Ben Dillon Q&A

We speak with the Picture Car Supervisor for Kick Ass, X-Men: First Class and Ashes to Ashes about crushing Land Rovers, turning down Noel Gallagher and his most dangerous day at work...

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve just finished a little job for STV called “Fast Freddie The Widow and Me” which is due to air at Christmas and also a second series of “The Jury” for ITV.

A few Directors and Producers I work with are in development with some exciting projects too so I am working in the background on a few films that are in development.

What got you started in the industry?

My Father worked as an Action vehicle coordinator so with a love of cars it was a natural progression.

What was your first job in the industry?

The first job I helped out on was “The Full Monty” and I was basically a tea boy for the car coordinators, fetching and carrying and doing what I was told. The first job I supervised was a 4 Part BBC Drama called “Nature Boy” with Director Joe Wright and Designer Sarah Greenwood, I was on location for around 3 months and it was a job with lots of Happy memories.

Can you talk us through the process of sourcing the vehicles? What’s the oddest and toughest request you’ve been given?

Where do I start? This is by far the hardest part of the job, as a coordinator on film its made easier by the fact that you usually have the budget to realize the Directors ideas and vision, specifics cost money, I can find or build anything in the world with wheels if the budget is there but unfortunately its not always the case.

With TV it’s generally a case of getting vehicles to match a budget, Directors and Designers still want things to look good so we have to really up the anti. I have lost count of how many people I have given chase to and pulled over, as I need their vehicle for a last minute shoot.

I don’t class anything as odd in my job as that’s the norm; people regularly ask for things that either don’t exist or cost the earth, I get more worried when normal things are requested. Matthew Vaughn regularly tries to break me with his requests but touch wood up to now I have met them, its pretty simple when you have the budget, I sit down with him and we talk through what he wants, he’s car mad and knows his stuff so I learnt a long time ago that No is not a word he wants to hear, I painted my own Range Rover yellow for him to use as the Dukes Car in Layer Cake as it had to be that car, the film was relatively low budget by todays standards so purchasing a car wasn’t really an option.

5 years later and working on Kick Ass it came back to haunt me when Matthew wanted a Left Hand Drive yellow Range Rover for Dexter Fletcher to go in the crusher, I would hazard a good guess that he knew it would keep me on my toes, and it did, but we shipped one in from Holland and had it painted prepped and on set in 3 days.

What are the dangers and pitfalls of looking after valuable cars on a busy set?

Mainly making sure that rigging to the car is done carefully, and people working around them are careful. I have a Rolls Royce on a shoot tonight that is a one off and worth just under a million pounds, for this we have written guidelines of what can and cant be done with them.

You’ve worked on a lot of period pieces; do you enjoy working with classic cars? What’s the classic car crowd like to deal with?

As a rule I don’t like working with Classic cars as you get the unreliability factor but again it goes back to the budgets, on a Period film with a decent budget we can buy in or hire in the best and most reliable vehicles, but on a low budget Film or Drama there simply isn’t the money and you have to make do with what you can, we don’t have the option to transport them from far flung places.

Old cars don’t understand that they have to be left running for numerous takes either and will overheat and breakdown easily, this can put the technicians on set under a lot of pressure. Generally a lot of the classic car owners are ok but there are certain ones who are totally barred from ever setting foot on the floor, One that gets mentioned a lot is a chap who brought a Consul Capri out on Nick Moran’s “Telstar”, Its best left there is all I can say, but many have dined out on their experience of this bloke and his car. Another that immediately springs to mind is a woman called ****, she has been know to turf the Director out of his chair and brings her whole family to the job, all donning bright oily fluorescent jackets, they also bring Tupperware containers and take all the food home, definitely ones to watch out for!!!

You were the man who found and supervised Gene Hunt’s Quattro – What was the job like and what was it like having your car become a national catchphrase?

The job was brilliant and had some very talented crew, although very hard at times for a lot of departments.

The show was set in 1980/81 and in reality most cars would have been late 60’s and early to mid 70’s, but as the Producers needed it to differ from their previous hit “Life on Mars” a very tight timeline had to be worked to. We had to use cars that were 1979 – 1982 (with the odd exception) but due to the model changes of cars around that time it was very hard to fill the brief and find things suitable.

The Audi Quattro didn’t actually become available in Right hand drive until 1982/83, and after this date there were numerous facelift changes and specs. It proved a mammoth task to find the right car as we couldn’t get away with anything newer than an 82 model, we also had to take into consideration the amount of work needed to make it worthy of months of stunt work, rigging, and a crew climbing all over it.

It took almost 6 weeks and thousands of miles to track down the right car and time was running out when I got a phone call off the Old Man to say he had found the right thing tucked away in a little village in South Wales, “Hallelujah”.

Production urgently wanted to recce the car so we bought it that day and brought it back to the workshop at Elstree. The car was given new suspension, new brakes and new tyres and we also fitted a hydraulic handbrake for the stunt boys to float it around the corners.

Once the interior was re-trimmed and re-carpeted she was ready for the paint shop, it came as a bit of a shock when they wanted red as its usually a colour that’s frowned upon but on camera it looked amazing and everyone was very happy with the end result.

I think my only mistake was selling the car to Kudos, as after the show Noel Gallagher offered me £20,000 for it.

Which car or sequence are you proudest of and why?

I am proud of all my work and am very lucky to have worked with some amazing cars and fantastic crew but one that stands out is something that a lot of people wont have seen. It was a car going under a lorry with Vicki Butler Henderson on Channel 5’s “Fifth Gear”.

We had to re-create a James Bond type gag of a bad guy escaping in a car as a lorry crosses his path; the car goes under the lorry and carries on out the other side with the bad guy at the wheel unscathed.

As we didn’t have the budget of a Bond Film and no Visual effects a massive amount of design went into this, the roof had to come clean off and stick in the side of the lorry and the safety of the Stunt driver was of paramount importance. There was no margin at all for error and if anything didn’t work as it was meant to then it could have been fatal.

We didn’t have remote controlled cars or wires, or any fancy tricks in post; the car was driven under a moving lorry for real.

We have flipped and crashed lots of things, but they are easy in comparison as you do a lot of them you can predict the outcome, with this we couldn’t just say from experience what would happen, we had to make it happen, gladly it did and without so much as a scratch to anyone.

What’s been your best day at work?

I don’t really have one in particular as there are so many highs and lows, If it was the best jobs I have worked on then id say Layer Cake, I met some great friends on that job and all the cast and crew were really good to be around, also Blitz, Statham’s latest film, the crew were top notch and long friendships were forged.

If you could give a producer one piece of advice about action vehicles, what would you say?

Try and get a Co-coordinator as opposed to an Action Vehicle Company.

A Co-coordinator is only doing one job so the dedication is to that job alone and they are not trying to juggle several at once.

If you could change one thing about the UK film industry, what would it be?

I would make more funding available for British Films

What do you do to you relax when you are not working?

I have recently become a father so like to spend time with my daughter Yvie when I am not at work; I also love the countryside and have a passion for writing.

Which film or filmmaker would you most like to work with (that you haven’t already)?

David Fincher, he is an amazing Director. 

I also recently had to turn down an opportunity to do “Dark Shadows” Tim Burtons new film, which was a shame, as I would have loved to work with him too.

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