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A Chat With Spaced's Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, and Jessica Hynes

BuzzSugar — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:30:45 -0700

Hands down, one of the highlights of my Comic-Con experience was getting to meet Simon Pegg and his Spaced cohorts, despite the brevity of our interaction. I sat down for a quick roundtable interview with Pegg and his costar on Spaced, Jessica Hynes, along with Edgar Wright, Pegg's frequent partner in crime (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) and the director of Spaced.

In the British comedy, Pegg and Hynes play Tim and Daisy, who rent a flat in London under the pretense that they are a couple. The show is filled with pop culture references and surreal experiences, and if you haven't already, you ought to get ahold of the newly available Spaced DVDs. For now, check out some of the highlights from our chat.

Q: There are a lot of horror references in Spaced. How did that come about?

Edgar Wright: I think that really is my default setting of shooting everything like it was a horror film, for no apparent reason. I mean, there were definitely a lot of references in the script already, particularly to The Shining . . . The whole style of the show is very stylized and sort of kinetic because the characters are so drenched in pop culture, it’s almost like, if they ever had to describe their mundane lives, this [a horror movie] is what it would look like. So it’s almost like, you’re watching them recount their lives, rather than the actuality.

Simon Pegg: Yeah, 'cause they’re like, "I went to work in a kitchen and it was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." Or, "I walked into the room that time and it was like the f---ing Evil Dead," you know? And that’s what you actually see. All three of us love the idea of taking very mundane things and turning them into slightly more grand, cinematic things. Which we took forward into Shaun of the Dead as well after having learned that on Spaced. Jess and I certainly wanted to have this world that was defined by popular culture, shaped by it.

The trio expounds on this and other things (like their intense admiration of Arrested Development), so read more.

Q: Was that also a reaction to the way most sitcoms are shot?

Edgar: Yeah, I think so. I think at the time, when we made the show there were some critics in the UK who assumed that we were trying to sort of burn down traditional sitcoms and that isn’t the case, because some traditionally-shot sitcoms are just fantastic. And it was around the time that Friends was huge, and in the UK there were two or three shows that were kind of trying to do a British Friends, so we wanted to go against that, really.

Jessica: [With] Friends. . . however real it is or funny it is, ultimately there's an aspirational quality to it in terms of the lead characters - the way they look, their world - there’s something slightly unreal about it. And I suppose that I would differentiate between the style of Friends as aspirational and would think of Spaced as sort of inspirational . . . It was important to have it reflect absolutely and intimately our world and experiences and our friends and ourselves. And to have that kind of authenticity it needed to be kind of grubby and sort of . . . real. Because that was our world.

Q: In terms of American TV, do you think there are comedic shows that get it right?

Edgar: Arrested Development did. For the two and a half seasons that it was on-air.

Simon: Arrested Development was just so . . .

Edgar: Fantastic.

Simon: It was depressingly good. Sometimes you watch something as a writer and you think, "Aw, what’s the point?" That show was like that.

Edgar: That was great. Larry Sanders, obviously that’s a bit further back, Curb Your Enthusiasm is really good.

Jessica: I always really liked Seinfeld as a sitcom, just in terms of quality of gags, and characters.

Edgar: And Seinfeld had a big influence, particularly on the second series of Spaced, actually the plotting of Seinfeld was very influential for us.

Simon: I love the American Office, I think it’s great. I love the way that they've taken that and they’ve made it their own.

Photo courtesy of Channel 4

TV Today: Get Spaced on BBC America

BuzzSugar — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 08:00:30 -0700

For all you folks who are huge fans of the Simon Pegg-Jessica Hynes comedy Spaced, you've probably already ordered or put at the top of your Netflix queue the new series DVDs, which are releasing this upcoming Tuesday, July 22. For everyone else, BBC America is awesomely running marathons of the show today, starting at 3:00 p.m. EST.

According to EW, those of you holding out for the DVDs will certainly not be disappointed, as they feature "uber-geeky, super-amusing, very informative commentary by Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Matt Stone, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, Diablo Cody, and of course show creators-stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, and director Edgar Wright."

In the meantime, I'm going to make my TiVo work overtime today with both this marathon and the Mad Men one. Yippee!

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Michael Cera, Comic Book Hero?

BuzzSugar — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:29:11 -0700

A while back, my boyfriend shoved Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life into my precious little hands, and I absolutely adored the part real, part video-game-ish love story (with ninjas!). Ever since we heard there was going to be a movie made of the series, we've been wondering who could play Scott, the books' 20-something, goofy, mediocre-music-playing slacker antihero who must defeat his crush's seven evil ex-boyfriends in order to win her heart. One name came to mind: Michael Cera.

So you can just imagine the squeal that escaped from my mouth upon reading that Cera is in final negotiations to play Scott in the film, which is being directed by Shaun of the Dead's Edgar Wright. Wright and Cera met while filming one of those many viral promos for Superbad, and apparently neither wants that to be their last collaboration.

I think this could be a great role for Cera - a bit of a stretch, but certainly something he can pull off. Scott's awkward, like many of Cera's best characters, but it's a different kind of awkward: the awkwardness of someone who thinks he's actually pretty cool. Plus, he gets to date not one but two girls! And play a lot of bad music and video games! And have ninja battles! I'd rather him in the role than someone who plays the more traditional slacker dude but doesn't have a lot of heart.

If you've read any of Scott Pilgrim, do you think Cera could pull off this role? And if you haven't, how much would you like to see Cera kick some ass for a change?

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Good: Spaced Is Coming to DVD! Bad: American Version Still Excludes Simon Pegg

BuzzSugar — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:30:18 -0800

There's good news and not-such-good news today as far as Simon Pegg and his British comedic series Spaced are concerned. Good news first: At long last, the Spaced DVDs will make their way to the U.S.! MTV Movies Blog learned from Pegg himself that the DVDs of the 14-episode series will be released here on July 23, 2008. Hooray!

As for the bad news, it looks like Fox is going to plow ahead with their Americanized version of Spaced - but without Simon Pegg or Edgar Wright's involvement. Pegg is none too pleased. Back in October, when the stench of this possible project wafted our way, many of you expressed your own outrage at the prospect of an American version of Spaced, especially one that didn't benefit from Pegg and Wright's creativity, or even their blessing. Now that the pilot is a sure thing, Pegg's indignation at not being consulted - but having his name used in press items about the Fox show - has only increased. To see what he's saying about it, read more.

He recently posted on his website, Peggster.net:

My main problem with the notion of a Spaced remake is the sheer lack of respect that Granada/ Wonderland/Warner Bros have displayed in respectively selling out and appropriating our ideas without even letting us know. . . It is this flagrant snub and effective vote of no confidence in the very people that created the show, that has caused such affront at our end. If they don't care about the integrity of the original, why call it Spaced? Why attempt to find some validation by including mine and Edgar's names in the press release as if we were involved?

Frustrating, indeed. At least the U.S. version of The Office has included Ricky Gervais from the start. Do you think an American Spaced has a chance of survival without Pegg's involvement?

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Fox to Make American Version of Spaced

BuzzSugar — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:28:24 -0700

Fox will be rolling the dice on adapting the British series Spaced for American audiences. Spaced was a series that ran on Channel 4 for two seasons and sprung from the creative minds of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, the duo behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The show follows a couple of strangers (played by Pegg and Jessica Hynes) who pretend to be married in order to rent an apartment.

The American version will be written by Will and Grace writer Adam Barr, but unlike The Office, for which Ricky Gervais is still a producer, neither Pegg nor Wright's name is anywhere to be found in this news.

Hopefully this will be as successful as The Office, but the cynic in me can't stop recalling that heinously neutered American version of Coupling that was on the air for a few disappointing minutes in 2003. I cringe at the idea of having another one of those on our hands. On the positive side, maybe this will finally get the complete series released on DVD in the US.

Any Spaced fans out there? What do you think of all this?

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Movie Preview: Hot Fuzz

BuzzSugar — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:00:33 -0700

I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never seen Shaun of the Dead, because after merely watching the trailer for Hot Fuzz, I'm ready to declare filmmakers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright two of Britain's most valuable exports. In their new comedy, which hits theaters this Friday, April 20, Wright (who also directed the best fake trailer in Grindhouse) and Pegg are lampooning an oft-ridiculed world - small-town cops - with wholly original humor.

Pegg plays a London police officer who is so good at his job that his colleagues resent him, so he's shipped off to the virtually crime-free village of Sandford and paired with a bumbling partner (Nick Frost). Not surprisingly, it turns out there might be more afoot in Sandford then expected. The movie also co-stars a roster of talented Brits, including Bill Nighy and Steve Coogan. But really, you should just watch the trailer and have a laugh, so read more

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