Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have gone from geek culture fans to cult idols. How are they enjoying their comic book adventure?
THE LATEST film featuring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, stars of Shaun of the Deadand Hot Fuzz, could not begin in a more appropriate location. The economically titled Paul, a lively science-fiction comedy, kicks off with a sequence at San Diego's increasingly influential Comic-Con jamboree. If you know your Amazing Spider-Manfrom your Spectacular Spider-Man(honest, it's a real distinction), then no further explanation will be necessary. The uninitiated should know that Comic-Con – it stands for "Comics Convention" – is the world's largest celebration of comics, science-fiction, horror, manga, video games and related ephemera. If you were feeling unkind, you might describe it as the annual Nerdenberg Rally.
Pegg and Frost find themselves in a peculiar position. Less than a decade ago, they would have fitted in comfortably with the fans. Lifetime fans of geek culture, they still savour the action-figure promotions and vintage comic-book stalls. Now, however, they are also walking exhibits. The Channel 4 series Spaced, in which they both appear, began the business of both satirising and celebrating these sub-cults. Their clever inter-textual musings went international with Shaun of the Dead. Now they can't walk through the aisles without being mobbed.
“You are absolutely right,” Pegg, small, crop-haired, muses amiably. “Having indulged ourselves in that world for a while, we now find ourselves outside it. Nick was saying it’s like being a Beatle at a Beatle convention. We are prisoners in our hotel room. We just can’t leave.”
“Yeah and we know it sounds really horrible to say that,” Frost, large, spectacled, adds in an apologetic tone. “Oh look at us: we’re too big to walk the floor. But we really, really want to mingle. We want to buy action figures.”
Here’s a notion. They could dress up as a Wookie or as an Orc. They’d fit right in, but nobody would know who they were. Pegg explains that they have, indeed, walked through the auditorium in masks.
“This year Sigourney Weaver went for a walk around in a Batman mask,” Frost says. “You can only imagine what would happen if Ripley wandered around that space. I’ve got a photograph on my phone. Where is it? Where is it?”
While Nick looks for the image of Weaver, a pal of the boys, I ponder their strange and wonderful journey. Now approaching middle-age – Pegg is 40; Frost is 38 – the two men are right to celebrate their elevated status in the Nerdisphere. It's no mean feat to simultaneously celebrate and satirise that universe. Launched in 1999, Spaced– written by Pegg and Jessica Hynes (née Stephenson) – starred Pegg as a pop-culture obsessive whose mundane life, thanks to smash-bang direction by Edgar Wright, played out to the rhythms of his beloved comic books and science fiction films. The series poked fun. But the affection was unmistakable.
"I always feel that the best place to make fun of a house is from inside it," Pegg says. "When people poke fun at something and they don't understand it then it doesn't ring true. Look at Mel Brooks. When he's parodying things he loves, like Universal horror in Young Frankenstein, then it really works. "When you get onto Spaceballsor Robin Hood: Men in Tights, based on stuff he doesn't feel affection for, then it just falls terribly flat."
Raised in Gloucestershire, Pegg studied drama at the University of Bristol before embarking on stand-up comedy in the early 1990s. Rifle through your DVDs and you will spot occasional guest appearances in I'm Alan Partridge, Brass Eyeand Black Books.
If ever a series deserves the title "cult hit" it is Spaced. The show never clocked up significant viewing figures. It didn't much register in the wider media. But those people who liked it, really, really liked it. And, crucially, its fans included many within the industry. When, thus, Pegg and Wright knocked together the script for Shaun of the Dead, a sideways take on George A Romero's school of zombie movie, they found investors surprisingly eager to play along.
Frost, an eastender, who began his career acting in corporate-training videos, admits that, to this point, he has generally been seen as Pegg's foil and sidekick. (The contrast in their body shapes makes for a classic double-act dynamic.) He played a military-obsessed pal in Spacedand did further second-fiddle duty in Shaunand, a satire on cop movies, Hot Fuzz.
Every comic duo should be prepared for the suggestion that, from time to time, they must have their fallings out. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were not the only double act to end up bitterly estranged.
“We have creative rows and we have personal rows,” Pegg says. “That’s the case with every relationship. But I think we row more creatively, because that’s actually part of the process.”
“When we row, we sometimes get a bit teary,” Frost says, making mock blubbing noises. “We have known one another for 17 years and, in that time, we’ve had maybe 10 really big fights. When that happens, one eventually breaks down and. . .” He heaves and wails like an enormous baby who has just dropped his lollipop.
Though the themes and tone are familiar, Paul does introduce a few significant shifts in working practices. Edgar Wright, who recently directed the fitful Scott Pilgrim vs The World, has been replaced by Greg Mottola, the man behind Superbad. And, for the first time, Nick Frost takes a writing credit. Following a couple of British nerds in America for Comic-Con, they encounter a foul-mouthed, irritable alien.
Paul allows Frost as much screen time as Pegg. "The one thing that worried me was that I didn't want Paulto have any negative effect on our relationship," Pegg says. "Because, when you're writing, those fights can happen and the most important thing is the friendship. That always takes precedence at the end of the day." "One of the good things about growing up is the sense of perspective," Frost adds. "Look, we're not the Monkees. We don't live in the same house. I have a lovely wife. Simon has a family. We have serious frames of reference."
And they both have proper careers. In recent years, both men have found themselves playing very different icons. In J J Abrams excellent reworking of Star Trek, Pegg secured the role of Scotty, the Caledonian engineer played so comically by James Doohan in the original series.
Last year, after years of development, Martin Amis’s Money finally made it onto the screen. The BBC’s adaptation starred Frost as the hugely drunk, hugely greedy, hugely huge John Self. One can only imagine the pressure that comes from shouldering such weights of expectation.
“Yes, there was a fair bit of consternation when I was cast,” Pegg says. “There were people saying I was comic relief and so forth. They were quite angry. But I never saw it that way. I made sure to talk to Chris Doohan, James’s son, and told him that I was in no way impersonating his father. You have to approach the role as if you’ve just met the character on the page for the first time.”
Does Nick sympathise? "Oh, yeah. There was a lot of criticism of me in Money. I was all wrong and so forth. Then, when Martin Amis said how much he liked it, all those critics in the press began attacking him. They seemed to think he didn't understand his own character." Frost turns to his chum. "Who'd play you in a Hot Fuzzremake?" "Erm. . . Danny Dyer, I think," he quips.
Paul does feel like a slightly more low-key exercise than Shaun of the Deador Hot Fuzz. Whereas those films were mini-epics, the new picture is closer to an extended sketch. But it's a great deal of fun and, with its sideways tilts at classic Steven Spielberg films, it should satisfy both the Nerdisphere and unaligned civilians. The wide appeal of the Pegg/Frost axis was confirmed when Steven Spielberg cast them in his upcoming The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn.
Despite their very different body shapes, the boys are – you guessed it – playing moustachioed detectives Thomson and Thompson.
Mention of Tintin sets off a pondering of that classic comic strip. Hang on, though. Nick has found the photograph of Sigourney in her Batman mask. It’s Ms Weaver all right. “Imagine the chaos if they knew who she was,” Frost says. “Yeah, there wouldn’t be any less chaos if she actually was on a powerloader.”
“A powerloader! Yeah. . .”
If you’re wondering, in the Alien universe, a powerloader is a quasi-robotic device that. . . Oh, never mind. If you care about these things then you already know what we’re talking about.
Paulis on general release
