Nick Angel is the name of your music composer, so is Simon Pegg’s character’s name an homage to him?
”Yeah. Well, his name, Nick Angel, sounds like a great cop. That was the thing. Even before we had the idea for the film, we had a meeting with him and when he left the room I said, ‘Simon, Nick Angel is one good cop.’ So that was it.
We never refer to him as Nick in the film. He's never referred to as Nick. He was really pleased we name-jacked him. Then during the film he started to freak out a little bit because he thought he was going to get the piss ripped out of him for the next 20 years. Now you see at the start of the film Nick Angel's commendations - those certificates of like outstanding work on Operation Crackdown - and Nick Angel's got one of those on his wall.”
The sound design is so intense. How many hours did it take you?
“It was very intense doing the sound mix. There's a lot of stuff that we do in the edits, as well. Whilst we're editing we do a lot of work because within the style of the genre, I'm a big fan of sound.
It's funny, actually, on the DVD for this, I'm going to put on the cop film that I made when I was 18. What's funny looking back at it is, apart from all the obvious things, the thing that it's really, really lacking is sound. There's hardly any sound effects in it and it's amazing just what, I know it sounds like stating the obvious, but what sound adds. And I just really, both on Shaun of the Dead and on this, kind of like making the sound mix really vivid. Because it was a cop film as well, we set out to make the loudest British film of all time. I think we succeeded. Calendar Girls is a close second."
It’s probably the loudest film of all time.
“I would hope so. If we don't get an Oscar nomination for sound effects editing, I'm going to cry.”
You’ll have to campaign for it but it might be a hard sell.
“Listen, if Under Siege can win a sound effects editing Oscar, we can.”
Did it?
“Yeah, because I remember the next year, Steven Seagal presented an Oscar and made some comment about the fact that he was pissed that Under Siege 2 did not get any Oscar nominations. I like to point out for the record as well that my favorite film title of all time is Half Past Dead. What an amazing title that is.”
Mine is Hard Rain.
“Hard Rain is pretty good. The other ones are good. There's one that I saw… I’ve never seen it but there's one called Cold Heat. I think that's a pretty amazing title. Cold Heat is good. I like Maximum Risk. Executive Decision is a good one. What a title that is.”
And it’s a good movie, too.
“On the DVD for Hot Fuzz, we've called all of the chapter headings different two word titles. So it's like the first chapter is Administrative Decision. Second one is Excellent Force, Man Heat, Avian Breakout, Maximum Bullets, Total Screech.”
So we have to read all the titles.
“Totally, you have to read all of it. And also, if we have had any criticism with this film, it's that it has too many endings, to which my answer is, ‘Have you never seen an action film in your life?’ Every single action film has too many endings, and the last three chapters on the Hot Fuzz DVD are Final Chapter, Final Chapter II and Final Chapter: The Final Chapter. If anybody has any issue with the length of Hot Fuzz and it having too many endings, my answer would be that Hot Fuzz is half an hour shorter than Bad Boys II. And 20 minutes shorter than Miami Vice.”
What’s up next for you?
“There’s several things in the works. Even before Hot Fuzz I wrote an adaptation of this comic, Scott Pilgrim, with Michael Bacall who's in Grindhouse. He's a great writer but also an actor. Me and Mike White had been working on Them and also working on an adaptation of Ant-Man, so there's three things in the works. On top of that, me and Simon [Pegg] have an idea for #3 in what we're calling the three flavors corneta trilogy. The three films feature blood and ice cream, so that's the only kind of linking variables. It's just a matter of what is next and stuff.
It's weird because it feels like we haven't even stopped working on Hot Fuzz because like Hot Fuzz was finished about two weeks before it came out in the UK. And then while we’re still doing the press I shot my trailer for Grindhouse like a month ago, which is insane.
It's so weird. With something like that it's like handing in homework. I had total carte blanche doing the trailer for Grindhouse. They read the script and they liked it. ‘Here's a little bit of money go do it.’ Then I hand it in and he goes, ‘Great. It's in the film.’ ‘Okay, cool.’ It's so weird.”
Are you thinking about making your Grindhouse trailer Don’t into a feature film?
“I don’t know. If anyone wanted me to, I'd happily do it. The thing about my trailer’s, unlike maybe the other ones, is that the whole point of it is that there's no plot. Sometimes you see some of those trailers for European films and you're thinking, ‘I have no idea what the f**k that is about.’ My idea to make it look like it was a 90 minute film condensed is to have a different actor in every single shot, so it seems like it’s a new cast. Nobody ever reoccurs. So in 90 seconds there's like 30 actors in it, which is crazy.”
Do you have a plot if you expand it?
“Don't? I like the fact that it's turned into the Don't conference. I'd rather talk about that than Hot Fuzz. If it was made into a feature it'd have to be like… I've always really admired Dario Argento and Superior is one of my favorite films. Superior is, I think, one of the few films that feels like a dream you've had when you've had too much cheese. It's just like the weirdest bad dream you've ever had. I love those films that have the nightmare logic and don't really have any plots or story. It's just like horrible bad dream after bad dream.”
