The new film The World’s End is a reunion of sorts for director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
The trio have been working together for years, creating the British TV series Spaced and cult films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Recently, they’ve separated to make other movies but always planned to come back and make a third entry in what they now call their Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy (all three films are bonded by ice cream).
The World’s End is the last entry in this trilogy, and at its core is a story about friendship and change. Many of Wright’s featured actors appear in The World’s End, along with some new faces, making this one of the biggest and most ambitious films he’s made yet. There are surprises within the film that will polarize audiences, but according to Wright, taking a risk and creating something different was what attracted him to the film in the first place.
Edgar Wright, along with his lead actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, were recently in San Francisco promoting The World’s End and took some time to talk to us about their third cinematic collaboration. The following is a transcription of that conversation.
Q: Last night, you mentioned something in the [post-screening] Q&A. You talked about how you wanted to show parts of England that weren’t London, and then in your movies, the parts of England that aren’t London have zombies, they have murderers, and they have what we see in this movie. It’s like you’re saying, don’t go to England.
(laughter)
Edgar Wright: It feels like a taunt. Richard Curtis’ films are like a tourist board kind of, like, sort of an advert, and ours, maybe not so much. Don’t stray out of the tourist zone.
Simon Pegg: Stay in London.
EW: Stay in zone one.
Nick Frost: Stay in Notting Hill.
EW: Do not go any further like east, west or…
SP: I think the UK is portrayed…is seen in a certain light around the world. Not least in America as being some sort of chocolate box, green and pleasant land full of castles and stuff like that. The context with that – irrespective of where we take it, whether it be zombies or murders or aliens – that’s by the by. Where we’re trying to set the film is at least in a real part of England. It’s something a little bit more indicative of the real place. From that …
NF: Don’t go to northern England because it’s full of unemployed minors who do strips.
(laughter)
SP: …because we always want to start off from a point of reality, and that’s where our roots always are. It’s reality and then we go off to these places of the fantasy and a little bit of absurdity.
EW: But it’s also amusing for us having grown up in those places when we watch. especially the Hollywood genre movies. It seems so, like, far flung to us. You know, like, even watching when we did Hot Fuzz, even watching American cop films, it seemed like sci-fi to us. It’s so far removed from, like, our… especially if you’re in the country or in a satellite town. So there’s something about having grown up a small English town that you’re both obsessed with about what goes on behind closed doors and also that funny mischievous like desire to cause absolute mayhem.
SP: Also we’re parochial. On a global scale, we’re parochial. England is a parochial country and so we wanted to reflect that.
Q: So we’ve this trilogy of films. Aside from ice cream, what would you consider the thematic connective tissue between these three?
EW: I’m glad you asked, I would say, that overriding themes would be the individual versus the collective, which is in all three movies. The dangers of perpetual adolescence. You know in “Shaun of the Dead,” Shaun has to grow up to be the hero. In “Hot Fuzz,” if anything, Nicholas Angel has to dumb down to be the badass. In this movie when Gary King decides to turn back the clock with the magic time machine known as alcohol, things go very badly wrong, so the moral of this film is actually said aloud by Rosamund Pike. She says, you’ve got to go forwards and not backwards. So I guess that’s something that links all of them; they’re three films about growing up.
SP: Loss of identity and, yeah, friendship.
NF: Maybe friendship between men you know how they must change and … right guys? Different stages of friendship that men go through or not go through.
SP: Also, Britishness, contemporary Britishness and those things also. There are many, many connective threads that are far more important and relevant than the ice cream. The ice cream and the fence jumping is just an invitation in. It gets more cerebral after that.
EW: The ice cream is literally the dessert topping.
Q: You’re obviously walking a very fine line in terms of tone, especially in the second half of the film. Obviously, you’re very conscious of that but what kinds of things did you take in order to make sure it didn’t go one way and that everything was very balanced and …
EW: That’s definitely a tricky thing. I think we like that idea and I think all the movies we’ve done have that balancing act. “Shaun of the Dead” is pretty dark. It’s funny to me when people said this feels darker than the other two. I said yes, sure, but in Shaun he does shoot his mother in the head. That’s about as dark as it gets in a comedy.
SP: Then his dad points a gun at him in “Hot Fuzz.”
EW: Yeah.
SP: It ends with a weird protofacist utopia.
(laughter)
EW: I think the thing is it’s because we’re with the comedy fans. There’s lots of … even some films that we really enjoy, you can be in the cinema and laugh for 100 minutes and have forgotten the film by the time you got to the parking lot. We like to make films like … you do have laughs and do have thrills but they have some other nagging themes that might echo around in your head like a couple of days later. That’s our aim in a way, it’s to have some deeper meaning there as well.
SP: We’ve always been trying to embrace and defend the idea of a slow burn so that you take time. You don’t just get in there and desperately try and be funny straight away or play all your cards straight away to try and fool the audience into thinking it’s hilarious. There’s value in building characters and story and then when you do start taking the left turns or making dramatic choices, the people have got a lot invested in it and it’s a lot more effective.
NF: You can get away with more as well if they’re invested in things.
Q: To follow up on that, you’ve said, Simon, that you take the audiences’ intelligence seriously – for any of you – why do you think that that makes for good comedy, taking the intelligence seriously?
SP: Because you should never underestimate the joy of audience participation in making links and the joy of your own sort of connections with the film. I think anyone can laugh at a person falling over and we know that better than most because we put it in every film we do. But there’s also a huge joy in working stuff out and solving puzzles and making connections between threads and seeing foreshadowing and things paying off and getting all that. It’s a far more gratifying experience than just being …. hearing the word ‘come’ every five minutes, do you know what I mean? (Nick laughs) Nick loves that shit.
(laughter)
EW: Nick is sold!
SP: When the audience leaves the theater when they’ve been taken seriously, they feel good about it. Jesus, we’ve been … we’re constantly being infantilized by what we see at the cinema, we’re constantly being underestimated. Bashed around the head with it and kind of … it’s turning us into mush. I would hope in a summer that’s been fairly populated by big dumb shit that you feel or think, ‘you know that was tasty.’
Q: You feel like the audience feels it when you take [their intelligence seriously]?
SP: They should be … I do. We try to make films for ourselves and try to make things that we would leave the cinema thinking that was enjoyable. I remember the first time I saw Raising Arizona, I was … I felt flattered that they thought that much of me that I could get that film. I felt like I was complimented by it in a weird way. I love that feeling of feeling like I’m in on it and I’m not just having fireworks light off in my face.
EW: I feel like all of the films that inspired us or continue to inspire us are all ones that I feel like films I wanted to watch again as soon as it finished and the films I felt like I love that but I just want to see more and I want to see … Like “Raising Arizona” is a good example. I felt exactly the same way. I saw it first on VHS and I watched it immediately again afterwards and before I had to return it to our Blockbuster thing, I’m going to watch as much of this as I can before I have to return the rental, just so I feel like I have seen everything, which is a good way to be. I feel like that’s the greatest kind of movie if you actually knew like you wanted to watch it a second time, halfway through watching it the first time.
Q: Right.
SP: I don’t think that … maybe this is … I think it’s a good thing, but I don’t think you can watch any of the films that we’ve made – particularly “The World’s End” – and entirely get it on the first watch. I think there’s stuff in there that you can’t possibly get between until you’ve seen it all before. There were punch lines which happened before the set up. So that you can’t … you can’t get it until you watch it a second time. There are elements … because we feel like we owe it to the audience these days in the age of repeated viewing and the age of DVD and downloading ownership which we have in the cinema now. You owe it to the audience in terms of if they’re going to spend money on what you’ve made then it needs to give back something so when you watch it again and again, you’re still seeing new things five or six times in. If that means people in the first watch don’t entirely get it, then that’s just the way it is.
EW: Because it was in 2D, it costs three dollars less.
(laughter)
NF: So we had the Olympics last year, ah fucking … I’m sick of the word ‘legacy’ because we heard it about a trillion times. It’s about that thing, it’s about the in 10 years’ time, someone will say, ‘hey, have you seen this film?’ I was like that with “Withnail and I” and “Spinal Tap.” It’s those things where someone says, ‘you’ve got to see this’ and that means a lot to us as much as about a pop shot, it’s about a slow build, something that people will watch in 10 years potentially, or 15 or 20 years. That’s really important…
(laughter)
NF: …also, you know it’s like that putting peanuts in a log…
(room erupts in laughter)
NF: …It’s like animals in the zoo. If you just lay food out for them, they get really bored and sad. But if you hide it, so they find it they fucking, they feel amazing…
EW: I’ve never heard that saying before.
NF: People were thinking these animals are very depressed. What’s the big deal? But animals like to forage, that’s …
Q: Make them work for it.
NF: Make them work for it! That’s what they’re happiest doing so they decided, let’s hide food all over the place and they became infinitely happier because they had to work to find it.
EW: So what he’s basically is saying is like, ‘listen you monkeys, we want you to work for your peanut.’
(laughter)
SP: Kind of like … as a species, we often take the path of least resistance. We don’t … that’s why people like spoilers because it just removes all the tension and people want that. When we shouldn’t really be encouraged to do that. I think that’s where in a way, the message of the film comes in. Sometimes, maybe it is better if a higher power comes in and tells us what we want. Maybe we’ll be better people for it. But then that will come down to control and then the debate starts so ….
Q: When it comes to creating comedy where it’s horror and comedy, I feel like there’s a thin line and it could very easily become a self-parody. I feel like with both this and with Shaun the effectiveness is that the stakes are real but we laugh with the characters when the situation is going. How do you find that line?
EW: It’s tricky because you’ve got to … I remember when we made “Shaun of the Dead” like the scene after the mum has died. We actually cut some jokes out because we realized that the audience needed like grieving time. It’s really tricky because you’ve also got to move the film along and then this one, there’s some moments like that where there’s no time to grieve some of the people who’ve gone. But then, I guess we know that … it’s a tricky bouncing act, absolutely. Because you’ve got this … you can’t make the characters look callous and there’s got to be stakes like …
Most horror films, you don’t give a shit about the victims at all. It’s like they’re just like they’re basically there to be killed every 15 minutes. But here, you’ve got to feel bad for those who didn’t make it. In a way, you can actually – without giving so much away – in the opening of the film, you can see the faces of some of the characters in the prologue. It’s setting up as omens. It’s almost like the opening is a prophesy foretold of what’s going to happen at the end of the movie.
Q: Having now spent three movies together, what’s the worst thing that one of the others of you have done in the course of making these movies?
NF: In terms of performance?
EW: I don’t know, what is there?
SP: I don’t know either … I have to think of it …
EW: I don’t know like sort of… I think if I have any regrets is that I sulk too much on set. I let the kind of the stresses of the shoot wear on my face. I rely on these guys too much to be the cheerleaders and keep the crew morale up. Because all the films, they’re fun to watch back and whenever I look back on them they look like a breeze, but they’re really tough to make because we’re trying to … this film took 12 weeks to make which is long for a low budget film. But not like with the sort of action and the special effects and just … even just a scene sitting around the table can be a bitch to shoot just in terms of the amount of coverage you use. So I think my … the worst thing I have done to these guys is be a moody bastard at times.
NF: Finally, you admit it.
EW: No, I … These guys did nothing wrong.
SP: I honestly haven’t. Stuff’s happened, like we’ve been hurt and stuff. I‘ve broken, we’ve broken bones, we’ve been through emotional trauma but always with the support of the others. We’re a cooperative and we don’t … anything less than that is counterproductive so I can … there isn’t even a scale of bad things that these guys have done in my opinion. I can feel the pressure but that’s because that’s the way it is on these …
NF: You’re disappointed aren’t you?
(laughter)
EW: But if you wanted to know what the real truth it’s, I fucked Nick behind Sam’s back.
Q: So you guys have done horror, action, why did you decide on science fiction as a third one and did it also connect closely to what [was asked earlier] about themes? Because there seemed to be the theme is not just of the individual versus the collective but an anti-technological theme …
EW: Yes.
Q: …that ran through the film.
SP: More anti-corporate than technological, yeah.
EW: Yeah, you’ve got a character like the one with the twist of the tails and you’ve got this character who likes to see himself as a rebel but to everybody else, he’s pathetic. He’s the guy who didn’t grow up and you can’t be like the teenager flipping the bird to the man in your 40s. But then when it gets towards the end, it’s like you’ve got to be on his side because you don’t want to be with the aliens. You’ve got to be a human at the end of the day. So that’s one of the overarching themes of it.
I think in terms of just like the sci-fi thing, it’s not like we pick a genre out of a hat when we’re writing. It was something that just felt like a way of expressing an emotion. We felt that bittersweet emotion of going back to your hometown and it changing around you.
There was something in “Hot Fuzz” that really stuck in my head that informed this film, is that Hot Fuzz was shot in my hometown and in “Hot Fuzz” it’s supposed to be really beautiful and parochial and that’s what I imagined as town [where] I grew up. Yet, when we were shooting that film, I had to digitally erase a Starbucks from lots of shots because it just didn’t fit. It’s like that doesn’t fit in my hometown and…
NF: … they will never allow a Starbucks …
EW: No, they … exactly, they would never allow a Starbucks. The fact that it was there. The irony of having to digitally erase the Starbucks was not lost on me and that factored into this movie. So think there’s something about using the sci-fi, social science fiction or paranoid sci-fi, quiet invasion, like that genre which is a big part of our upbringing through a lot of British and American sci-fi – whether it’s “Body Snatchers” or “Village of the Damned” or the “Quatermass and the Pit.” Like it’s something … it’s almost to me, I remember once expressing to a friend that I felt that my town had changed because whenever I would go back at Christmas to see my family I would feel like nobody … they either didn’t recognize me or didn’t care. Both of them bummed me out. So these are people I went to school with. Even the thing with the bully in the film was based on a real incident. So I remember saying to a friend of mine, every time I go back to my hometown I feel like “Body Snatchers.” It’s like the town changed without me. It’s like the two go hand in hand really.
SP: Always story first. Then as soon as you say the word, I felt ‘alienated’ at home. It’s obvious what you were going to do.
Q: For Nick and Simon, of the three characters that you both played in the three films, which do you feel is most like you and which is the most different?
NF: I think for me, Danny Butterman is the least like me. I think I was probably like Ed when I was Ed. But now, I’m kind of a lot like Andy sadly, without the violet pub rages but …
EW: But if you were pushed into it, you could handle yourself.
NF: Yes, sadly absolutely.
EW: You can do two robots, maybe not 10 robots.
SP: The amount of Hungarian stuntmen you knocked out in that scene was ….
NF: Yes, there was a couple … Yes, I wasn’t always an actor so do I have a violent anger that erupts from time to time.
(laughter)
SP: I would say …
NF: I’m sorry, but you never have to get to that because it’s that thing that if you front up and pretend to be a lunatic, people will always back down unless they’re a lunatic. Then you’ve got a problem. I don’t know …
SP: I once threatened to tear a man in half, it was brilliant. I am least like Nicholas Angel and I was probably a little bit like Shaun when I did “Shaun.” Gary is probably somebody I could have been if I hadn’t been conscientious in my lifetime. So, it’s difficult to say … “Shaun” is a long time ago and I’m not like Shaun at all anymore. I’m more like Gary now. But Gary without all the alcoholic depression.
Q: The three films together are almost like an homage to the English pub and to beer drinking at some level. But this one coming to an American audience now and bringing it to America – obviously, it’s going to play in other places – but with the great British pub crawl as the central element, one of the things I came up with 30 years ago for the first time and one of my culture shocks was the differences in the way that people drank. The first time I ever saw an American drinking game, my British friends and I couldn’t figure out why the game was happening. It was actually slowing down the drinking. So we decided to speed it up. I think that most Americans I’ve ever met, I don’t know what you guys think but they see the pub crawl as a stamina event whereas it was also a speed event. It was really just ripped because pubs closed so quickly.
EW: Yes.
SP: If you were going to do 12 pints, you only have a three hour window of opportunity and you have to order and you have to pee occasionally right? So I just wondered what your observations have been. You obviously are fans of pubs and drinking but …
EW: But then …
SP: Pubs changed their hours right? In England, they used to open from 12:00 until 3:00 and then shut until 7:00 and open from 7:00 till half 10:00 so you have to be quick. [Cross talk] Now it’s has changed, you can go all day.
EW: I think the film is like a love-hate like [Inaudible 00:21:46] and pubs in a way. It’s like we love things about that culture and we hate things about that culture. That’s true with “Shaun of the Dead.” It’s like the character of Liz does not want to be in the pub every night. In the way, it’s Gary’s obsession to go these 12 beers and much more than the other four. They’re not like … they’re emotionally blackmailed into coming. But there is a thing in terms of that spread thing is we did use to think that Gary in every scene his beer is like an hour glass.
Once he’s finished that beer, that’s the end of the scene. There’s literally a line when someone said … I don’t want to spoil who said it but he says, somebody offers him another round and he says no, we’re done here. It’s just when he just finished his drink and that’s the end of the scene. So we used to think about the beer being the hour glass. Once Gary’s drink has gone down, he didn’t even really care anymore that the others have finished their drinks or not. It’s just about him getting on to the next one. He’s on his own sprint and it becomes more obvious as the film goes on that he doesn’t necessarily care if the others make it to the end with him because it’s his obsession.
SP: I think the film is less to a homage to the pubs and drinking and more they are invariably part of them because they’re British. The pub is such a cornerstone of the British culture and activity and social activity. It forms such a vital part of our society that if we’re going to make films about being British in Britain, it’s going to be, there’s going to be a pub in it. Even in “Hot Fuzz,” there are things that happen in pubs there, people meet and Danny and Angel find …
EW: It’s still at the center of social …
SP: Yes. Even with “East Enders,” “Coronation Street” and all our soap operas, the central point is a pub.
EW: It’s a pub square …
SP: The … when he was returning …
EW: Somebody said to me like doing a season of pub related films to promote “The World’s End” and I said, outside of the American wealth and London, all pubs films are complete bummers. I don’t know if you see a double film of “Tyrannosaur” and this because there’s not a lot of riot. But we like the idea of taking it in the big like it’s a big part. But it’s almost like the thing that was obviously Shaun becomes … but in this movie, we thought if it like being an Arthurian quest. It’s like because of the names that are loaded with significance even if the actual bar themselves are shitty, they’ve always got these fancy names. So we always thought that the idea of having the bar names being like tarot cards. It’s the thing which is maybe obvious or not is that all of the pub names are like are telling you what’s going to happen in the scene like chapters.
Even some of the things that are on the signs like in the mermaid, you can actually see the mermaids on the sign. So we wrote the story and we wrote “The World’s End” was going to be last one because it’s a real bar. But then once we’ve written the story, we went through a book of real pub names and attributed different bars to different chapters. This is this one, this is this one and this is why. So it’s a really fun thing to do. So it’s definitely like something that’s like, it’s a part of our culture that maybe like the three of us are slightly left behind but it’s still something that’s so part of the natural psyche, you basically cannot escape it. It’s just like Gary King kind of escape … There you go.
Q: What did you guys think of “World War Z?”
EW: I loved the book. I think the book is amazing.