movies that the whole thing was based aroundâ, but itâs not like that. When you watch documentaries about filmmakers screening loads of movies for their actors before they make somethingâitâs lovely, but itâs not something Iâve ever done.
The actual process of filmmaking is guiding actors and capturing emotion on set. Thatâs enough of a job without putting another layer of postmodern film criticism over the top of itââweâll use this shot from 1952, that will really make this scene sing!ââthen youâre in a world of pain. Basically, itâs my interpretation of the adaptation. The book is its own place, and for something like High-Rise, [screenwriter Amy Jump] has the nightmare of sitting down with 112 pages of blank paper and taking a novel and smashing it into a script. Thatâs the hard bit.
Armie Hammer and Lily James in âRebeccaâ.
Current industry news is not so greatâcinemas are facing bankruptcy, film festivals in the USA are mostly virtual, Disney is focusing on Disney+ only. How do you feel about a future where streaming dominates the market and the theatrical experience becomes, as we fear, an exclusive niche? Independent cinema was born out of very few movies. If you look at the history of Eraserheadâthat film on its own almost created all of cult cinema programming. One movie can do that. It can create an audience that is replicated and becomes a whole industry. And that can happen again, but it needs those films to do that. They will come as things ebb and flow. The streamers will control the whole market and then one day someone will go âI donât want to watch this stuff, I want to watch something elseâ and theyâll go make it.
Itâs like The Matrix, itâs a repeating cycle. Thereâll always be âthe Oneâ. Thereâs Barbara Loden in 1970 making Wanda, basically inventing American independent cinema. So I donât worry massively about it. I know itâs awkward and awful for people to go bankrupt and the cinemas to close down, but in time theyâll re-open because people will wanna see stuff. The figures for cinemagoers were massive before Covid. Are you saying that people with money are not going to exploit that? Life will find a way. Remember that the cinema industry from the beginning is one thatâs in a tailspin. Every year is a disaster and theyâre going bust. But they survived the Spanish Flu, which is basically the same thing.
Two months ago, you quickly made a horror movie. Weâre going to get a lot of these from filmmakers who just need to create something this year. What can you identify now about this inevitable next wave of micro-budget, micro-schedule pandemic-era cinema? Iâve always made micro-budget films so that side of it is not so crazy. There will be a lot of Zoom and people-locked-in-houses films but they wonât be so interesting. Theyâre more to-keep-you-sane kind of filmmaking which is absolutely fine. Where you should look for [the âpandemic-eraâ films] is from the kids and young adults through 14 to 25 whoâve been the most affected by it. They will be the ones making the true movies about the pandemic which will be in like five yearsâ time.
People going through GCSEs and A-Levels [final high-school exams in England] will have had their social contracts thoroughly smashed by the government after society tells them that this is the most important thing youâre ever gonna do in your life. Then the next day the government tells them âactually, youâve all passedâ, then the next day they go âno, youâve all failedâ, and then âoh no, youâve all passedâ. Itâs totally bizarre. Anyone whoâs in university at the moment [is] thinking about how theyâve worked really hard to get to that position and now theyâve had it taken away from them. That type of schism in that group will make for a unique set of storytelling impetus. Much more interesting than from my perspective of being a middle-age bloke and having to stay in my house for a bit, which was alright. Their experience is extreme and that will change cinema.
Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs Danvers in âRebeccaâ.
Itâs time to probe into your taste in film. Firstly, three questions about Alfred Hitchcock: his best film, most underrated film, and most overrated film? Itâs tricky, thereâs a lot to choose from. I think Psycho is his best film because, much like Wanda, it was the invention of indie cinema. He took a TV crew to go and do a personal project and then completely redefined horror, and he did it in the same year as Peeping Tom.
Thereâs stuff I really like in Torn Curtain. Certainly the murder scene where theyâre trying to stick the guy in the oven. Itâs a gut-wrenching sequence. Overrated, I donât know. Itâs just a bit mean, isnât it? Overrated by who? Theyâre all massively rated, arenât they?
Which film made you want to become a filmmaker? The slightly uncool version of my answer is the first fifteen minutes of Dr. No before I got sent to bed. We used to watch movies on the telly when I was a kid, so movies would start at 7pm and I had to go to bed at 7:30pm. You would get to see the first half-hour and that would be it. The opening was really intriguing. I never actually saw a lot of these movies until I was much older.
The more grown-up answer is a film like Taxi Driver. It was the first time where I felt like Iâd been transported in a way where there was an authorship to a film that I didnât understand. It had done something to me that television and straightforward movies hadnât done and made me feel very strange. It was something to do with the very, very intense mixture of sound, music and image and I started to understand that that was cinema.
What horror movie do you watch every Halloweâen? I watch The Thing every year but I donât tend to celebrate Halloweâen, to be honest. Iâm of an age where it wasnât a big deal and was never particularly celebrated. I find it a bit like âwhatâs all this Halloweâen about?ââhorror films for me are for all year-round.
Whatâs a brilliant mindfuck movie that perhaps even cinephiles havenât seen? What grade of cinephile are we talking? All of the work by Jan Ĺ vankmajer, maybe. Hard to Be a God is pretty mindfucky if you want a bit of that, but cinephiles should know about it. Itâs pretty intense. Marketa LazarovĂĄ too.
âMarketa LazarovĂĄâ (1967) directed by FrantiĹĄek VlĂĄÄil.
What is the greatest screen romance that you totally fell head over heels for? I guess itâs Casablanca for me. That would be it.
Which coming-of-age film did you connect to the most as a teenager? [Pauses for effect] Scum.
Who is an exciting newcomer director we should keep our eyes on? God, I donât know. I would say Jim Hosking but heâs older than me and heâs not a newcomer because heâs done two movies. So, thatâs rubbish. He doesnât count.
[Editorâs note: Hosking contributed to ABCs of Death 2 with the segment âG is for Grandadâ while Wheatley contributed to The ABCs of Death with the segment âU is for Unearthedâ and also executive produced the follow-up film.]
What was your best cinema experience? [Spoiler warning for The Thing.]
Oh, one that speaks in my mind is seeing The Thing at an all-nighter in the Scala at Kingâs Cross, and I was sitting right next to this drunk guy who was talking along to the screen. It was a packed cinema with about 300 people, and someone at the front told him âwill you just shut up?â The guy says âI wonât shut up. You tell me to shut up again and Iâll spoil the whole film!â The whole audience goes âno, no, no!â and he went âitâs the black guy and the guy with the beardâeveryone else dies!â That made me laugh so much.
Do you have a favorite film youâve watched so far this year? Yeah, Zombie Flesh Eaters.
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Classic Gothic Literature to FilmâJennifer Boddaertâs list
Avaâs Dark Romance list
Ben Wheatleyâs Life in Film list
Follow Jack on Letterboxd
âRebeccaâ is in select US theaters on October 17, and streaming on Netflix everywhere on October 21.
#ben wheatley#rebecca#alfred hitchcock#gothic#gothic cinema#gothic film#gothic romance#thriller#psychological thriller#armie hammer#letterboxd#kristen scott thomas#kristin scott thomas#netflix#working title#the thing#free fire#high-rise#english cinema#director#directing#amy jump#lily james
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