Next week sees the release of The World’s End, the third and final instalment in Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's ‘Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy’ that kicked off with Shaun of the Dead in 2004 and continued with Hot Fuzz in 2007.
I visited the World’s End set late last year and will be posting my report tomorrow, but before then I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane. Shaun of the Dead was the first film set I ever visited – 10 years and two weeks ago – when writing for the film magazine Hotdog. That publication has now sadly gone the way of the dodo, but for nostalgia’s sake, I thought I’d post that write-up below.
So read on for talk of freshly shaved scrotums, death and destruction on the streets of Crouch End, and the Shaun sequel that never happened. And check back to IGN tomorrow for all the behind-the scenes info on The World’s End.
Hold onto your skulls film-lovers – it’s the dawn of a new era for the dead and they want your brains for breakfast . Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and the rest of the team behind award-winning sitcom Spaced are putting the finishing touches to their first big-screen opus, and while the results aren’t pretty, it looks set to make a blood-splattered mark on the movie world.
As Pegg explains. “We wanted to make a horror film, we wanted to make a comedy and we wanted to make a romance. As this was out first film, we weren’t sure if we’d get the chance to do another, so we decided to combine them all at the same time.”
From such pessimistic beginnings, Pegg and his team created Shaun of the dead, a gory romantic comedy quite unlike anything that’s ever been made. “We kind of joke about the rom-com-zom as some fort of hybrid genre, and it was a joke at first, but it’s kind of stuck.”
Andyou may as well get used to the phrase over the next few months as Shaun of the Dead will be coming to a cinema near you, and there really is no other way to describe its bizarre mix of styles. The film is sweet in a romantically daft sort of way, its funny in a slightly surrwal sort of way, and there’s a fair amount of brain-stained horror peppered throughout.
Such a twisted concoction should come as no surprise to fans of Pegg and the sublime Spaced, however, a show in which random genres rubbed shoulders with each other at an alarming rate. Indeed, an early episode saw Pegg himself battling an army of zombies folling one too many hours playing Resident Evil. He and director and writing partner Edgar Wright saw the potential for a movie in that scene, and so began the arduous task of actually putting the thing together.
“We had a couple of offices and we started off by just watching a lot of films (including, of course, the George Romero Trilogy of the Dead),” says Pegg, “looking at them in terms of how they worked and how they didn’t, as well as taking onboard some structural theories because it’s very important to develop in that way.”
So after copious hours spent watching the likes of Raising Arisona, Gremlins, Back to the future, Straw Dogs, Assault on Precinct 13 and An American Werewolf in London (tough job, this screenwriting) they were ready to get cracking. The result was a flip-chart draft written in marker pen, followed by a 140-page first draft proper, and then eventually a shooting script, full of the boys’ trademark snappy dialogue, some truly imaginative deaths, and lots and lots of zombies.
The tale they tell is of a 29-yearold no-hoper called Shaun, a thoroughly nice bloke with no real prospects in life. In fact, the only thing Shaun does have going for him is hi relationship with charming girlfriend Liz, and when that too turns pear-shaped, he decides to stop coasting once and for all and turn his life around. The only trouble is, that decision comes just as hell is quite literally breaking loose all around in the shape of a ferocious, devastating zombie holocaust.
These aren’t the new, improved zombies that run around with the grace and speed of Olympic athletes in films like 28 Days Later, Resident Evil and the Dawn of the Dead remake, though. As Pegg explains, “We tried to make them very specifically like the ones in the romero films – very ambling, very shambolic, very weak and almost ineffectual but also somehow scary.
“For us, their uselessness is part of their charm – they are eminently rubbish, so if you’re stuck in a room with one you can just walk from corner to corner and they’ll never catch you, but if you take them for granted, they’ll get you!”
So with the script in place, the next step was to cast the film, and with the help of producer Nira Park, they were able to assemble the cream of young British comedy talent.
“We wanted that ensemble feel that we have on Spaced” explains Park. “and we didn’t want to unbalance the whole thing by using a big American star – that was never our intention.”
So as well as the entire spaced team making an appearance in the movie, there’s the acerbic Dylan Moran, the adorable Lucy Davis, and a pair of British acting institutions in the shape of Penelope Wilton and Bill Nighy. The union of young and old makes for a unique combination, and one that seems strangely fitting for the films’ own singular vision.
No matter how good the cast is however, a film like Shaun lives and dies on the strength of its zombies, and in this respect the film really comes up trumps. As Park puts it, “You can’t make a zombie movie scary unless you’ve got lots of extras, and being a low-budget production we couldn’t afford too many, so we got in touch with the Spaced fans through the website.”
The response was immense, so much so that 800 zombies were amassed in total, making for some impressively large shots of destruction, death and decay as the film nears its dramatic denouement. It also made for panic on the streets of London, with several locals complaining that the sight of the living dead strolling around town was not something they wanted their children to see. Those with a sense of humour meanwhile simply locked the kids up indoors and came out to enjoy the spectacle.
With such organised chaos taking place in and around Crouch End and Millwall, you need a very special helmer to take charge of matters, and in Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead has just that.
A directing prodigy who made his first comedy at the age of 14, his career proper started on the low-budget western A Fistful of fingers before achieving widespread critical and commercial acclaim with Spaced. Nevertheless, it’s the visual confidence and flair of Shaun of the dead that’s all set to send him global. On both occasions that Hotdog speaks to Wright he’s somewhat stressed.
The first time is a strange day on-set as he prepares to direct our heroes beating an elderly zombie senseless in time to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now. Filming in a purpose-built pub at the heart of London’s historic Ealing Studios, bizarre and demented scenes like this sprang forth from the script every day, but for Wright the most important element of his job was to never lose sight of the overall intentions of the film.
“We really are trying to do something quite odd with the structure of the film. We wanted to create something where it seems like the first 25 minutes would almost work as a totally different film, then we’d slowly introduce the horror element. Hopefully that will give people a chance to get to know the characters and their relationships, and that information will pay off later in the film.”
By the time we speak again several months later, he’s nearing the end of post-production, putting the finishing touches to his blood-splattered baby and still trying to strike that balance between drama, comedy, horror and romance. As the film’s release date nears he’s starting to feel the pressure, but for the most past the experience has been enjoyable.
“It’s been great, actually. We’ve been editing for about six months and while it’s always stressful trying to get everything right, like the music and the sound effects, I think we’re finally getting there.”
Much like Pegg, Wright talks about the film very much in terms of George Romero’s Trilogy of the Dead. “We want it to be a companion piece to the Romero films, so if the epidemic is happening in Pittsburgh, it’s also happening in Crouch End. Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead was a big influence, with Dawn of the Dead being our Hamlet and us being like Rosencrantz and Guildernstern on the edge of that world.”
And in Simon Pegg, Wright seems to have found his perfect Rosencrantz. Or should that be De Niro? The two have formed a bond so close over the last few years on TV and film that perhaps one day they could be Britain’s very own answer to the Den Niro and Scorsese partnership, with added humour. I put this to the pair, suggesting that Nick Frost – who plays Pegg’s best friend in both Spaced and Shaun – could be their Joe Pesci, to which they both seem somewhat flabbergasted.
But look closely and the Spaced performers already seem to be dabbling in ‘the Method.’ On-set, Frost explained that as well as shaving a square hole into his hair for the sake of his character, he also did something far more dramatic. Where De Niro bulked up like a bison for Raging Bull, Frost claims to have shaved his private parts as bare as a newborn baby.
“I clipped my pubic hair so I’d have itchy nuts all the time.” Whether there is methin in his madness or madness in his method we’re not sure, but Pegg assures us that Frost really did have a freshly ‘Shaun’ scrotum during the shoot, revealing “He also liked to show anyone who would look.”
So with filming long finished, post-production nearing its conclusion, and Frost’s pubic hair now back from the dead, the dust is finally srttling on the world’s first romantic zombie-comedy. But what of the future for this strange new sub-genre. Could the boys see Mike Leigh and Richard Curtis jumping on their bandwagon?
“You mean Death Actually starring Bill Nighy?” offers Wright, “I suppose there’s always a chance.”
For now however, it seems that a sequel (tentatively titled From Dusk ‘Til Shaun) could yet be on the cards. “It totally depends on how this one does” explains Wright. “We’ve definitely got some ideas to continue the adventures of Shaun, but taking some other genres and making it with a similar sensibility.”
Does that mean that success for shaun and its strange juxtapositions will see others follw suit, changing the face of mainstream cinema for good? It’s too early to tell, but should the next romcom you see feature Hugh Grant taking a bite out of Julia Roberts’ leg before sucking on Sandra Bullock’s brains, you’ll know exactly who to blame.
Chris Tilly is the Entertainment Editor for IGN in the UK and will be posting his World's End set visit tomorrow. In the meantime. Tilly's you can find him on both Twitter and MyIGN, and if you want to read his Hot Fuzz set visit for the sake of completion, it can be found over at Time Out.
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