I’ve been very fortunate working in the horror film industry – I’ve been able to interview many of my favorite actors, directors and FX specialists. But every now and then, there is an interview that really stands out, an interview that is so much fun, I’m left grinning like the Cheshire cat, and I can’t wait to write all about it. One of those interviews took place this week over the phone with director Edgar Wright. And sure, he’s every geek-girl’s dream date, and the British director was not beyond chatting all things geek with me – even when the main focus is promoting his new film, The World’s End.
Struggling with growing up, forty-year-old Greg (Simon Pegg) gets his old buddies together to complete an epic pub-crawl – a crawl they had tried to complete twenty years ago. To complete the challenge, they simply have to reach the titular drinking establishment without ending up in the gutter; but wider forces are at work and it becomes clear that current events may have ramifications for the future of mankind itself.
So Wright and I chatted about The World’s End… but we also talked zombies, blue blood, classic sci-fi novels, Romero and 80s goth and post-punk.
The World’s End is the third and final part of your genre-bending trilogy known as The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy. Where did the inspiration for the film come from and - be honest - did it come from your own epic pub-crawl?
The idea had been germinating for awhile, but I remember I was on the Hot Fuzz press tour – and I never really intended for these movies to be a trilogy, not until we had the idea for the third one, and then I thought maybe there was a way of connecting the three films. They’re not linked in terms of characters; they’re a trilogy in terms of tone. When I was 21, I wrote a script called Crawl, based on a real pub crawl but I didn’t do anything with it; it was about a group of teenagers going out for the night and having an epic tour of their local pubs, a drinking quest! I never made that film obviously, and then when I was on the tour with Hot Fuzz, Superbad came out and I thought, “now I will never do anything with my Crawl script. But, I thought, what if that pub crawl was just the first five minutes of the movie, and what if these friends reunited in their late thirties to try and relive the pub crawl, and then something major occurs that brings the quest into shaper focus, so that was the initial idea.
But this isn’t a disaster film in the conventional sense – or at all, right?
Yes, it’s not a disaster movie; it’s an invasion film. It’s more in the vein of John Wyndham, more of a sci-fi film, Day of the Triffids, the things that we grew up with, genre movies like Dr. Who, Village of the Damned, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Those kinds of films were on television a lot when [Simon Pegg and I] were growing up, and we wanted to channel those 50s/60s sci-fi movies so the invasion happens, and then it gets bigger and crazier [laughs]!
I’ve read that Pegg was a goth in his youth. Were you excited to have him back in black?
He did have a gothy phase, yes [laughs] and he was very into Sisters Of Mercy and Bauhaus and The Cure. He had his gothy phase in the late 80s. In fact, he’s still a big Sisters Of Mercy fan and we found out through the movie, because Simon wears the t-shirt, the lead singer of the band, Andrew Eldritch, is a big fan of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, so that really made our year! Simon did say that the Gary King costume in the film is the greatest costume he’s ever worn. He got to dress like an eighteen-year-old everyday. He did look a bit tragic, dying his hair black – but he really pulled it off! He looks like a particularly cool goth.
The music that you choose evokes a certain time period – the late eighties/early nineties.
Yeah, the idea is that these five guys – four of them have grown up, and Gary hasn’t and he’s literally trying to drag them back into the 90s. He still has his tape from the times with all of his favorite hits. I wanted to use British music from the phase of hedonistic music during that period – Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, and a lot of those anthems like ‘Loaded’ by Primal Scream; Simon Pegg’s character, Gary, lives his life by the messages in songs like that.
Is it a balancing act trying to sell a film like The World’s End without letting loose all of the jokes, gags and plot twists?
It can be tricky, but the trailer is out and it does give a few things away, it was important for us to establish what we weren’t, we wanted people to know that we weren’t doing a disaster movie, and so that was one of the reasons why we weren’t shy about showing certain things. I’m fine about sacrificing some bigger gags for the sake of new fans coming to see the film. It’s a necessary evil. It was the same for Shaun of the Dead. And to be honest, when you look at old trailers, they’re full of spoilers! So many of them show the last shot of the film! There is still a lot of surprises in our film, I think they will be surprised by what it is, and I think essentially at it’s core, the theme has to do with different people’s viewpoints on what Utopia is. It’s something different for each character in the film, and that theme ties in with the sci-fi genre very well.
The trailer shows robot-like creatures and… blue blood!
Yeah, I don’t want to say too much about that because I’d like for those aspects in the film to uncover for themselves but I will tell you about the GLOOP, which is what we call the blue blood. I wanted the characters, as they get drunker, to regress to their teenaged-selves and one thing I remember very vividly from school, I remember ending every school day with my hands covered in blue ink. This image is really funny to me, and it is very childlike, so I thought using that for the characters as they regress was very appropriate.
Did a lot change between the finished script that you and Pegg worked on when you got on the set and started filming?
Not really, we don’t do that too much actually. It wasn’t improve heavy, our script was quite tight. The casting and the timing of the scenes is all worked out, and it’s rehearsed, and we’ll make little tweaks if funny things come up, but we pretty much stick to the draft that we went into rehearsal with. We’re quite old school that way actually and it’s the actors job to make the dialogue natural and conversational.
I wanted to share with you – I met George Romero last month, and he doesn’t speak very highly about modern zombie movies, but he lovesShaun of the Dead.
I know! He’s always been so supportive! He was the first person we sent the film to when we finished, it was very important for us to get his blessing. Modern zombie films would not exist today without him, I mean, zombie films before Romero, zombie were a voodoo thing. The whole idea of zombies being cannibalistic creatures is George’s vision. I think he gets a lot of credit, but not enough because he really is the godfather of the zombie genre. I always go out of my way to praise his work, and we really wanted his blessing on Shaun. He was very flattered that we bothered to get in touch with him and show him the movie before it came out. He was extremely kind about it. For Simon, and me that was everything! We didn’t need anyone else’s approval! It was amazing.
So if you could send The World’s End to anyone in the world – even those who have passed, who would you send it to?
John Wyndham. The great novelist of The Chrysalids, The Day of the Triffids, etc. His influence extends from British sci-fi to a lot of television and film, so definitely him.