BOP Interview: The World's End
Edgar Wright and Nick Frost
By Ryan Mazie
August 20, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Pegg stars as an alcoholic sad sack with the gift of being able to talk as fast as he can chug. Convincing his successful schoolyard friends (Nick Frost, Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, and Eddie Marsan) to finish the elusive “Golden Mile” pub crawl (consisting of 12 bars and even more pints) they couldn’t finish as kids, the 40-something gang returns to their hometown where a sinister, sci-fi secret is taking place that results in brews being traded for brawls.
In a roundtable interview with the affable buddies Nick Frost and Edgar Wright, the two talked about: sci-fi influences, their previous work, “researching” pubs, and Ultron.
Each movie in this trilogy has a specific genre element to it. Where did the idea for the sci-fi genre and the concept of alien robots originate?
Edgar Wright: In Shaun of the Dead, we wanted to put ourselves into a Romero film. A very much “what would we do?” situation if we were hungover Brits with no guns. In this movie, the sci-fi paranoia element is an amplification of an emotion. When I go back to my hometown and feel disconnected from it, I feel alienated from it. And much like [Simon Pegg’s character] Gary King, it is much more comfortable for me to accept that aliens have taken over my town than it is to accept getting old... So I’d say the sci-fi element is much like the sci-fi in the horror films we grew up with; it’s a metaphor for the emotions in the script.
Nick, you give almost two performances in this film after your character hits this breaking point. Tell us what it’s like to transform from an awesomely nuanced dude into a tornado of fists, feet, and barstools.
Nick Frost: I loved it, it’s amazing... I think that there’s a preconception that big men can’t get stuff done in terms of the physical side of stuff and I wanted to blow that myth out of the water essentially. But we trained a lot. Initially for four weeks, Bradley Allen, who is just an amazing stunt director, put us through our paces to see what we could do. He and Edgar designed these amazing fights. You’d come in the morning and he’d open his laptop and say, “Let’s have a look at this” and put the whole fight together in the rehearsal room with pieces of cardboard for stools. But the thing about Brad, he would say, “What do you think now? Put your performance in it.” We wanted to keep the character in the fighting. It’s no good to create a character and then to become a slugger when you start the action side of it. It wouldn’t work. We wanted to keep and maintain those characters throughout the fight.
I did a dance film before this, so I trained for seven and a half months to be a dancer. So I’m not sure how it would have been if I did it the other way around. I think the fact that I could move now and dance, I think it made those big, long takes quite balletic and violently beautiful.
Edgar, after Hot Fuzz you took a break and made Scott Pilgrim vs the World. Did you learn anything different to bring back to these films from that experience?
EW: We actually came up for the idea of this story on the Hot Fuzz press tour like six years ago. So we had the story worked out and I think that gap after the writing had us grow older, making us have more to say on the subject. I don’t think we would have written as good a screenplay as this six years ago, because now Simon’s over 40, I’m 39, I don’t think we would have said the same things six years ago. So hopefully in that case, it feels a little more mature, even amongst the head smashing and various other things (laughs).
Coming back to this was very nice, because we always had this really strong idea, but you just build up lots of personal experience. The great thing about making these movies is that as geeks, you got to make a zombie film, a cop film, and a sci-fi film. But on the comedy side of it, it’s really personal stuff and it’s really hopeful. Sometimes people say, “This one’s quite dark.” I wouldn’t use the word “dark”, but “honest.” I feel like a lot of American comedies are about the man-child of being a big kid forever. Never, ever scratch below the surface that much. With this, I think, if you set up some of these issues, you have to tackle them head on. As such, I think the comedy in this is more prickly and complicated than in the other two, which I think is a good thing.
After watching the film, I feel like you have done your fair research on pubs and drinking. The movie is set primarily in 12 different pubs so I was curious about how the 12 different designs came about and for you, what makes the perfect pub?
EW: We wrote the script and obviously “The World’s End” was always going to be the last one. They are all named after real bars. We wrote the story and then named the bars after things that happen in the scene. So they are all real bar names. Even “The Famous Cock” is a real pub in the UK around the corner from my house. As I discovered when we went to clear the names, it is the only one in the country (laughs).
NF: There are lots of cocks, but there is only one famous one (laughs).
EW: In terms of the design, as you see in the movie, one of the things we wanted to tackle which is happening a lot, is how chains are taking over pubs and they all start to look identical. So it’s something I find a slightly sad thing, is that so many pubs are in older buildings, they get this makeover, all of the signage looks the same, they have that fake, folksy, handwritten chalk that is supposed to look like someone did it that morning but it came straight from the factory. There are about ten bars around me in my neighborhood that I can walk to in ten minutes, but so many of them look exactly the same. … I wanted the quest to feel like it was becoming nightmarish, that you are going through these chambers or levels with each pub.
But my perfect pub would be an old fashioned one. There is one pub in the movie that we had to give a makeover to, to look like the others, but it was actually a nice pub and it still is, the fifth one they go to.
NF: For me, I have a problem going to pubs. Being relatively successful, I can’t go into them without people talking about you essentially and it’s fairly annoying. When they talk about you when you are on TV, it’s OK, but when they are right in front of you, and all you can hear, “THAT’S HIM! THAT’S HIM! IT’S A HOT FUZZY!” So a perfect pub to me is one with no one in it (laughs).
EW: You should do a Ray Winstone, and have a pub in your own house.
Edgar, all of your films are very layered, so when writing them do you start with the character and story first or the pop culture, genre references?
EW: With this one, you have to know the fate of the characters. You have to know where you’re ending. We always knew what the end scene of this film was going to be and once you know the fate of the characters, then you can start to layer. For instance, Martin Freeman’s character, where he ends up is predicted in the first thing that’s said about his character. So in the first three minutes of the film, which are impossible to get on the first watch, there are a lot of omens of things to come as there are in the pub signs. You need to know where your characters are going and then go backwards to start threading things in. And we usually have been quite mathematical about it. If there is going to be a payoff to something, it has to be mentioned twice before. You can’t just have one and then three. You have to have, one, two, and then three is the payoff. And because we had a chart of 12 bars, we also had a chart where you’d have these leaping lines of where things come back in and out.
Gary’s character is told in the film that his problem is that he keeps going backwards, but he needs to go forward. If you could jump back to any character you’ve been to see where they have gone, who would it be?
NF: I think mine would be Mike Watt from Spaced to see if he did go to Afghanistan and if he survived. He wanted to be in the Army so much, “Did he ever do it?” Mike is based off of a friend of mine called John who we used to rag on a lot for saying he was in the Army when he was in the National Guard essentially. Like four years ago I saw him on Facebook and he had become a personal, protective guard to the Prime Minister. So through all his bullshit he eventually got there and that amazed me and I wondered if Mike would take that same route.
EW: I’d say going back, this is another movie I will never make like a Don’t [the fake trailer from Grindhouse] feature film, but I thought it would be funny to do a low-budget spin-off movie featuring the Andys from Hot Fuzz. Like a buddy film with Rafe Spall and Paddy Considine would be hilarious. I even had a title for it called Maximum Tash.
Edgar, a lot of your films, especially Scott Pilgrim, seem to find their audience once they are released on DVD a few years later. As a filmmaker, does it bother you that it didn’t do as well as it possibly could but then find its audience at the end?
EW: Here’s the thing. If you’re proud of a movie, which I am proud of, you just have to have faith that it will get out there eventually. And to be honest, that’s exactly what happened with Spaced. Spaced wasn’t a big ratings hit in the UK, but it found an audience on DVD and cable with endless repeats. So I think the thing is, and I know the cast feels the same way, because we did a DVD press tour; if nobody was proud of the movie, you wouldn’t have seen the cast. They would have all ran for the hills. But the fact that we went out and did more press for it was just like, “You know what, we’re proud of this.” Films are more complex. Mainstream audiences want to know exactly what they’re getting and if a film is more complicated, it’s just a harder job to market it. It’s as simple as that. I don’t feel bad about it, because I feel like people are still watching that movie in cinemas at midnight, while movies that have made $300 million leave the theaters and no one ever thinks about them again.
NF: I think it’s that thing we always talk about and I hate this word, because I heard it used so fucking much during the Olympics, but it’s about a legacy. If I was a studio head, my answer would be different, but do you want a film that makes a shitload of money or one that people will watch forever and care about?
EW: With this film as well, there are darker strokes in it. You can see a film that’s very funny and laugh all of the way through, but you have forgotten about it by the time I have validated my parking. It’s completely gone. But hopefully with things like this, by being very specific, you can resonate more over a longer period. One of the nice responses I have gotten with this movie is that people post about it a couple days later “this movie’s got me thinking” which is good beyond the laughs and action stuff. It’s better to be a sleeper than something that burns out.
To hit on a bit of Marvel news, Edgar, you have been working on Ant-Man for quite some time now. Ultron is now in The Avengers 2 so I wanted to know if he was ever in the Ant-Man script?
EW: I can not really get into that, but I’ll say “no.”
And Nick, how is the sequel to Snow White and the Huntsman coming along?
NF: It’s now Ultron and the Huntsman.