Burn it! Burn it!” The comedian, writer and actor Simon Pegg grips the
dashboard and screams excitedly as our black GTi hits the first of many
turbo-charged hand-brake turns. The tyres screech against the asphalt, the
interior fills with smoke, and the car becomes a weightless whirling
dervish, spinning wildly in woozy 360s. In a moment our mild-mannered
driver, Russell, will slam the left side of the car into a ramp, flip us up
on to our right, and cruise effortlessly across the test track on two
wheels. “This is how I drove here today,” jokes Pegg, from his suddenly
elevated passenger seat position. “All the way from Crouch End!”
We are here, at the centre of a vast testing facility in greenest
Bedfordshire, to celebrate the launch of Pegg’s new film, Hot Fuzz.
A cop movie action-parody (just don’t call it a “spoof” — he’ll explain why
when we’ve caught our breath), it is of course replete with top-notch car
chases; hence my desire to be shown how it’s all done.
Pegg’s co-star and long-time friend, Nick Frost, is also here, but at another
part of the facility, and in a red GTi. The pair, affable slackers onscreen,
have evolved into their own iconic comedy double act. Through the TV series
Spaced, and the smash-hit horror-comedy Shaun of the Dead,
they’ve come to represent the new manifestation of modern British
blokishness — sensitive, angsty fanboys who are nonetheless enthralled by
the allure of traditional masculinity. “Something like this is very primal,”
says Pegg, later, gesturing out to the test circuit. “It’s about conquering
something, and controlling it.” Frost, sitting beside him, nods and then
adds, deadpan: “It’s like breaking in a horse.”
For the moment, however, there is still the “Alpine” track to conquer. Our new
driver, Kieran, a formerpoliceman, explains that this part of the track is
meant to simulate an Alpine driving environment, complete with twists,
turns, cambers and crests to drop left, drop right and, finally, get
airborne. He turns quickly to me in the back. “Hope you have a strong
stomach. It’s always worse in the back!”
Sorry, did someone say “airborne”? “Yes,” says Kieran, “It’s quite safe.”
Within seconds we’re tearing through a series of queasily realistic alpine
passes. We’ve done 140mph on the straight and it feels as if we’re getting
faster with each gut-wrenching twist and turn. To make matters worse, the
conversation turns to the topic of Richard Hammond, and his infamous Top
Gear spill. “I’ve done the same track that Richard Hammond did when he
had his crash,” says Kieran, jauntily, as we plummet down towards a hairpin
bend. “OK, guys,” he adds, casually, “We’re going to be airborne in a
second.”
We race upwards towards a crest in the road. Kieran floors it. Pegg yelps:
“Wu-hooooo!” Suddenly, we have the most fantastic view of the Bedfordshire
countryside. From the air. We have officially left the road. The contents of
my stomach — threebreakfast skewers, courtesy of Volkswagen hospitality, a
Danish pastry, and the remains of last night’s cabernet sauvignon — are
officially about to leave my digestive system . . .
Hot Fuzz is the brainchild of the 36-year-old Pegg and his 32-year-old
Shaun of the Dead co-writer and director Edgar Wright. Much like
the latter movie, and indeed much like the ground-breaking TV series Spaced
from which it emerged, Hot Fuzzis forged in the jarring
juxtaposition of big-budget American action movie values with everyday
British social concerns.
Thus we have Pegg, in perhaps his “straightest” role to date, as the super-cop
Sergeant Nicholas Angel,an expert in tactical firearms and hand-to-hand
combat who is unceremoniously transferred from crime-ridden London to the
sleepy English hamlet of Standford (actual location, Wells in Somerset).
Here, after some initial frustration with the limits of small-town life,
Angel soon discovers that the village’s ostensibly twee Neighbourhood Watch
Association (NWA, geddit!) is hiding a homicidal heart. Which is, of course,
a nice cue for Pegg and co-star Frost, as the impressionable Officer Danny
Butterman, to load up with an improbable amount of interballistic hardware
and gamely reference a helter skelter series of action movie staples such as
Lethal Weapon, Point Break and John Woo’s The
Killer.
And yet, it’s not just about sitting back and ticking off the movie nods, says
Pegg. And it’s certainly not a spoof. “That word frustrates me the most,”
says Pegg. “It was used in relation to Shaun of the Dead, and
I’m sure it’ll be used to describe this. But it’s not a spoof. We tried to
make a credible action police film, but one that was transplanted,
completely faithfully, to Somerset. And when you do that you don’t need to
tell many jokes to be funny. Shaun of the Dead wasn’t a spoof of a
zombie film. It was a zombie film that just happened to be a comedy.”
Pegg describes Hot Fuzzas the next evolutionary step up from Shaun,
with bigger production values, more elaborate stunts, and a sprawling cast
list that includes Steve Coogan, Bill Nighy, Timothy Dalton and an
uncredited and heavily disguised cameo (she wears a forensics mask for the
entire scene) from the Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett as Angel’s
girlfriend Janine. “I’m not legally allowed to confirm it,” saysPegg,
sheepishly. “It’s because of, er, the actress’s contract. It’s a silly
thing, just one of those things because it’s uncredited. But you’ve pretty
much hit it on the mark. And it’s there for everyone to spot.”
Despite the heavy-hitting performers, the lavish action sequences andgrotesque
sight gags (the demise of a roving reporter, played by TV’s Adam Buxton, has
to be seen to be believed), Hot Fuzz can occasionally seem a little
too enamoured of its own concept. Especially during the third act, when the
action parody begins to adopt an orgiastic excess all of its own, the film
is in genuine danger of unravelling. What keeps it together, as with their
previous collaborations, is the on-screen chemistry and loosely worn
affection between Pegg and Frost and their fictionalcounterparts. In Hot
Fuzz, Butterman is the giddy hyperactive child to Angel’s stolidly
repressed father figure — they are the yin and yang of small-town policing,
and they need each other to become, ultimately, whole.
With the Alpine track conquered, Pegg and Frost flop down togetheron a wide
black couch in the facility’s spacious, and grandly titled, Concept Centre.
“You’ve only, just now, started to go the normal colour of a human,”
observes Pegg, pointing to my ashen face.
After some prompting, he turns to Frost to analyse just what it is about their
screen bond that has attracted a diehard fanbase that ranges from comic geek
web-nerds to Alist directors such as Sam Raimi and Quentin Tarantino. It is,
incidentally, a bond that’s set to endure through anothertwo Pegg/Frost
movie collaborations — the first is a script that the pair are currently
writing, the second will be a final genre flick in the Edgar Wright trilogy.
I suggest that with Hot Fuzz especially, which incessantly plucks at
the homoerotic undertones of the buddy movie, there’s an admission of sorts
that Frost and Pegg have an eminently watchable romantic chemistry. Albeit
one that’s accompanied by explosions and pump-action shotguns.
“Well, look at us now, look at the body language!” says Frost, pointing to
their half-locked limbs, with a mock metrosexual frankness.
“Very open,” adds Pegg, who married the Scottish PR agent Maureen McCann in
July 2005.
“It’s man love,” says Frost. “It’s the way forward for society.”
Pegg laughs, and Frost regroups, momentarily serious. “We’ve been best friends
for almost 15 years,” he says. “But because we’re older now, and we’ve got
partners, there’s a real glee when we actually get to spend three or
four months together. And so doing this job is, generally, a joy.”
“We make these films with nothing but love and affection,” Pegg adds. “The
chemistry between us is simple, and maybe it comes across on screen.”
Yes, but what about the blatant allure of guns, fast cars and macho
histrionics?
“What we’re basically saying,” explains Pegg, “is that you can be a man, you
can cock your weapon, but just have a little bit of love in your life, too.”
For behind-the-scenes footage of the day and your chance to win a VW stunt
driving experience, visit www.volkswagen. co.uk/hotfuzz. Hot Fuzz is
released on February 16
