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Interview - Edgar Wright On The World's End
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- Written by Matthew Toomey
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Edgar Wright knows how to make a great comedy and I’ll site Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World as examples. While he was recently in Australia, I had a chat with Edgar about his new film, The World’s End. You can download the full audio by clicking here.
Matt: The first time I heard the names Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost was back in 2004 with Shaun Of The Dead. It was very well received by critics and has developed a cult-like status since. Did you always think that film was going to be the one that helped break you all into the industry?
Edgar: We had no perceptions of how it would turn out. We were actually just feeling lucky and fortunate to be able to make a film. There was no grand plan with that movie beyond hoping that people liked it.
Matt: Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and now The World’s End – I’ve heard you’ve dubbed these three films ‘the Cornetto Trilogy’. Where exactly does that reference come from?
Edgar: It’s a very silly linking device and in fact, it wasn’t intended to be trilogy initially. In Shaun Of The Dead, Nick Frost’s character asks for a Cornetto first thing on a Sunday morning as a hangover cure. We brought it back as a running gag in Hot Fuzz and then a journalist asked us if this was going to be a trilogy based on different flavours of Cornettos and we said yes, it’s going to be like Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy. It was a joke that stuck.
Weirdly, once we’d done Hot Fuzz, we felt there was a way to make this a “thematic” trilogy. We never wanted to do sequels to the other movies but we did want to continue the tone. The three films are linked by similar themes and the idea of sharing contemporary Britain under siege from dark forces. There are other recurring themes like the individual versus the collective and the idea of perpetual adolescence.
Matt: Now you clearly have a great working relationship with Simon Pegg who co-wrote all three of these films alongside you. Take us through the writing process. Are you sitting in an office? Are you sharing a few beers? How do you come up with the ideas for these films?
Edgar: We definitely don’t get drunk whilst writing. If I did that, I’d have to have a mid-afternoon nap. It’s usually powered by coffee and water. We actually sit opposite each other and treat it like a proper office job working 9am to 6pm. We hammer out the story and then start working on the script. With this movie, we shared a lot of memories from our own youth which were incorporated into the story.
Matt: And while your films often cover a few genres, most come with a pretty strong dose of comedy. Did you have favourite films or TV shows growing up that helped shape the sense of humour that you have today?
Edgar: Oh yeah. I used to love Woody Allen films and still do. There’s also Monty Python and The Young Ones.
Matt: I find comedies such a divisive genre because everyone does have a different sense of humour. How do you know what you’ve got here is funny? Are you bouncing jokes off friends? Are you doing a lot of improvisation on the set?
Edgar: We don’t really improvise during the movie because the films we make are plot heavy. We write the script, we rehearse it with the actors and then we come up with a shooting script. In terms of the comedy, we try to write what we think is funny. It’s about making each other laugh really.
Matt: You had the world premiere for the film recently in London. I’m guessing you received a pretty good reaction but what’s it like sitting in the audience with a packed cinema for the first time? Do you find people laughing at moments you didn’t expect and vice-versa?
Edgar: Usually you’ve seen it a couple of times with people before the premiere. At the London premiere, we were watching it on a very big screen with a really big crowd. I remember thinking to myself “that got the best laugh it’s ever got”. It’s really nice watching it with a big audience.
Matt: This film does come with a darker layer in the sense that our protagonist, played by Simon Pegg, is battling an alcohol problem. What made you do with that more serious sub-plot as opposed to just making a straight-out zany, crazy comedy?
Edgar: We want to make comedies that stick with people and hopefully that’s one of the reasons why Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz have stuck with people because there are things to think about afterwards. It’s taken us 6 years to make this one and if we’d have made something that was light and fluffy, it’d hardly be worth bothering.
While there’s a lot of action, mayhem, craziness and funny gags in The World’s End, it’s the connections with the characters that you’ll remember. The response to the film so far is that it’s made people think about their youth and their old friends. I think that stuff is important.
Matt: I’ve been to Great Britain a few times and one thing I love are the names of all the pubs. In this film you’ve got The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Two Headed Dog. I have to ask – where did you come up with these names?
Edgar: They’re all real pub names! We wrote the story and we fitted the pub names to the scenes. All the pub names are like tarot cards – they all tell you something that is going to happen in the next scene. Some of them are obvious but some of them are more subtle. But they’re all real names – even The Famous Cock.
Matt: There’s another film out in Australian cinemas at the moment called This Is The End – directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. I’ve found it amusing that these two films are out at the same time with very similar titles. Were you aware of that film while it was being made?
Edgar: Yeah. Simon and Seth have the same agent so absolutely, we were. We also knew their film was about a biblical rapture/apocalypse. As ours is more of a sci-fi invasion film, we knew it was a very different movie. Also, our actors aren’t playing themselves so that’s different too. (laughs) I’ve now seen This Is The End and it’s quite funny that ours couldn’t be more British and theirs couldn’t be more American.
Matt: So where to from here? Now that you’ve wrapped up this trilogy, will you keep collaborating with Simon Pegg on similar projects or do you want to branch off onto something a lot different?
Edgar: I don’t know and we haven’t really talked about it yet. We only finished this film about 3 weeks ago. We’d like to work together again but what that is, we’re not sure yet. As we’ve wrapped up most of the themes in this movie, if we do something in future, it could be wildly different.
I've Officially Made It As A Film Critic - I've Been Plagiarised!
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- Written by Matthew Toomey
I’ve officially made it as a film critic – I’ve been plagiarised!
A few days ago, I heard about a US critic known as Lianne Spiderbaby who had been busted for plagiarising film reviews on the FEARnet website. You can read more here. Adding an extra layer of layer of surprise is the fact she’s the girlfriend of acclaimed writer-director Quentin Tarantino.
The scandal was first reported by Mike White (see here) and in its aftermath, Lianne MacDougall (her real name) offered a quick apology and then deleted her Twitter account. The reviews have now been removed from the FEARnet site.
It wasn’t until yesterday that I realised that one of my own reviews had been plagiarised! A fellow blogger provided me with the details.
It’s not something I’m going to lose any sleep over. She’s been busted and that’s the end of it. I guess I should wear it as a badge of honour – that one of my reviews was actually good enough to be plagiarised. :)
The film itself was Life Of Pi (one of my favourite of the year) and here’s a look at how similar the reviews were…
My review – “Pi transports us back to 1970s India where his younger self is living with his family in Pondicherry, India. His father is a zookeeper and the inquisitive Pi has spent a large chunk of his life surrounded by an assortment of animals from around the globe. Due to the increasing political unrest within India, the family has decided to sell the animals and move to a more stable life in North America.”
Her review – “Pi transports us back to 1970s India where his younger self is living with his family in Pondicherry, India. His father is a zookeeper and the inquisitive Pi has spent a large chunk of his life surrounded by an assortment of animals from around the globe. Due to the increasing political unrest within India, the family has decided to sell the animals and move to a more stable life in North America.”
My review – “Sadly, the freighter ship on which they are travelling encounters a freak storm and sinks in the middle of the night. It all happens in a flash. After slipping off the deck and being knocked unconscious, Pi wakes up on a lifeboat drifting aimlessly across the ocean.”
Her review – “Sadly, the freighter ship on which they are travelling encounters a freak storm and sinks in the middle of the night. It all happens in a flash and Pi wakes up on a lifeboat drifting aimlessly across the ocean.
My review – “He’s the only person on board… but Pi quickly realises that he’s not alone. Hidden beneath the lifeboat’s tarpaulin are a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. ”
Her review – “He’s the only person on board… but Pi is not alone. Hidden beneath the lifeboat’s tarpaulin are a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. ”
My review – “Suffice to say that this isn’t a situation that can remain stable for very long.”
Her review – “Suffice to say that this isn’t a situation that can remain stable for very long.”
My review – “We know that Pi survives, evidenced by the fact that he is still alive to tell the story, but how did he pull it off? What does one do when stuck on a tiny boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean with next-to-no food while in the company of a Bengal tiger?”
Her review – “We know that Pi survives, evidenced by the fact that he is still alive to tell the story, but how did he pull it off? What does one do when stuck on a tiny boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean with next-to-no food while in the company of a tiger?”
My review – “Things become less and less plausible with each passing scene and it will certainly put audiences to the test.”
Her review – “Things become less and less plausible with each passing scene and you will be put to the test”
Her full review is no longer accessible (since it has been pulled from the website) but you can check out a screen grab below and compare with my full review here.
So what’s the lesson out of this? Don't plagiarise my reviews. For starters, there are writers much better than me out there! Also, someone will eventually bust you and when this does happen, I’ll get an inflated sense of self-esteem. Best not to do it in the future.
Would You Pay $50 To See A Movie?
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- Written by Matthew Toomey
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Would you pay $50 to see a movie? That could be a reality as cinemas look at new ways of attracting filmgoers. A friend linked me to this article a few weeks ago that talks about how Paramount tried to lure the public to advance screenings of World War Z with the heftier price tag.
The reality is that until now, cinema has beaten off much of the competition and continued to grow. We had the arrival of television followed by the huge rise (and subsequent decline) of VHS and DVD. Despite all of these new mediums, the international box-office has continued to increase and the public have been prepared to part with their dollars to see a movie in a darkened cinema.
However, with the simplicity with which movies can now be downloaded, has cinema finally met its match? I’ve made reference to the fact before that the number of cinematic releases is on the decline in Brisbane. Back in 2006, a total of 238 movies could be seen in our cinemas. Last year, that number had fallen to 183.
The funny thing is that it’s easier than ever to show movies in a theatre because it’s all done digitally. You don’t have to worry about joining film reels and paying projectionists. Yet, we are seeing most cinemas in Brisbane scale back the number of different movies they are screening. The main reason is obvious – money.
Boutique cinemas (e.g. Palace, Dendy) used to screen a lot more of the smaller stuff – American indies, foreign language flicks, Australian films. They would pop up at film festivals around the globe, small distributors would buy the rights and then they’d try to find a window to release them a few months down the track in Australia. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work anymore. Because these movies are so easily available online (legally and illegally), people aren’t prepared to wait. They’ll just watch it in the comfort of their own homes. By the time the film does reach Australian cinemas, many will have already seen it and hence the box-office is down. It’s therefore no surprise that the likes of Palace and Dendy now screen a lot more of the bigger product (e.g. Man Of Steel, Pacific Rim, The Heat) because these films have a simultaneous release date around the world (so it’s not available online) and they know it will put bums of seats.
The cinema industry has tried to reinvigorate itself with the likes of 3D but one must ask how long this fad will last. I know many people who prefer to see the 2D version of films and avoid the extra $3 surcharge. Cinemas are also now screenings ballets, operas and plays from around the globe. We’re also seeing an ever-growing number of film festivals that come complete with big opening/closing night parties and events. These are all designed to give the public an experience they can’t get at home.
In response to the $50 mega ticket idea, both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have weighed in with their own thoughts (see the full article here) and they’re not impressed. They believe the film industry is set to implode. If you keep pushing prices up, more and more people are going to stay home. I put the question out to some friends on my Facebook page and got similar responses. The other worrying aspect is that only big blockbusters are going to be guaranteed a release. Smaller stuff may no longer have a place in cinemas and instead, people will access it online. Perhaps I’m old fashioned but I don’t think it offers the same experience as watching a movie in a packed theatre.
As to how it will all play out… I can only respond by saying to watch this space. I don’t have a crystal ball but I have a strong hunch that the industry will change significantly over the next 10 years.
Nominations Unveiled For 2013 Toomey Awards
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- Written by Matthew Toomey
One of my favourite parts of any film year is award season. It begins in December and culminates in late February with the Academy Awards.
Since I'll never be a member of the Academy, I decided back in 2000 to create a way of recognising my own favourite films and performances. It was somewhat self-indulgent to call them the Toomey Awards but meh, it was the best I could come up with at the time so I'm sticking with the name for now.
You can click here to see the winners and nominees for the past 13 years. I always go off a fiscal year and so the 2013 awards include all films released in Australian cinemas between 1 July 2012 and 30 June 2013. This is because (1) I'm an accountant by day, and (2) it helps line up with the staggered release of "awards season" contenders in Australia through December, January and February each year.
On that note, you can check out the 2013 nominees by clicking here. The winners will be announced in 3 weeks!