Edgar: (Laughs)

Nick:  Yes.  Goodbye!  (Stands up to leave.)

Edgar:  We wanted to make the gayest cop film ever made.

Nick:  And I think we’ve done it!

The last time you were down here, most people hadn’t seen Shaun of the Dead yet.  This year, you’ve got a fan base. 

Edgar:  It’s funny being back here, because this is Nick’s first time and [Comic Con ‘04] was the first kind of U.S. press that [Simon and I] ever did.  It’s cool.  The thing that was amazing about Shaun over here, the proudest thing about the whole film was that, when we made it, we didn’t really make any kind of concessions to it being international in terms of its appeal.  It’s probably as British as it can be.  And I think people over here in and in the U.K. always say, “Oh, the Americans will never get it”.  But what was amazing for us was when we did the press tour in eighteen cities in the States, people would laugh at the same things every night.  It was great for us.  I remember that me and Simon were watching it in Detroit, and we both looked at each other and thought, “It’s just so weird that that’s our neighborhood up on the screen in Detroit”.  (Laughs)  “And we’re in Detroit where fucking Robocop lives!”  (More laughter)

Is this film a little more Americanized?  The genre is more our kind of thing.

Edgar:  Not really, but in the sense that both the film and the characters start to ape the conventions of action films more as the film goes on.  Kind of the whole point of the film essentially is that action movies do not exist in the U.K., and neither do cop movies; there are very, very few police films at all.

Nick:  (Affecting a cockney accent)  It’s all about the gangsters.

Edgar:  (Doing likewise)  It’s all about gangsters.  Like Jason Statham.  (Laughs)  It’s all about gangsters films because gangsters are considered cool.

Nick:  Well, they can have guns.

Edgar:  While the police don’t have guns and couldn’t be less cool – particularly uniformed kinds of cops.  So we decided to make it our duty to pick the most uncool subject and try to make it cool.

Nick:  Vets is next.

Edgar:  (Laughing)  But the British uniformed police deserved their own action film, and that was kind of the idea.  So, in some ways, it becomes more Americanized as the film goes on.

Nick:  We will never ever get another parking ticket or a speeding fine again.

Edgar:  I think police recruitment will go up after the film.  There’s this scene in it that we filmed in the training places at Helmdon and Gravesend, which are the two big training places.  And we filmed with the real riot police, which is crazy.  So, Simon was doing all these exercises with the real riot police, who were fucking mental.  (Laughs)  And they were totally into it.  But there was this one bit Simon was doing where they have this thing called the skid pad – which looks like a huge concrete wok that’s covered in oil – where the cars have to—

Nick:  Did you say “wok”?

Edgar:  Yeah.

Nick:  Okay.

Edgar:  It does look like a wok.  And what’s funny is that we did this scene where Simon was supposed to be doing this awesome hand-break turn… which he actually did – Simon did do a lot of his own stuff.  But the guy who’s running the thing goes, “No, no, no, no!  What we train is to reduce skidding.”  And he expressed that he was not happy that we were going to do a hand-break turn.  He goes, “This is about reducing skidding.  We teach you to stop skidding.  We don’t encourage you to skid.  I don’t want people to come and see this film and think that you get to donuts and hand-break turns.”  Initially, he wasn’t going to let us do it.  The other funny thing about that scene was that Simon was banned from driving.

Nick:  That’s right.  He was.

Edgar:  (Laughing)  I think for like three months – because he had a speeding fine and we were shooting on police headquarters whilst he had a driving ban—

Nick:  Hiding in the light.

Nick, can you tell us about your character?

Nick:  Well, he’s known as Danny Butterman, and he’s the son of the chief of police.  He lives in the country, and he’s just a simple man, I guess.  He’s not malicious; he’s just a very honest… he’s like a child, I guess.  In a policeman’s uniform.

Edgar:  You ever hear that expression “the butcher’s son”?  Or a “Saturday boy?”  It’s not even nepotism; it’s just that he literally couldn’t get anything better to do.  (Laughs) 

Nick:  He followed daddy.

Edgar:  There’s a bit in the film where Nick asks Simon why he became a policeman, and Simon has this enormous, flowery monologue about why he got into being a policeman.  And he says to Nick, “How did you first get to be a policeman?”  And Nick goes, “Dad did it.”  (Laughter)  And that’s it.

Bill Nighy, when he was doing press for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, said he’s one of many, many cameos [in Hot Fuzz].  He said half of the British actors are making cameos in this film.  Is this true?

Edgar:  Here’s who’s in the cast:  Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan, Martin Freeman, Edward Woodward, Billie Whitelaw, Timothy Dalton, Stuart Wilson, Kenneth Cranham—

Nick:  Paul Freeman.

Edgar:  Or, if you want to genre: “Belloq”, “Prince Barin”, “The Fucking Equalizer”.  (Laughter)  Who else is in it?

Nick:  Bill Bailey.  Paddy Considine.  Rafe Spall (Timothy Spall’s son).  Olivia Colman, who is a brilliant comic actress.  Jim Broadbent.  Oscar winner Jim Broadbent.  (Laughter)

Nighy also raved about you guys.

Edgar:  He’s such a sweet guy.  I can tell you that he was a bit reluctant at first to do a cameo, and he came up with the funniest condition.  He said, “I’ll do it on one condition.  You have to give me one more funny line.”  That was the best condition I’ve ever heard, so we wrote him another joke.  I think that was a good diva demand to make.  “I want one more zinger.”

Nick:  Well, then, the pro rata rate of your comedy writing is going to be quite high.  (Edgar shoots him a puzzled look.)  It’s a joke saying you’re quite expensive.

Are there going to be any references to British shows like The Bill or Midsomer Murders?

Edgar:  Not really.  What’s interesting is that a lot of British cop shows deal with the mundanity of the job.  But the idea [for Hot Fuzz] was like, “What would happen if Michael Bay or Tony Scott had to make a British crime film where nothing happens?  How would they cope?”  And that inspired the first half of the film in a way.  I suppose there’s definitely an Agatha Christie element in there only in that Agatha Christie is so [prevalent in] her influence.  It’s funny, actually.  She’s one of those writers who’s so well known to the point where everybody is sick of Agatha Christie adaptations.  She’s been ripped off so many times that you’re so kind of aware of all those tricks and twists.  I actually went back and started watching the old Poirot films, and I really fucking enjoyed them.  We watched Death on the Nile, and I was going, “This is fucking great!”  I hadn’t watched them since I was a kid, and I remember watching them as a kid and kind of being bored when there wasn’t a murder happening.  “They’re too talky!” 

They always used to sell them on the number of murders, but I was watching them when the slasher films were really big, and I’d be waiting for these big gruesome deaths and then... somebody gets poisoned. 

Edgar:  What I love about them is that they go into that insane… it’s almost like magician’s logic.  An entire murder plot might rest on the fact that someone had their back turned for two seconds.  And somebody kicks the gun under a thing, and someone gets some ink, and someone’s like, “I’m shot!”, but they haven’t really been shot; it’s a fake, but the bullet that you thought you shot me with is going to be in someone else.  And the only way they can get there is if Jane Birkin turns her back for two seconds.  (Laughter)  And then Michael York can get to the other side of the boat.  Insane, insane logic!  And I’m just thinking, “Man, I’d love to know more about how Agatha Christie came up with that kind of stuff!”

Nick:  Opium.  (Lots of laughter)

Shaun was essentially Rogue’s first feature to be released.  How are they to work with on this one?  Did they give you more freedom?

Edgar:  I suppose we more kind of work with Working Title in terms of the actual production.  They’re our production company and Rogue distributes.  They’re great, but I suppose we don’t have much discussion with them until the film is actually done.  But, yeah, Working Title is really cool in terms of that they left us to our own devices.  Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner… they’re kind of like tough dads.  They’re the kind of people that only say nice things behind your back – in a way that makes you really want to do them proud.  It’s funny.  Also, they have a thing that can sometimes be frustrating, but ultimately a good thing, which is that they ultimately want every film to perform to its absolute zenith.  When we were making Shaun, we did a test screening, and it went down pretty well.  But because it wasn’t, like, scoring ninety, you could see the disappointment on their faces.  It was like, “It’s not bad for a zombie film.  It’s never going to be Lord of the Rings!”  But it’s really good in a way, especially in the U.K. for a small budget film.  If we had been with another distributor or production company, it could’ve gone out on thirty screens and kind of been a cult-y thing – one of those things that people have read about but never seen.  But they put it out on 300 screens in the U.K., and there were posters everywhere.  So, a £4 million film was being promoted like it was a £40 million film. 

Here in the States, though, it was sort of annoying because we heard all about it from the U.K. and it took forever to get here.  Will that be the case with Hot Fuzz?

Edgar:  No, I think it comes out two weeks after in the States.  [It comes out on February 16^th in the U.K. and on March 9^th in the U.S.]  Last time, it got kind of bootlegged to death.  We were doing the press tour, and people would come up and ask us to sign bootlegs, which was not so much fun.  I remember once I had an argument with a guy because I refused to sign it, and he thought I was being a real ass.  He was like (affecting a lisp), “Are you therioth?”  I don’t know why I did a lisp there.  I don’t think he actually had a lisp.  It’s just funnier.  But I had a row with him because I refused to sign a bootleg.  I said, “I’ll sign anything else except a bootleg”.  And he said, “Okay.”  And then he came back with a blank piece of paper, and said, “Sign this.”  And I was like, “It’s the fucking inlay!” 

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