Copyright 2006 Emap PLC
Empire Magazine – December 2006
THE HEAT IS ON
In a world exclusive, Empire gets the inside track on action comedy Hot Fuzz,
Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's follow-up to their hugely successful Shaun Of
The Dead. Just don't mention Cannon & Ball... Words: Chris Hewitt
HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE SHAUN? IF YOU'RE SIMON PEGG AND EDGAR WRIGHT, CREATORS OF THE much-loved, massively popular Shaun Of The Dead, you resist the urge to wallow in the same genre pool and make a quick buck from a quicker sequel (From Dusk Till Shaun, perhaps?). You reject big-money offers from Hollywood and instead stay in the UK for your next movie — Hot Fuzz, a bold and decently budgeted action-comedy that aims to do for the cop movie what Shaun did for the zombie flick. And you end up in a disused warehouse in Osterley on a fine April morning, filming a tense and violent stand-off in a freshly constructed and eerily convincing supermarket set.
In one corner, the good men (and woman) of the Sandford Police Service, led by Pegg as PC Nick Angel, a London supercop seconded to a small West Country village, where he reluctantly bonds with his fellow officers, including Nick Frost's naive PC Danny. Butterman and Paddy Considine's no-nonsense CID officer, Andy Wainwright. Pegg in particular is looking lean (he dropped more than two stone for the movie, courtesy of a punishing regime involving three personal trainers) and mean (he's wielding two handguns, Chow Yun-Fat-style, and a scowl worthy of Steven Seagal). In the other cornet the bad guys, currently pinning our cop heron down with... fresh fruit. A hail of pineapples rains upon the beleaguered PCs. A melon whistles past Pegg's melon (later, he'll be hit smack in the kisser by one, prompting an anguished cry of "what the fuck?"). Frost dances through a shower of mangoes, and looses off a couple of blasts from his trusty shotgun. Seeing a chance to go after the main villain, Angel and Butterman make a break for it. "Angel!" barks Considine/Wainwright. "Don't go being a twat, now." "I wouldn't give you the pleasure," grins Angel/Pegg, and off he goes while the bombardment — proof that fruit can be bad for your health — continues.
"Cut!" yells Wright, who looks pleased as the actors retire to their rest area, complete with comfy chairs, ‘gas heaters and PSPs. He should fee, for all the evidence is that Hot Fuzz is shaping up as a worthy successor to Shaun, and possibly the best British cop comedy since, well...
I WANT TO PUT AN EMBARGO ON EMPIRE MENTIONING CANNON & BALL'S BOYS IN BLUE," LAUGHS WRIGHT, WHEN HE SETTLES DOWN later for a spot of lunch with us. "Because it's the most obvious thing. Every single review of British comedy films mentions it — and you've already done it twice. YOU did it and Kim Newman did it!" It's a fair cop — check out this reporter and Kirn's reviews of Shaun Of The Dead for proof if you must. But while Wright's request is fair enough in theory, putting it into practice is damned difficult. For starters, comparisons between Hot Fuzz and the 1982 Tommy Cannon-Bobby Ball caper are irresistible. Both. after all, feature duos ripped from the small screen and transplanted to the big — in this case, Pegg and Frost, real-life best friends and stars of Shaun and Spaced (which Wright, of course, directed). Both are about bored country cops who stumble upon a criminal conspiracy and wade manfully into action. And, erm... that's it. So okay, we'll do it. We promise that this feature marks the last time Empire will ever mention The Boys In Blue in conjunction with Hot Fuzz — not least because, unlike that pile of Cannon-and-Balls, Hot Fuzz promises to be funny, funky and very, very cool. Or should that be hot?
"We wanted our next film to be something that had a bang, to follow Shaun," says Pegg, wolfing down a healthy salmon snack. "It was like, 'Okay, let's set ourselves a real task and make British cops cool again.' The fact is, British police aren't that cool. As movie cops go, there are a lot cooler out there. Greek cops are hard as fucking nails! But I think it'll work."
IT'S BEEN A LONG ROAD TO HOT FUZZ. WRIGHT ANNOUNCED THE TITLE EXCLUSIVELY TO EMPIRE BACK IN AUGUST 2004 ("WE WANTED A meaningless title that inferred something, rather than said anything," says Pegg of a movie that could also have been called Raging Fuzz, or Hott Fuzz for an element of extra-willful obscurity), but since then a global press tour for Shaun and a recharging of the batteries slowed down the start of production. That, and the fact that their first draft was 235 pages, the result of a research period that partially involved going on ride-alongs with British police (not as cool or blood-drenched as their American equivalents), but mainly sitting down and watching a bunch of action flicks as inspiration: (see sidebar on page 70) for their fusion of American action and British badinage.
"It's not going to be like Hard Boiled or Desperado, in terms of action all the way through," says Wright, who insists that the fife will, after the massive script was trimmed, n* no longer than two hours. "If anything, it's going to be like an episode of Miss Marple directed by Tony Scott. What we're essentially trying 1 to address is the idea of why there aren't any -British cop films. The first two-thirds of the ft answer that question, and then we try to have our cake and eat it at the end, when it gets pretty mental."
Mental’s one way of putting it, as Angel and Butterman — with the help of their fellow officers and a handily placed weapons cache — set out to kick some bottom. 'The Battle Of Somerfield', as it's been dubbed ("I can't believe Somerfield has allowed us to name this supermarket after them," laughs Pegg), is a component of the movie's extended climax, during which a slew of shoot-outs, mano-a-mano confrontations and wild car chases spiral into each other, with the action sequences both conforming to and challenging the rules and ridiculousness of the action genre.
"We've got this phrase of 'popcorn logic', or 'Bruckheimer's Law'," says Wright. "If there are continuity problems or logic problems in the last half-hour, we have this get out of jail card. It's pretty silly, but I think action movie fans will love it."
BACK ON SET, AND 'POPCORN LOGIC' SEEMS TO HAVE INFECTED EVERYONE WITH A DEVIL-MAY-CARE SPIRIT. During lunch, Considine and Rafe Spall (the only other member of the Shaun cast to appear in Hot Fuzz) mount a daring raid on the genuine booze that's been brought in to lend the supermarket an air of authenticity (pretty much everything else is fake; the freezers, which aren't even turned on, simply contain empty packets with pictures of meat stuck onto the front). They manage to fill two apple crates with cans and bottles before they're caught by producer Nira Park and forced to put it all back, like two naughty little schoolboys.
Then later, during the filming of a scene when the cops construct a battering ram of trolleys, Pegg — who's clearly been buying into the whole action-hero thing a little too much — launches himself over the meat counter, fearlessly and acrobatically, as if nothing could possibly go wrong. "If he'd put his back out doing that, I'd have been like, 'Yooooou twat!'" laughs Wright, who has been watching the whole thing on a marvelous mini-monitor slung around his neck. "But Simon has been doing a lot of his own stunts. And that's not just me bullshitting. He can really sell that kind of stuff in terms of doing the action thing, but with humour."
Car chases, helicopter shots, fist fights, chases, shoot-outs, daring camera moves, a wonderful cast featuring both Pegg/Wright alumni (Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy and Steve Coogan cameo) and British movie icons (Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Edward Woodward, Billie Whitelaw)... It's safe to say Hot Fuzz operates on a scale beyond previous British action movies. Yes, even Downtime. Now all that's needed, surely, to grant it instant classic status are cameos from a certain 1980s double act, popular thanks to their Saturday night TV show and a motion picture spin-off which we're not supposed to mention.
"That," says Pegs, through gritted teeth, "would be a gross error of judgement..."
Hot Fuzz will be released on February 16, 2007, and will be reviewed in a future issue
Point Break (1991)
One of two movies deliberately namechecked and quoted in Hot Fuzz (there's an
epic and hilarious foot chase which pays homage to the Kathryn Bigelow classic),
its homoerotic relationship between Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze forms the
basis for the tongue-in-cheek male bonding of Frost and Pegg.
Bad Boys II (2003)
"Bad Boys II is so fucking ridiculous!" says Pegg. And he's right,
but the second movie namechecked directly in Fuzz is so feverishly paced that
it shines a light on the frenetic last act. Logic doesn't come much more popcorny
than this.
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Pegg and Wright are huge Shane Black fans, and this movie has the biggest influence
on Hot Fuzz, in terms of its pithy dialogue, violence and - yes! - man-on-man
grappling. "The end of Lethal Weapon, in the rain, is soooo gay,"
says Pegg.
Man On Fire (2004)
Currently part of the temp score for Hot Fuzz is culled from the brutal Tony
Scott vengeance flick.
The Boys In Blue (1982)
Kidding, Edgar! Only Kidding! Honest!