This week, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg__'s second instalment in the Cornetto Trilogy, Hot Fuzz, turned the grand old age of 15. The iconic West Country-set cop comedy showcases the pair at the height of their filmmaking powers together, with non-stop jokes, lovable character dynamics, epic action sequences, and, of course, plenty of “murder murder murder.” Back in 2007 for Empire’s ‘Action Issue’, we got Wright, Pegg and co-star Nick Frost together to chat about their favourite action heroes and biggest influences from the genre. Have a read of that below – and for a really in-depth chat on the film, listen to our live Hot Fuzz Spoiler Special from our Empire Podcast Episode 500 celebrations.
As far back as he could remember, Edgar Wright had always wanted to be an action hero. So you’d be forgiven for thinking that Hot Fuzz marks the fulfilment of a lifelong dream for its director and co-writer.
The closest he'd previously come was as a teenager growing up in Somerset, when Wright wrote and directed on video a cop flick called Dead Right – the L.A. Takedown, if you like, to the Heat of Hot Fuzz. But during the filming of the much bigger-budget sorta-remake, it was Nick Frost and Wright's co-scribe, Simon Pegg, who got to do the crash-slam thing as two mismatched cops in a quiet country town who tackle a sudden crimewave with enough firepower to blow smithereens to smithereens. All Wright could do was watch.
Today, however, in a London studio on a blustery December day, Wright is putting things, well, right for Empire’s Hot Fuzz shoot. Suited and booted, gun clasped in hand and aviator sunglasses perched on nose, he's just about to shoot his portion of our explosive opening image. There's just one small problem – Wright appears to be hesitating. Could the Hot Fuzz man be getting cold feet? "Simon, you've done this before," he says nervously. "Any advice?"
Pegg, who's already performed his dramatic leap through the air, runs over and has a quiet word with his friend and colleague. Whatever he says clearly helps: on the very next take, Wright propels himself forward and onto the crash mats with such gusto that his replica handgun flies loose from his hand, arcs through the air and snaps into two pieces as it connects with the concrete floor just inches from Empire’s feet. His dream has finally come true, and he's grinning like a loon.
One hour later, having completed the other shots – in which they dangled off a building (or rather, rolled around on a crash mat) and monkeyed around in our Picture Editor's Mercedes, Wright, Pegg and Frost are pulled aside by Empire for a chat. Throughout their working history, from the seminal sitcom Spaced, triumphant first film Shaun Of The Dead and now Hot Fuzz – which wears its love of action flicks on its bloodied sleeve – the trio have displayed a deep knowledge of, and fondness for, genre movies. Which makes this the perfect time to sit down and consider all things bang bang, bang bang...
Can you remember the first action movie you ever saw and loved?
Pegg: Fort Apache, The Bronx. I remember watching that when I was young. I think we got it out on video. I remember the really cool freeze-frame at the end, but not much else.
Frost: Grease? It's not really an action film, is it? I remember really enjoying The Taking Of Pelham 123 but not knowing why, because I was quite thick back then.
Wright: I remember Dirty Harry. Clint's right-wing fascist avenger mode was something that quite affected me.
Pegg: Yeah, it was Magnum Force for me. I saw it before I saw any of the others because David Soul was in it and I was a massive Starsky & Hutch fan .
Wright: Did you find it shocking that he was one of the baddies?
Pegg: Very much so.
You drew up a list of movies to watch when writing Hot Fuzz****. What was on it?
Wright: We tried to re-watch all the good ones, find all the ones we hadn't seen and dip our toes into previously uncharted waters. It was a good excuse to go trawling around Amazon buying lots of NTSC tapes.
Pegg: You were pretty good at rooting out stuff like Chuck Norris' Hero And The Terror, Silent Rage and those kind of odd '70s ones as well, like Busting.
So what makes a good buddy-cop team, then?
Pegg: They've got to have good chemistry and secretly be in love with each other.
Wright: What about Dead Heat with Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo?
Frost: [sighing] It's Pasquale!
Wright: [laughs] Now there’s a remake. Dean Gaffney and Joe Pasquale in Dead Heat II. What about Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans in The Last Boy Scout?
Pegg: Or Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in Die Hard 3?
Wright: Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker in Striking Distance – not so good.
Pegg: The partnership we haven't mentioned is probably the greatest of them all... Mr. Tango and Mr. Cash!
Wright: Aaaaaah! [in Jack Palance voice] "Ray Tango! Gabriel Cash!"
Pegg: I'm going to show you the plot with two mice!
Wright: He has mice just to illustrate Tango and Cash because he's going to put them in the maze on his desk, as a trap. And the maze is purely there to illustrate things for the bloke who's just walked in. It's like, "Check this out!"
Frost: That scene is hilarious.
Wright: I'd like to see a sequel where they team up with the mice, also called Tango and Cash. Tango & Tango & Cash & Cash...
Who are your favourite action stars of all time?
Wright: Oh, Clint Eastwood, easily.
You've got a man-crush on Clint Eastwood…
Wright: I have. I think he's the most handsome man on this earth. Clint's face looks like Mount Rushmore. In a good way.
Pegg: The older he gets, the more he looks like he should play Judge Dredd. Bruce Willis is a favourite. I am very, very, very excited that I am going to be sharing the cover of Empire with fucking John McClane! I'm retiring now. I don't need to do anything else, that's it.
Wright: But is he John McClane without his receding hairline in Die Hard 4?
Frost: He wasn't receding in 3, was he? He was bald in that.
Pegg: No, he was receding in 3. Now he looks like him out of fucking 12 Monkeys!
Wright: The other weird thing is he's not wearing a sweaty vest at all!
Pegg: I love Bruce very much. He was one of the first fallible action heroes. In that tradition of the Arnie / Van Damme indestructible type, he was one of the ones who would be vulnerable and freaked out by stuff.
Frost: Who, John McClane? I always thought he was very confident.
Pegg: Yeah, but he had that thing where even when he was being cool, he was always muttering to himself. And he cried... What about Don 'The Dragon' Wilson?
Wright: I'm not sure I've ever seen a Don 'The Dragon' Wilson movie. I've never seen a movie with Michael Dudikoff either.
Today's shoot is all about action cliches. Any favourites?
Wright: Pretty much all the things you can think of, like endless rounds of ammo, and people getting shot and just carrying on without any...
Pegg: ...medical help. And if anyone approaches a microphone, it shall make a feedback noise. Those rules are set in stone.
Wright: The idea is that Hot Fuzz becomes more cliched as it goes along. But I have to say, filming action stuff you do realise why a lot of these things happen. I bet on any Michael Bay film the continuity person must be going, "Er, Michael, I just wanted to say that in the last shot he had his left hand down," and Michael's like, "Forget it! Fuck that! Fuck that! Nobody's going to be watching that!"
Are you fans of the major cliches, like jumping away from explosions?
Pegg: One of the greatest ones is Homer Simpson when he's at the candy show (in the episode ‘Homer Badman’) and he gets a can of soda and some Space Dust, shakes it up and then throws it: "See you in hell, candy boys!"
Wright: A really good one is in Torque, which is the motorcycle version of The Fast And The Furious, when a bike explodes and Martin Henderson and Ice Cube run away from it.
Frost: Say no more.
Wright: [laughs] There's a good fireball in Hard Boiled, in the hospital ward with the baby pissing on the flames. Chow Yun-fat says, "You pissed out my flames!"
Pegg: I want a T-shirt with, "You pissed out my flames! " on it.
Tooling up with big guns is another favourite…
Wright: That's the bit that Robert Rodriguez does the music for in Hot Fuzz. He gets to soundtrack the gun-fetish sequence.
Pegg: And every close-up is me.
Wright: It's true. I became obsessed throughout the shoot that people doing hand doubles were always shit. So Simon was really given the guns and I made him do the whole tooling-up sequence. You never see his face but that is him doing all the twirling and stuff. What are some of the best tooling-up sequences of all time? Evil Dead II?
Frost: Oh yeah. Groovy.
What's your favourite action sequence?
Pegg: The lobby sequence from The Matrix. I still use that when I have a new television and want to test the sound.
Wright: I have to go for the end of The Wild Bunch. Can I have more than one? Point Break’s footchase, which we reference in Hot Fuzz. Maybe the Steadicam shot in Hard Boiled, the hospital corridor scene. And...
Pegg: ...The first Quidditch match in Harry Potter (laughs).
Wright: The bar shoot-out in Desperado. I'll go for those four. Can I go for five? No, I'll stick with my four. Okay, number five would be The House Of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill: Vol. 1.
Pegg: I'll stick that on my list.
Frost: You've split it up between the fucking two of you. Mine would be... would one of the battle scenes in Braveheart do?
Pegg: Which one?
Frost: Scots versus English!
And what's the single coolest moment in action movies?
Pegg: "Yippee-kay-yay, motherfucker" is a good one.
Wright: I watched RoboCop quite recently and when The Old Man says at the end, "What's your name, kid?" and he says, "Murphy," I cried. The other movie that made me cry – and my girlfriend at the time was completely perplexed – was Rumble In The Bronx, at the end when Jackie Chan turns to camera and puts his thumb up and ‘Kung Fu’ by Ash starts. I was so pleased I was reduced to tears.
Pegg: [turning to Frost] You love, "Not bad for a cueball," don't you? Nick said wouldn't it be great if they remade Aliens but instead of Sigourney Weaver, there was a white ball and then at the very end, Bishop's going, "Not bad for a cueball!"
Frost: [in a Lance Henriksen voice] "Not... bad... for a... cue... ball."
Pegg: [crying with laughter] It's the weirdest thing he's ever said!
Finally, what precisely is it about action that inspires homage and comedy?
Wright: It's a similar thing with Shaun: the reason we made it in the first place is the juxtaposition of this overblown carnage happening in the UK – full stop.
Pegg: And it's good to remind people how good those films are. Genre films are often underrated as pieces of art and a lot of them are valid as such. With the possible exception of Hero And The Terror…