:: SIMON PEGG INTERVIEW Part 2 ::
BY JESSICA DWYER
4/4/05
Welcome to Part 2 of my interview with the very talented Simon Pegg.  As said before, he was kind enough to agree to an interview and is quite the chatter; we discussed everything from his newest film he's writing along with partner in crime Edgar Wright (director of the oh-so- wonderful Shaun of the Dead), to Buffy The Vampire Slayer to Mystery Science Theater 3000.  We also get a bit of insight to what his part in the new Doctor Who is.  Yes, I get shamelessly girlie a bit here and there. But hey...I'm a Fangirl.  I'm allowed.

FG:  Okay I'm kind of going on to the geek questions now.

SP:  Bring 'em on.

FG:  Of all the filmmakers you've seen lately, who do you want to see more from, less from, and who do you want to shut the fuck up and fall off a cliff?

SP:  (laugh)  Oh dear, that's quite hard.  Well I'd love to see more Edgar Wright films.

FG:  I think we all would.

SP:  We were watching a bit of Kill Bill today and it reminded me how much I love Tarantino.  I think he’s such a great filmmaker.  He’s got such a, you know, he’s got such a lot of love going into what he does.

FG:  Did you know he’s doing the season finale of CSI?

SP:  I heard he was doing some TV but I didn’t know it was CSI, that’s cool.

FG:  He’s actually writing and directing it.

SP:  Oh wow, I think he’s brilliant, you know I could never get enough of him.  I’d like to see more Wes Anderson.  I love his kind of stuff.  You know, I love his sort of quirky.  His style of direction is sort of beguiling.  Sometimes the films are sort of...the last one, The Life Aquatic was sort of meandering, but was so full of nice things to look at so you forgive him for that.

FG:  And Bill Murray is just great.

SP:  Right…I love Bill Murray.  Who would I like to see less of…I don’t know, I don’t like to bitch you know?

FG:  Feel free to bitch (laugh)

SP:  (laugh)  Those kind of films like Alien vs. Predator you know, films that the studios can’t commit to being proper big horrors like Alien or even Aliens was.  It’s got be sort of bloodless.  Has to be some sort of popcorn entertainment.

FG:  The PG-13 horror films now, I just want to kill someone.

SP:  I could stand seeing less video game to movie transfers.  I want to see more Robert Rodriguez.  I can’t wait to see Sin City.

FG:  Oh gosh, that’s funny!  That’s one of my other questions I was gonna ask you.  What do you think of the Sin City trailer?

SP:  I haven’t seen it yet!  I mean I’m a massive Frank Miller fan and we hung out with Robert when we were in Austin and of course Greg Nicotero did all the, from KNB Effects, did a lot of the special make-up for the film.  He’s a great friend of ours from going out on Shaun and then Land of the Dead.  So I know a lot about the film and I’m really excited about it

FG:  Did you know Frank Miller is in it?

SP:  Yeah, and Robert Rodriguez is sharing credit with him as a director, and that’s causing lots of problems because he’s not in the union or something and there was a lot of fuss about it.  So Robert Rodriguez said well he virtually took Frank’s comic book as the storyboard so he deserves the credit, which I think is really good.

FG:  That’s awesome.  I didn’t know that, that’s great.  It looks amazing, so if you get a chance you should see it.

SP:  I’ll log on as soon as I get home and watch it.

FG:  It’s just beautiful, it’s just beautiful looking.

FG:  As an actor, what character from any comic book, graphic novel would you most like to play, and as a writer what one would you most like a crack at adapting for film?

SP: It’s funny actually, the last time I said this it got me into trouble, because I said Rorschach from The Watchmen and then suddenly it’s all over the net that I’m playing him.  I met Lloyd Levin the producer of the film and I mentioned it to him, that if it comes up to think about me.  But uhm, I guess the, from comic book characters…there’s actually a character named Johnny Alpha from 2000 AD.

FG:  I’ve heard the audio things you’ve done and they’re great.

SP:  Well, and I got to play him and he’s one of my real comic hero’s you know.  And he’s got cool eyes.  But I’ve already played him.  Well you know I’d like to be on the Simpsons right? (laugh)

FG:  (laugh) I’ve actually got over 230 signatures for that petition now.

SP:  (laugh)  REALLY?  That’s great!  That’s crazy!

FG:  I’m gonna send that off to Fox by the way.

SP:  Oh you should, and Greg knows someone there at Fox, he’s gonna have a word too.

FG:  Well what was funny was that somebody put on there…there’s been two really good quotes.  Someone said “I’m gonna cut somebody’s nuts off if you don’t do this.” And then someone said “I’ll eat my own ass.” 

SP:  (LAUGH)  Oh that’s good, I like that kind of support.

FG:  Yeah you’ve got…well someone from Israel got on there too.

SP:  That’s crazy…

FG:  It’s amazing, you’re worldwide.

SP:  Fantastic.  I find that very surprising.  I don’t know, in terms of adapting I’ve always been a huge Batman fan. I’d like to have taken control of the last three Star Wars films and written those for George.  All the best Star Wars media now, which is basically the games, are written by fans.  Cause the stuff he writes is no good.

FG:  Oh yeah, well no doubt.  He’s Jabba…he’s Jabba in plaid.

SP:  Exactly.

FG:  They're talking about Kevin Smith doing a TV series.

SP:  I heard about this…yeah.

FG:  And they are talking about having Mark Hamill in it too. 

SP:  He’d do a good job too I’m sure.

FG:  Oh yeah …Kevin is a big time Star Wars fan too.

SP:  Oh yeah definitely.  I think he’s over in the UK this month.  I might try to say hello.

FG:  Get yourself on the show, be a Jedi.

SP:  That’d be cool…I do have a light saber.  I bought one of those master replica light sabers.  I had a big pitch battle with a friend of mine the other night, and all the neighbors came out.

FG:  (LAUGH)  That’s awesome.  I actually did that in the middle of a Wal-Mart once. 

SP:  That’s fantastic.  I think it’s always good to do it in a very public places.

FG:  I got chased down by a guard.

SP:  Good for you.

FG:  And the other guy was trying to beat me with a plunger that he’d found.

SP:  (LAUGH)  You’re crazy, Jessica.

FG:  Since you said you’re a Batman fan, I’ve got to ask this, Adam West or Michael Keaton, that you would pick as the best?

SP:  Ah, that’s kind of a hard one, cause there’s a place for the kind of camp Batman.  It’s not mine really, because I prefer Frank Miller’s Batman.  But I’ve always thought that the best kind of Batman would be a beefed up Clint Eastwood.

FG:  Ohh the older kind.

SP:  Yeah cause he kinda has to be big, Bruce Wayne is a giant.  Bruce Wayne is big.

FG:  Kinda like the cartoon.

SP:  Yeah, he’s like a big guy.  It’s like his true self is Batman and he’s his..uhm like Batman is his secret identity.  You know, it’s the opposite of what you think it is.

FG:  Exactly.

SP:  When he’s Batman, it’s like Batman is his natural costume.

FG:  You know, I never thought of it before, but after you saying Clint Eastwood.  If they ever make, and I wish they would, Kingdom Come as a movie.  He would be great.

SP:  Yeah, I think he looks like Gregory Peck in that.

FG:  He does!  And Linda Carter still looks like Wonder Woman enough.

SP:  Yeah yeah, she’d be great.  I love the ending when they are asking him to be godfather.

FG:  (laugh)  He just looks at them and says you’re pregnant.  He knows, he knows everything cause he’s Batman.  That was an amazing comic, it’s one of my faves.

SP:  It’s fantastic.

FG:  Okay, another geek question.  Who would you want on your side fighting minions of darkness, Buffy or Ash?

SP:  Awww…that’s tough.

FG:  There’s perks with both.

SP:  Oh, I dunno…I’d just have to say both.  Just because Ash for the wisecracks and Buffy for the eye candy (laugh).

FG:  So you’d have to both.

SP:  Yeah.

FG:  That would be a fanboy’s dream right there.  Really, you have no idea.

SP:  Absolutely.

FG:  Preferred method of interstellar travel:  Millennium Falcon, TARDIS, or Enterprise?

SP:  Oh the Falcon.

FG:  I was gonna say, it was a giveaway but I thought I’d ask.

FG:  Do you really hate the Timewarp?

SP:  I’m not huge fan of Rocky Horror but I, but Richard O’Brien who wrote it was really nice and let us use that in Spaced.  We spoke to him in person.   I watched it on TV the other night, it’s not so much the…the show and the film are really innovative and funny.  And I went and saw this band, their not massive in the States yet, but this band called Scissor Sisters who are American from New York, and I saw them on Halloween and they all dressed up as Rocky Horror.  And I must admit, it was more the people around me that got on my nerves, it wasn’t the film.

FG:  Their kinda psychotic aren’t they?  They’re a little bit psycho (Editors Note:  No offense to the Rocky Fans, I've had some bad experiences :) ).

SP:  They think they are doing something really risky liking it.

FG:  The Scissor Sisters are great.  I was going to ask you if you knew that Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) is from like 45 minutes from where I live?

SP:  No way!

FG:  Salem Oregon.  I found that out the other day and thought that was pretty funny.

SP:  I bumped into him in LA at the beginning of the year when we were up there doing press for Shaun.  My agent had me go to this casting call because I hadn’t done any in the States yet and I was casting with him.  It was quite strange.

FG:  Oh what were you casting for?

SP:  It was for some Will Ferrell movie.  Neither of us got it, but it was quite fun to do.

FG:  You’re probably better off after having seen the Bewitched trailer.

SP:  (laugh)

FG:  Okay, favorite villain of all time?

SP:  Favorite villain of all time….probably Darth Vader.

FG:  Vader, even after you know he was Jake Lloyd?

SP:  Even though he’s got bad hair.  Even though he had a bowl haircut when he was a kid.  I don’t acknowledge that.  I just remember him from when I was a kid.  I actually got bought for my birthday a Darth Vader helmet. 

FG:  Oh was it the voice changer?

SP:  I don’t think so, it’s just a plastic helmet.  My friend, you know…oh now I can’t remember.

FG:  (laugh)

SP:  It was bought for me by a famous person, but I’m not going to say because it would be a really big name drop.  It was bought for me by Darth Vader himself.

FG:  Really?  Are you serious because so many people would fall over right now if you said you were friends with James Earl Jones.

SP:  I’m friends with Darth himself (laugh)

FG:  You know I’ve been thinking….I saw that big Vanity Fair picture…

SP:  Oh yeah.

FG:  And I looked at it…and I saw Christopher Lee there, and I thought what would have made this just so cool is if Peter Cushing were still around…

SP:  Yeah, I’m surprised that George just didn’t fucking put him in there, didn’t CGI him in there.

FG:  He does everything else!   I’m a Hammer fan too so I would have been like AAH!

FG:  Okay, so who is your favorite Doctor Who?

SP:  Tom Baker.

FG:  Everybody says Baker.

SP:  Yeah, he was my Doctor growing up.  It was enormous fun for me when I just did the new series.  To say, to call him the Doctor to say to him “You won’t escape from here Doctor!”  It was incredible rite of passage having grown up with that show and to have the Doctor in manacles in front of me.

FG:  Oh that’s awesome!

SP:  It was so great, it was a dream come true.

FG:  I would be giddy…I would be so giddy.

SP:  You know it was a funny year for that, because I ended up being in a George Romero film and being a villain in Doctor Who, its like how many dreams can come true?  And that was in the space of like two months.

FG:  How much did you hate Alien vs. Predator?

SP:  Well to be honest, me and Edgar were in uhm…somewhere in Seattle when it came out, and we went to see Garden State, which we loved and then we snuck in to Alien vs. Predator after because they were playing the Shaun of the Dead trailer with it.  Then we sat and we watched just about 15 min’s of it and Edgar fell asleep, so I said we’re going home. So I actually haven’t seen it.

FG:  (laugh)

SP:  So we’ve seen the first bit, but it seemed kinda like…eh.

FG:  Spare yourself, don’t see it.  I actually did a review of it where I called it the death of film.

SP:  NICE.

FG:  Oh…I was so pissed after I walked out of the theater because I went a midnight showing of it and had to go to work the next day.

SP:  Yeah, that’s when we went, that time of night when we went.  But it was just so boring.

FG:  Oh, well they totally screwed the time frame too.  They made Lance Henriksen’s character who was alive in Alien 3, suddenly he was alive in the 2000’s.

SP:  Yeah, it was such a needless cash-in really.

FG:  Well I’ve got one more question and I’ll wrap this up since I think I went over with my time.

SP:  Oh, nah…ask your questions. I can hear Edgar in the next room watching bad films so…

FG:  So I’m kind of sparing you?

SP:  Yeah.

FG:  (laugh)  Okay, Shaun had its gory bits for sure, especially David’s death.  Have you ever had a movie that actually made you queasy?

SP:  I don’t find films… the more realistic stuff makes me queasy.  I mean, I watch The Thing and love every second of it, but when he cuts his thumb to get the blood for the blood test, that’s the bit that makes me go HUH…  The bit in Rocky where he cuts his eye.  Usually gore doesn’t really get me.  Most gore, especially in horror films, is done with a certain amount of glee. Uh..stuff that’s slightly more gritty or real.  That film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

FG:  Oh yeah, that’s awful.  The thing that gets me is Saving Private Ryan.

SP:  Yes, the first part of that film is so visceral

FG:  The part at the end when the Nazi kills the Jewish solider.

SP:  Adam Goldberg…yeah.

FG:  I can’t watch it.

SP:  Especially when he’s doing that “SHHHH…”

FG:  And it’s so slow…

SP:  Yeah, it’s terrible.

FP:  Ugh…Okay…Have you seen Mystery Science Theater 3000?

SP:  OH YEAH!  I LOVE THAT SHOW!

FG:  And if you have, which is apparently the case.  And if you haven’t seen it Manos the Hands of Fate is the best.  You have to see that one.

SP:  (laugh)

FG:  What movie do you want a crack at MST’ing?

SP:  Well it’s so funny you should say that, it’s quite weird.  I discovered that, it was like over 10 years ago when I was in New York. And I just found it on Comedy Central and thought it was the best thing I’d ever seen. But me and Edgar were watching this film today called Silent Rage.  Which is sorta semi sci-fi Chuck Norris movie, where he goes up against, its pre-Terminator, but he goes up against this supposedly indestructible genetically engineered killing machine.  And because it is so fucking awful, we said today, we said we just Mystery Science Theater’d that film for the whole thing.  We just sat there making silly comments through the whole thing.  So I would have to say that one, because we’ve had a rehearsal.

FG:  (laughing)  That’s hilarious.

SP:  Ain’t that weird?

FG:  (laugh)  So what piece of memorabilia in your collection truly shows your pure fanboy geekness?

SP:  Well I have in my office now the front page of the Southern Globe with the headline “The Dead Walk” which is from the beginning of Day of the Dead.

FG:  The actual one?

SP:  Yep, the actual paper which was a present from Greg Nicotero.  I’m sure there were probably many of them made but it’s a framed page from the film.  And also next to that I have Bugs...I have Bub from Day of the Dead.  And then next to him I’ve got a zombie bunny in a box.

FG: (laugh)  I wonder who gave you that? (Editors note: this was a birthday present that I sent in a box with goodies from the other fangirls for Simon’s birthday in February.)

SP:  I wonder? (laugh)

FG:  The best part was the instructions for feeding on the back.

SP:  (laugh) I know he’s brilliant.  I’ve kept him in the box, he’s too cool.  I also got a Simpsons picture signed by Nancy Cartwright of which I’m very proud of.  I even have a pair of goggles from the Hoth battle sequence in the Empire Strikes Back.

FG:  Oh that’s awesome.  Now I know where to break into if I ever come to London.

SG:  (laugh)

FG:  Okay, the final question.  Who would play you, in the movie version of your life?

SP:  OOH… That’s a good one. Hmmm… Giovanni Ribisi. 

FG:  Oh he’s good.  I just caught him in Flight of the Phoenix (Editor's note: uncanny resemblance to Simon in this as well)

SP:  Yeah, he’s great.  I loved him in the Wonder Years.  But I don’t know who would play a young me.  Not Haley Joel Osmet.

FG:  Not Jake Lloyd.

SP:  (laugh) No.