MoviesOnline sat down with and at the Los Angeles press day to promote their new film, Hot Fuzz. Hot Fuzz is the action-packed new comedy from the makers of the hit movie Shaun of the Dead. With the same razor-sharp combination of humor and attention to detail they used to breathe new life into the undead, and Edgar Wright have set their sights on Action Movies for their next uniquely funny vision.
Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is the finest cop London has to offer, with an arrest record 400% higher than any other officer on the force. He’s so good, he makes everyone else look bad. As a result, Angel’s superiors send him to a place where his talents won’t be quite so embarrassing -- the sleepy and seemingly crime-free village of Sandford.
Once there, he is partnered with the well-meaning but overeager police officer Danny Butterman ( ). The son of amiable Police Chief Frank Butterman ( ), Danny is a huge action movie fan and believes his new big-city partner might just be a real-life "bad boy," and his chance to experience the life of gunfights and car chases he so longs for. Angel is quick to dismiss this as childish fantasy and Danny’s puppy-like enthusiasm only adds to Angel’s growing frustration.
However, as a series of grisly accidents rocks the village, Angel is convinced that Sandford is not what it seems and as the intrigue deepens, Danny’s dreams of explosive, high-octane, car-chasing, gunfighting, all-out action seem more and more like a reality.
It's time for these small-town cops to break out some big-city justice.
Written by Pegg and director Edgar Wright, Hot Fuzz reteams Pegg and Frost alongside a killer cast.
In addition to Oscar winner , the stellar lineup of talent includes (In America), (Night at the Museum), (The Living Daylights), (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), (Raiders of the Lost Ark), (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest), Lucy Punch (The Class), (The Mother), (The Omen), (The Mask of Zorro), (The Equalizer), and plenty of surprises!
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are fabulous guys and sensational actors. We really appreciated their time.
Here’s what they had to tell us about their latest film:
Q: Another day talking about this movie, does it get tiring?
Nick Frost: The 51st straight day.
Simon Pegg: No, we never get tired of it.
We love our film and we love selling it.
Q: What was more challenging, Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz?
Simon Pegg: They were challenging in different ways, physically Hot Fuzz was more challenging than Shaun of the Dead because it was just a bigger deal.
There was more demand on us physically, and there was a lot of running around, and the daily strain was tough, wasn’t it, Nick?
Nick Frost: [Laughs] Yeah, it was. When the three of us do a film, we all have a tremendous work ethic.
And I have to explain to my girlfriend, ‘I am Edgar’s now for four months.’ And it’s literally that –
Simon Pegg: You’re mine forever.
Nick Frost: And I’m yours forever.
But you’re working from half five till 9 every day, six days a week for four months, three months. You just have to prepare that you’re not going to see your cat for four months.
Q: Was there any pressure to getting the follow-up written?
Simon Pegg: Oh yeah, definitely, but the pressure was entirely from home though, you know. It was from ourselves. We didn’t want to disappoint anybody or come across as being one-trick ponies.
We wanted to do it again and do it bigger and better, so that pressure was very much a positive thing.
Q: Are you your own worst critic?
Simon Pegg: No, Christopher Tookey in The Daily Mail is our worst critic.
Yeah, absolutely, we just want to make something that we’d want to watch, and that goes for every aspect of the film in terms of the posters and stuff – we always want it to look like something that we would go and see. We start worrying if it starts to be something other than that.
Q: How has your acting relationship grown over the years?
Have you reached a distinct comfort zone?
Simon Pegg: I feel less responsible for Nick these days. At first, I felt I introduced him into acting and I felt very protective of him when we were doing Spaced together.
I’d come to be there when he was…
Nick Frost: I’d catch him off set like that watching in the monitor.
Simon Pegg: [Laughs] But now I don’t need to. Now he’s so …
Nick Frost: You can say good.
Simon Pegg: Grounded. [Laughs] I wouldn’t go that far. Now, he’s matured so much as an actor, I can quite happily not be at work when he’s – I don’t feel like I have to protect him anymore.
But our working relationship is the same as ever. It’s just the same as daily life.
Q: When you were researching this film, did you spend time with the cops?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, yeah.
Q: In London?
Simon Pegg: In both London and the countryside.
Q: What’s the best single piece of advice you got from the cops?
Nick Frost: Uh, don’t get shot.
It’s obviously determined by the amount of crime in terms of there’s a lot of proactive crime in this city as in any city. There’s a lot of mugging and street crime; whereas in the countryside, it gets a little bit more insidious. There’s more alcohol related and more domestic crimes, you know, bored kids and stuff.
And there’s less police officers in the countryside.
In the film, the whole idea that Angel throws all those kids out of the pub was supposed to show that he gets that wrong, because the whole point of it is the fact that he has to then go on and arrest all of them for being drunk and disorderly. The reason they’re in the pub is to stop the police from having to – and they do that in the countryside, they do accommodate the younger kids.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, we did. Nick, you were involved in a low-speed tractor chase.
Nick Frost: Yeah, some junkie nicked a tractor and fell asleep at the wheel - never got more than 8 mile an hour, pretty thrilling.
It’s odd when you’re with a cop and he pulls over a suspected burglar, ‘cause you think, ‘cause you’re standing next to him and the cop is talking to him. You’re thinking, ‘If he runs now, then I’ll have to get a hold of him.’ It’s odd, you get an odd flutter.
You might not know. It might be a man thing.
Q: Is there any Angel in you?
Simon Pegg: In me? Not at all, none whatsoever. I’m not like him at all.
I’m more like Tim or Shaun. Angel’s like a machine.
Q: Well he grows as a result.
Simon Pegg: Maybe in terms of his sort of ambition or his resolve, but he’s got a huge amount of… The thing about Angel is he’s not like Dirty Harry, he’s not like a renegade, or even a quasi-fascist. He’s really sort of liberal. He’s like the perfect policeman.
He just doesn’t know how to switch it off, that’s all.
Q: What’s it like having dolls of yourself from Shaun of the Dead?
Nick Frost: It’s insane.
It’s great. I talk.
Q: You’ve got a 12-inch, too.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, I saw it. I’ve got a 12-inch doll. [Laughs] I walked past the Forbidden Planet in Dublin and saw it in the window and went, ‘Hang on, no one sent me one of these.
I should have one.’
Q: Was it odd buying your own doll?
Simon Pegg: I didn’t have to pay for it.
He said, ‘You shouldn’t have to buy this,’ and he gave it to me.
Nick Frost: And then, his loyal friend Ed, with shovel. [Laughs] And it’s complete with debris and hudlumps [headlamps].
Q: There’s one with a zombie head.
Simon Pegg: There is a zombie head.
Nick Frost: It comes with a zombie head.
Simon Pegg: We told them not to do that one because he didn’t have zombie arms, so he put the head on and he looked like he was half and half.
Nick Frost: So we said we’d do a separate zombie head if they want it. My parents would be so proud.
Q: Instead of a free doll, shouldn’t you be getting a royalty check?
Simon Pegg: You’d think.
Nick Frost: It’s not all about the money.
Q: Would you two want to work independently as actors?
Nick Frost: I think we do.
Simon Pegg: We do.
We’ve probably done more apart than we do together, but I think the things we all did together as a three.
Q: What are you doing now?
Simon Pegg: We’re writing a film right now that we’re going to shoot over here in the autumn, in the fall.
Q: You two are writing?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, and I think Edgar is going to direct. I think he might or script supervise or produce or something.
Q: Can you talk about it?
Simon Pegg: Not really.
Nick Frost: Not really.
Q: Is it a comedy?
Nick Frost: Yeah.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, but we just want to not talk about it until it’s….
Q: Would you play Americans or British?
Simon Pegg: No, British.
Nick Frost: British.
Q: There’s something in IMDB called La Triviata.
Simon Pegg: No, that was the TV series that we shelved years ago, but then somebody made up a story in the press about the fact that it was back on and it’s not. I don’t know why that story was made up.
Nick Frost: It’s the oddest story to make up.
Simon Pegg: I know, you might as well say I was having an affair with Nick.
Nick Frost: Why is that so odd?
Simon Pegg: That would be more interesting, that could be a sitcom.
Q: You took a road trip to prepare for that?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, we did.
Q: Where did you go exactly?
Simon Pegg: We just went across the mid-west America. The film will probably take in that journey.
Nick Frost: It was an eight day drive.
Q: How was that experience?
Nick Frost: It was fine.
Simon Pegg: It was amazing. We picked up a very bright, shiny RV here in LA, and we returned it seven days later f*cked up. Cause when you hit loads and loads of snow and stuff, it was knackered.
I think the official diagnosis was that its brain had broken.
Nick Frost: The on-board computer had gone down.
Simon Pegg: But it got so cold that the deodorant froze in bottles and it had gotten down to minus 17.
Q: What states did you guys visit?
Nick Frost: We drove across Nevada and Utah and Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado.
Q: What did you discover on this journey?
Nick Frost: What did we discover? That Nevada is big and empty.
Simon Pegg: America is very big.
Nick Frost: There were two days when we drove across Nevada where we actually felt fairly suicidal ‘cause we hadn’t seen – because it’s massive, and you don’t see anyone. You drive on one two-lane black top for 80 miles and you can see it stretching and then you’d get to the end of it and there’d be a little hump and you’d think, ‘Ah, great. What’s next?
’
Q: What were you aware of about your characters in Hot Fuzz?
Simon Pegg: Just that they go on. I think with Shaun of the Dead you had a story of a man who was learning how to take responsibility, and in Hot Fuzz it’s a man learning how to let go.
I think it’s a very sweet relationship in the heart of it, and Danny and Angel sort of complete each other in a way. Angel brings to Danny the sort of adventure and excitement that he wants, and Danny brings to Angel a bit of humility and a bit of humanity. He teaches him how to be a person rather than a machine.
I think that’s quite sweet. At the heart of all the pyrotechnics and all the kind of bombasters is a little romance which is quite nice.
Q: Is there a message to the movie?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, it’s ok to watch firework displays.
Q: And Bad Boys 2.
Nick Frost: It’s fun to watch Bad Boys 2, but then you have to watch Run, Lola, Run or L’Appartement straight after.
Simon Pegg: Basically what we’re saying is there’s a place for a spectacle – dumb fun is ok. And sometimes, you do have to switch off that big melon of yours and just enjoy yourself.
Q: What inspires you guys as writers and actors?
Simon Pegg: Who does inspire us?
Nick Frost: He inspires me.
Simon Pegg: Awwww.
Nick Frost: But yeah, he does inspire me. I know it sounds a bit wanky but..
.
Q: Friendship is such a big part of the characters that you’ve played in your last two films and in Spaced as well.
Simon Pegg: It’s a bit of a rip-off, isn’t it really?
Nick Frost: I’d like us to play enemies in the next film.
Q: Would you ever consider doing something like that?
Nick Frost: We’d still have that chemistry as enemies.
Simon Pegg: But then we wouldn’t be able to share as much screen time together. It’d only be in the final battle that we’d come together.
Nick Frost: Well – A red baron.
Simon Pegg: I thought the whole point of us making films was that we got to hang out together for three months.
Nick Frost: We’d still hang out. I’d come down to set and see how you’re doing.
Q: Speaking of fun, what was it like getting into that full blown action stuff at the end of the film?
Nick Frost: It was great fun, wasn’t it?
Simon Pegg: Oh, it was a daily joy to come into work and jump off things, shooting.
It doesn’t get more fun than that.
Q: Do your own fantasies come to life?
Simon Pegg: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Firing off two ‘nines’ while sleeping through the day.
Q: When you’re doing an action sequence, what music plays through your head?
Simon Pegg: Well, from now on it’ll be the theme from Hot Fuzz which is amazing.
David Arnold’s music is just great.
Nick Frost: Mine is hard house, very hard house music. I kind of have a posh on for it.
Simon Pegg: For me, it’s sort of John Williams style, big orchestra, dramatic sort of music, that’s what I had in my grommets when I was...
Q: How different is your relationship as writers than as actors?
Nick Frost: We’ve written together before.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, we have.
Nick Frost: And other than the aborted sitcom.
Simon Pegg: I’m going to say the process is quite organic, which actually means we’re both fairly lazy. We do what Edgar and Simon do.
We just sit there in an office and we thrash it out line by line, and it’s not always easy. We sit there and…
Nick Frost: We’ve written two things. We wrote La Triviata, the episodes of that, which we then shelved just because Shaun of the Dead took off and took us in a different direction.
And we also wrote a sitcom called Magnetic Park which was a lost classic, I think.
Simon Pegg: It was too expensive.
Nick Frost: It was about two park keepers, who took care of a little park in London – but once you went into the park, it was the size of Snowdonia.
It was small.
Simon Pegg: There were lots of mythological creatures there, and they had a low-speed chase with a giant tortoise.
Q: When did you write this?
Simon Pegg: Years ago. It was just after Spaced.
Q: Would you ever take it off the shelf?
Nick Frost: It’s unmakable. They told it to R R when we wrote it about firing a rifle at a tortoise and the bullet bounced off into a tree, and a lion falls out of the tree – they didn’t know how to stage it. But sometimes we’ll go into work and we’ll write a crackin’ joke and we’ll take the rest of the day off, watch a film, or something.
Simon Pegg: We’ll go shopping.
Nick Frost: Edgar and Simon are much different. Edgar’s the real taskmaster in it, and you’ll sit and hammer it out all day.
Q: Was it different shooting the Grindhouse trailer?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, I came in and sat in make-up for about three and a half hours, and then was in front of the camera for about ten minutes, and that was it. ‘Cause with a trailer, all you do is shoot the money shots.
Nick, you had a bit longer, didn’t you?
Nick Frost: Yeah, I was there for a few hours. Well these things, you kind of get roped into them, and you don’t know what to expect, and then you’re standing in your underpants covered in mud while there’s loads of people watching you.
Simon Pegg: You liked it, didn’t you?
Nick Frost: I did. Yeah, I did.
Q: What is the rehearsal process like for you two?
Simon Pegg: We read the scenes out, we rehearse the scenes, and then if anything comes to mind, like for instance at the end of the scene when Angel is pursuing the shoplifter and I asked Danny why he didn’t tell me he knew him, and he says ‘I couldn’t see his face’ then he added, ‘Well, I’m not made of eyes.’ Which Nick just said to me, ‘I liked that.
We’ll keep it in.’ And that happened a few times. The whole Danny doing the (spitting) thing, that was always written in the script as just that, but Nick came up with the ‘Jog on’ line which is a kind of west country expression for politely telling someone to go away.
Q: Did you think Shaun of the Dead would become so popular?
Simon Pegg: I don’t know what we thought when we were shooting it to be honest. I think we just wanted to get it made.
There’s a lot of heart in that film, and it’s made by people who know what they’re talking about in terms of the genre. As I’ve said, we make films for ourselves, and it just happens that there are a lot of people just like us everywhere who just love films and love detail, and get a kick out of comedy. I suppose it kind of struck a cord with those people, I guess.
Nick Frost: There’s a lot of people like Shaun out there, and I think when you’re at University or you’re a 20-year-old man, there’s a lot of exports to be played. And there’s a lot of people like Shaun who had nothing on auteurs and stuff. We hear that most, people saying ‘It really touched us because I know so and so and he’s a bit like Ed’ or ‘We got a flatmate who’s horrible.
’
Q: Do you want to work more in the States? Do you like the L.A.
scene?
Nick Frost: Yeah, I like L.A.
, and I really like the States. But, as an actor, you don’t have to come and live in the States to make films, ‘cause not as many films are made here in L.A.
now. Chances are if you move here, you’ll have to move somewhere else to make another one. But at our core, we’re British filmmakers, and I think we’re doing okay so far making films in the U.
K.. We’re going to shoot this movie over here in the fall.
Q: Is there a studio behind it?
Simon Pegg: Yeah. It’s Working Title again and Universal.
Q: Any word from Kathryn Bigelow or Michael Bay about what they think about the movie?
Simon Pegg: I’d like Kathryn Bigelow to see it and Michael Bay; we’ve heard from Shane Black, who really loved it. He’s one of the guys who inspired us, and he’s a great writer.
Nick Frost: I want Will Smith to see it.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, I love Will Smith. Keanu –
Q: They all had to sign permission.
Nick Frost: Yeah, they did.
Simon Pegg: Yeah, they had to sign their likenesses away.
Nick Frost: Good on them!
Simon Pegg: Absolutely. Yeah, I’d love those people to see it. I can’t say I’m as much a Michael Bay fan as I am a George Romero fan by any means, so getting George’s nod for Shaun of the Dead was an enormous thrill.
Nick Frost: It was like being blessed by the zombie pope.
Simon Pegg: It was and then being there it was fun.
Q: You already have Shaun of the Dead dolls.
Do you want Danny and Angel dolls?
Simon Pegg: I think there’s a lot of potential for it.
Nick Frost: The falling through shot with the two guns.
The arsenal. Absolutely.
Q: How was it to be on set with the other British character actors?
Simon Pegg: It was great. They were just amazing people. Jim Broadbent approached us after Shaun of the Dead, as did , who’s a brilliant young actor.
Everyone else, we just had to get the script out to. and his son had seen Shaun of the Dead here in LA and liked it. He’s amazing in it.
’s son, we used his flat in Shaun of the Dead, so when the script came to his mom, he said, ‘You should do this one.’
Q: Even though she’s retired?
Simon Pegg: Yeah, she came out of retirement, bless her, and was great.
, he just read it and liked it.
Q: I didn’t know he was still working.
Simon Pegg: He’s not really, he works a lot less than he used to because he’s 76.
Nick Frost: I don’t think he’ll do many more.
Simon Pegg: He said, ‘This will probably be the last thing I ever do.’ And then he cropped up on some massive BBC TV series a few weeks later.
He’s hilarious, Edward.
Nick Frost: He’s just unrelenting.
Simon Pegg: He’s a real raconteur.
He’s just a star. We were very pleased with this. He actually turned down a cameo in The Wicker Man remake – probably exactly the right thing to do.
But he did Hot Fuzz, which is essentially, at the heart of it, inspired by that film. The Wicker Man was the last film that had a British uniformed police officer at its center.
Q: And a naked Britt Ekland.
Simon Pegg: And a naked Britt Ekland, which we didn’t have unfortunately. There was no room for naked women in Hot Fuzz. It says a lot about it.
We did have a kind of love story. Obviously, Angel has his ex-girlfriend and she says, ‘Until you find somebody you care about more than your job, you won’t be able to switch off.’ And then he does, but it’s Danny.
We did have a female actress.
Q: So it’s a gay subtext.
Simon Pegg: Oh totally, yeah.
Nick Frost: You noticed?
Simon Pegg: I noticed you staring longingly at my lips. [Laughs]
Nick Frost: That was Vicky.
Simon Pegg: There was a character called Vicky, who we actually excised in the end because we realized that the real romance was here. Not only did we lose the female character, but we gave Danny all her lines. [Laughs]
Q: Have you done a lot of traveling to promote this movie?
Nick Frost: Let’s just put it this way, I have my BA executive silver card now.
Q: Terrific work.
Nick Frost: Thanks guys.
Simon Pegg: Thank you.
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