With positive notices coming from our staff at Comic Con and Fantasia, and with in depth looks at both the official soundtrack and score for the film, our expectations have been running high and most satisfyingly, have also been met.
So it was with great pleasure that we spoke with Edgar Wright during his recent (and extensive) press jaunt for the film about the development of “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.” Among other things, we chatted about a first draft of the script that intentionally had no music; a new , visually heavy original script he’s working on and what it’s like being constantly asked about “Ant-Man.”
You’ve been working on the film for five years or so? Was fine-tuning a constant process?
There were some things that we would tweak, but there are some things that have never changed. It’s funny—I had a little industry screening last night of fans, and a lot of people, especially directors, have commented on how dense it is. The only thing I can say in terms of that is, I had a lot of time to think about it. Some of the scenes have been storyboarded for two years! I guess I really started working on it in July 2008, around the time that me and Nigel [Godrich] started talking to some of the artists. We shot a test scene in July of 2008, a version of the Matthew Patel fight with two stuntmen. It’ll be on the DVD. And what’s funny is that some of the sequences have changed a lot, and some, the actual length of them has never changed, because they’re set to music. So say the scenes with Cornelius and the twins, we had storyboards for that two years ago and we had the music, and ironically, that’s the bit that was finished four weeks ago, the final shot. It was the first thing started and the last thing finished — the paint was still wet. But test screenings are a terrifying process, and also weirdly exciting, because you get to show it to an audience who has never seen a trailer or TV spot or poster, or don’t even know who’s in it. I remember the “Shaun of the Dead” test screening as well, because you got the sense that some people in the audience didn’t know there were zombies in it, and suddenly you had a screening that could never be replicated, because people are watching things completely cold, for better or worse. It’s great watching with an audience who genuinely don’t know that a fight’s going to break out at the half hour mark. So as much as it’s seen as a sort of bad thing in Hollywood— focus groups and homogenization and stuff — it can sometimes be very exciting. And the ‘Scott Pilgrim’ screenings and stuff, we kept tweaking it and it kept getting better. The thing that I’m most pleased about is that my cut is the one that’s in theaters. We worked it to a point where I was really happy and the studio was really happy, and that’s the very one that’s getting released.
In an interview with Beck, he said that you had approached him two years ago. How did you approach the music?
All of the music was done prior to starting filming. Beck sort of came on board first and me and Nigel [Godrich] went to meet him with Bryan Lee O’Malley at [the music festival] Outside Lands in San Francisco and talked to him about it. Around November 2008, we gave him the scripts and the books, and I did these blowups of all the Sex Bob-Omb frames, because I didn’t really know whether he would have time to read all the books. I gave him scene descriptions of what we needed in a particular scene and what was happening in the Sex Bob-Omb scenes. He had this big A1, Royalicious type blowups for Sex Bob-Omb, and I think that was exactly what he set out to do. ‘What does this sound like?’ Because that’s the one problem we have that Brian Lee O’Malley doesn’t, he doesn’t have to worry about what it actually sounds like. And what’s ironic is in the first draft of the script that me and Michael Bacall did way back in 2006, the first draft we handed in, there was a running joke about never hearing the bands. It was a running joke because we saw that most fictional bands in films suck, and we thought we’d do a running joke on it, almost commenting on music biopics that you see [but]….we didn’t have to worry so much on ‘Scott Pilgrim’ because Sex Bob-Omb are not that big. With the running joke, you’d see the start of an intro and then it would cut to Knives saying, “That’s the most amazing song I’ve ever heard!” So that was in the first draft, and then when it came to the point where Nigel got involved, and he also had a similar feeling about music in films by fictional bands — it’d rub him the wrong way — that we set out to try and nail it. And then actually, that’s definitely something that changes it. I found out that once I had the songs, I allowed myself more time to let them breathe. So I think the first Sex Bob-Omb song, “Garbage Truck,” maybe originally I thought they’d play the first verse and just before it kicked into the forest, [Matthew] Patel would interrupt, but then it was like, “no fuck it, let’s just listen to it.” And when the song’s started to expand, I thought, “wow, I’m really starting to get that vibe more like a sixties or seventies film.” Some of those films like “Phantom of the Paradise” or “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” I would love it when they would go, “And now, the Strawberry Alarm Clock will play” or “Now The Carrie Nations will play” and it’d be like 10 minutes of the film. That was something that definitely developed once we had the material. I think in an early cut of the film, I think we played the whole of [Metric’s] “Black Sheep.” That’d be on the DVD, one version. In fact, when we shot the songs, we shot the full songs with all the artists, so we have different versions of them which we’ll put on the DVD.
Sounds like the DVD is going to be packed with stuff.
Yeah. Well it’s at least two years work! Loads of amazing rehearsal footage and the fight training and the fight footage. Those fight types are extraordinary, because they’re such a mishmash of stunt people and actors without wigs on and stuff. And all the music rehearsals, because I basically had all the actors interned in some kind of camp, whether it be music, fighting or just rehearsing the films, we were all in Toronto for two months before we started filming.
Just running through songs, training up?
Well some people could play instruments and some couldn’t. Michael Cera is a really good guitarist. But Alison Pill had to learn the drums and Marc Webber had to learn guitar and then in Clash of Demon Head, Brie Larson can sing and play keyboards, but Brandon Routh had to learn the bass. We had Tennessee Thomas from The Like, was playing the drummer in Clash of Demon Head, so she was completely on it. Just bringing different people up to scratch.
How difficult was it get to clearances for things like the 8-bit Universal theme and the “Legend Of Zelda” theme?
You have to be very straight with them. Nintendo especially is a very family oriented company so if you’re going to use one of their sounds they want to know that it’s not going to be — they don’t want their Nintendo sounds used on “Requiem For A Dream” because somebody is going to be shooting up heroin you know what I mean? — so you have to show them the context of it. We wanted to use the Zelda music in a scene where he’s walking to the bathroom in a dream and Nigel Godrich wanted to do an orchestral version of the Zelda music and we had to go to Nintendo in Japan to get that cleared. And it eventually went right up to [Shigeru] Miyamoto who had to watch the clip and approve it. I never met the guy but it’s just a weird thing that Miyamoto has watched sixty seconds of the film.
And the “Seinfeld” sound, was that hard to clear?
Basically with all clearances you’re thinking, “Can we clear that ‘Seinfeld’ music? Can we clear that ring sound from ‘Flash Gordon’?” Where that came from [the ‘Seinfeld’ gag], at the end of the first book there was one little joke that Bryan drew that made me laugh where they kiss and it there’s the little box that says “Studio Audience” and it says “Awwwww.” So we put that at the end of that scene and I thought, why don’t we just start the next scene with a laugh track and have [sings Seinfeld music]. So we just went with that. And that’s the great thing about this film. If you want to analyze it….you’re watching the film inside Scott Pilgrim’s head. He’s a daydreamer. This is his ideal, unrealistic version of events. If you read the last book in the series, Bryan feels even more strongly that Scott’s been an unreliable narrator for the last six volumes. In the film, I like that idea too [that] Scott Pilgrim is the hero of the movie inside his own head and this is that movie. It’s funny, in a way, with “Inception” coming out recently, part of me feels that [“Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World”] is a big daydream and when Scott Pilgrim walks into that school corridor he never wakes up for the rest of the film.
How sick are you of answering questions about “Ant-Man”?
[Laughs] Yesterday, me and Michael Cera did an interview where the interviewer said, “Two more quick questions about other projects,” and straightaway without a beat I said, “Well I can answer for Michael, ‘Arrested Development’ is something they’re hoping to do, and Mitch Hurwitz doesn’t have the script yet, but it’s something all the cast are very excited about if it happens.” And then Michael said, “And Edgar is going to back to writing, going to take a break and sleep, and then ‘Ant-man’ may be one of three projects next.” That hopefully says everything. We’ve got each other’s answers down pat. I think it’s that thing where, the real truth of it is, I’m a terrible multi-tasker and I can’t do more than one thing at once. And even at one of the screenings that we had of the film, someone at the studio asked, “So what are you doing at the moment, are you writing?” And I thought, “I’m in the edit sixteen hours of the day, drinking coffee and trying to finish this film!” So basically, everything I was doing before July 2008, I’m going to return to. Get back to writing and stuff. I don’t honestly know what’s up next, it’s such a fallacy that directors have any control over which one’s next. I think it can sound like that when you listen to press junket interviews. And I’m excited about the “Ant-Man” script we’ve done, and I’m excited to work on it, but you also don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf. I’d hate for there to be a magazine, looking back at something in five years time, a project that didn’t happen. I’m superstitious about stuff. And once something’s on IMDB, it’s sort of impossible to erase. It’s like having bad credit, you realize you’re going to get asked questions about something forever.
But at least you know what you’re going to get asked, you can just look it up on IMDB and mentally prepare.
Right, but you always think, I just kind of want to do something different now. I feel like I’ve already done the junket for a film I’ve never made.
Do you ever read those rumors with “Ant-Man”?
I sort of go back and forth. Sometimes you refute things because people are going to run a story about it. I know it sounds like I’m bitching about it, but the nice thing is that given how much I get asked about it, people must be excited about it. And having these wild rumors, too. On the flip side, there’s another project I’m doing [“Baby Driver“] that, because it’s not based on anything, nobody asks me anything about it, and I secretly like that as well. Nobody asks me questions about an original script because there’s no speculation on who might play The Wasp. You know what I mean? There’s something great about that, doing original scripts, because you don’t get asked about things.
So can you talk about this original script in any capacity?
Well, it’s something I’ve been meaning to write for ages. I really planned to recharge my batteries and get back into writing. I’m excited about doing something that’s almost purely visual, because I’ve done three films—and even though Scott Pilgrim is very visual, it’s very dialogue heavy as well, which is great. And music heavy. Yeah. I think I’d like to try something—I’m a big Brian De Palma fan, and I’ll sit and look at something like “Carrie,” and I like the fact that it starts to play out like a silent movie. There’s a point in “Carrie” in the last half hour where there’s no need for any more dialogue because the plot is in motion. Or something like [Jean-Pierre Melville’s] “Le Samourai,” I look at something like that and think, wow, there’s hardly any dialogue in this film. Something like that can be enjoyed around the world. I’d really like the challenge of doing something where the dialogue is really stripped back and it’s all about the cinema.
Whatever happened with your adaptation of “Them,” the Jon Ronson book?
I think that one might be on the back burner. I worked on it with Mike White — he wrote a draft which is really funny — and I’m not entirely sure where that stands. I’m a huge fan of Jon’s writing, and working with Mike is fun, but it seems to be on the back burner.
Have you and Simon [Pegg] and Nick [Frost] talked at all about “The World’s End”?
That’s another one…. Or is it that you have a million things happening and you need to carve out time. Yeah, I want to try an carve out time this year. But in a weird way, it’s been nice doing Scott Pilgrim, and I know there are some fans who’d like to handcuff us together forever, but it’s been great to do something in a different country with completely different actors. It was amazing to do that, and I’d like to work with Simon and Nick again when it’s something that’s really right and something we want to say. I know “Shaun of the Dead” is a comedy/zombie film, but it’s very personal to us. “Hot Fuzz” is kind of really personal too in a lot of very strange ways, so I think that’d be the thing to do. I wouldn’t want collaborating with them to become rote, I’d want it to be that we had something we really wanted to do and say, and then write it.
And have you seen “Paul” at all, the movie they made with Greg Mottola?
I read the script and I was kind of involved early on, and I was going to be one of the producers on it, but I realized I was going to have no time, and I said to Greg Mottola—I saw my name on a crew list at one point as a producer, and I said to Greg, who I’m good friends with, “I don’t want to be that guy who was never on set, and I don’t want to be that guy who you see in the opening credits and you say, well he wasn’t fucking around, was he.” So I said, “I’d rather you put my producers’ fees back into the effects and not feel resentful every time you saw my name in the credits because I wasn’t on set once.”
Can you talk about the test screenings for ‘Scott Pilgrim,’ and the changes made to the ending? What made you make the decision? The test screenings?
It’s a tricky thing to talk about that one without ruining the film or the book. If it’s cool, I might talk about that when the DVD comes out. It’s difficult to talk specifics without revealing what the ending of the film is, and it kind of ruins the book too. Without going into too much detail…. That was partly through the fact that things changed with the book as we went along. Usually, reshoots have a negative connotation. But I’ve done them on all my films. Mostly, it’s a chance to go back and really focus on one particular bit. We changed a couple of bits actually. There’s another bit that’s great because it gets a really big laugh in the film and it was shot in May. In those cases, it’s great thinking, I’ve got an idea about how to nail this little bit. There was a thing with [Jason] Schwartzman — we basically shot a new monologue, and I defy some people to see the joins. What’s crazy is there’s a couple of bits in the film where it suddenly jumps a year and back, within an angle, and luckily nobody had put on any weight, so they look exactly the same.
Are you worried at all about those outside the core audience “getting” this film?
I think the only thing you can do is make a film, be proud of it, and put it out there. Once you’ve finished it, it’s sort of out of your hands. I’ve been asked a lot of questions about it in a very specific demographic sense. To me, it was never that cynical in some respects. I try to make films for myself as a film fan, and then hope that other people accept them with open arms. I would like to be myself as a 13 year old watching that film and loving it. I tried to recapture that feeling I had when I saw films that took me completely by surprise when I was a young film fan. I remember watching something like “Gremlins” as a 10 year old and just losing my mind over it. And not understanding why I loved it. I really tried to recapture that feeling.