GARY SCHULTZ: Guys before we get this interview started I want to say that “Hot Fuzz” is a fucking awesome movie.

EDGAR WRIGHT: (laughing) That’s two of our favorite words, “fucking” and “awesome”.

GARY: Sorry that’s pretty unprofessional of me…I also use the word dynamite frequently.

EDGAR: No man it’s cool. Glad you liked the movie.

GARY: Can you guys tell us a little about the film Hot Fuzz?

SIMON PEGG: Hot Fuzz is the tale of a very over achieving police officer who is making everyone else look bad and ends up being reassigned to what seems to be the most ideal, peaceful village in the UK. But it turns out to be the darkest beating heart of corruption throughout the country and my character teams up with Nick’s character, Danny to find out if his suspicions are correct. The film goes from being this little quaint English procedural picture to a full blown American style action movie.

EDGAR: From good ass to badass.

(everyone laughs)

OTHER INTERVIEWER: Were you guys worried about the complete lack of zombies at this point in the film?

EDGAR: You know after about a 16 month press tour on Shaun of the Dead, we’re fucking sick of zombies.

(everyone laughs)

EDGAR: We capped off our zombie fascination with our cameo in “Land of the Dead” and that was it. It was the perfect way to end our zombie obsession.

GARY: How did you prepare for the writing of this film?

Edgar: We’ll first we love the genre. We`re big fans and to prepare we made ourselves completely emerge into the genre. We watched something like 138 action films to get into that mindset to write that hackney dialogue. Because it’s kind of funny when you watch those old action films, I mean you watch something like “Out For Justice” and think, wow somebody wrote this.

(Everybody laughs)

GARY: Richie, Richie.

EDGAR: Exactly and somebody wrote done the line “Yo fuck nuts…”

OTHER INTERVIEWER: That was probably Segal.

EDGAR: Was that a bit of method? He goes to the director, (Edgar does his best whispering Segal imitation) “Hey man I got an idea for this scene, I go up to the guy and say, “Yo fuck nuts…”

NICK: (admiring) You know he’s almost a good an actor as that Steven Segal…

(Everyone laughs)

GARY: Well I mean you’re talking, “Out For Justice”, “Marked for Death” era Segal. He was still badass. Now he’s doing Mountain Dew commercials.

NICK FROST: He’s touring his bad around the UK.

OTHER INTERVIEWER: I’ve seen his band “Thunder Box”.

GARY: Does he tour with Russell Crowe’s band?

NICK: Yeah “30 Odd Feet of Grunts” and “Thunder Box”. Those are some great names.

GARY: Your approach to comedy is unique. Or even better I would say that your films are very funny, appealing to a low brow audience while the humor is almost high brow, you never talk down to the audience.

EDGAR: We are encouraged and confident that the audience can get our humor. We don’t have to talk down to them. As long as it’s funny on a first watch, people will get it and allow it to resonate on different levels.

GARY: It seems that could be thought to American comedy.

EDGAR: Well now you’ve got “The Simpson’s”. “The Simpson’s” is an amazing show.

GARY: Yeah but The Simpson’s is the best sitcom ever. I mean almost 20 years running. It’s an exception.

SIMON: “Arrested Development” was very smart as well.

GARY: Okay so you got me.

SIMON: I wrote a joke back when we were doing our TV show “Spaced”. It was in the first season and the joke was about one of the character’s dog goes missing and he comes back and says it was put up into a crocodile. And it was in reference to when Skully from the “X-Files” dog went missing and I thought one person perhaps will actually get this joke and they will be so fucking happy they did. They will feel the kind of delight of being spoken to personally by a television program and that has become the fundamental of the main body of all our work. We’re always being very personal, very specific and in doing that you’ll find that loads of people get.

GARY: The audience then feels like they are connecting to something special. The inside joke.

EDGAR: The thing about “Hot Fuzz” and “Shaun of the Dead” aside from all the kind of riffing on genres, there are characters and character arcs that you can sympathize with. And I think that’s what makes these films work more than anything else. Look at the “Scary Movie” films they exist from joke to joke. If the joke hits it’s great but if the joke misses there’s nothing happening on the screen. You’re just kind of flat lining. And what we try to do with our comedy is make sure that there are characters that see you through the entire thing. Like you’re watching a proper film that does sort of have all these references from the genre. But really you’re watching the story of Nicholas Angel and Danny.  “Shaun of the Dead” you’re watching the story of Shaun, Liz and Ed. The characters glue it all together and the rest is gravy.

GARY: I feel like in both your films in Shaun and “Hot Fuzz” the movies are great comedies and then by the third act Shaun turns into a truly scary horror film and “Hot Fuzz” is the same. By the third act it turns into an amazing action film.

EDGAR:  Absolutely.  What we wanted to do is really keep amping it up. I mean with “Shaun of the Dead”, I’m really proud of it but there are elements about the climax that if we had a little more time and money I would have really gotten a little bit further with some more carnage. With “Hot Fuzz” we really wanted to go over the top in the third act with the action.

GARY: I saw “Point Break” and went skydiving three times.

SIMON: Really?

GARY: No bullshit. What is with the “Point Break” obsession?

SIMON: “Point Break” along with “Bad Boys 2” is kind of the essential over the top bad action movie. Very different films and very unpretentious. “Point Break” is a really interesting film because it is thoroughly enjoyable and it’s directed by a woman as well which is interesting because she doesn’t shy away from the sort of guy on guy mentality in the film that we also address in Hot Fuzz.  Occasionally we’ll write something whacky and people will go “what we’re you smoking when you wrote that?” Man this film was powered entirely by black coffee.

GARY: You are releasing the film on 4/20 here in the states so what are you implying to your audience that they do before seeing the movie?

NICK: I’d say smoke a fat one and then eat a burrito and then go and watch it.