A big star in his native England, actor-writer Simon Pegg has developed a devoted cult following in the States for his smart, pop-culture savvy work alongside friends and collaborators Edgar Wright and Nick Frost. Pegg rose to prominence as the star and co-creator (alongside fellow star/co-creator/writer Jessica Hynes) of Spaced, a clever, Wright-directed sitcom that gave a deliriously cinematic, larger-than-life spin to the misadventures of a pair of slacker roommates. The 2004 instant cult classic Shaun Of The Dead took Spaced's fanboy-friendly, pop-culture-warped sensibility to the big screen in the scary/funny story of a directionless young man whose humdrum existence is shaken up by a zombie attack. Pegg, Frost, and Wright reunited for 2007's equally awesome Hot Fuzz, a giddy deconstruction of/homage to the buddy-cop genre. In recent years, Pegg has embarked on a number of projects without Wright or Frost, including the 2006 dark comedy Big Nothing, last year's romantic comedy Run, Fatboy, Run, which he co-wrote, and the brooding comedy/drama The Good Night. Next year Pegg will play Scotty in J.J Abrams' feverishly anticipated update of the Star Trek franchise, and he'll appear in and co-write the road comedy Paul with Frost for Superbad director Greg Mottola. Pegg can currently be seen in How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, an adaptation of Toby Young's memoir about his oft-disastrous tenure writing for Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair. The A.V Club recently spoke with Pegg about Young's on-set faux pas, Star Trek, cutting the profanity from the American version of Run, Fatboy, Run and, of course, his Marxist overview of popular '70s cinema and hegemonic discourses.
The AV Club: Did you spend much time with Toby Young researching the role of Sidney Young before you started filming How to Lose Friends & Alienate People?
Simon Pegg: I read his book, which was the first thing I did. Then I realized that I didn't ever want to do an impression of him because the script is a fictionalization of his book. It's a very anecdotal account. It doesn't necessarily lend itself to a movie when you first read it. What [screenwriter] Peter Straughan did was to fashion a fiction out of the information that he had, and create this universe that was a filmic version of it. So I thought, "I'll play the character from the ground up, but I'll go meet Toby and see what he's like." And he's got this weird kind of [affects gravely voice] "bah bah" about him, which I thought would be distracting if I did that in the movie. But it was interesting to meet a guy who essentially didn't really care what anyone thought. He cares what one percent of people think about him and nothing about what the rest of them think. He's genuinely happy to be hated, it doesn't really bother him, and that's very opposite to me. I don't want to be hated. [Laughs.] And it was fascinating just to talk to someone who has no compunction about upsetting people.
AVC: Who is in that one percent that he cares about?
SP: It's the people that he admires. I guess the people he's trying to impress. In the movie he does want to do well for Jeff [Bridges'] character because he sees him as kind of a mentor, as perhaps a fallen version of himself as well.
AVC: So how important is it for you to capture the essence of Toby Young?
SP: Peter Straughan is a really good screenwriter. He's written loads of stuff. Have you heard of that screenplay Men Who Stare At Goats?
AVC: I have not, but I'm won over just by the title.
SP: Yeah, that's the little buzz about that. He wrote that as well. He kind of, as I say, created a fake world for the film to take place in and drew from Toby's experiences. So I thought, "I'm going to play Sidney like he is on the page and interpret it myself. Specifically not study Toby or be Toby." The character is adjusted because, in the book, he's just unapologetically obnoxious all the way through. As soon as he admits some kind of fallibility and emotional distress you start thinking he's okay, but generally speaking, it is a catalogue of gruesome fuck-ups. [Laughs.] And it certainly needs to be, because it is a romantic comedy essentially. It's a little more than that. It's a little spikier, I think. But it needs that structure, and it needs those beats, and those kind of pinches, and whatever the fuck Robert McKee calls them. He needs to go on that journey. At some point you need to see him become quite sweet. So when he sees the actress [Megan Fox] on the balcony, and he's so nice to her because she's been dissed by the other guy, you think, "Oh, he's not a complete asshole." And as his journey over the red rope occurs, he starts to become good. I think Peter did it very well. It wasn't appropriate, I didn't think, to completely channel Toby. Otherwise we'd be fucked. [Laughs.]
AVC: It'd be called A Catalogue Of Fuck-Ups, and be banned from every theater.
SP: People walking out—"Terrible!"
AVC: On your v-log on The Guardian you have an amusing anecdote about Toby Young's first encounter with Kirsten Dunst.
SP: Yeah. That thing in The Guardian's hilarious. They're so bad at proofreading anything. There are so many mistakes in it. Toby came on set early on, and he walked up to Kirsten, and he asked her, "Have you fallen in love with me yet?" So Kirsten had no idea who he was or why he was there on the film set—because he certainly hadn't been there for the first few weeks. And then suddenly there was this odd, bald, bespectacled guy hitting on her. And then he gave her a performance note, "Coming back, you'd probably have been a bit more sad, wouldn't you've?" To this actress who, even though she's 25, has 22 years of experience. And he was told to not do that. Kirsten didn't complain, and was perfectly polite to him, but you could tell she was thinking, "Who the fuck is this guy?" He wrote that e-mail to Bob [director Robert B. Weide] just saying, "It's going to be really hard not to get involved when I come on set." And Bob just said, "Well don't come on set." So he didn't. He came on once when we were in New York, but otherwise he stayed away. He's not even the writer. It's based on his book, but Peter's the writer. It's a terrible thing, and I don't think it's fair on writers actually, even screenwriters, that they are so low down the food chain when it comes to movie making. That's why me and Edgar do what we do. It's because we want to be there the whole time, we don't want to give our film to someone else. They'll fuck it up. [Laughs.]
AVC: It's a protective thing?
SP: Absolutely. I think you have to. A movie is a creative process from its conception, through its writing, to its execution, to the editing. I think with the best films there is some kind of contribution from one person all the way through that. The best films are made by people who write, direct, and edit, so there's continuity. You know, you can get films that are one thing, and then the studios get hold of it and they go, "Ah nah, we need to put more of this in" and then it becomes something else, and then it's destroyed. That happens a lot. Committee filmmaking is just deadly.
AVC: At the same time there is the studio system, where all these great films— Casablanca is kind of the ultimate—are made by a giant group of people, and yet something amazing happens.
SP: I think that's true. But I think in those days, even with that large group of people, they weren't making films to pinpoint certain demographics. Like, "We need to get the 16-to-25-year-old guys who like to jerk off to girls in bikinis." They were just making movies. They were making movies with grander intention, I think. Now it's become too polarized in terms of box-office splash, or this crap. The fact that you've got to nail this one audience and you test it. Now it's more scientific.
AVC: Your character in How to Lose Friends & Alienate People has a knack for saying the wrong things and rubbing people the wrong way. On what level do you think it's him being willfully provocative, and on what level do you think it's just him being oblivious?
SP: I think it's a combination. He doesn't mind being provocative because he thinks he's just being honest. So he is being kind of willfully provocative. His obliviousness is entirely intentional. He's happy to be oblivious because he doesn't want to pretend that he's an expert on everything, and knows that kind of ignorance will, at times, rub people the wrong way. He's very definite in how he behaves. He's not just an idiot. He's not Mr. Bean. He's got an agenda. He's got several agendas.
AVC: It seems like there's also this idea that he thinks people will appreciate that he's being so honest.
SP: Exactly. And he misjudges that as well. He thinks that is a virtue. He thinks his no nonsense honesty and brash realism is charming. When in actual fact it's sort of inappropriate at times.
AVC: Because he does so many obnoxious things it's hard to watch the movie and not think, "Why isn't this man fired?"
SP: I think because, for all of Clayton Harding's dressing downs and disapproval, essentially the reason he hires him in the first place is because he has something which appeals to Clayton. Clayton always has the little matchbook with him, and that's Sidney to him, that little matchbook. He kinda hopes. He doesn't even know why he keeps him around. There is something in him that he sees that he had once. A desire to shake things up, a more idealist- naïve, probably, but the idealistic impulse to try and tear things down a bit. And you see that in the end, when Sidney causes all that trouble and Clayton just bursts out laughing.
AVC: Obviously on some level too, he's playing a version of Graydon Carter.
SP: Absolutely. Of course he is. We couldn't do Vanity Fair. I think there's certainly no love lost between Toby and Graydon. It's a shame. I know that Graydon—he's happy about being played by Jeff Bridges. And I don't think it's a particularly scathing portrayal. He's a guy that succeeded and has the humanity to be at odds with that. He hasn't done it unquestionably, which I think is a good character trait. But definitely for him, that matchbook in his fingers is the guy that he's hired from England. 'Cause he's kind of hoping that Sidney's going to bring the whole thing down. He's almost disappointed when he doesn't do it. When he's not very good at it.
AVC: To a certain extent Carter has turned into everything that he was initially railing against.
SP: To a degree it's true. I think that's the kind of thing that disappointed Toby when he went to work for Vanity Fair. That here was the guy that pioneered Spy Magazine and was now clearly sort of editing a magazine that greased the wheels of that operation. It must have been strange. But at the same time it's almost understandable. Those magazines should be left for younger people because they have the more incisive, in-touch view.
AVC: Has Toby Young mellowed with age? Is he less of an angry young man?
SP: Absolutely. When I met him I was expecting some kind of thug, some sort of literary thug. What I met was a sweet guy. He's got kids. He's still a shameless self-publicist. And this film… If it does well, he'll be fine, if it doesn't do well, he'll write a big column about how it all went wrong. It's win-win for Toby. It was odd to see him at Cannes, being interviewed. He wrote a little piece about it in The Spectator, I think, about the fact that he suddenly got some insight into something he'd been complaining about and being cynical about for a long time. To be in that position where people are pulling you around and asking you stuff. He said, "I finally get it." Which is an interesting turn of events. [Laughs.]
AVC: Young has paradoxically made a success out of being a failure.
SP: You know, the most ironic thing, maybe not ironic, but humorous at least, is that the character in the film that I interview—the guy who I ask if he's Jewish and gay—was Nathan Lane. I think the production approached Nathan Lane and said, "Do you want to come and recreate this moment?" And Nathan Lane said no. A couple of people went, "Oh, why did he say no?" And I thought, "Well, if you'd been rudely insulted by a journalist, someone had come along and been a bit of a prick to you, and then you heard there was a film being made about that guy's life, you wouldn't want to make it better. You wouldn't want to give it any cred." I completely understand and respect his decision not to do it. Toby pissed him off that day.
AVC: In the film your character goes from being a spectacular failure to a huge success more or less over the course of a montage sequence.
SP: God bless the montage. [Laughs.]
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