Nerd Do Well (39 page)

I parked up at the studios and made my way inside, where I was taken straight to Steven, who was operating the performance-capture camera on a small, elevated stage
²³
. He was exactly how I knew him from countless behind-the-scenes documentaries: bearded, baseball-capped and unfailingly charming. We chatted for a while about
Tintin
and other things. I told him about our new film,
Paul
, specifically my and Nick’s idea that our alien hero had acted as adviser to Steven over the years, giving him a few key moments and plot details for
E.T.
and
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
. He found this hilarious and pitched in a few ideas of his own, one of which you will see in the finished film, although to divulge that now would be a spoiler.

As our meeting came to an end, Steven casually asked if I wanted to actually be in the film, as he had been thinking about me for the role of one of the Thom(p)son Twins. I spluttered something to the tune of ‘That would be great’, and when he asked me if I had anyone in mind for the other twin, I immediately suggested Nick Frost, an idea he warmed to straight away.

The beauty of ‘performance capture’ is that although the computer captures your physicality and facial expressions, the details of both can be manipulated into any shape, a technique exemplified beautifully by the versatility of actor Andy Serkis, who was able to play an emaciated hobbit and a twenty-five-foot gorilla, wearing essentially the same costume, a skintight body-suit covered in reflective tracking markers.

A year later, Nick Frost and I stepped onto the set of
Tintin
wearing our hugely unflattering bodysuits (which somehow looked cool on Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig and Jamie Bell) to play the almost identical Thompson and Thomson for a man both Nick and myself had long admired. Between takes, Steven was happy to talk about his work and experiences, much to our utter glee. I couldn’t help but recall being ten years old and making that crucial choice between
Raiders of the Lost Ark
and the Gloucester Fair or, indeed, sitting alone in the
ABC
cinema two years later, crying inside my parka while watching
E.T.
I said as much to my mother when I left the studios after my first meeting with Steven in 2008, phoning her breathlessly from the car park at Giant Studios.

As if this wasn’t irony enough, I sent a picture of my daughter to Steven shortly after she was born, since he had only seen her grainy sonogram image while we were shooting, and received an email back declaring that he thought she resembled the star child at the end of
2001: A Space Odyssey
. This made me so happy, not only because he had related her to a famous cinematic baby (as of course he would), but that I found myself in a position where one of my all-time favourite directors was looking at pictures of my baby girl. I can’t wait to tell her.

Working on
Tintin
was something of a double whammy professionally speaking, being directed not only by Spielberg but also Peter Jackson, who was co-directing via video link from New Zealand. Peter had been present for much of the run-up to the shoot but then returned home, handing over main duties to Steven. Peter was another director for whom I had had the utmost admiration as albeit a slightly older youngster. His movie
Braindead
(
Dead Alive
as it was know in the States) was a favourite of both mine and Edgar’s and was required viewing during our writing of
Shaun of the Dead
, since it was essentially a romzomcom (romantic zombie comedy), despite claims in other corners that ours was the first. I actually reviewed
Braindead
for a cable TV station while working as a stand-up comedian in Bristol on its release in 1992, never knowing I would one day find myself directed by its creator.

After
Shaun of the Dead
was released, we found another ally in Peter, who made very positive noises about the film and gave us a winning quote for our poster. When we came to shoot our ode to the police action film,
Hot Fuzz
, Peter happened to be on a location scout in the UK and agreed to come and perform a cameo as a psychotic Santa Claus who stabs me through the hand in the opening montage of the film
²⁴
.

On the New Zealand leg of our
Hot Fuzz
press tour, Peter not only introduced the film at its Wellington premiere but also played generous host, inviting us to his house for several dinners, giving us an extensive and fascinating tour of Weta, his huge and impressive production facility, and generally showing us some good old Kiwi hospitality. While wandering around his private movie museum, he produced a frame containing one of my shirts from
Shaun of the Dead
and asked me to verify its authenticity. Studios will often make money on the side by selling props and costumes on to collectors and auction houses. A friend had purchased the item for Peter’s collection, and while I was there, he grabbed the opportunity to ensure the seller was on the up and up. I checked it over and recognised my own bloody handprints smeared across the front, proudly confirming it to be genuine.

We knelt down either side of it and posed for a picture and I once again experienced that wave of temporal irony joining the spatter of coincidental dots that had brought me to this point and, three years later, would lead to my participation in
Tintin
. I could even trace the irony back to early memories of my father reading me
Lord of the Rings
, as I inspected the models of Isengard and Minas Tirith in the Weta prop stores. What the hell? It’s a memoir, it’s supposed to be self-indulgent.

‘Hello, Simon, John Landis wants your details.’

In 2009, shortly before I flew to New Mexico to shoot
Paul
, I received an email from Edgar Wright just after I arrived for a four-month residency in the US, telling me that John Landis had asked to see me. I had met John a year before at a screening of
Spaced
at the ArcLight Cinema on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Eight years after it had aired on British TV, the show had finally generated enough interest to warrant a US release and Edgar, Jessica and I embarked on a short press tour to give the occasion a little visibility.

The LA leg consisted of a signing at film-maker Kevin Smith’s Jay & Silent Bob’s Secret Stash section of the video store Laser Blazer, followed by a screening and Q&A at the ArcLight, moderated by Smith himself. Kevin’s support was ironic in itself to Edgar, Jess and myself, since it was his own 1994 movie
Clerks
that had in some ways inspired the three of us to create
Spaced
. It is because of
Clerks
’ brilliantly observed moral re-evaluation of the rebel attack on the Death Star in
Return of the Jedi
that I felt able to channel my love of
Star Wars
into writing the character of Tim Bisley in
Spaced
, since Smith had blazed a trail in culturally specific scriptwriting. Randal, Smith’s misanthropic video-shop philosopher asks if it was morally correct to destroy the second Death Star since it was incomplete and would no doubt have carried a population of independent contractors not necessarily politically affiliated to the Empire. After all, as Randall points out, what working-class tradesman is going to pass up a ‘juicy government contact with all sorts of benefits
²⁵
’? The whole piece is sharply funny and the argument so beautifully reasoned, it stands out as one of the highlights of the film for me. Unsurprisingly, we eventually made contact with Kevin after
Shaun of the Dead
and were able to tell him how much his work had inspired us. Edgar and I had even attended a screening of
Chasing Amy
in 1998, while Jess and I were writing the first series, and listened to him talk about film-making. Ten years later, we recorded a number of new commentaries for the American release of the show and invited Kevin along to take part, which he did with characteristically laconic profanity.

Kevin was not the only inspiration to feature on the new set of commentaries; along with comedian Patton Oswalt,
South Park
’s Matt Stone and
Saturday Night Live
alumnus and future star of
Paul
, Bill Hader. Also a certain video-shop philosopher turned celebrated movie maverick came along and lent his enthusiastic vocals to the mix.

I had been a fan of Quentin Tarantino since
Reservoir Dogs
and followed his work closely thereafter. The first time Nick Frost and I visited the cinema together was in 1994 to see
Pulp Fiction
, an event that in many respects formed an important part of our bonding process. I took him to see
Pulp Fiction
with Eggy Helen because I thought he would enjoy it. The moment I met him I noticed he had an acute natural wit and intelligence and the kind of mind that would doubtless respond to Tarantino’s playfulness as a director. The following Christmas, Nick bought me a long-sleeved
Pulp Fiction
T-shirt featuring the image of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson as Vincent and Jules holding their guns out, demonstrating the awesome power of their partnership. The shirt said a lot about the significance of the film to our friendship. It was an affectionate reminder of our first date. We were partners and we meant business. Ten years later, Quentin Tarantino would refer to Nick as the funniest man in the world.

After
Shaun of the Dead
was released, word got back to us that Quentin had screened the movie in his private cinema for a select group of friends. We subsequently contacted him and secured a quote for our US poster. We were, after all, a foreign film and needed all the endorsement we could get our hands on.

From the very beginning, our own effort was to be resolutely British and the inclusion of any marquee American names would have defeated the object. The very point of
Shaun of the Dead
was that it was happening in a small suburb of north London and not the traditional American context for such events. For this reason, we were already at a slight disadvantage in terms of marketing the film to an American audience, since the only touchstone we had was the genre itself. We felt this was enough, as did our producers, Working Title and Universal, albeit more tentatively. I will always be grateful to Working Title Films for plucking
Shaun of the Dead
from the choppy waters of turnaround. The film had been developed at FilmFour, but when the company downsized, it was (thankfully) cut loose and handed back to us.

The morning Clash frontman Joe Strummer died, Edgar and I sat in an Islington Starbucks with our producers, long-time friend Nira Park with whom we had created
Spaced
and Jim Wilson who we had retained from FilmFour, wondering what was to become of our little film. Fortunately, Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan and Natascha Wharton at Working Title 2 offered to take up the challenge, having expressed some interest before we chose to go with FilmFour. Thus the movie was made by a very British production house, albeit for Universal Pictures in the US, and as such remained resolutely British.

Both Edgar and I believe the decision not to contrive a way of appealing to the American audiences gave the film the precise appeal that secured its eventual success over there. It was a slice of familiar American culture viewed through a glass darkly, recognisable but at the same time fresh. We used the same approach for our next film,
Hot Fuzz
, despite a few early suggestions about visiting
FBI
agents played by the likes of Jack Black. Our intention was to be true to ourselves and hope that honesty paid off in providing foreign audiences with a different perspective on familiar cinematic ideas.

Shaun
wasn’t a massive hit theatrically in the States and was considered more of a cult, word-of-mouth sleeper than a smash in the vein of
The Full Monty
or
28 Days Later
. Nevertheless, the support we got from the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, Robert Rodriguez, Stephen King and of course George Romero gave the film sufficient momentum to become a genuine smash on
DVD
, to the point where, according to Universal, 40 per cent of American males between seventeen and thirty-nine consider themselves to be fans of the film. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?

The relationships we cultivated as a result of
Shaun of the Dead
have persisted, and I firmly believe this is because all those directors recognised themselves in Edgar. A young film-maker with a singular vision, combined with the drive and tenacity to get things done. Edgar and Quentin certainly found themselves kindred spirits, and it wasn’t long before Edgar passed on a
DVD
of
Spaced
, no doubt knowing Quentin would get all the references, not least the ones to his own films.

A few years later, in a recording studio in Santa Monica, Edgar, Jess, Quentin and I sat down to record commentary on episode one, series two of
Spaced
, which featured a shot-by-shot recreation of a scene from
Pulp Fiction
, in which Bruce Willis returns home to find a machine gun discarded on the kitchen worktop and John Travolta using the toilet. In
Spaced
it is Daisy who finds the gun, while its owner Mike Watt is in the bog. The moment was intensely personal for me, since the scene featured Nick as the careless Uzi owner, recreating a scene from a film which had united us as friends, for the viewing pleasure of the very film-maker that created the original. I only wish Nick had been there, if only because we were knocking back the margaritas, and if there’s one thing Frost loves, it’s a salted Mexican booze bowl.

At the
Spaced
screening in Hollywood’s much loved ArcLight Cinema, guests including our new raft of commentators were milling around in the bar before the show. To my barely disguisable delight, Edgar introduced me to John Landis and pretty much made my night. The circularity at work here was fairly dizzying, not only because it was Landis’s movies that had so informed my tastes long ago in those darkened front rooms, but also because we had paid specific tribute to him in
Spaced
. At the end of episode five of the first series, an evil vivisectionist is stalked on Hampstead Heath by a feral dog and unwittingly quotes one of the victims in
American Werewolf
just before he is attacked. It never occurred to us as we made our very low-budget comedy for Channel 4 that we would one day be able to show it to the very people that inspired us.