Cop movies don't come in singles. It's always buddies. Even Clint Eastwood had no name partners to take bullets for him. In their send up of cop movies, Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg plays by the books Nicolas Angel and Nick Frost is his action movie partner. Pegg also co-wrote the film with Edgar Wright and showed his knowledge of action flicks while Frost chimed in with the one-liners.
CraveOnline: This is like everything I love about action movies. Did you make this movie for me personally?
Simon Pegg: You know what? In all seriousness, it's a really good question because we made the movie kind of like for us knowing that you were out there, if you know what I mean. Because I think when you start to try and imagine what people like, and try to second guess what people like, that's when you start missing the mark. If you make something very personal that you love, I think you'll often find that the whole world around, there are other people exactly like that, you know.
CraveOnline: With zombies and now cops, do you love violence?
Simon Pegg: We're splatter fans. We enjoy that element. I think there was definitely also a slight kind of feeling that we wanted to have a look at this sort of high concept violence as a way of also placating, not placating but pleasing the people that came from Shaun of the Dead. So there was an element of that. That probably encouraged us to kind of seek out the slightly more violent cop movies and see that there were some pretty violent ones out there. I mean, Robocop I know he's the future of law enforcement rather than the traditional kind.
CraveOnline: Did working on MI3 give you any more insight into the big action genre?
Simon Pegg: Most of my stuff was actually fairly studio banned. I was kind of IMF headquarters so I didn’t get to see too much of the action. I did go to set one day and they were shooting a scene where the car was rolling over and over and that was very interesting to watch. It was interesting to see just how similar huge budget and small budget films are. It's not a massive leap really. It's the same dynamic on set, it's the same relationship between the first and the cast and the first and the director, the director and the cast and so on and so on. What differs are the resources and it was amazing to see the resources they had on Mission Impossible 3. It was $180 million worth of film there. You could make a hell of a lot of Hot Fuzzes for that. The catering was probably the thing that amazed me the most.
CraveOnline: What draws you to genre pieces?
Simon Pegg: I think with the absence of a Hollywood in the UK, we're kind of in the position where we make the films we want to see and that’s particularly in Britain, where they don't get made, we've kind of taken the law into our own hands as it were and produced the kinds of things that we would want to be in and we would want to direct. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing yourself.
CraveOnline: So why stop at three?
Simon Pegg: Because we don't love every genre, you know. We love zombie films and that's why we did one and we love cops.
CraveOnline: You and Nick have worked together for so long and you're friends…
Nick Frost: The cracks are beginning to show to be honest.
CraveOnline: Does that make it easier to work together? Do you ever discover new things about each other?
Nick Frost: Every single day.
Simon Pegg: I think we've got it all covered. It's nice because it's an enduring friendship and it makes working together fun. I mean, he still surprises me. I was very impressed with him, I'm talking about you now, on Hot Fuzz just as he grows as an actor because when I met Nick, he was a waiter and he wasn't even a waiter trying to be an actor, like everyone here. Not here obviously, I mean in L.A. He just wanted to serve food and I said, "Why don't you come and be an actor with me, you fool?" And he went, "All right." With that amount of enthusiasm. And now he's sort of stealing the show so it's nice. I'm very proud of him.
CraveOnline: Are you fans of Jerry Bruckheimer and have you heard from him about this movie?
Simon Pegg: No, I think Shane Black's (Writer of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Lethal Weapon) seen it and he really likes it but we haven't heard from Bruckheimer or Bay, the big B’s. Fan is a strange word to use in context with those guys. I think I'm an admirer of just the bombast of those films. Having attempted to make an action movie, you realize just how hard it is to pull off. Obviously we were fighting against the fact that we only had an eighth of the budget of Bad Boys II, but you literally can make 8 ½ Hot Fuzzes for one Bad Boys II. That's a hell of a trade off. And actually eight Hot Fuzzes are almost as long as Bad Boys II as well. But just the kind of wherewithal and sort of gumption it takes to pull off an action film is quite impressive. So dismissing those movies isn't so easy now.
CraveOnline: Nick was method for Shaun, shaving your pubes to make sure you itched. Did you do anything method like that for Hot Fuzz?
Nick Frost: Yeah, I actually joined the Dutch police force for four years.
Simon Pegg: They're the only ones that would have him.
Nick Frost: They are the only ones that will have me.
Simon Pegg: The uniforms fit.
Nick Frost: No, not really. I watched Bad Boys II.
Simon Pegg: To me, the shaving the pubes thing was always just an excuse to actually do that. You'd pawned it off as some sort of method thing but really you just wanted a shorn scrotum.
Nick Frost: Don't tell them that.
CraveOnline: Why Bad Boys II and not one?
Nick Frost: Is there a one?
Simon Pegg: It's kind of eclipsed because it is an odd thing. Bad Boys II, I think they kind of knew that it wasn't an entirely requested sequel really. It was sort of like everyone went, "Oh yeah, there was Bad Boys." But I think in order to kind of counter that, they just made the most sort of impudent, excessive movie possible. And as a result, now it exists solely without the need of its predecessor. It's like Bad Boys II. Forget Bad Boys I. It kind of makes it obsolete.
CraveOnline: How about Hot Fuzz II?
Simon Pegg: I don't know, I think it would be silly to do. It's an easier sequel to do than Shaun of the Dead because it's just Danny and Angel getting into another adventure, but it's like Hot Fuzz is like an origin story. It's how they become Hot Fuzz and I think once you have them just being Hot Fuzz, it'll be less fun. It would just be two hours of the last half hour of Hot Fuzz. Tiring.
CraveOnline: How did you come up with the title Hot Fuzz?
Simon Pegg: We just wanted to make a title that really had very little meaning. And also to appeal to the sort of two word titles of the '80s and '90s action flicks like Lethal Weapon and Point Break and Executive Decision.
Nick Frost: Exit Wounds.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, all those titles seem to be generated from two hats filled with adjectives and nouns and you just "Okay, that'll do." And also with Shaun of the Dead, because it was a pun on a specific English sentence, phrase rather, it got changed a lot so we figured let's start off with something that means nothing and then they won't change it, but I think they are still going to change it. Like in Spain, Shaun of the Dead was called Zombies' Party.
Nick Frost: It's very euro, isn't it?
Simon Pegg: [in American accent] Zombies' Party!
CraveOnline: Simon, you and Edgar collaborate on the script. How involved is Nick in the writing process?
Simon Pegg: We have a sort of period of rehearsal that takes place four weeks before we start shooting and Nick is the first person to get the script and the first person that we have in, and we have like a week of improvising. Well, just rehearsing but if anything comes up during the line readings, if Nick brings something else to it, then we'll integrate it into the script, but in terms of when we're on set, it's pretty rigid. We're quite anal about the right things being said at the right time. Sometimes it's very necessary for things to be said in this particular way. But Nick always brings [ideas]. I mean , "I'm not made of eyes" was his.
Nick Frost: I call it bringing the funny.
Simon Pegg: Show me the funny.
CraveOnline: So what's the next one going to be?
Simon Pegg: The next thing me and Nick write together, we're busy working on at the moment which'll be a little side project. We're on planes and we talk about it briefly and then we land. It's not going to be the third thing from Edgar and me. It'll be something extra and Edgar won't work on it as a director. He probably will give script notes or something. But me and Edgar had an idea as well for the third one in the kind of Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz…
Nick Frost: Blood and Ice Cream.
Simon Pegg: The Blood and Ice Cream trilogy we're calling it, which we had as we landed in Sydney but we're not going to say anything about it until it's born because the last time we spoke of Hot Fuzz before we'd even started writing it and it became a thing that people wanted to know where it was and we hadn't even started writing it. So we learned a lesson there.
CraveOnline: Come on.
Simon Pegg: Do you know what it's going to be? A very violent version of The Lake House. That's the next project.
CraveOnline: How about acting-wise?
Nick Frost: Well, I've got a show called Hyperdrive and another one called Man Stroke Woman which they come out kind of now, now in May. So when Simon and Edgar write a film, I go off and make British television. And then, you know, I've tasted forbidden fruit now. I like films. And then we're writing our film so hopefully we'll shoot that in the autumn. That's kind of it. That's going to take up our whole year.
Simon Pegg: I'm doing a film in the interim of Toby Young's book How to Lose Friends and Alienate People which is directed by Bob Weide who did Curb Your Enthusiasm. And it's me and Kirsten Dunst at the moment but I'm not sure the rest of the cast yet so I can't.
CraveOnline: On the Shaun of the Dead commentary, you promise to reveal the Golden Bunny but then it cuts off. So where is it?
Simon Pegg: You find out in the commentary of Hot Fuzz.
CraveOnline: The two you spoof most are Point Break and Bad Boys II. Were there other movies you were interested in doing but just couldn't get the rights?
Nick Frost: We don't use the S word by the way.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, we don't say spoof. It's a dirty word.
CraveOnline: How about homage?
Simon Pegg: We're thinking spastiches, I don't know. Because ultimately, the film is what it's sort of taking on. With Shaun of the Dead, we wanted to make a zombie film. We didn't want to make fun of zombie films. At no point in the film do we ever make fun of zombie films. There are slightly more parodic elements in Hot Fuzz where we are drawing attention to some of those grander clichés that are always employed, like the neverending magazine full of bullets and the capacity to fire at each other and not hit anything.
Nick Frost: Clichés like someone saying, "I'll give you information in five minutes" and you know that they'll be dead.
Simon Pegg: They have five minutes to live. But basically it's like inhabiting that genre comedically rather than making fun of it. There's no derision in Hot Fuzz. We don't feel superior to the source material at all. In a way, the film is saying it's okay to be dumb as long as you temper it with some intelligence occasionally. It's all right to watch a firework display. You don't have to watch Ibsen 24 hours a day. But I think we were going to mention Lethal Weapon but I don't think Mel Gibson's got a sense of humor.
CraveOnline: How did you like being action heroes?
Simon Pegg: It was great.
Nick Frost: It was really good fun.
CraveOnline: We get Edgar next. What's something we can ask him?
Nick Frost: Ask him about cake flushing.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, say that some of the sewers of Atlanta and, where else did you flush a cake down a toilet? All over Texas. The Texas sewageworks have been jammed up with cake. Can you explain?
Nick Frost: Seriously, if you ever get a chance to flush a cake, do it because it's joyous. This is like my Pay it Forward to you lot.
Simon Pegg: It was Nick's birthday.
CraveOnline: How do you do flush a cake?
Nick Frost: You put it in the toilet and you flush it.
Simon Pegg: And you video it.
CraveOnline: Piece by piece?
Nick Frost: If you want. If it's a small cake, it can go down in one. Your American toilets, they suck cake like no one. So I got given such a massive cake in Atlanta that I had to cut it into pieces with a shoe horn and flush it.
SP: We videoed the flushing as well.
Nick Frost: For our tour finale in New York I'm going to flush a wedding cake.
Simon Pegg: Tier by tier.
Nick Frost: And also an apple pie but I'm going to leave it in the toilet all day to steep and then flush it later so it breaks down easier.
