Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are following up the success of Shaun of the Dead with Hot Fuzz, a celebration of US action flicks (with a little Miss Marple thrown in), they tell Donald Clarke
The first time Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, two ordinary Englishmen, came to Dublin was 10 years ago. A few years out of college, still finding their way in the world of television comedy, the pals had travelled across the Irish Sea to see Radiohead in concert. Now they sit in adjacent rooms in the Morrison Hotel, fending questions from the ladies and gentlemen of the press.
"Here we are now, publicising our second film, and I am still amazed by everything," Pegg says. "You try not to pop with excitement. But it is an enormous pleasure to do what you love for a living."
In truth, a mere three years ago, when Shaun of the Dead, a comedy of the undead starring and co-written by Pegg, was being released into cinemas, the boys would have been surprised to learn that, in just a short time, they would become notable movie players. Pegg had achieved a class of cult fame in the television comedy Spaced, which featured Frost in a regular supporting role, but, to this point, they rarely fraternised with Hollywood royalty or fended calls from men with cigars. Now Quentin Tarantino visits their set. Tom Cruise, who acted alongside Pegg in Mission: Impossible 3, is an admired acquaintance. Hot Fuzz, the highly amusing follow-up to Shaun, is being advertised on every bus and hoarding.
"You can't let all this change you," Pegg continues. "The minute you start believing what people say you are doomed. It is important to keep a healthy degree of awe about it all."
Unlike, say, the increasingly smug Ricky Gervais, Pegg shows little sign of having his head turned by adulation. Born in Gloucester 36 years ago, he comes across as a polite, articulate young man with an impressive ability to weave pop-cultural references into any conversation. The appeal of both Shaun of the Deadand Hot Fuzzdepends upon juxtaposing American genres - the zombie movie for Shaun, the action thriller for Fuzz - with very English environments.
The genesis of those projects surely lies in a childhood spent fantasising about Star Warsin the nowhere-more-English West Country.
"I guess so," Pegg says. "Way back, my mom was an actress in the local drama group. I grew up around the theatre and for that reason was very interested in comedy as a pre-teen. I used to do shows for my friends. Then I went to university and did a very theoretical course in drama. I quickly began to lose interest in being an actor. I wanted to do something more proactive. As an actor you had to wait for jobs. You weren't in control of your career. I became the master of my own destiny by writing and performing my own stuff."
After leaving Bristol University, where he was good buddies with David Walliams, later the good-looking one in Little Britain, Pegg soon rubbed up against two important collaborators. Jessica Stevenson became his co-star in Spacedand Edgar Wright directed and co-wrote the series. The Channel 4 show, which integrated elaborate movie pastiches into the lives of two ordinary flatmates, seemed to gain cult status even before the credits had rolled on the first episode in 1999. Wright, also the director of Hot Fuzzand Shaun of the Dead, brought a vivid kinetic quality to the action which was unusual for a situation comedy and which bade well for the team's first cinematic collaboration.
FOR ALL THAT, Pegg and Wright had modest expectations for Shaun of the Dead. Detailing the aftermath of a zombie infestation in London's Crouch End, the picture seemed destined for a tight niche. They enjoyed the positive reviews and the busy box-office. But the first sign they had created something really special came when George Romero, director of Night of the Living Deadand the inventor of the modern zombie genre, called to register his approval.
"Our expectations were just to get the film made," Pegg says. "And we didn't really pause to think how it would do in Europe or America. It was a real surprise when we got the call to say that George Romero liked it. That was the pinnacle. He ended up becoming a friend. When somebody who wrote films you grew up loving calls you up and asks you to dinner, that never becomes boring."
When I asked George Romero about Shaun of the Deadin 2005 he made it clear that he understood the film was as much a tribute as a pastiche.
"I loved it immediately. What's not to like?" he said. "It's just so reverent. It's done with such great respect."
Sure enough, one of the great joys of the film was its willingness to play the horror sequences straight. The final showdown between the surviving humans and the advancing ghouls would have sat comfortably in one of Romero's own films.
Wright and Pegg are trying something similar in Hot Fuzz. The picture finds Pegg's efficient urban police officer relocating to a small town in the country where, upon encountering a series of murders, he loads up with a ton of munitions and begins blowing all hell out of the village green. The film, which features Frost as the hero's hopeless partner, nods towards the cosy television crime stories of Midsomer Murders and Miss Marple. There is something of The Wicker Manabout it. But, more than anything else, it is a celebration of the mainstream action pictures produced by the likes of Jerry Bruckheimer or Joel Silver. Now there is a difficulty here. Whereas the zombie film was originally a low-budget entity, films such as Lethal Weapon, Point Breakor Bad Boyswere anything but.
"That is a correct observation," Pegg says. "We came up against that problem daily. We are paying tribute to budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but doing so on a budget of less than $20 million (€15 million). And we did want it to look credible. It's not a mickey-take. Now when you are making a film in the UK, you are also looking at weather problems. You are trying to blow things up or fill a pub with gunfire and it's difficult on that budget."
Wright, who, with Pegg, studied dozens of action films on DVD in preparation, does a pretty good job of delivering grand mayhem with a less than grand bankroll.
"We absolutely tried to have the action sequences work in their own right," he says. "The joke in those scenes is not that we are sending up those genres. It is simply that the context is different. We take the histrionics of action and put that in a parochial setting that seems out of place. The joke is you are not used to seeing two-handed gunfire in a country pub."
PEGG AND WRIGHT, co-writers again on Hot Fuzz, cannot be faulted for the industry they bring to their work. Every corner of every scene is decorated with a joke or a sly cultural reference. They research the background of their imagined world with formidable assiduousness. Hot Fuzzcontains more information about contemporary policing in England than you would extract from a hundred episodes of The Bill.
"All of that research ended up in the film," he says. "We really wanted it to be procedurally correct. Sandford, the village in the film, is the name they use for all fictional hypotheses in police exams. You know - 'There is a riot in the village of Sandford. What would you do?' In the film my character is constantly pointing out the correct terminology. It's 'Police Service' not 'Police Force'. They say 'collision', not 'accident'. All that stuff is from our researches."
Hot Fuzzis certainly very funny. Featuring a happy array of familiar British actors including Edward Woodward, Timothy Dalton, Steve Coogan, Jim Broadbent and Paddy Considine, the picture manages the tricky business of being promiscuously allusive without ever seeming clever-clever. That said, whether it has the crossover appeal to become a proper hit in the US remains in doubt. Not that Simon Pegg should worry. With roles in Band of Brothers, Mission: Impossible 3and Doctor Whounder his belt, he seems to be developing a handy alternative career as an actor for hire.
"When you do something like that, there is a real level of relaxation to it," he says. "It is not your responsibility if the sun doesn't go down. You just do your job and let the producers do their thing. Doing Mission: Impossible 3 was like winning a competition. I was the 50th caller and got to be in Mission: Impossible. The scale of those Hollywood productions is daunting."
He goes on to discuss his incredulity on encountering the palatial trailer the producers laid on for him. It all sounds quite tempting.
Recently married, he still lives in humble north London. Would he be tempted to light out for Bel Air? "The experience I had on Mission: Impossibledemonstrated to me that Hollywood is really not that far away. People think of going there as piercing this membrane, which, once you breach it, won't allow you back. You can always come back. People are always asking: 'Are you going to go to Hollywood?' Well, maybe for a week or two. But I will always come home afterwards."
Hot Fuzz opens on Feb 16