AVP2? Transformers? Bah! Harry's got the real scoop with EDGAR WRIGHT and HOT FUZZ!!!

Hey folks, Harry here... Had the joy of sitting down and having a nice long wonderful chat with Edgar Wright Jr... genius behind SPACED and SHAUN OF THE DEAD - whose next film is HOT FUZZ... The film that mankind is waiting for. Now - we're hoping to send our own Nick Frost - QUINT - over the blighty to cause havoc on this havoc-ridden set. Thanks goes out to the wonderful "Selena" - who is interning with AICN. Speaking of which - if you're in college in Austin or Los Angeles and would be interested in an interning position with AICN - Email Here to inquire about interning opportunities. We're well on our way to having a great relationship with the University of Texas - and getting credit for goofy AICN chores is the bomb. Anyway - here's the interview between Edgar and myself. Hope you enjoy...



H - I got to see “Mission Impossible 3” yesterday and saw the Simon Pegg going at it up there.

E - Yeah I just read that on the site, and I told him to check it out and he was really chuffed.

H - Yeah, he comes across really really good in the film, which is great.

E - That’s cool, no I don’t think he’s seen it yet.

H - I guess I’ll start off with what is Hot Fuzz?

E - Um, yeah that’s kind of a difficult question first. We can come back to that one, as maybe I'll answer it as we talk about it.

H - So, what British crime films are you a fan of?

E - Well I’m a fan of quite a few British crime films. But one of the reasons that we started to write this film is because we realized that there were no British cop films. Certainly not in the last 30 years and most of the kind of British crime films of that period have all been gangster films. I think maybe the reason there are very few British cop films, is because American cops are armed to the teeth and for the most part British cops are not, even though you do have armed response units. But still, you know that only 20% of British police are armed, maybe less actually. So in the UK there is no kind of British cop action genre at all, other than some TV shows, because I think it just looks pretty pathetic. And so always, British crime films have always been about gangsters. I can’t think off the top of my head of too many films where a cop is even the lead, you know.

H - In England, do ya’ll call cops cops or are they bobbies or what’s the….

E - Well bobbies is an….

H - Explain the cop structure of England, because there’s a lot of people over here that don’t really understand what the difference is.

E - Well there’s no real difference in the cop structure really. I think even cop, I’m not entirely sure, but I think even cop is an English word. I’m pretty sure cop comes from, ahh god what is it… I know this. Yeah “cop” is constable on patrol and constable is the lowest rank of officer. You know it goes constable, sergeant, inspector, chief inspector in the UK. And “bobby” is an old term and which comes from the fact that the guy who invented the police in the UK was called Robert Peel, see I’m giving a history lecture now. And so that’s where “bobby” comes from; Robert Peel gave birth to the 'bobby' and also they used to get called “peelers” and then there’s also “rozzers” and “the fuzz”, another saying which has sounds America, but we use it as well. Most slang goes both ways, I mean people say “pigs” all over the world pretty much, don’t they? It is interesting what kind of slang terms for the police kind of are universal. But “bobbies” is one that is very particular to Britain. An American friend of mine refers to "Hot Fuzz" as "Blackpool Bobbies". Whenever I get an e-mail from him he says, how’s “Blackpool Bobbies” going?

H - Cool, what sort of cop is Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg’s Character)?

E - He’s a very good cop. We thought that we would subvert the genre basically by having our character being a very liberal, very right minded, very righteous cop. He's not a badass cop. He’s kind of a good ass cop. Maybe at some point in the film he will turn badass, you’ll have to see. It’s like the Hulk, at some point in the film, he gonna flip.

H - Is he going to be running around with a gun in this thing or is he gonna be, you know bopping people up side the head with those sticks and stuff?

E - He has a stick, a truncheon. You refer to them as baton basically don’t you?

H - Ok batons…

E - Yeah, what do you call them, they’re called night sticks?

H - Yeah, I guess we refer to them as night sticks more often than not. I just saw a really great Hong Kong cop film called “SPL”.

E - Oh, is that the Donnie Yen thing?

H - Yeah and in it he’s got one of those, uh expanding sort of like police baton…the extendable thing? And he’s got a fight scene in that movie against some criminal with a knife in an alley way that, well I mean it’s Donnie Yen versus some other guy who’s amazing too and it’s just, you sit there and you watch it and you just go man this is so much cooler than guns.

E - Well yeah, I mean one of the things that was the inspiration for the script is we thought, "how could we do like a cop movie with no guns?". To almost do a Joel Silver type film in a situation where nothing fucking happens. What would it be like if Tony Scott was forced to direct something in a sleepy village where fuck all goes on. That was almost the central conceit to the entire thing, where there is some action in the film, but it slowly builds up to fucking craziness. We’re trying to have our cake and eat it by on one hand asking the question why are there no British cop films and then trying to answer it in the last half an hour. It will be like an amped up version of Mrs. Marple or the Jerry Bruckheimer version of “Midsomer Murders”.

H - Well did you see any of the “Walking Tall” films?

E - Yeah, yeah I did. You know what, I actually sought out the “Walking Tall” films because I’d heard a lot about them and I ended up watching the whole damn Rhino box set. Because they were not big in the UK at all and I’m pretty sure you can’t even get them on DVD. I watched them all, me and Simon watched the first one together and there is a little reference to Buford Pusser in the film.

H - Because to me that’s kind of, at least in the American world of cop films, that’s sort of the prototypical sleepy town you know, badass cop coming to make a change type of thing.

E - Yeah, it's an interesting film, there are those moments where it becomes properly badass and really flies and then the rest of it is like a sort of badly directed TV episode, but that’s….

H - Ah, don’t let Tarantino hear you say that. That’s like one of his favorite movies.

E - Oh yeah, I know I know. But it’s almost one of the plus points to it. It's one of those “B” movies, where all the energy has been put into the fighting scenes and very little energy goes the dialogue scenes. So you know, you'll see a lots of long dialogue scenes with basic coverage, but then when Joe Don Baker comes into like the bar, late night and whacks ‘em all upside the head with that piece of wood, it’s suddenly really well directed and it’s like, oh you know, this scene got the director’s fire up. It’s like he’s interested in this bit.

I did a little mood reel screening for the crew and the one bit I put on from the whole ‘Walking Tall’ trilogy was just the opening credits to the last film where there’s that fantastic opening credits with the expressionistic silhouette of Buford Pusser and his stick, against the red sky. Just that opening sequence, with the blood red sky and the silhouette, I thought that was fucking ace.

H - Tell us a little bit about the Nick Frost character in the film Danny Butterman.

E - Well Nick’s character is um, pretty much, he’s pretty much the big lump. I’m at a loss for adjectives here...Danny Butterman is puppydogish, naive, a daydreamer. There was an initial plot line where he wasn’t a real copper. His dad is the Inspector and he’s like the Saturday boy. Do you have that kind of phrase over there, the Saturday kid?

H - No, explain Saturday kid to me.

E - Well if you said Saturday boy it would be somebody who comes in on a Saturday to make the tea. You know, there’s that kind of feel to Danny, he's the office junior. And so it’s a very sort of sweet performance by Nick and it’s different kind of vibe, definitely very different to Ed, he’s a lot more likeable and loveable than Ed. Although Nick Frost as Ed had a knack of like, saying the most horrifically incorrect things and being a major, major pain in the ass without ever stopping being loveable. This is a sweeter, well meaning character from the Frost. He steals a lot of scenes, he’s a very fearsome presence, considering the cast we have in the film, a lot of people are scared of Nick’s scene stealing. He can be in the back of shot, say nothing and still steal the entire scene.

H - Well, Nick’s sort of like a puppy or a child in a scene. You know, you don’t want to work with him because he’s going to steal everything.

E - Yeah I know. I remember that when he was on “Shaun”, Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton marveled a him. They weren’t really aware of him at all and he hadn’t actually done much. You know it’s funny, before SPACED the Frost basically hadn’t done any acting at all. I am always very impressed by how he matures whilst remaining completely immature.

H - Exactly, um what was the sort of philosophy you were going for in casting this film? Because I mean you’ve put together, like I said, as amazing cast of people, what was sort of behind that plan?

E - Well, like the casting with Shaun, we like to create different worlds, different ensembles. With the people playing upstanding members of the town, we've definitely gone for iconic British actors that we adore.

H - Well ok, who else are playing police in this?

E - Um there’s well, obviously Simon and Nick. Jim Broadbent is playing Nick’s dad which is a very funny pairing. Kevin Eldon is one of the others, one of the best British comedy actors. Paddy Considine, the amazing Paddy Considine, Paddy Considine and Rafe Spall make a fantastic team. Rafe, as you might remember as being Noel, he’s surly teen from “Shaun of the Dead”. I would like to think that the two of them will make some good action figures at some point in the future, if the film does well. Paddy Considine is just this fucking amazing actor and we’ve been friends for a couple of years and it’s nice to finally actually work together

There's an actress called Olivia Colman who is another brilliant comedy actress who crops up in shows like “Peep Show” and also “Look Around You”. Also and then a fantastic fantastic actor called Karl Johnson. He’s another huge scene stealer. Um, Bill Bailey who you will know as “Bilbo” from “Spaced” and “Black Books” and lots of other stuff.

And then there’s other people as well, there’s the mighty triumvirate of Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan and Bill Nighy.

H - Yeah, are you going for the same sort of balance in seriousness that you had off “Shaun of the Dead” or is this stylistically different from that film?

E - It’s got a very similar sense of humour. Simon’s character is quite different from Shaun definitely and there are probably less references than “Shaun”. Simon’s character unlike Tim from SPACED is not culturally savvy at all and hasn’t really seen any cop films. There’s this scene where Nick’s character chides him for never having seen “Bad Boys 2”.

H - What sort of music were you listening to while putting this film together? Cause I know that you think musically a lot of times in advance of the work.

E - Yeah, there are quite a lot of tracks, let me have a flick through my I-Tunes now, so I can find the tracks that we like to write to. I can tell you certainly that the Main Theme from the "Taking of Pelham 123" immediately makes me think of writing this with Simon. As does Ping Island/Lightning Strike by Mark Mothersbaugh from The Life Aquatic soundtrack which is also possibly the best kind of amped up, inspirational music of the last five years I think. My favorite soundtrack of all time is Dirty Harry. I’m a huge huge Lalo Schifrin fan.

H - Lalo’s son just directed a film called “Abominable” which is about….

E - Yeah I read about that, I heard it’s good.

H - And, I tell you Lalo’s horror score on that is amazing, I mean what’s kinda crazy is like there’s points where it’s sort of light and jaunty but then the Abominable snowman music is so creepy you know, he’s got your hair standing on end and he is an amazing composer. Who are you going to go with for the score?

E - Well David Arnold is gonna do our score which is very exciting. We’ve been friends for 6 or 7 years and we’ve never actually had the opportunity to work together. He assured me that he wanted to do the next one, so it’s really good that we’re doing something that’s vaguely in the action genre because I think David will do something quite special for it, so that should be fun. And there’s a lot of music….

H - What do you mean by vaguely in the action genre?

E - Well maybe when initial reports came out we said it was going to be like Hard Boiled. I don’t really want to fool anybody by saying that it’s like a one hundred minute gun fight because, but basically one of the things about this film is that in the first hour, nothing happens, second hour, everything happens. So okay, there’s some talking as well, it’s not all running and jumping over fences and punching and foot chases and murders and gun fights. Though those things do occur, but I’m not going to say that it happens all the way through. There is an element of down time, there is an element of boredom, there is an element of kind of cops sitting around in cars. But that’s what British cops do, for god sakes.

H - Well, is that coming from a sense of wanting to lull an audience into a sense of safety before sort of blowing them out if their seats?

E - Well there’s an element of that, and there’s also an element of staying within the realm or what it is like to be a British cop and why there are no British cop films. Because a large part of the job is doing paper work and sitting around in cars trying to catch speeders and not doing a lot. So there’s definitely kind of that side of things as well in terms of the fantasy of it being all action and heroics.

H - Well but I think that’s just the reality to the job of being a cop, you know?

E - Oh absolutely yes.

H - I mean, it’s very rare that anybody ever has to jerk a gun and actually use it over here you know.

E - Well at least your guys are packing heat. At least they can swagger around by knowing that they’ve got like a phallic death machine in their pocket. But it’s like 85 or 90% of British cops over here don’t even have that. I’m not really a Robin Williams fan but I always thought his joke about the British police was amazing succinct . 'What are they gonna do? Say "stop… or I’ll say stop again!".

When we first came up with the idea, one of the first things we did was interviewed a lot of British police men from both the city and the country, about how their job differs from the depiction of them on British TV, American TV, American movies and just how things are different essentially and so….

H - Are you putting any of that together for the DVD?

E - Uh, these were just audio interviews. Although I’d love do a cops commentary on the DVD. I think that would be pretty good. To get 4 of the cops that we interviewed to look at the piece for it’s authenticity and rip it to pieces.

H - Now do you have any cop advisors on set during the making of this film?

E - We have had a couple of times. We had one today but I sometimes feel bad if they’re coming in for an entire day just to show someone how to use a brush or to fill in a form and I think, you know what, don’t bother coming in….

H - How important is reality to you for a film like this?

E - Well it’s kind of like a heightened reality in the same way as in “Shaun”. We are always big fans of doing things as naturalistically as possible, but with a deadpan quality to it.

H - Visually what sort of films have inspired you on this one?

E - It’s basically Tony Scott. I love “The Last Boy Scout”, "True Romance", even “Domino” I’d say. I’ve watched Domino three times and my mind boggles every time I see it. It's definitely not all shot in the style of “Domino” but I’d be lying if there weren’t double exposures in there and some hand cranked action.

H - We did a great screening of Domino here in Austin with Rickard Kelly where after the screening the entire audience went out to shoot shot guns.

E - hah hah hah heh, I haven’t seen Richard since I’ve seen “Domino”, I mean I really haven’t seen him in person for kind of like a year or so now and I cannot wait to just pick his brain about the entire thing.

H - Yeah, I mean it’s so weird because that movie, if you know Richard and you know his style. Like I had read the screenplay for it and Tony Scott just made it such a Tony Scott crazy film you know? But it’s definitely sort of anchored into Richard Kelly’s insanity.

E - Well I think it’s sort of interesting that Tony Scott is always criticized by some people for being this style over substance, as being the MTV man. And I think to some extent that couldn’t be further from the truth. Whatever you think of “Domino” or “Man on Fire”. You could never say that it’s not artful and well thought out. It’s incredibly complex. It’s definitely kind of an I love it or hate it thing but I think some of it’s fucking amazing.

H - I think some of it’s amazing yeah.

E - There’s moments in “Domino” where I was just cackling & clapping in the audience. Even at the inserts of Mafioso bustling up some steps at like 12 frames a second, I was thinking, wow that looks amazing.

H - The thing to me about Domino is there’s just that ever, there’s just the idea that this is a story that’s being told by someone who’s still got a certain amount of mescaline in their system. You know, so it’s like the memories of someone coming off of a mescaline high and so the result stylistically, that excuses everything that happens in the film.

End side one

E - I’d wager that “Deja Vu” will be a little more conventional, because I think “Domino” was like, the end of something and whether you kind of think it’s fantastic or think it’s awful, I don’t think you can’t admire that in some way shape or form.

H Yeah, no I mean can you imagine having to be in the editing room putting that thing together. I mean it’s just the amount of work that went into it is amazing.

E - I think what’s really so amazing about it, is how much of it is in camera and how much of it you can do in camera and a lot of those double exposures and speed changes were shot on the day and that’s just how they were developed . We’ve got a couple of things in this where we’ve got our little double exposure segments. It’s so fun cause it’s, a lot of it takes you back to kind of like a primal sort of filmmaking where you used to make super 8mm films and what you shot is what you had. What you shot in a day is what you have and there isn’t any need to fix it later because you shot a double exposure or you shot something at high speed and there’s no way back from that. And sometimes in this age it’s nice to actually do something organic and in camera, thinking - okay - we’re going to experiment with this shot and what comes back from the lab is the shot and there’s no way out of it and that’s what they do a lot of the time you know? They’ll have ten cameras running and somebody will be doing crazy kinda hand crank speed changes and somebody will be doing double exposures. And you get these little moments of spontaneity which it would take two fucking weeks for them to come up with in the edit. So, there is a Tony Scott influence on it.

H - So, what is “Hot Fuzz”?

E - Haha, “Hot Fuzz” is like “Bad Boys 2” with no guns. Though it might have some guns at the end. That wouldn’t be the biggest thing to figure ou. That was a huge spoiler.

H - Well, I can’t wait to see this thing….

E - I can’t wait to finish it, we’re not even half way through and it already feels like a bit of a monster, we still have a long way to go.

H - How does it stack up against something like shooting “Shaun of the Dead” at this point in that film?

E - It’s um, we’ve already done as many slates as we did in “Shaun” in less than half the time. It’s pretty tough and it’s an ambitious script and even with an increased budget and schedule you do find yourself thinking god it doesn’t get any easier does it? It's still pretty tight, although if you have the benefit of a luxurious time schedule that would just add complacency. I think somebody said that if you wrap early on a shoot, that’s a bad sign and we have never wrapped early. But then it can be bad for moral if you're always up against it. On a lot of shoots I do, the jigsaw pieces don't come together until the final hours of the last day, do you know what I mean?

H - Yeah, well is there an anti-god weapon in this movie?

E - An anti-god weapon?

H - Well you know Simon’s character in “Mission Impossible” describes the great you know, rabbit’s foot as being an anti-god which will basically exterminate mankind. How big is the threat of the film?

E - Oh there is actually a nice explosion device which I won’t go into it. I mean we wanted to create a screenplay as we did before where everything sets up and pays off. We’ve always got just big fans of those films and screenplays that are really dense with detail so they withstand 3 or 4 viewings and you pick up things that you didn’t notice first time around. It all comes back to a love for “Raising Arizona", being one of the most densely packed comedies of all time and so we really spend a long time with the script working out lots of rhythms and callbacks and setups and payoffs and in a similar way to “Shaun". It’s ambitious to make just because nothing is filler. Every minor detail or close-up is going to have some kind of bearing on something later. But that’s just the way that we like doing stuff. I think that when we did the second series of “Spaced”, we just had the first DVD out and we realized just how much people watched them closely and appreciated all the detail.

I always made that a measure of all of my favorite films, in that I watched them again immediately after watching them for the first time.

H - Awesome, well I guess you need to get back to making the movie.

E - Yeah well there’s lots of fun to come, lots of bits and bobs. We did shoot an awesome cameo today. A very nice cameo by somebody who you wouldn’t associate with this genre at all. Their face isn’t actually featured either. I want to keep it a secret because I want people to discover the first time they watch it and are like, hey snap, isn’t that so and so playing that role? I’m not going to tell you now because I want you to figure out when you first watch it.

H - Well I can’t wait to have you and Simon and Nick over for the screening that we do here in Austin eventually.

E - I know that’d be cool, wait I heard hopefully we’re doing comic-con, um it’s certainly me and Nick… Simon might not be able to make it unfortunately but we’re definitely going to be there and hopefully we’ll have some kind of teaser thing to show cause it will only be like a month after it wraps so we’ll all be completely fucked. I think you will see from the web-log that I’m trying to share like this sort of portrait of my physical disintegration as the shoot goes on.

H - Well when you do come down we’ll have to do one of those gun screenings.

E - Oh yeah, I’d love to do that.

H - Just cause it was just so friggin hilarious so see Rickard Kelly fire a shotgun because he’d never he’d never held a gun in his life.

E - I’ve never really fired a gun in my life which is sort of odd seeing as there’s so many guns on Hot Fuzz. I really have to do something about it. I can write these things, it doesn’t mean I actually get to do any of them. I mean Simon gets to go running around and jumping over things and stunts and fucking firing off automatics and stuff and I think you know I could do that as well.

H - Awesome, well thanks so much for doing the interview and….

E - Thanks for that man, well I hope we can get it finished in time for Butt-Numb-A-Thon, that would be funny.

H - That is exactly what you need to be aiming for.

E - Well we shall see, we shall see. Alright man listen, well you enjoy “The Proposition” and I’m going to go and relax.

H - Yeah “The Proposition’s” going to be awesome. You rest up and I hope everything goes well throughout this film.

E - Exactly, alright man listen, you enjoy the “The Proposition” I’m going to go collapse.Take it easy man.

H - Bye bye.

E - Bye.