INTERVIEW : SIMON PEGG & NICK FROST (SHAUN OF THE DEAD)

Yesterday we brought you the first part of my epic interview with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the stars of Shaun of the Dead (now available on DVD - buy it here from us at Amazon) and the really amazing TV series Spaced. Just click here if you missed that. It’s worth catching up on - the first part of the interview saw us talking about Spaced, the American reception of Shaun, Star Wars, and plenty of other stuff. In this, the second half, we go a little wider, talking about the best movies of 2004, the films of Peter Jackson, Bruce Campbell, and video games...

Q: What were your favorite films of 2004?

Frost: For me, Napoleon Dynamite.

Pegg: Napoleon Dynamite.

Frost: Loved it. Amazing film.

Pegg: That film, we watched it on tour like four times. Jon Heder, we invited him to a screening at this film festival in England, him and his wife, we took them out and I was like “Wow - it’s Napoleon Dynamite!”

Q: What’s he like in real life?

Pegg: Lovely. He’s this kind of cool young man.

Frost: Dang it! He’s suhweet!

Pegg: He is sweet. A fantastic movie, which I don’t know if it even got released out here, is Dead Man’s Shoes, a revenge flick set in the north of England from Shane Meadows, with an amazing actor named Paddy Considine, who’s in that new movie Cinderella Man. You’ll paddybe seeing a lot of him, he’s our next big thing.

Frost: He’s the next Bill Nighy.

Pegg: Yeah, he’s fucking amazing. A brilliant actor.

In terms of the American - it’s been a good year. The Incredibles blew me away. I was clapping, laughing and clapping in that film when the little kid hit the water.

Frost: Sorry, I haven’t seen it.

Q: I can’t figure out why they’re even bothering to finish that Fantastic Four movie.

Pegg: I know! What more can you do? They’ve done every joke, covered every base. I haven’t been that excited about a film since the lobby sequence in The Matrix.

Garden State, we liked that.

Frost: Sorry, didn’t see it. Did... not... see... it.

I did think The Grudge was creepy.

Pegg: Did you see Ju-On though?

Frost: Yeah. Did you see the Grudge? What did you think of it?

Pegg: I just love Sarah Michelle Gellar. Anything she does makes me cry. She’s a beautiful woman.

Q: Have you met her?

Pegg: No. But we’re going to LA tomorrow so I’m going to hunt her. Stalk her.

Frost: Creeeeepy. You are creepy.smg

Pegg: I did a list of my top five. Hero was great.

Frost: That was good.

Pegg: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was fantastic.

Frost: Didn’t see it.

Pegg: Spider-Man 2.

Q: As a comic book guy, what did you think of Spider-Man 2?

Pegg: I thought it was great. There was more of Sam Raimi in Spider-Man 2. I felt like in the first one he was on his best behavior a little bit. He was great, but there wasn’t that much of him in it. But that sequence when Doctor Octopus is on the operating table and he just goes nuts is pure Evil Dead 2. It was brilliant.

Frost: There was that chainsaw sequence too. “There’s a Spider in all of us, Peter-Man!”

Pegg: I really liked that. There were a couple of times I thought - like the joke in the elevator when he says, “Nice Spider-Man costume,” I thought it could have ended when he said, “Thanks,” but it went on a little bit. But I just think he nailed it. And I love the fact that the big hitters in Hollywood now are Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson. Guys who started out making home movies -

Frost: Geeks.

Pegg: Geeks who started out making home movies with their video recorders. Like Sam Raimi who cobbled together money to make a horror film that took him three years to make, funded by car companies and whatever. Those are the big guys now, those are the ones who rule the roost now.

Q: I like to imagine the people who hired Peter Jackson for Lord of the Rings popping in Meet the Feebles.

Pegg: I was just saying that! After they employed him, after writing the check for three hundred million dollars. “OK, what are we going to watch? Meet the Feebles - WHOA!”

If you look at Deadalive and Bad Taste -

Frost: [laughs]

Pegg: You haven’t seen them, have you? Heavenly Creatures was maybe the only - the Frighteners, did he do the Frighteners?

Q: Yeah, and I think that one is underrated.

Pegg: Definitely. But it’s not the most telling body of work. Whoever gave him that money must have been so incisive to see it in him. Braindead, as it was called in our country, was glorious, and Heavenly Creatures is lovely, and I do also like The Frighteners quite a bit as well. So it wasn’t like it was a complete risk, but the way that he came through - Edgar Wright just spent the New Year with him.

Q: Oh wow.

Pegg: Lucky little bugger.

Q: On the set of King Kong?

Pegg: No, at Bag End. He’s hanging out with Jack Black.

Frost: Helms Deep.

Pegg: Yeah, they went to Helms Deep. They put on a little war for him. I think one of the reasons we got all that support last year from the likes of Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarantino as well - another guy who’s just a geek with a camera - is because they see in Edgar themselves when they were younger, a guy who is making films with the same kind of passion and ingenuity that they did. There are big things ahead for that boy. We’re sofagoing to ride his coattails as much as we can.

Q: Are you guys a unit now?

Pegg: We’re going to end up as like his Bruce Campbell. We’re going to do telling cameos in his big blockbusters. “Oh here comes Simon and Nick, it’s Simon and Nick’s bit - with the funny doorman!”

Frost: "Hey!" [waves]

Q: But you know, you see Spider-Man 2 with the right audience and Bruce Campbell comes on as the ticket taker and that audience - that’s their favorite scene.

Pegg: That man can do no wrong. I think he is just - what a guy. And also, for a guy who’s basically had a career where he’s the guy who goes crazy in Evil Dead - Bubba Ho-Tep, what a performance. I mean, that was a performance to die for. Who knew that he could be that good. Not that he’s been that good before, but he usually does the b-movies.

Q: And no one thought he could hold his own against Ossie Davis.

Pegg: Yeah! He did the best Elvis in cinema ever. He’s the bomb.

Q: What games are you guys playing this past year?

Pegg: Halo 2.

Q: Nick, have you played Halo 2?

Frost: No, I haven’t. But that’s only because my girlfriend hates me playing games. So I would rather not play games than play games and have her angry.

Pegg: You should take the “playing games” part off that sentence.

Frost: What do you mean?

Pegg: Your girlfriend hates you.

Frost: Oh. I’m gay.

Pegg: I haven’t started playing Half-Life 2 yet, and Half-Life was my favorite game of all time. Doom 3 was a hoot.

Frost: I couldn’t play it in the end. It was too tense.

Q: Scared you too much?

Frost: Yeah, I just thought, “I don’t need to feel like this in my own house.”

Pegg: What I like about it is that you will go into a dark room and everything will be dark and that was what was great about it, that you only have a torch and you hear “ugh agh” and you shine it around and there’s a zombie right there!

Frost: I know.

Pegg: One time me and Nick were playing it, and we were playing on the computer and my girlfriend - who I adore beyond measure - called down to me for something and I was like, “Yeah?” and then I got killed and I hadn’t saved it for like - I was shouting. “You rooooo-ined the game! You roooooo-ined it!”

Frost: I’m addicted to this game called Championship Manager 2005. Days disappear.

Pegg: It’s a soccer game.

Frost: You can be a manager for any division in the world.

Pegg: America United?

Frost: From shit divisions - you can be DC or Kansas City. Any team in the world. You’re the manager. You’re responsible for the players, how much you pay them, if they get injured, their morale and training schedule. And then a week goes back and you then get to play a match. Where you get beat. And if you don’t do well enough they fire you. It’s incredible.

Pegg: I love that about the first Half-Life, where you actually went to work for maybe half an hour. You got on the train, you went in, you picked up your suit, you walked off and were messing around in some chamber and then 20 minutes into the game when you’re just playing a blue collar worker the dimensions fold and all these aliens come in. It was brilliant, I can’t wait to play the sequel.

Q: Have you played the new Grand Theft Auto?

Pegg: No, I just bought that.

Q: It’s incredible. I hope you have a week and a half to kill. Are you Playstation or Xbox guys?

Pegg: Both.

Frost: Xbox.

Pegg: I haven’t played a Playstation game for a long time. I do like PCs.

Frost: I love PC. We both have nice offices, so it’s nice to sit in our PC room and just play.stw

Pegg: I really enjoy Jedi Outcast, the Star Wars game. That’s where they get it right. You know why that is? Why the games are better than the films? Because he delegated it to Star Wars fans and Star Wars fans are making the ancillary media. They understand it better than he does.

Q: Have you heard this rumor that there is going to be a Star Wars TV show and that they want Kevin Smith to write it? Would you watch that?

Pegg: Only if he set it in a recognizable time. The big mistake about setting it all 60 years before the ones we loved is that I don’t want to see robots and clones. I want to see X-Wings and Tie Fighters. I want to get back there again. I heard that the TV show would be set a thousand years after the fall of the Empire.

Frost: By that time they might get Jar Jar right.

Pegg: Mark Hamill is an incredible voice over artist, but he hasn’t done much as an actor. You could have him. You could have Luke Skywalker with a beard - I would watch that.

Q: That’s the rumor this week, that it would have Luke 30 years after Jedi.

Pegg: I hope it’s not like the Young Indiana Jones series, which was just an excuse for George Lucas to practice special effects.

Q: What do you think about Indiana Jones IV?

Pegg: Sorry, I haven’t seen it. [laughs] Harrison Ford is great, but he’s getting on now.

Frost: Is he going to do it?

Pegg: Apparently.

Q: He says he’s going to do it.

Pegg: How believable would it be to have a 60 year old Indiana Jones? There was a point when he was about the coolest, sexiest guy on the planet. Now he’s got an earring and Callista Flockhart and you go, “Come on, get it back! Get it back!”

Frost: Isn’t he going to play the doctor in DaVinci Code? He’s old for that as well.

Q: Ron Howard’s directing that one.

Pegg: We just saw his daughter in The Village.

Q: She’s beautiful.

Frost: She’s blind.

Q: Not in real life.

Frost: What?

Q: What did you think of the film?

Pegg: If it had been his first film it would have been received a lot better. But now he’s the guy that does twists. He’s a good director, and he certainly knows how to build tension and deliver surprises, and he knows how to frame all these shots, but after The Sixth Sense, because he did Unbreakable next, which is another film with a twist and then he did Signs which is another film with a twist, it’s like “Stop doing twists!”

Q: Our site named The Village our least favorite film of the year.

Pegg: I can understand why in a way.

Q: You feel like this guy should be doing something more than sub-Twilight Zone stuff.

shPegg: Yeah, you’re watching it, knowing his form, and you’re going, “Come on, come on, get to the twist.” But in actual fact, if you weren’t expecting a twist, you’d be wondering what was going on. You’d be involved in it. The performances are great, Ron Howard’s daughter is brilliant, Adrian Brody is great, Sigourney Weaver - all these people are great. But the whole time you’re going, “OK, but what is the twist?”

Frost: I do like his movies, and it’s nice to watch on a rainy afternoon or whatever, but what I am getting sick of is seeing him in them in different ways.

Q: And he really stands out in The Village.

Frost: The reflection in the morphine fridge.

Pegg: That’s not him being modest, that’s him thinking he’s so enigmatic that he can only be seen in reflection.

Frost: Like in Signs when he’s walking down the street, and the kids are going, “That’s him! There he is!” Shut up. Who are you kidding?

Pegg: He’s supposed to be some kind of Iowa farmer. If he was some old guy it would be more believable, but it’s some young Asian guy so it’s not. Having said that, I really liked Unbreakable, as a comic fan. It’s a great origin story. And I really liked Signs as well. It’s tenuous at the end - there’s a five minute flashback in the most tense part.

Frost: Sorry, I haven’t seen it.

Q: Don’t ruin it for Nick!

Pegg: The video with the kid’s party, that’s all great. But he’s got into this whole -

Frost: Did you notice that in The Village the shape of the animal’s arm is the same as the alien’s? It’s got this back shape.

Q: You mentioned being a comic fan, Simon. What are you reading these days?

Pegg: Y: The Last Man. The Walking Dead, obviously.

Frost: I’ve been reading Superman: True Brit. That’s great.

Pegg: Yeah, Superman raised in England. The Originals, Dave Gibbons.

Q: That’s really good.

Frost: It’s like a hover Quadrophenia.

Q: Are you guys going to write any comics? You wrote some that tied into Shaun.

Pegg: We might do from Dusk Til Shaun. DC and Marvel have been in touch.

Q: For the Shaun title of just in general?

Pegg: In general. But I would like to do a Shaun of the Dead sequel as a comic book.

Q: So there may actually be a Shaun sequel after all.

Pegg: Yeah, but only in that format.

Q: From Dusk Til Shaun is maybe the best name ever.

toiletPegg: That’s the thing - it’s almost worth doing just for the title.

Frost: I like Night of the Living Ed.

Q: Let’s talk really briefly about the DVD. What’s the best special feature on there?

Frost: My butt.

Pegg: The sight of Nick’s butt getting injected with whatever it was. There’s loads of good stuff on there, the diaries and stuff. But for me I love the plot hole features, where we thought of those missing bits. I mean, those aren’t bits that should have been in the film - their exclusion is all about building tension in the film - you don’t want to know where Shaun goes, Dianne’s exit has to be ambiguous, and Ed in the shed has to be a surprise. But it’s a nice thing to go back to after you’ve finished the film.

Q: The Dianne thing is great because it worked that she seemed to die in the film, but then when I read the comic I was glad, because I had liked her so much.

Pegg: We thought it would be more surprising if she survived it. And if you don’t know that plot hole and it’s still dramatic.

And that’s Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, two of the best guys I have had the pleasure of meeting. I can’t wait for the next project that brings them to the States, because these are just fun guys to have a beer with.

If you live in or near LA you may yet get your chance - check them out signing copies of the Shaun of the Dead DVD:

Friday (tonight) 7:30 - Barnes & Noble at The Grove at Farmers Market, 189 Grove Drive, Los Angeles

Saturday 7:00 - Borders Books and Music, 1360 Westwood Blvd., Westwood.