Adult Swim : I Should Watch That - Interview with Simon Pegg

Welcome back once again to I Should Watch That, where we ask our BFFs, Internet girlfriends, and secret crushes to boot up their movie and TV wishlists and thoroughly dissect what it says about them as a person. They're told ahead of time not to get rid of any embarrassing choices, and not to load it up with Criterion Collection picks so as to impress anyone.

This time, we chatted up Simon Pegg, co-star of Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, and some movie called Star Trek. Lately, he's taken a bit of a break from movies, and his latest work includes his new autobiography Nerd Do Well and lending his voice for Fable III. Pegg professed to us his love Saturday Night Live and why he's okay with all these remakes coming out.

No. 4: MacGruber

Kristen [Wiig]'s in it, who's in our movie [Paul.] I love those [Saturday Night Live] guys, but I just worked with Kristen and Bill Hader and I have been getting the seasons sent to me here in the UK, because they don't show it here in the UK weirdly. Obviously it's considered too topical, I guess. But I think, you know, it seems ridiculous because there's enough comedy and known faces for it to work—even a minority channel [could carry it.]

It never has been [broadcast here]. I've been aware of it. It's an extraordinary show. Just the concept of it alone, a live comedy show every Saturday night. We don't have anything like that. We had our own version of it, which was more of a cabaret show than a sketch-comedy thing. We didn't really have guest hosts.

I've been there a couple of times to NBC to see it. It's an amazing enterprise. Like any sketch show it can be patchy, but that it's still going after 30-odd years is incredible. I was aware of the Ghostbusters guys, Blues Brothers guys, they're all sort of alumni. It's something I've been aware of for a long time, but only recently after a few years I've seen it up close.

Who hosted when you went to those tapings?

Oddly enough, Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, on separate occasions. They were a couple of years apart, weirdly enough. They are linked, obviously, by Transformers, but they didn't do it together.

Since you guys don't get SNL out there, you aren't as spoiled as we are. A lot of Americans kinda take the show for granted.

I mean, it's got a very talented cast. Bill and Kristen are both extraordinary talents. I've met the other guys, too. They work SO hard on that show. It's like a relentless assault. And all of them, they still work the cocaine hours from the '80s, but now they're drinking green tea and eating vegan salads. And they're working John Belushi hours? It's ridiculous. And every week they have to come up with something new and fresh. It's not always going to deliver, but you can't f***ing blame them for trying.

“...they still work the cocaine hours from the '80s, but now they're drinking green tea and eating vegan salads.”

No. 5: Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans

I love Nicolas Cage. I've heard so many good things about this. It's supposed to be a barnstorming performance from Nicolas Cage, who I've loved dearly since Raising Arizona, and I forgive him any ass choices he's made on the way—we all make them. He's kind of like retiring into just not really minding, in a way. He'll do a crazy, silly film like, I don't know, Knowing—though I quite enjoyed Knowing, which I watched the other day. I kind of liked it. Bangkok Dangerous or something, and then you remember what a good actor he is.

He has a lot of really underappreciated stuff.

I agree. I think people don't want to see movie stars that they know be different to what they know. It's like, the classic thing is The Cable Guy, if you rewatch that, it's really one of Jim Carrey's best performances. And yet, because he's playing slightly evil and wasn't a goofy pet detective, people were like, "No, this is s***." And it's not true. It's a good film.

“I think people don't want to see movie stars that they know be different to what they know.”

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind gets the same rap.

Oh absolutely. Eternal Sunshine is extraordinary. It's hard if you're a supposed serious actor who does comedy. If you're someone who's seen as being a comedy actor—like that's any different from being a regular actor? It's not, really. There's still the discipline of acting. You're not allowed to do serious stuff. You're not taken seriously. Like when Will Ferrell does something like Stranger Than Fiction, a lovely film, I thought he was really great in that. But people were like, "I don't know, he isn't goofing around!"

No. 10 Greenberg

Ben Stiller's last film. I really like Greta Gerwig. I really wanted to see that. [Laughs.] I really liked Night At The Museum 2. It was one of those films that I thought, "Oh, I have to see that because it's got this extraordinary cast." I like Ben. Greenberg is something that I know he'll be good in. He can do broad comedy standing on his head, but he's also very good at quieter stuff. He's brilliant in The Royal Tenenbaums. He's got this quiet, manic sweetness to him that I think he likes to do. He doesn't always have to be White Goodman from DodgeBall.

No. 11 American: The Bill Hicks Story

Watch Trailer on YouTube

I really want to see that. I think it's just out. I just saw it advertised. It reminded me of another movie, Exit Through The Gift Shop, the Banksy documentary.

That documentary was great. I saw it last week. [Banksy] sent it to me, actually. I got a packet at my agent's with a postcard that said, "Thought you might like this." I was like, "Wow. Where did it come from? Where did it come from?"

Was there a return address?

No, no, no. It was in an unmarked package. I thought it was a great film. It's got so many layers, it's like an endless onion of intrigue.

“It's got so many layers, it's like an endless onion of intrigue.”

He's in it. He's blacked-out, in disguise. But it's a really fascinating take on works of art, all the meaninglessness of art. On every level what it really means, what it really is, and it's very thought-provoking. You get to the end of it and you won't really be sure what you've just watched. It is a piece of art in itself, it's great. Give it a look. It's supposed to be about him, but it actually becomes about somebody else. But if you're left wondering if that somebody else is real. It's very clever.

No. 14: The Crazies

As a fan of Romero, I'm a bit interested. I'm intrigued by remakes. I don't have anything against remakes. I think there are times when it's pointless. There are times where it's not. I don't think it's necessarily indicative of a bankruptcy of ideas.

“I don't have anything against remakes. I think there are times when it's pointless. There are times where it's not. I don't think it's necessarily indicative of a bankruptcy of ideas.”

It feels like a while back we were seeing more and more of those, and it's tapered off a bit.

When I worked with Jeff Bridges in 2007 he was telling me he'd just been digitally body-cast for [Tron: Legacy] as his character from the original still locked in the game. The industry is run by marketing people. Everything is based around brand recognition now. It used to be run by the studios. It's not anymore. It's run by marketing executives, and they have a say in what's made, and they have a say in the creation of what's made. The movies are fashioned more as products far more than it ever was. Is it a marketable product, not having much to do with art so much anymore as getting money back.

The classic one is the first big horror remake, when they remade Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They did a survey and discovered it was the film the most people had heard of but the least people had seen. So what they basically had was a very sellable title. I mean, look at the remake of Dawn Of The Dead—if it hadn't been called Dawn Of The Dead, I would have liked it more. It used that title of George's, and it was a completely different film. It wasn't a remake. They used the name of a film that people know in order to sell it. It would've been much better if it was called Deadish, which was a great joke in the film. I wouldn't have been so annoyed at the fact that the zombies were running if it was its own thing like 28 Days Later. But it didn't. It vamped off George's idea.

What's your take on the latter-day sequels, like the new Indiana Jones? Have you seen that one?

I did, and I just saw it for Steven Spielberg. [Laughs.] I think it lost its way a bit towards the end, but I enjoyed it. It was really good to see those characters again, but I think a lot of what's happening is that—it's kind of like the '80s thing. There are a lot of '80s UK bands that are back and touring again, and it's because they realized that there's a huge amount of nostalgia for that period and they realized that tribute bands were making a lot of money from playing their songs. They realized, "Hmm, maybe we should play our f***ing songs, and we'll go on tour." And that's what's happening here. Certainly, with Stallone redoing Rocky and Rambo, that was him being his own tribute act.

It's all about brand recognition. That's why it's so exciting when something like Inception or Scott Pilgrim comes along, because they are totally unknown quantities. You think, "What's that? I've never heard of that." And then you go and it's brilliant. It's mind-blowing, and it's new. It's exciting. And I just wish all cinema was like that, but it isn't. You look at something like Vampires Suck—those movies that simply get laughs by recreating stuff. It's deadening. It's f***ing atrocious, and it should be stopped at all costs. [Laughs.] These films that exist joke-to-joke have no soul. The minute one of these jokes fail, which is usually at the second or third minute, the film dies. There are no characters to sympathize with. There's no story to follow. It's just series of repetitions of images you've seen before that you laugh at because you've seen before. If that's what's being passed off as cinema, then we're all f***ing going to hell.

“It's all about brand recognition. That's why it's so exciting when something like Inception or Scott Pilgrim comes along, because they are totally unknown quantities.”

Well, what they should do is do a Naked Gun latter-sequel to mock these movies, stuff like Scary Movie.

[Laughs.] Scary Movie was weird because it was a pastiche of Scream, but Scream was a pastiche in a way. Scream was a post-modern film about slasher films. It was an intellectual kind of pastiche, loving and sort of an affectionate one, and functional as well because in itself it's a scary film. And then Scary Movie came along and it took the piss out of the thing that was taking the piss out of the thing. You don't get Scream? Do you not understand that was kind of being arched? Do you really have to go and make fun of that? It's like dressing up like a clown and going, "Oh, aren't clowns stupid?" [Laughs.] Anyway, I'm just being controversial.