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The Lightsabre Interview Simon Pegg
Welcome to
Lightsabre. Our next guest broke into TV
in 1999 and created and co-wrote Spaced with Jessica Stevenson, along with
director Edgar Wright and co-star and friend Nick Frost. They reunited for 2004's
romzomcom Shaun of the Dead and now they’re back with
the action-packed comedy Hot Fuzz. Speaking
specifically about his new movie, please welcome to Lightsabre Simon Pegg. Q - Every boy wants
to be an action hero, surely you were the same? A - Absolutely. It's wonderful to be
able to do that for a living and having a chance to do that for three months
was awesome. However, it wasn't the motivating thing behind writing the movie, it was more that we know the genre and understand it.
It just so happens that a bonus of that was that we would then play it out. As a writer I don't really think of myself as
an actor. I sometimes looked back when I got the script and thought, “I've got
to run for a whole day, what the fuck did you write
that for?” You've definitely got a different head on as a writer. But it is
nice to play out those roles. Q - Is it fair to say that out of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and this, that
really Tim is the closest to your natural character? A - Tim was a synthesis of me. Shaun was a version of me that could have
been and Angel is nothing like I will ever be or could be. As a result, playing
Nick Angel is the hardest thing I've ever done, it was really tough. Not least
because I couldn't piss about; I couldn't goof around or rely on the usual little
tricks and comedy techniques that I'd use. He was like a Vulcan. Q - Was it strange writing a part like that and
visualising yourself playing it, or do you visualise someone else playing it? A - It's a weird thing that when you
write: you have an idea of the person playing all the characters, certain
actors. For yourself you have a slightly detached version of yourself. You
think 'I could do that or I couldn't play that sort of comedy'. I must try and
think next time I'm writing and remember to log exactly what I'm thinking about
in terms of what I will eventually do in the film, because you really do occupy
two separate camps as a writer and an actor. Occasionally you think 'if I write
this I can do this', or you're writing something and you start looking forward
to doing it. It's quite schizophrenic. Q - Was there ever a
consideration of you not playing Angel? A - No. It was always going to be
Edgar directs, I take the lead role and Nick is the supporting lead role. In
this it was more like a joint lead role and in Shaun I guess as well. It's how
we work and we know that it works. Edgar will go on to do stuff without me and
similarly I will without him. But we all come back to the set up because it's
where I feel most comfortable.
Q - Do you feel the
pressure of expectation, people wondering what the Shaun of the Dead boys are
going to pay homage to next? Maybe a period drama or sci-fi? A - People do say "what's
next?" Shaun of the Dead was a
specific kind of movie, even though Shaun
of the Dead is fun there's far less referencing than people think. There's
one big reference which is the George Romero thing but otherwise it's its own
thing. Sometimes we end up shooting ourselves in the foot, because even when
the stuff is original people just assume that we've referenced someone. I guess
when you make your mark re-inventing existing things people think that's what
you're going to do next. Maybe in the next thing we write we'll not do that at
all. Q - Is that an active
consideration; maybe not doing something that people can pigeon hole you with? A - It's organic, you do what you
know. Myself and Edgar are both firm movie fans and
have a comprehensive knowledge of cinema in a geeky way and figure that seeing
as we understand the equations of action/horror films why don't we use them
ourselves. It's always important to us that we're not seen as being
piss-takers. The comedy that we want to make is not really spoof, it's not
Scary Movie, it's not a parody. It's more like adopting the genre wholesale without
any irony and somehow showing the humour that's in it anyway. Films that we
watched in preparation are serious films, without any irony, and are
hilariously funny because they have such overblown plots. Films like Lethal
Weapon, Die Hard or Point Break, they have humour in them and they know they
have humour in them. It's not quite pronounced or the thrust of the movie but
they are funny. There are also things in those films which are funny when they
don't mean to be. Then there are films with Chuck Norris or Steve Segal which
are just plain funny because of the sheer overblown violence, use of phrases
like "hey fucknuts". Q - You were quite careful not to overload references; there's obviously
Point Break, you made a clear point of referencing that... A - Nick's character Danny is a fan of
action movies and the point of the film is that Nicholas Angel insists that
real life isn't like action movies and eventually his life does become one. The
film gets inexorably dragged into being something it resists being for a while.
There are references in the film for fun, for people who want to get the
relevance of Callaghan Park, i.e. Dirty Harry. Every farm and every hill is
named after somebody or something, which is irrelevant. If you don't get it it doesn't matter, all you need to know is the street name.
The most obscure one is Brian Levy, who is the little boy who is reported to
have discovered one of the bodies; he was the actor who played one of the
characters in a Chuck Norris movie called Silent Rage. He plays this sort of
pre-Terminator, unstoppable killing machine, and we watched this film as part
of our research. It's weird, it's kind of a really good film trying to get out
of a really bad film and Brian Levy is actually really great in it. Every name
that's the name of a place has some significance.
Q - Do you recall which film from your youth got you really excited about
action films? A - When I was young it was probably
movies like Die Hard. As a kid the stuff you saw was less high-octane, the 1980’s
brought back that more heightened ridiculous edge of it. Q - True, I guess the
phrase 'action movie' wouldn't mean much in, say, 1972? A - When you look at a film like Dirty
Harry or those '70s movies, they're not really action films. The French Connection,
I remember that having a real effect on me, the car chase in that. It was when
cinema became taken over by the producers, they
discovered the formula for action films. These very by-the-book films started
coming out. Films like Die Hard were almost like an answer to some of those films, it was a response to some of the films like the Schwarzernegger films that were revenge movies. Suddenly
you get a hero who isn't infallible, he's a bit scared
or funny. That was a great turning point in action films. In a way Die Hard signaled a kind of death knell for the straightforward,
wise-cracking action hero. It humanized that action hero a bit. I remember
watching cop movies like Brannigan, which wasn't a
particular influence, but it came up recently that it was a weird John Wayne
movie in England. He's 60 years old and terribly unconvincing, getting off with
an actress 30 years younger, and he's throwing Tony Robinson into the Thames.
It's such a bizarre kind of fish out of water thing, unintentionally. As a kid
you don't have access to those films until you can go to the cinema when you're
15 or whatever. Q - Or your parents buy a VCR, like mine never did? A - Yeah, we didn't get one until
1983, which was quite late apparently. So horror was my influence when I was
younger because the video age meant that's what you were getting from the shop,
American Werewolf, Texas Chainsaw, these supposedly mind-altering films. As I got older I started to get into the
action movie thing, although I never loved it quite as much because it was less
humorous. The Terminator's a great film but things like Commando and Cobra
they're slightly leaden, sledgehammer. That's a reference in
Hot Fuzz actually that when Danny and Angel go back to Danny's flat to have a
beer, they're drinking Cobra beer. Q - I thought maybe you'd got a good deal from an Indian restaurant? A - We actually asked for it and they
cleared it for us; it was a very sly reference. Q - Have you got any
favourite lines from action films? A - There's one from Commando when the
guy goes into a steam vendor and he goes "he has to let of steam". In
Predator there's "Stick around" and we get the most obvious literal
comments like "he had to split". Yeah alright you're not Oscar Wilde
you muscle head! "Yippee-kay-yay motherfucker" from Die Hard is a great one
just because it's almost trying not to be clever, it really sums that character
up I think. Danny says it in Hot Fuzz because "motherfucker" is such
a kick in the teeth, that word. It's important for your action heroes to have
an element of humour, to have a slight comment to say after they've off'd some bad guy. We have that in the film with Nick when
he puts someone in the freezer, Danny asks if he said "Time to cool
off". We played with that a little bit in the script. Q - The classic buddy picture has the two men not liking each other at the
start. Here you're a bit distant towards him but Danny adores Angel from the
very start. Was that intentional or did that grow organically? A - We love the idea that Danny
assumes that because I'm from London I would be Bruce Willis and have seen so
much action. He is very puppy-eyed towards him. We wanted to have a little
shift in that dynamic and one way was certainly adoration from the start, and
by sheer corrosion he wears Angel down to appreciate him. He's such a good
soul, Danny, there's nothing misleading or calculated about him, he's just very
honest and I think that appeals to Angel because he's an honest person. It's
very important to have a romance at the centre of the film and often with these
movies where you've got two guys there's antagonism, but ultimately they die
for each other. You only need to watch Lethal Weapon to see Danny Glover
cradling Mel Gibson in his arms saying "I've got you". It's one of
the most homo-erotic scenes in any film, including gay porn. It's fascinating
and lovely. I'm quite fascinated by the love that can go on between
heterosexual men; it requires them to get over a lot of mental bullshit. Guys
can care for each other that much without being gay...! |
