This Site Just Got Real:
An Interview With Nick Frost and Edgar Wright

Why we're here.

Comic-Con this year was loaded -- LOADED -- with Hollywood stars and associated talent coming to San Diego. Yet for some of us, the most important weren't the likes of Edward Norton (yeah, take that, Marvel) but two men who we already know delivered one of the most satisfying films of the year, Hot Fuzz.

To promote the DVD release (out today) in the US, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright braved hordes of fans and even sat down for a press conference.

They entered to applause from the press, Edgar a little dazed but bright-eyed, and Nick smiling while clutching his coffee. It sounded, too, like both men had been doing a lot of talking in panels and with fans. Edgar's voice teetered on the edge of hoarseness throughout the conference.

Here's part one of the conversation...

Edgar Wright: Just for the record, we cannot answer any questions about Heroes.

Question: How much better does a pint look when it's shown in HD?

Edgar Wright: That's a good question.

Nick Frost: I'd say thirty percent better.

Edgar Wright: I haven't actually got an HD player yet, so I haven't seen either of our films in HD, but now that you've said that I'll take a look. I wasn't convinced, but now there's a chance of seeing what a pint looks like in HD, I'll check it out. Good, I expect.

Question: Your movies always make me thirsty.

Edgar Wright: Good. I think you should do good drinking games with both Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead.

Question: Is there one yet?

Edgar Wright: I don't know. How would it work? If you took a pint of beer every time they had a pint, a shot every time they use the f word…

Question: I've always been fascinated by movies shot in supermarkets. What made you decide to have your finale in a supermarket?

"I think you should do good drinking games with Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead..." photo by Erin Frost

Edgar Wright: I used to work in a supermarket. I used to work in the very supermarket that's in the film. I was a shelf-stacker. That was my Saturday and holiday job for like five years. When they storm the outside of the supermarket in the car park, that was where I used to work.

So I think that when I was a teen-ager, I used to dream of f***ing the place up. (laughs)

Question: In the Shaun of the Dead DVD, you had a lot of extras, including ones that showed the other stories. Are you going to do that kind of thing for this one, too? Are there lots of extras?

Edgar Wright: Yeah. Absolutely. There's loads and loads of extras. Even while we were deep in the film, we were doing DVD content. We kind of produced the DVD extras ourselves. Some of them are on different versions. The HD version has everything, and I think the Wal-Mart has a kind of two-disc edition as well. So there's basically reams and reams of extras.

We really enjoy the stuff like "plot holes," the bits which we animated for Shaun of the Dead. We tried to do the things people liked from the first DVD, like plot holes. And we expanded, like on the first DVD we had "Funky Pete," in which we tried to do the television safe version.

Actually, we did get in trouble with Universal because we never completed our TV version; contractually you have to do that. So this time around, we did all of our swear word replacements, and we had a lot of fun doing that. That's on the DVD called "Hot Funk."

When it turns up on American Airlines, I want it to be at least entertaining in the clean version. I always thought the TV versions of 80's action films like Lethal Weapon, Robocop and Die Hard were amazing. So many things that they've given us like "melon farmer," "muddy funkster," …"forget you!"

We wanted to come up with some good ones. We kind of go "funk," "silt," "mother hubbard…"

Nick Frost: … "peas and rice…"

Edgar Wright: Peas and rice! Another good one. We had a lot of fun doing the TV safe version. Also to replace the C word we got to take from The Nutty Professor the word "klump." So that's a good sort of dialogue replacement as well.

Question: Isn't it worse than the actual word?

Nick Frost: It can be, yeah.

Edgar Wright: That's what's funny about it. I think Patton Oswalt does a funny routine about dialogue replacements that sound even ruder than the actual word.

Question: Nick, I noticed that at least on the U.S. release of the DVD, you're not on the creator commentary. Was this your decision, or they didn't include you?

Nick Frost: It'll be on the HD and I can't even say the company, it hurts my mouth.

Edgar Wright: Wal-Mart.

Nick Frost: Yeah, Wal-Mart. It's on the double disc.

Question: It's an exclusive Wal-Mart thing? How did that happen? I've never even heard of that.

Nick Frost: You've never heard of Wal-Mart?

Question: I've never heard of Wal-Mart having a special edition set, especially with something like you guys.

Nick Frost: Yeah, it's a mystery to us, too. On the Wal-Mart one all the way through it in the corner it just says "Wal-Mart." It never leaves.

Question: Has the movie already been released on DVD overseas?

Edgar Wright: Yes it has. It's out already in the U.K. It sold a million copies in four weeks.

Question: It broke records when it opened in theaters there, too. Did the studio do anything for you, buy you a car?

Nick Frost: We got a case of Cristal champagne, which it doesn't seem much.

"You've never heard of Wal-Mart?" photo by Erin Frost

Question: Did they buy you that coffee? (Nick came in with a Starbucks cup.)

Edgar Wright: No! We had to buy that ourselves!

Question: When you stand in line for coffee, do you get mobbed by the people out there? Do they recognize you?

Edgar Wright: We generally get mobbed by baristas in Starbucks. That's our fan base.

Nick Frost: It's a very low level…

Edgar Wright: We basically try to walk up and down the line until we get recognized.

Question: Can you talk about what you have next?

Edgar Wright: We're all writing at the moment, having a furious writing period. Simon is writing something with Nick, and Simon and I are going to start writing something later this year. That should hopefully be the third in what we're calling "the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy."

Nick Frost: The three flavors Cornetto.

Edgar Wright: I'm writing two adaptations, both of which I've been doing before Hot Fuzz. We've only really finished doing the press tour for the film last month in France. We've been essentially doing press for six months, so now we can get started writing.

Question: Do you guys switch off? Is that why Simon isn't here?

Nick Frost: He's shooting a film at the moment.

Edgar Wright: Simon Pegg has actually said "I hate all geeks. I'm never going to Comic-Con again." (laughs long and loud) You put that on record!

Nick Frost: No, he wasn't here last year, either. It was just Edgar and me.

Question: So he does hate all geeks.

Nick Frost: Yeah, I think he fears what he loves most.

Edgar Wright: He came here three years ago and saw a Batman made out of Legos. He never recovered.

Nick Frost: He didn't think it could get any better than that. So he never came back.

Part Two tomorrow...

Derek McCaw