Its 2007 and Simon Pegg has become a bonafide movie star. Peggs breakout role in the surprise cult hit Shaun of the Dead has led to bigger roles such as the lab tech in Mission: Impossible III and the lead in the Run, Fat Boy, Run written by Michael Ian Black. But Hot Fuzz is the film that Pegg and his long time collaborator, director Edgar Wright, have wanted to do since they wrapped Shaun. Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorite films of recent years but Hot Fuzz surpasses it in acting, humor and technically the film is a marvel. Wright and Pegg have crafted a tight screenplay that lovingly satirizes elements from some of the best/worst action films of all time. Amazingly theyve incorporated those ideas into pivotal and often emotional scenes. In Hot Fuzz, Pegg plays super cop Nicholas Angel, who does such a good job of arresting bad guys that he is making his department pale in comparison. He is then transferred to the rural sleepy hamlet of Sandford. At first he spends his time trying to whip the lazy police department into shape but soon Angel realizes that Sandford is hiding a dark secret.
Hot Fuzz opens April 20
Daniel Robert Epstein: The first interview we did for Shaun of the Dead was in a pub. Then for Shaun DVD we talked in another bar. Now we are talking about Hot Fuzz in the police museum.
Simon Pegg: Absolutely. Its quite alarming isnt it?
DRE: [laughs] It looks like you went all method for the role. You even had neck muscles.
Pegg: I did. I felt like I had to work out for the role. I didnt really want it to be a joke. The serious element of a lot of what we do is very important. In Shaun of the Dead when people started dying, the characters were reacting as they should. In this I wanted Nicholas Angel to be absolutely convincing as a super cop.
DRE: I read you hurt yourself quite a bit making Hot Fuzz.
Pegg: Daily, it was comic in a way. There were so many injuries on set. Fortunately it was a low level curse. It was like The Omen but there were only cuts and bruises. A lot of people that werent even on camera ended up injured. One of the grips fell down the stairs and broke his rib. Our wardrobe designer fell out of the truck and banged her leg. One of the facilities guys broke his glasses and snapped the top of his nose. I just got strained quad muscles and I lost various segments of skin here from jumping over things. The thing is, I was so charged up, I was so in the moment that when I was filming the scene where Im chasing the shoplifter down the street and he runs in front of a 4X4 and I jump over the bonnet. In one of the takes I put my knee into the side of it but I just kept on going. When we went back for the next take we saw a massive dent in the car. It was like that scene in Smallville where he stops the bus with his hand and leaves a handprint in it. I was really firing on all cylinders with this. I can dent the hard part of a 4X4 and not feel it.
DRE: My favorite stuff in the movie is all the cross-cutting and the juxtaposition. Is all of that in script?
Pegg: Absolutely, were very meticulous when we write. We love transitions. A great way to knit a film together is with interesting transitions and obviously verbal ones are great fun to do. Often somebody will say something and the next thing you see will have relevance to that or whatever. Edgar is also able to do some of that in the edit as well, in terms of having everything in front of him and essentially is able to do another draft of the script. Were very particular the way we do that. Thats why theres very little, if any, improvisation on set. We have the script written in stone before we begin.
DRE: Obviously you guys take a couple things out of other movies like Point Break when Nick [Frost] is shooting the gun up in the air, which is done completely serious. Is it difficult to take those conventions and put them in a movie without making it a parody?
Pegg: I think the key to that is to not to come at it with anything other than love. The minute you dislike your source material thats when you start parodying and parodying with a sneer as well. Anything in Hot Fuzz that we might parody like for instance the never ending bullets in a gun or some of the more the more ridiculous beats of the action sequences is all done with a huge amount of affection so itll never come across as anything other than a tribute because thats what it is. Look at Mel Brooks as a film director, his best movies are when he was sending up films that he loved like westerns or Universal horror movies. You can see he didnt particularly like Star Wars or Robin Hood and thats why those movies arent near as good. I think its always healthy to have affection for the source material youre tackling.
DRE: I love the scene where you and Nick are shooting up the tiny English village. It reminded me a scene from another film of yours, Mission: Impossible III, where Tom Cruise is running really quickly through that ancient Chinese village. Theres all this insanity going around a place where that really shouldnt be happening.
Pegg: Lets not forget I was guiding Tom through that little Chinese village on the other end of the phone. But thats the central joke of Hot Fuzz. Weve taken two things that shouldnt really be together and put them together. Essentially thats the structure of every joke, you juxtapose any two categories that shouldnt necessarily be in the same place, a duck walks into a bar kind of thing. The incongruity of it was a whole part of the comedy.
DRE: Whats it like upping your game with all those great actors like Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent?
Pegg: Its nothing but good for you. As soon as you walk on set and you look around you and you see these people who youve grown up watching or you have massive respect for, you have to step up. You have to play youre A game otherwise youre just going to disappear. People like Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward and Billie Whitelaw are utter professionals and do nothing but brilliant stuff. So its the best environment for any actor. Look at [Sylvester] Stallone in Copland. He really raises his game. I think Stallone is a great actor. A lot of the time hes in action fare which demands less of him as an actor. But when you surround yourself with great actors it brings out the best in you.
DRE: I know that at least up until Eraser, Arnold Schwarzenegger would bring in his own writer to write his one liners. They never got credit because it was literally just a few lines. Did you guys spend a lot of time coming up with the one liners in Hot Fuzz?
Pegg: I think the people that were brought in to write Arnold Schwarzeneggers one liners must have had the easiest job on earth because all you do is come up with the most leaden pun for whatevers just happened. Then deliver it in a slightly smug way. You just draw on those movies when youre trying to think of those lines like Cool off. A friend of mine told me that when someone lands in the freezer during the supermarket scene I should have said Rest in peas, which I thought was very good. But they are fun!
DRE: My eyeglasses have transition lenses so they turn into sunglasses in the sun. Sometimes, after they turn into sunglasses, I look at my reflection and feel cool. But in Hot Fuzz you get to play the coolest cop with the awesomest sunglasses.
Pegg: Yeah, its fun to be a writer/actor and be able to write yourself parts like that. You get a little wish fulfillment because as youre writing jumps through the air, firing two guns at once Hong Kong style youre thinking, Im going to be doing that in a few months. So its great fun to write yourself a part. Basically Edgar and me write the films that we want to see. We write the films that we dont usually get to see or make in the UK so obviously theres going to be a little bit of making ourselves look great in it.
DRE: It is funny to read reviews of Hot Fuzz and see people pick the wrong movies you guys are referencing. Someone wrote that the scene where you are loading up with guys was reminiscent of Neo in The Matrix. But that is obviously Rambo.
Pegg: Oh absolutely, it was more like The Wild Bunch or the commando scene in Commando. If you look at Wikipedia theres a list of so-called references in Hot Fuzz which are virtually all wrong. There arent that many that we actually made specifically. The load up scene is a great example. Somebody said to Edgar, That line when Angel says, Im going to bust this thing wide open, whats that from? Edgar said, Its from everything. Its a much broader palette than Shaun of the Dead was.
DRE: Do you look at it as a postmodern action film?
Pegg: I guess so, since its self-referential so its now drawing attention to itself. Postmodernism is all about the recognition of self and using that as a creative start point. The film is very much self-reflective. Its taking on the conventions and the themes and the clichs of a lot of other films and drawing attention to them so in that sense it is postmodern. But I think postmodernism is almost a condition as much as a decision. You almost cant help it these days.
DRE: I read all sorts of different things about your acting training. That you may be a method actor, is that true?
Pegg: Im not a method actor by any means. I guess method acting suits some people. To me, acting is acting is acting. [Laurence] Olivier said it once to Dustin Hoffman on Marathon Man, Act, dear boy. I went to university to study theater, film and television so I have formal training in the arts but I became a standup comic and cut my teeth there.
DRE: I was lucky enough to interview Woody Allen a few years ago and I asked him if he would ever do standup again. He said that he would like to but it takes so much time to build a set. Would you do standup again?
Pegg: Yeah, I would. I did a couple of gigs recently in the UK and really enjoyed being back on stage. Its a very immediate form of performance because youre validated there and then. The minute the joke leaves your mouth they either laugh or they dont. Its not like youre waiting for the edit. For that reason its extremely exhilarating but I think Woody Allen is right. Not only do you have to build the set, you have to work it through in safe environments until youre natural and then take it out to the clubs. I might do a live show but I dont know. I certainly would enjoy it. I really look back on those days fondly.
DRE: The first time we spoke I asked you if read The Walking Dead and you said you do. After that got printed I know that you and [Walking Dead creator] Robert Kirkman became internet buddies.
Pegg: Thats right. Now he sends me the new issues via PDF.
DRE: So do you want to do a shout out to any cop or crime comics like Ed Brubakers Criminal?
Pegg: Ed Brubaker gave that to me. Hes friends with Robert [Kirkman]. They were in Seattle. Robert emailed me and said, My friend Ed is in town, can he come to the movie? I said, Absolutely. Of course. He gave us Criminal and Nick [Frost] read it and said its fantastic. Im going to read it on the flight to Toronto because I want to really read a good comic. Another comic I picked up at St. Mark's Comics a couple of weeks ago was Zombies vs. Robots. Chris Ryall wrote it and he also wrote the Shaun of the Dead comic book adaptation.
DRE: I read a quote from you on the IMDB, which is always
Pegg: Sketchy, yeah.
DRE: Yeah. I read that you turned down the role of Rorschach in Watchmen because it would become too "Simon Pegg IS Rorschach."
Pegg: That is just so not true. I dont even know what that means. I floated that Id like to play Rorschach because I think hes a great character. Also Im ginger and funny looking. I think hell be fun to play. Its funny when you read those things because they get put out there as fact. On the IMDB my agent keep taking off The Triviata as one of our projects. That was a sitcom that Nick and I were working on about three years ago. We shelved it because things really took off with the movies. Someone keeps putting it back on there and its like, No, Im not doing it anymore. But the reason that is, is because some tabloid paper in the UK broke it as if I said we were doing it but that just wasnt true. It seems like an odd story to make up.
DRE: But you didnt turn down Rorschach flat.
Pegg: No, I was never offered it. I think when it was in the hands of Paul Greengrass I had a better chance at maybe getting a casting because I know Paul and would have put my case across. But now that it is with [300 director] Zack Snyder, hes going to have his own choices, but I think hed be a fun guy to work with.
DRE: Have you seen any Shaun of the Dead tattoos on anybody?
Pegg: I have. Its cool and immensely flattering. A girl in Seattle named Wendy. Shes sexy and cool and has tattoos. Her tattoo is the cover of issue four of the Shaun of the Dead comic. But the weird thing is that maybe two months prior at a Virgin Megastore this guy showed me his tattoo based on the same image.
DRE: You should get them together.
Pegg: I said we should get them together, its a match made in heaven.
DRE: Hot Fuzz is already doing so well overseas. Are you and Edgar planning on doing something together sooner rather than later?
Pegg: The trouble is since Shaun of the Dead did so well a couple of projects have come up for both of us that we are now committed to. Edgars working with Marvel on Ant-Man which I might be involved in somewhat. Nick and I writing a project together, which we hope to film here in America maybe towards the end of this year or the beginning of next. But as Edgar and I touched down in Sydney for our Australian leg of our press tour we had this idea for the third film, which were very excited about. So as soon as we clear the decks well get on with it and I think its going to be good.
DRE: Would you want to play Ant-Man?
Pegg: I think its important for Edgar to do a film that Im not the lead character in. Though I think it would be fun. I havent read his script yet but I know its going to be really good. In the same way that we made the British bobbie into a bad ass, hes effectively taken the smallest Marvel character and I have no doubt hell make it one of the best.
DRE: Any Marvel characters you would like to play in a movie?
Pegg: Probably Captain Britain [laughs].
DRE: [laughs] With the flag on his face, chest and back.
Pegg: I used to read Captain Britain when I was a kid. If they make a Captain Britain movie, theres only one choice.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Hot Fuzz opens April 20
Daniel Robert Epstein: The first interview we did for Shaun of the Dead was in a pub. Then for Shaun DVD we talked in another bar. Now we are talking about Hot Fuzz in the police museum.
Simon Pegg: Absolutely. Its quite alarming isnt it?
DRE: [laughs] It looks like you went all method for the role. You even had neck muscles.
Pegg: I did. I felt like I had to work out for the role. I didnt really want it to be a joke. The serious element of a lot of what we do is very important. In Shaun of the Dead when people started dying, the characters were reacting as they should. In this I wanted Nicholas Angel to be absolutely convincing as a super cop.
DRE: I read you hurt yourself quite a bit making Hot Fuzz.
Pegg: Daily, it was comic in a way. There were so many injuries on set. Fortunately it was a low level curse. It was like The Omen but there were only cuts and bruises. A lot of people that werent even on camera ended up injured. One of the grips fell down the stairs and broke his rib. Our wardrobe designer fell out of the truck and banged her leg. One of the facilities guys broke his glasses and snapped the top of his nose. I just got strained quad muscles and I lost various segments of skin here from jumping over things. The thing is, I was so charged up, I was so in the moment that when I was filming the scene where Im chasing the shoplifter down the street and he runs in front of a 4X4 and I jump over the bonnet. In one of the takes I put my knee into the side of it but I just kept on going. When we went back for the next take we saw a massive dent in the car. It was like that scene in Smallville where he stops the bus with his hand and leaves a handprint in it. I was really firing on all cylinders with this. I can dent the hard part of a 4X4 and not feel it.
DRE: My favorite stuff in the movie is all the cross-cutting and the juxtaposition. Is all of that in script?
Pegg: Absolutely, were very meticulous when we write. We love transitions. A great way to knit a film together is with interesting transitions and obviously verbal ones are great fun to do. Often somebody will say something and the next thing you see will have relevance to that or whatever. Edgar is also able to do some of that in the edit as well, in terms of having everything in front of him and essentially is able to do another draft of the script. Were very particular the way we do that. Thats why theres very little, if any, improvisation on set. We have the script written in stone before we begin.
DRE: Obviously you guys take a couple things out of other movies like Point Break when Nick [Frost] is shooting the gun up in the air, which is done completely serious. Is it difficult to take those conventions and put them in a movie without making it a parody?
Pegg: I think the key to that is to not to come at it with anything other than love. The minute you dislike your source material thats when you start parodying and parodying with a sneer as well. Anything in Hot Fuzz that we might parody like for instance the never ending bullets in a gun or some of the more the more ridiculous beats of the action sequences is all done with a huge amount of affection so itll never come across as anything other than a tribute because thats what it is. Look at Mel Brooks as a film director, his best movies are when he was sending up films that he loved like westerns or Universal horror movies. You can see he didnt particularly like Star Wars or Robin Hood and thats why those movies arent near as good. I think its always healthy to have affection for the source material youre tackling.
DRE: I love the scene where you and Nick are shooting up the tiny English village. It reminded me a scene from another film of yours, Mission: Impossible III, where Tom Cruise is running really quickly through that ancient Chinese village. Theres all this insanity going around a place where that really shouldnt be happening.
Pegg: Lets not forget I was guiding Tom through that little Chinese village on the other end of the phone. But thats the central joke of Hot Fuzz. Weve taken two things that shouldnt really be together and put them together. Essentially thats the structure of every joke, you juxtapose any two categories that shouldnt necessarily be in the same place, a duck walks into a bar kind of thing. The incongruity of it was a whole part of the comedy.
DRE: Whats it like upping your game with all those great actors like Bill Nighy and Jim Broadbent?
Pegg: Its nothing but good for you. As soon as you walk on set and you look around you and you see these people who youve grown up watching or you have massive respect for, you have to step up. You have to play youre A game otherwise youre just going to disappear. People like Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward and Billie Whitelaw are utter professionals and do nothing but brilliant stuff. So its the best environment for any actor. Look at [Sylvester] Stallone in Copland. He really raises his game. I think Stallone is a great actor. A lot of the time hes in action fare which demands less of him as an actor. But when you surround yourself with great actors it brings out the best in you.
DRE: I know that at least up until Eraser, Arnold Schwarzenegger would bring in his own writer to write his one liners. They never got credit because it was literally just a few lines. Did you guys spend a lot of time coming up with the one liners in Hot Fuzz?
Pegg: I think the people that were brought in to write Arnold Schwarzeneggers one liners must have had the easiest job on earth because all you do is come up with the most leaden pun for whatevers just happened. Then deliver it in a slightly smug way. You just draw on those movies when youre trying to think of those lines like Cool off. A friend of mine told me that when someone lands in the freezer during the supermarket scene I should have said Rest in peas, which I thought was very good. But they are fun!
DRE: My eyeglasses have transition lenses so they turn into sunglasses in the sun. Sometimes, after they turn into sunglasses, I look at my reflection and feel cool. But in Hot Fuzz you get to play the coolest cop with the awesomest sunglasses.
Pegg: Yeah, its fun to be a writer/actor and be able to write yourself parts like that. You get a little wish fulfillment because as youre writing jumps through the air, firing two guns at once Hong Kong style youre thinking, Im going to be doing that in a few months. So its great fun to write yourself a part. Basically Edgar and me write the films that we want to see. We write the films that we dont usually get to see or make in the UK so obviously theres going to be a little bit of making ourselves look great in it.
DRE: It is funny to read reviews of Hot Fuzz and see people pick the wrong movies you guys are referencing. Someone wrote that the scene where you are loading up with guys was reminiscent of Neo in The Matrix. But that is obviously Rambo.
Pegg: Oh absolutely, it was more like The Wild Bunch or the commando scene in Commando. If you look at Wikipedia theres a list of so-called references in Hot Fuzz which are virtually all wrong. There arent that many that we actually made specifically. The load up scene is a great example. Somebody said to Edgar, That line when Angel says, Im going to bust this thing wide open, whats that from? Edgar said, Its from everything. Its a much broader palette than Shaun of the Dead was.
DRE: Do you look at it as a postmodern action film?
Pegg: I guess so, since its self-referential so its now drawing attention to itself. Postmodernism is all about the recognition of self and using that as a creative start point. The film is very much self-reflective. Its taking on the conventions and the themes and the clichs of a lot of other films and drawing attention to them so in that sense it is postmodern. But I think postmodernism is almost a condition as much as a decision. You almost cant help it these days.
DRE: I read all sorts of different things about your acting training. That you may be a method actor, is that true?
Pegg: Im not a method actor by any means. I guess method acting suits some people. To me, acting is acting is acting. [Laurence] Olivier said it once to Dustin Hoffman on Marathon Man, Act, dear boy. I went to university to study theater, film and television so I have formal training in the arts but I became a standup comic and cut my teeth there.
DRE: I was lucky enough to interview Woody Allen a few years ago and I asked him if he would ever do standup again. He said that he would like to but it takes so much time to build a set. Would you do standup again?
Pegg: Yeah, I would. I did a couple of gigs recently in the UK and really enjoyed being back on stage. Its a very immediate form of performance because youre validated there and then. The minute the joke leaves your mouth they either laugh or they dont. Its not like youre waiting for the edit. For that reason its extremely exhilarating but I think Woody Allen is right. Not only do you have to build the set, you have to work it through in safe environments until youre natural and then take it out to the clubs. I might do a live show but I dont know. I certainly would enjoy it. I really look back on those days fondly.
DRE: The first time we spoke I asked you if read The Walking Dead and you said you do. After that got printed I know that you and [Walking Dead creator] Robert Kirkman became internet buddies.
Pegg: Thats right. Now he sends me the new issues via PDF.
DRE: So do you want to do a shout out to any cop or crime comics like Ed Brubakers Criminal?
Pegg: Ed Brubaker gave that to me. Hes friends with Robert [Kirkman]. They were in Seattle. Robert emailed me and said, My friend Ed is in town, can he come to the movie? I said, Absolutely. Of course. He gave us Criminal and Nick [Frost] read it and said its fantastic. Im going to read it on the flight to Toronto because I want to really read a good comic. Another comic I picked up at St. Mark's Comics a couple of weeks ago was Zombies vs. Robots. Chris Ryall wrote it and he also wrote the Shaun of the Dead comic book adaptation.
DRE: I read a quote from you on the IMDB, which is always
Pegg: Sketchy, yeah.
DRE: Yeah. I read that you turned down the role of Rorschach in Watchmen because it would become too "Simon Pegg IS Rorschach."
Pegg: That is just so not true. I dont even know what that means. I floated that Id like to play Rorschach because I think hes a great character. Also Im ginger and funny looking. I think hell be fun to play. Its funny when you read those things because they get put out there as fact. On the IMDB my agent keep taking off The Triviata as one of our projects. That was a sitcom that Nick and I were working on about three years ago. We shelved it because things really took off with the movies. Someone keeps putting it back on there and its like, No, Im not doing it anymore. But the reason that is, is because some tabloid paper in the UK broke it as if I said we were doing it but that just wasnt true. It seems like an odd story to make up.
DRE: But you didnt turn down Rorschach flat.
Pegg: No, I was never offered it. I think when it was in the hands of Paul Greengrass I had a better chance at maybe getting a casting because I know Paul and would have put my case across. But now that it is with [300 director] Zack Snyder, hes going to have his own choices, but I think hed be a fun guy to work with.
DRE: Have you seen any Shaun of the Dead tattoos on anybody?
Pegg: I have. Its cool and immensely flattering. A girl in Seattle named Wendy. Shes sexy and cool and has tattoos. Her tattoo is the cover of issue four of the Shaun of the Dead comic. But the weird thing is that maybe two months prior at a Virgin Megastore this guy showed me his tattoo based on the same image.
DRE: You should get them together.
Pegg: I said we should get them together, its a match made in heaven.
DRE: Hot Fuzz is already doing so well overseas. Are you and Edgar planning on doing something together sooner rather than later?
Pegg: The trouble is since Shaun of the Dead did so well a couple of projects have come up for both of us that we are now committed to. Edgars working with Marvel on Ant-Man which I might be involved in somewhat. Nick and I writing a project together, which we hope to film here in America maybe towards the end of this year or the beginning of next. But as Edgar and I touched down in Sydney for our Australian leg of our press tour we had this idea for the third film, which were very excited about. So as soon as we clear the decks well get on with it and I think its going to be good.
DRE: Would you want to play Ant-Man?
Pegg: I think its important for Edgar to do a film that Im not the lead character in. Though I think it would be fun. I havent read his script yet but I know its going to be really good. In the same way that we made the British bobbie into a bad ass, hes effectively taken the smallest Marvel character and I have no doubt hell make it one of the best.
DRE: Any Marvel characters you would like to play in a movie?
Pegg: Probably Captain Britain [laughs].
DRE: [laughs] With the flag on his face, chest and back.
Pegg: I used to read Captain Britain when I was a kid. If they make a Captain Britain movie, theres only one choice.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 20 of 20 COMMENTS
thejuanupsman:
Nice interview. Can't wait to see the movie.
enchante:
I loved Shaun of the Dead...I also loved Hot Fuzz. I'm on the fence about 'Run Fat Boy Run' though, since the trailer makes it feel less awesome and more touchy feely.