GUITAR HERO Edgar Wright Levels Up with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a romantically challenged guitarist (Michael Cera) must face off against seven formidable members from The League of Evil Exes if he’s ever to get the woman of his dreams (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) — let alone have the chance for an uneventful date with her. Old fogey moviegoers might have the same feeling when it comes to escaping the super villainy of Edgar Wright, who continues to squeeze their demo from the multiplex. For when it comes to filmmakers who embody the videogame-age generation that’s ruling the theaters, then Edgar Wright likely places number one in the League of Film Geek Directors.

Like such American chapter members as Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith, Wright spent much of his British childhood on a high calorie diet of genre pictures, video games, comic books, and every other fattening thing that genre pop culture had to offer. And like the work of his brethren, the result of Wright’s thousands of hours of viewing other people’s stuff is a host of high-energy TV shows and movie-movies that reference cult sci-fi (“Spaced”) zombie pictures (Shaun of the Dead), and the explosive cop oeuvre of Richard Donnor (Hot Fuzz), usually with his stock company of writer-actor Simon Pegg and performer Nick Frost in tow. But what comes out of Edgar Wright’s pop culture mosh pit is a voice and style uniquely his own, a deliriously fun, and surprisingly character driven sensibility that’s won him both critical and fan acclaim the world over.

Now the 36-year-old Wright has moved from his base in Blighty to create his most gleefully bonkers work yet with Scott Pilgrim. Based on the graphic novel by Canadian artist Bryan Lee O’Malley. Wright creates an anime / Manga / Matrix / Guitar Hero / Grunge Rock picture come to life, a colorful splash page of a movie as mixed in with more ordinary relationship travails. All of this is aimed like a delightful bullet at the head of Gen X. Yet Scott Pilgrim just might appeal beyond the Comicon, indie record store and game console crowd by utilizing some of the most bizarre displays of visual imagination yet seen on film, not to mention an instant cult vibe that compares to my generation’s WTF reaction to Repo Man and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. Wright’s rocking Scott Pilgrim takes its flights of fantasy to a whole other level with every colorful frame and rock chord, for what might stand as the most insanely adventurous romantic comedy of all time — a movie that’s a veritable button-masher of comic book imagination come to life.

Venice:

How did you first become aware of Bryan’s graphic novel?

Edgar Wright:

It was pressed into my hands at a Shaun of the Dead screening, just when the first issue came out in 2004. I was told, “This is your next movie,” which was half right, because I did end up making it after Hot Fuzz. Scott Pilgrim appealed to me because the tone of it reminded me of “Spaced,” which was the TV show I’d done with Simon Pegg. I was also keen to do something that was a comedy, and had a big visual element to it. But “Scott Pilgrim” also ended up covering every base from action to music and relationships. Not only would it be a real challenge to do, but the graphic novel was also a gift in terms of the subject matter.

Both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz had a definite British sensibility. What’s it like trying to see a movie through the distinctly American eyes of a young American male like Scott Pilgrim?

Well, it wasn’t that difficult really, especially because we had such an amazing cast. I also don’t think my sense of humor is particularly “British,” as much as it’s coming from a particular point of view and style. So I think when you watch the film, you’ll see that my sense of humor marries well with the original source material and the actors. So Scott Pilgrim isn’t out of step with my other two films.

While few people saw how great he was in Youth in Revolt, do you think that Scott Pilgrim will finally show people that Michael Cera can break out of his mold?

Michael knew the books already. And there are obviously things that are within his skill set that he loved doing in Scott Pilgrim, especially because he’s an amazing guitarist. It was also important for him to make sure he could pull off the fight scenes, and he worked very hard at that stuff. So there’s an obvious level of fun in that, in terms of bringing Michael out of his “comfort zone.” The flip side of that is that even though people are going to see different sides of Michael in the film, I still think it’s weird in this day and age that people get criticized for that. I grew up on Woody Allen films during that stretch of great, funny movies with him in the lead that went from the late 1960s through to the early ’80s. And if you’re going to a film with Woody Allen, you want to see him play the same character. It’s the character’s situation that changes from movie to movie. That makes it a strange thing to pin a label on actors, even though Michael does get to do a lot of different things in this film.

How do you turn Michael Cera into Neo?

Eight weeks of training! It was very important to Michael to be convincing in those scenes. We did a lot of training with the cast. Bill Pope, who shot our film, also shot The Matrix. He told us about the kind of training the cast did on that. I also talked to Quentin Tarantino about the work he’d done on Kill Bill, where he also had eight weeks of actor action training. For Scott Pilgrim, we set up a camp in Toronto for eight weeks before the start of the shoot. It was literally like fight camp. An amazing guy named Bradley James Allan did our choreography. He was recommended to me by Guillermo del Toro, who’d worked with him on Hellboy II. Brad is the first western member of Jackie Chan's fight team. He was working with him for 15 years along with Peng Zhang. Look them up on IMDB and be wowed! But we also had different courses, because people also had to train for the music sequences. It was really good having the cast together. People who weren’t even in scenes together got to bond. Jason Schwartzman and Chris Evans got along like a house on fire together before realizing they wouldn’t even see each other during the shoot!

The look of the film really captures the look of a live action video game / anime.

You could say the stylization is there because this is the movie that would be playing in Scott’s head if he were relating his life story to someone. And if you’ve grown up on videogames, cartoons, and anime, then you tend to relate your experiences with the media you’ve grown up on. It also fits Scott, because he’s a daydreamer who’s off in his own world, a place where you’d have animation and video game graphics. To realize that, I made sure to have my framing fit the graphics. They weren’t just an afterthought. Sometimes we’d even compose the shot with the graphic on the set. We also integrated the effects with the lighting on set, and even had wind machines so the actors would have something on set to react to when the graphics pop up. All of that makes the visuals organic to the scene, and not just slapped on. The editing of the film has been incredibly time-consuming, because it’s almost like making an animated film.

Were you ever worried about going too far “out there” with the style of Scott Pilgrim?

I think that with this particular book and film, there’s no other option. I think a lot of Asian cinema goes a lot further than western films. And this was a chance to let our imagination run riot. So I thought the only way to go was completely over the top with it. A halfway version of Scott Pilgrim wouldn’t be interesting to watch. It’s either all or nothing.

Scott Pilgrim is as driven by its music as its visuals. How did you put the songs together?

We had different artists doing songs for each fictional band. Beck did the songs for Sex Bob-Omb, which is Scott’s band. Metric did the Clash at Demonhead. Broken Social Scene did Crash and the Boys. The composer of our underscore is Nigel Godrich, who paid homage to the John Carpenter music that we used in the temporary soundtrack. Shaun of the Dead also had loads of John Carpenter in its temp, because one of the things that’s great about Carpenter’s music is that there’s a lot of air in it. That’s great for comedies if you’re trying to score a scene that’s threatening. It’s an approach that’s spare, and doesn’t get in the way of the dialogue. Nigel and me are huge fans of Carpenter’s scores like Halloween and The Fog, as well as progressive rock groups like Goblin, Tangerine Dream, and the genre of Krautrock as well. So we thought it would be a great approach to score Scott Pilgrim like a 21st century version of Krautrock. I’m very pleased with how all of the film’s music has turned out.

What was it like doing your first studio film with Scott Pilgrim?

It was great. I worked with Universal on Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz because they distributed those films. So in some sense, it was like working with the same people again. But it was fun to do a movie as insane as Scott Pilgrim as a studio picture. It’s like a gift to be able to do something like this with all of these amazing actors and filmmaking departments.

Yet did you still have to deal with absurd studio notes for a movie this absurd to begin with?

You get the same questions and concerns with every scale of budget. I don’t think it’s something that necessarily gets different the bigger a picture gets.

I’ve rarely seen a film so exactly geared for its target audience like Scott Pilgrim. Did you find yourself “marketing” the picture while you were making it?

 I always feel that you’ve got to go and make films for yourself. And in the specificity of that, people will respond to your own voice. You shouldn’t lose points for having your movies speak to people like that, because it’s more fun to put everything that you’re passionate about in there, and to see how people respond to it rather than doing something that’s catch-all.

I think Kick Ass is one of the best pictures of the year so far. Yet despite all of the fan and critical acclaim, it never caught on in the major way its studio had hoped it would. In that respect, how do you hope that Scott Pilgrim will transcend the comic book geek genre?

Scott Pilgrim has its heart on its sleeve. And even though there’s a geeky element to it, there’s stuff that’s eminently relatable in the comedy, and even in the gaming stuff. Even in the test screenings, people were never confused about stuff like the character getting extra lives, or anything like that. All of those references are bits of dressing, really, for what’s really a boy-meets-girl story. As for Kick Ass, that film certainly has made its money back three times over, so I wouldn’t describe it a failure. Usually, it’s about the expectations that get foisted on a film. And I find what’s depressing about movies now is that people are obsessed with the box office numbers, like it’s about sporting games rather than thinking about what the movie itself is like.

All of your movies pay tribute to the genre films you grew up watching. And now you’ve got American pictures like Zombieland that seem to be paying tribute to your own tributes, especially with Shaun of the Dead.

I guess so. There are a bunch of films in the U.K. that are like Shaun. We were also asked to do an American TV version of it. But we resisted that, as well as the possibility of doing a sequel, because we thought we said everything there was to say about Shaun’s story and those characters. But all of that is definitely kind of flattering. In the end, I guess my movies are a way of taking many different flavors and trying to create something new with them. Yet there are so many elements in my movies that they should hopefully be considered to be their own thing. They’re not one film in particular. Because I get to make a movie every three years, I try to have different elements in them every time. Hot Fuzz has action, mystery, thriller, horror and comedy elements. Scott Pilgrim is a crazy mash up of action, music, comedy and romance.

What's your next movie with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost?

We've had an idea for a couple of years. Now we've got to start writing it! With each new thing that we've done between the TV series and Shaun and Hot Fuzz, we’ve been about to let our characters get older, and deal with different subject matter. So hopefully we’ll write that next script by the end of the year. I’ve got about three things I’ve got to finish writing when Scott Pilgrim is all done.

I thought the best part of Grindhouse was your spoof horror trailer, “Don’t!” Will we ever see a real movie made out of it?

I don’t know. I doubt it somehow. The gift of doing something like “Don’t” is that it’s entirely plotless. I just came up with all of the cool shots I ever wanted to see in a ’70s horror film. Sometimes you watch those trailers and say, “What is this film about?” But the good thing about doing a fake trailer is that you don’t have to worry what it’s about!

One of my favorite bits on the Hot Fuzz DVD was your diary of the publicity tour. Will we be getting one for Scott Pilgrim?

Maybe. I think we were all quite ragged after doing the Hot Fuzz European press tour in Europe. So by the time we did it in America, we were beginning to lose our minds. I really enjoyed watching that extra, because it’s a great document of what the festival circuit is like. But this time the American tour is first for Scott Pilgrim, so we’ll see if we do one.

What’s your favorite videogame right now?

I haven’t really been playing a lot because I’ve been so consumed with all of my films. For the last ten years, my game playing has been curtailed. So I’ve had to play stuff at my brother’s house. He keeps up on it all. Most of the game references in this film are all pretty old, which is fun. I was seven when the first home computers came out. In the U.K., they had The Spectrum, which was the rival to the Commodore 64. And I was definitely a Spectrum man. “Spaced” was also very much about the Playstation generation. So it’s been great doing Scott Pilgrim because I’ve gotten re-introduced to the games I played when I was a pre-teenager. Even the videogame of this movie is a retro, late ’80s beatem’ up, which takes me back as well.

Would you describe yourself as a big kid?

Yes. I didn’t really hesitate with that answer at all!

You definitely have the biggest geek audience for any filmmaker from afar. How do you think your American fans are going to react to Scott Pilgrim?

I think they’ll get a kick out of it. I feel like it takes a lot of my obsessions to the next level. It’s a particularly intense kind of visual experience. So on a comedy, music, and action level, I’m really pleased with it. ▼

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World opens at your Guitar Hero dojo on August 13th.