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Edgar Wright Peter Jackson. Sam Raimi. George Romero. Quentin Tarantino. A list of famous and well-respected film directors, you might think. And you'd be right. But it turns out that they were also all disarmed by the little British zom rom com that is Shaun of the Dead. And not in the sense of those quotes you see on DVDs all the time. You know the ones. It says 'hugely enjoyable' on the box. But the actual quote was really something like; 'This movie could have been hugely enjoyable, if it wasn't for the directionless direction, the inexorable acting and the particularly less-than-special effects. No, all those directors have thrust genuine praise in the direction of Shaun of the Dead in one way or another, a fact that has thrilled writer and director Edgar Wright, and writer and lead actor Simon Pegg. It's not every day you get to impress your heroes.
So forgive us for acting a little smug, but it's always nice to know about something special before the big shots get their mitts on it. Because Shaun of the Dead was always going to win a place in our hearts thanks to the brilliant Channel 4 sitcom Spaced. The UK antidote to the formulaic Friends, over its two series it perfectly captured the slacker culture of the late nineties and early noughties. Born out of a generation of young people finding they had a whole extra decade of adolescence to experience that their parents had not, Spaced hit a cultural nerve that few shows ever manage. That extra decade the characters experienced was of course their twenties, and in it they submersed themselves in videogame, movie and music culture to the extent that the unreal became the real. Spaced, like Shaun of the Dead, wore popular alternative culture on its sleeve as a badge of honour, and never merely for the sake of it.
Cut to the present, and Edgar and Simon are writing their second movie, which as the Internet Movie Database describes, is to be 'an action/cop genre movie in the vein of Shaun of the Dead'. But also, Edgar recently completed an endearing little video for Charlotte Hatherley's new single, Bastardo. Shot in the style of a 1980s Jacky comic, replete with makeover tips, photo stories and crosswords, it's an innovative poke in the eye to all those dull 'switch off your MTV and do something less clichéd instead' music videos. And with cameos from David (Little Britain) Walliams, Lucy (The Office) Davis, and naturally, Simon Pegg, it's clearly an incredibly enjoyable way to spend three minutes. Luckily, we got the chance to have a chat with a jovial Edgar Wright about it all, and you'll find the conversation below. And yes, it's a little long, but we really hope you'll stick with it and not, ahem, just skip to the end.
 PIXELSURGEON: Hi Edgar, we really appreciate you being able to spare a few minutes to chat with us. Especially seeing as many of our contributors and readers are Spaced and Shaun of the Dead fans. Charlotte Hatherley's video has been getting plenty of airplay on MTV2, and comes out in February. You must be extremely pleased with how it turned out?
Yeah- it was finished literally a couple of days before Christmas. Yeah, I am really pleased with how it turned out, but it was a bit of a last minute headfuck for 2004! (Laughs) Just in terms of we were really working round the clock on it, because Charlotte was touring, and with all the various cameos in it, it was quite a tricky one to organise. So, yep I'm really pleased with how it turned out but it was a lot of hard work from a lot of people.
Where did the idea to do a kind of live action Jacky comic come from initially?
Because the song is a good heartbreak story song, when there was any talk of doing Bastardo as a single at all, I immediately thought of the photo stories that you used to have in Jacky, and My Guy, and Just Seventeen. So it kind of expanded from that, but the initial thought was to do something entirely in stills. And then as I started to develop the idea, because the song is very pacey, and has all these great little guitar break sounds in it, the idea of then framing the whole thing within one of those annuals came about.
Our art director got hold of some copies of Jacky and My Guy from that period, and Look-In magazine as well, that was the other one. I wouldn't say that I was necessarily a regular Jacky reader, but I definitely used to read Look-In. I used to like the story of the bands bits, where they tell the story of Sweet, or Suzi Quatro in cartoon form. So it expanded from there, and then it wasn't just the photo story. It was the puzzles, and the articles about relationships too. It's funny reading those magazines again, because they're beautifully naïve; very innocent. So I really liked the idea of doing that primitive, early 80s design.
So would you say that it;s the most elaborate music video you;ve done to date?
It probably is in terms of the density of it. Weirdly, it's the cheapest video that I've ever done. I think it's the way things are going in music videos, which is partly fallout from the whole file-sharing thing, that music video budgets have been slashed. Even really big artists like Fatboy Slim, or the Chemical Brothers will be doing videos for a third of the budget that they were used to even three years ago, let alone five or seven years ago.
So on one hand having almost no money at all made it quite tough, and then on the other made it quite liberating. Aside from just the cameos, we had a lot of people doing graphics essentially for nothing, who were all helping out because they liked the idea, or liked the song. In that way, if you haven't got any money to do a video, it's quite easy to be completely honest about it! (Laughs) In essence I started to feel a bit like a magazine editor. Getting submissions in from all over the country, and in other countries, finishing off articles, or doing artwork, so, it was pretty crazy.
 Did you actually audition anyone for it, or just call people up you already knew and see if they could be involved?
Yeah. The latter! (laughs) In a similar way to how I used to make amateur films really with my school friends. Whenever I made amateur films at school or at college, there'd be no audition process, it was literally ringing up people who you think would be good to do a bit. Saying 'Hey! What are you doing on Sunday? Do you fancy being in this video I'm doing?' (Laughs) Obviously, having David Walliams as Antonio was a bit of a laugh, because I think he enjoyed the opportunity to send up his tabloid self. And then in the case of Simon Pegg as the bartender, I think I was literally in the office and he was asking how it was going, and saying that he liked the song, and I said 'Hey! Do you want to be the bartender?' And he goes 'Yeah, sure, whatever!' So it was a very laid back approach to casting!
In the case of Lucy Davis, she wanted to be in it, but she couldn't make the main day when we were shooting all of the sequences. We were going to do the sequence with Charlotte's friends, and she couldn't make that day. And then I thought, well hang on, seeing as it's all photographed, I could just come and shoot you on your stairs. So we just went round with a digital camera and shot her that night. So it was fun, because even though it was a really complicated video, it took me back to my roots of doing amateur stuff.
Did you storyboard the whole thing?
We storyboarded the photo story, and then we had the articles written out. We approached it more in a script form, in terms of, 'Here's the article that we want...and this is the article that's dramatising this lyric'. So all of the photo stories were drawn out. We had those as rough comic strips that me and my brother did before we started shooting. And then the rest of it was done, almost in a list form. Literally like a list of articles pertaining to the lyrics. It was shot in three different formats. We were in a photo studio with Charlotte trying on different outfits and with different props. There's a whole makeover bit that you see when she's getting made up really fast. And then we did two days of shooting the photo story and other stuff, where we would shoot digital stills, on DV. And then, finally, on 35mm, we shot the actual guitar solo and the framing. Then the girls hand flicking through the annual. Those bits that top and tail it, and frame it throughout, were shot on film.
Do you prefer choosing and editing songs around your own movies and TV work, or editing visuals around a song for a music video?
They work in different ways. I like both really. It's great sound-tracking things that you've written, and in Shaun of the Dead, there were songs that were in the first draft of the script that we always wanted to use. Certainly the Queen song, and White Lines, were deliberately written in. And then, completely on the other end of it, there are songs that you hear later which totally fit a sequence, which you've written two years before. But then in the case of music videos, especially with something like Bastardo, which has got so many lyrics, because it's a very verbose song. It's great to have script already there for you. Probably my favourite thing is doing the soundtrack. During the making of Spaced, I think I personally bought about 200 CDs, expanding my CD library enormously!
Are there any songs then that you wish you could have made a video for?
Oh God yeah. Umm...Ohhh - let me think of a good one. I'd love to do a video for Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. (Laughs) They're my favourite band; I'd love to do a video for them. Who else? Of all time, or just recent things?
I guess maybe a classic song that you really loved. Something you feel that you could really apply your skills to now, but it could be a song from the 80s, or...
Probably my favourite song of all time is Bell Bottoms, by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Which already has a video, but because it's my favourite song, I always think I could do something really good with it. I always think of songs that either don't have videos, or songs that I've wanted to use in things and have never been able to clear. There's an amazing song by a band called the Computer Rockers, called Galaxy Defenders, which is a remix of Galaga, the old videogame. And I remember we tried to clear it for Spaced, and we couldn't because the samples themselves hadn't been cleared, so that would be one. There's also the Cornelius and Unkle track, Ape Shall Never Kill Ape, which is amazing.
You've announced the next movie. Is it definitely going to be called Hot Fuzz, or is that still to be agreed?
It's still a working title, but I suspect that'll probably be it, yeah!
And you're already writing it, is that correct?
Yeah, we're writing at the moment. Most of the end of last year was taken up doing press for Shaun. But we have been writing in between, and doing research. And now we're just knuckling down to writing it, to hopefully maybe do it at the end of the year.
Presumably you'll have a bigger budget this time?
One would have thought so, yeah. I mean, we shall see. We're still in the process of writing, but at the moment it's going to be a bit more expansive than Shaun I think.
Were you surprised by the reception that Shaun of the Dead received in the US?
Yeah. It was great. We were really pleased, and I think it made a fallacy of the idea that Americans don't get British humour, or irony, which is something that I think maybe John Cleese said in the late 70s, and has been repeated as fact ever since. The fact that the US is responsible for the Simpsons, completely makes a fallacy of that idea that British humour is more sophisticated. It's bullshit. So we were really pleased that people embraced something that was so British. And even in terms of London, it was very specific, and we didn't really make any concessions to an international audience at all. Hopefully it shows that you don't have to have American star, or make something completely transatlantic, for it to work, you know?
On both Spaced and Shaun of the Dead, you've talked about having a secret code between yourself and Simon; so that you both know when you're going to really go for it on take'
Ha ha ha! Well that's blown now we've mentioned it on the commentaries!
So, if the new movie's going to have more action...well, in fact, is it?
Well we'd like to. We always loved doing those bits in Spaced and Shaun. The action scenes are always really fun to do. And really hard work, I mean, the Queen scene, or the scene with the cricket bat was probably some of the hardest stuff to do, but it was really good fun.
So will you have more stunt doubles on the next film, or will you just have more elaborate secret codes?
(Laughs) Probably a bit of both! It's really strange sometimes. There's one bit in Shaun where Simon jumps over a fence. The second part of the shot is him, and the first part is the stunt double. But I don't think we'd met the stunt double until he came down to the set, and he looked stunningly like Simon. It felt a bit like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
You've got, with the flower scene in Shaun, what you yourself have called a 'Richard Curtis moment' in Shaun of the Dead. Of course the very fact that it's a romantic comedy at all implies that you're riffing on that tradition of British cinema. How does it feel to have really got out there with a totally different take on what a British movie can be?
 Yeah it was nice. And it was ironic given that, on that flip-chart preview on the Shaun DVD which was done three years before the film actually came out, before we'd even signed up with Working Title, it was still with Film Four. So it was ironic that we called it a 'Richard Curtis moment', and then actually ended up at Working Title. Even when we'd originally fashioned the script, it had been quite a satirical jab at those films, so I was quite pleased that they got the joke. And even Richard Curtis liked it! He rang me up at the office to say how much he'd enjoyed it. It was pretty funny!
If you weren't allowed to work with any of the actors you've worked with so far, with whom would you most like to work with?
There are a lot of performers that Simon and myself both like. Owen Wilson, and Jack Black. Um...Paddy Considine, the British actor, we're big fans of him. Bruce Campbell, Sam Rockwell, a whole bunch of people.
So would you ever like to direct something without its roots in comedy?
Yeah, eventually. What's nice about having done Shaun and Spaced, is that even though they're comedies they touch on different elements. And even doing music videos is part of that in a way. There are a couple of them that haven't necessarily been funny overtly. So I like trying different things, and I'd like to maybe expand into other genres at some point, given the chance.
If you look at someone like Sam Raimi, he's gone from making cult movies like the Evil Dead, and ended up at the helm of a massive franchise like Spiderman. Is that the kind of avenue you'd hope to take?
Oh yeah- who wouldn't? I mean, Sam Raimi, and Peter Jackson both started making the lowest budget splatter films, and in a way, the fact that the Lord of the Rings was one of the biggest series of films of recent years and an Oscar winner, and Spiderman was huge too, it's just vindication for people who've supported them right from the start, and watched their early, schlockier efforts. The proof is in the pudding. They're now two of the biggest directors in the world. I think anybody who has an interest in film would look at something like that, and see that they've taken something that started a boyhood hobby, into the ultimate train set. It's fantastic!
While we're on the Hollywood subject, what do you think of the fact that there seem to be so many remakes at the moment? And particularly Asian horror movie remakes, and then also things like Infernal Affairs?
I don't know. It is a bit strange, and I have myself been offered quite a few remakes. It does seem like, I don't know, just a lack of imagination. Like when I've had some meetings in Los Angeles, people immediately start offering me every horror remake going, thinking that I'll immediately go; 'Ah Yeah! A remake of Creepshow? Of course I'll do it!'. Actually, Creepshow's one of the better ideas! (Laughs) I'd say that one in every three movies they make now is a remake, and it is a bit depressing. Every now and again you get one that bucks the trend, or does something different.
And certainly, what's weird is that some of my favourite movies are remakes. Like John Carpenter's version of The Thing. Then The Fly; Cronenberg's version is brilliant. So it's not like it can't be done, but recently it's just been a real lack of imagination going on. And also I think people are buying titles because they think they'll do well at the box office rather than loving the film. Even though it was pretty slick, and not necessarily a bad film at all, I think the Dawn of the Dead remake was totally like that. I don't think the people making it were really that much in love with the original, which is a shame. And then there's Assault on Precinct 13, and even though that's supposed to be okay, you just think 'Why? Why don't they just make something new?!' It's getting silly. That said; I am looking forward to Charlie and Chocolate Factory, because I always thought the original was shit! (Laughs)
Yeah- it does look quite bizarre, and it seems like an ideal thing for Tim Burton and Johnny Depp to be doing together...
 Well, aside from Gene Wilder, who is brilliant, being a big fan of the book as a kid, I always used to think that the film wasn't that great. On the other hand, Tim Burton is responsible for one of the worst remakes of all time! (Laughs)
No. Planet of the Apes wasn't great was it! Well, it's been nearly ten years since yourself, Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson, David Walliams and Matt Lucas met, through the different shows you were working on and overlapping on at the time (Six Pairs of Pants, Mash and Peas and The Asylum). What with the success of Little Britain, and Shaun of the Dead now of course, do you ever look back, amazed at how far you've come? Or are you too busy working on the next project to think about it?
On one hand, it feels like that time has gone so quickly. And on the other, even though I couldn't actually attend the British Comedy Awards, when I saw the nominations, I did feel quite proud. Not just with our nomination, but that it felt like the class of '96, with David and Matt, the Mighty Boosh, Julia Davies. You know, it's nice when there's a group you've worked with for the last eight or ten years, and all their careers are coming to fruition.
And then of course you've got the Baftas coming up too...
Yeah! It's pretty funny. It should be a laugh. I don't think we're gonna win though!! (Laughs)
Surely. Well if you could be any other director, living or dead, who would you be?
(Without hesitation) Russ Meyers!
Well apart from his movies (!), which other movies do you wish you could have directed?
Ohh...there's a question. Run Lola Run? I'll just have a look round at my DVD collection. Hard Boiled? Let me find one more...Oh, what about American Werewolf in London?
Great. Have you seen any good movies so far this year?
I've seen a few already. Well, I only just saw the Incredibles, which doesn't really count as a film from this year, but that blew me away, I thought it was amazing. And I enjoyed the Aviator a lot. And A Very Long Engagement is good. That was pretty stunning, and a lot darker than the trailers made out. House of Flying Daggers, that's also great. Then last night, I just watched something that came out last year, but completely freaked me out, a film called Switchblade Romance. A French horror film, which is shocking stuff! I rather unwisely decided to start watching it at 1 in the morning, and then it utterly freaked me out!
Which new films are you looking forward to this year?
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy...which I'm in! Very briefly. It's payback for Garth Jennings (the director), because he was in Shaun of the Dead as a Zombie. Also, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I'd be quite interested to see. Not bothered about Star Wars Episode III at all though...
Like many directors, you're famous for being a perfectionist, and doing multiple takes. Is there anything that you feel has shaped you in that way over time, or have you just always been like that?
I don't know. I think every director works in a different way, and it's difficult to really get inside somebody else's brain rate, in terms of how exactly they work. I just work in a way that I suppose is almost obsessive compulsive. Even just having a particular way of thinking things through, and any deviation from that and it'll just start to look like Japanese characters to me. Even doing Shaun of the Dead, I always like to scrawl out exactly what I'm doing on a piece of paper, even if I've already done the storyboards. I marvel sometimes at people who can work in different ways. It's interesting thinking how say, Peter Jackson works. Watching A Very Long Engagement, I sit there enjoying the film, but also my mind starts to boggle at how it was made, and I want to get into Jean-Pierre Jeunet's head, and figure it all out! I don't know, it's just interesting; it's part of the process. It doesn't matter how many DVD commentaries you listen too, or books you read, you can never entirely get into somebody's head to see how they work.
Well that's been great Edgar. Thanks for your time, and best of luck at the Baftas, and indeed with everything else. We look forward to Hot Fuzz, and if you ever need any extras, I'm sure the Pixelsurgeon readers and contributors will be happy to help!
(Laughs) Excellent stuff! Thanks very much!
(Thanks to Jason for additional questions, and i love dust)
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