The first movie that made Ben Wheatley fall in love with cinema: “I had never seen anything like it”
It’s not often that an independent filmmaker, usually working with challenging lower budgets, catches the eye of a director as big as Martin Scorsese. However, Ben Wheatley managed to do just that with his second feature-length film Kill List. Made on a budget of £800,000, it’s a quintessential British B-movie horror with all the deadpan humour you would imagine.
Yet, despite its small scale, Scorsese managed to catch it and loved it so much that he agreed to produce Wheatley’s next film, Free Fire. It’s not completely out of the ordinary for Scorsese, given that he began as a small independent filmmaker. The iconic director still tries to do what he can for those following in his footsteps, often funding and producing smaller-scale productions when he can.
Yet, what was another day for Scorsese must have been monumental for Wheatley, especially given the film that the latter credits for his love of cinema. That film is, of course, none other than Taxi Driver. A formative film for many filmmakers and actors alike, Taxi Driver continues to have a serious effect on all who watch it. “Seeing Taxi Driver when I was a kid was the first time I think I understood that there was an actual director behind the camera. I had never seen a film like it. It was almost like the beginning of cinema for me,” Wheatley explained.
This offers an explanation of Wheatley’s films, especially Kill List. After all, both that and Taxi Driver follow an ex-soldier who is being driven to extreme acts of violence. Plus, Wheatley seems to work most often within the crime drama, just like his hero. And, as mentioned before, both began their careers working with incredibly small budgets. Once you see it, it’s difficult not to notice the striking influence of Scorsese on Wheatley.
Yet, all this admirable affection and inspiration is thwarted by the story of how Wheatley managed to come across Taxi Driver. As with many young people, it was entirely by accident. “And it was such a random thing,” he said. “I’d rented a VHS copy of it from the video shop, looked at it and thought, ‘A film about a taxi driver. That sounds really boring.’ I thought it was something to do with Danny DeVito and a taxi. I was such an idiot.”
It’s not quite the story of a clued-in auteur who was always going to find their way to film. In fact, it’s much more realistic and demonstrates the true power of cinema. All it takes is one accidental viewing of something unexpected, and your life could be changed as Wheatley’s was: “I watched this thing, and it just rearranged my brain, basically, in 90 minutes, or however long it is. And I’d never had that.”
For him, Scorsese’s voice was so clear in the film, and his vision was so realised that he was forced to see through the work and realise that Taxi Driver was, in fact, created by someone. It didn’t simply just exist as films so often can feel when you’re young. And who knows where Wheatley would have ended up if the film had been about Danny DeVito and a taxi. Maybe he’d be making comedies.
