Great Scott!
Interview with Scott Pilgrim director Edgar Wright and star Michael Cera
By Norman Wilner
Before I can even sit down to discuss Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World with Edgar Wright and Michael Cera, two things happen.
First, Wright tags me as the critic who named his 2004 debut Shaun Of The Dead the best film of the last decade, and demands a high-five. Next, he notices the DVD of Humanoids From The Deep in my bag, which launches us on a conversation about skeevy Roger Corman monster movies.
The interview rolls merrily onward from there. What’s supposed to be a 15-minute slot stretches to nearly half an hour, with Wright talking animatedly about his points of cinematic reference while Cera munches on nuts and a fruit plate, occasionally joining the conversation. Part of that is because Cera is naturally pretty reserved; part of it is because the entire Scott Pilgrim team is verging on exhaustion after a week-long North American press tour.
“It’s been a bit of a whirlwind,” Wright says, ordering an espresso to match Cera’s cup of coffee. “I think when the press tour is finished, I will inevitably drop dead, which is what always happens whenever I finish a film. My immune system is gonna completely break down.”
“That’s what happened to me when we wrapped,” Cera says.
“It always happens,” Wright says. “When you stop, your body just gives up on you completely. But if you power along like this – I mean, I only finished the film three weeks ago.”
Shaun and Wright’s second feature, Hot Fuzz, are pitch-perfect genre pieces; the former framing a moving coming-of-age story against a zombie apocalypse, the latter tackling the buddy-cop genre with self-awareness and quiet absurdism. (“The swan’s escaped.”) But Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World – an adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s series of six graphic novels, pitting Cera’s easily distracted rocker against the seven evil exes of new girlfriend Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) – gives Wright the chance to create an entirely new mode of storytelling out of the video games and action movies in which O’Malley’s characters are steeped.
“The books are funny and magical and imaginative,” Wright says, “and it was perfectly acceptable to tap into that complete four-colour bubble-gum pop art explosion that’s in the books. The manga-like artwork is kind of unbridled; it can be just fun. And because this is a comedy, there wasn’t any real limit to anything. There’s an elastic reality to the film, like films that in their time were considered campy or bubble gum and are now kind of cult classics, whether it’s Danger: Diabolik or Flash Gordon. You’re allowed to have fun as well as be deadly serious.”
The trick, Wright says, was figuring out how to explain that balance to his cast and crew.
“We had frequent Shaw Brothers screenings,” Wright says. “The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin and Five Fingers Of Death…. I don’t think anybody could watch The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin and not want to become a Shaolin monk afterwards.”
“That was a special one,” Cera says. “That’s the one where he’s carrying buckets, right? And the spikes?”
“Yeah,” Wright says. “What an amazing, life-affirming film. But also things like A Chinese Ghost Story, and movies from the late 1980s.”
The finished film may wear its references on its sleeve, but it’s very much its own thing. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World works a similar alchemy to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, and watching it is a little like sticking your head in a pop culture wind tunnel.
“There are elements of romantic comedy, elements of action, music, video games,” Wright says, “all things that people are aware of but haven’t seen put together like this.”
Preview audiences from Comic-Con to Toronto have loved it, though there’s been grousing in certain publications that this “epic of epic epicness” may be, well, too much of a muchness.
“It might be overwhelming to some audience members,” Wright acknowledges, “but that’s good, isn’t it? It’s good to give people something to chew on, to make them sit up and participate. I feel like audiences are much smarter than studios usually give them credit for. TV is much faster and sharper than a lot of cinema. Arrested Development, 30 Rock, The Simpsons – they don’t slow down for anybody, and they’re brilliant to watch. Why can’t we make films like that? Why can’t we make films that don’t talk down to people?”
Scott Pilgrim offers another challenge in its presentation of a hero who’s fairly self-absorbed and prone to distraction.
Cera laughs. “Yeah. I think that’s what makes me think of Homer Simpson the most,” he says, “that dead-eyed, glazed-over look.”
“He needs constant shiny objects,” Wright says. “Scott Pilgrim to me, the way he pursues Ramona is like she’s a shiny object in a game.”
But Scott’s not a bad person. He’s just not a grown-up yet.
“I think Scott Pilgrim as a character has his flaws because he’s definitely, like, slightly solipsistic in that way,” Wright says. “He’s got blinkers on, and everybody around him becomes unimportant to the point where he breaks hearts and ruins lives and stuff. But I like this idea that the film is powered along by young, naive, blind optimism. Unlike some of the characters around him who are a bit more cynical, Scott Pilgrim hasn’t been worn down by the harsh realities of life yet.”
Wright even found a way to visually convey the character’s youth.
“In the books, you occasionally meet people’s parents,” he explains. “But we cut that out. Even for the extras and stuff we had a Logan’s Run-style bracket of nobody over 30. I wanted the whole city to feel like Scott Pilgrim’s playground – that he is the centre of his own universe and there are no adults. They’re not supervised any more. I think it’s about that time in your life – post-school or -college but before you’ve settled into whatever your vocation’s going to be – when you’re still in arrested development, no pun intended, in terms of this perpetual adolescence. When you’re not living with your parents any more, you can watch whatever you wanna watch, you can play games as much as you want to.…”
“Sleep all day,” Cera adds.
“Maybe you don’t have any disposable income, so you just tend to be in your little bubble,” Wright says. “It’s still playtime, you know?”
Wright’s enjoying being back in Toronto for the first time in a while. (The day after our interview, my wife and I bump into him and co-star Anna Kendrick, who plays Scott’s sister Stacey, on Dundas West while walking our dog.) Asked to pick a favourite location, he barely hesitates.
“There was something quite magical about being in Hillcrest Park,” Wright says, “because it’s such a beautiful part of the first book. I went there when I met Bryan in the city for the first time. [Co-writer] Michael Bacall, Bryan and I went around all the locations on a little tour. Just sitting in that park, talking about the film, and then two years later being there with Michael and Mary shooting that scene with fake snow everywhere, creating this Toronto winter garden wonderland, it was really beautiful.
“Then these birds turned up at 4 in the morning and ruined everything.”
“Oh my god, that’s right,” remembers Cera. “We had to have a bird whisperer and shoot cap guns into the sky to scare them off.”
That wasn’t the only wildlife they had to cope with.
“We did go to a restaurant where we saw a family of raccoons, and that was amazing,” laughs Wright. “It kinda looked like a Disney film for a second, but then you’re reminded that raccoons will **** you up.”
“They’re wild,” Cera nods.
“That’s a good note to end on,” Wright laughs. “’Raccoons can **** you up.’”