Shaun Of The Dead

[Stefen]

and I don't think it's that I don't like british humor, it's just that SOTD was dumb and not very funny, tell me the parts that you thought were funny?

-When Shaun tells david to 'fuck off four eyes' in liz's flat
- the pajama clad zombie being used as a basis for the gang's zombie miming
- Shaun almost killing phillip when he was sitting in his chair
- the entire drive to the Winchester
-the ending sequence complete with zombies PS2 play
- Pete the roommate
- The late night electro dj set
- "there's a girl in the garden, in the garden there's a girl"
- the myriad of day, dawn and night of the living dead references and in-jokes

ah screw it, the whole movie is hilarious and if you can't see that, I pity you.

Yeah, those parts were funny! Hilarious really. Cripey, I just soiled my pants thinking about them, can I borrow your handkerchief, lad? Or your hand.

[Dtm115300]

Saw it last night. I really liked. Very Funny

[Two Lane Blacktop]

How'd I miss this thread?

Just saw SOTD two weekends ago at a friend's house.  I'd avoided seeing it because I thought it looked dumb, and instead I liked it a LOT, to the point that I want my own copy to watch again.  

I don't generally like "spoofs," but this one was smart and funny as hell.  Zombie movies (esp. the Romero trilogy) are some of my favorite, favorite films, and it was great seeing people who obviously love those movies as much as I do, paying homage to them AND making them funny.

That said, I'd hate to see it inspire a string of imitators like Scream did (mind you, I liked the first two Scream films a lot, too); SOTD was funny and well done.  Hollywood does NOT need to make a half dozen shoddy copies of it.  Thank you.  

2LB

PS- the friend who showed me this movie did so because she said Shaun reminded her of me.    I felt better later, when she said it was because of the "sorting through the record collection" scene.  (I thought the guy playing Shaun was a real cutie, though, so I didn't completely mind the comparison...  heh!)

[modage]

this is NOT A SPOOF!

from the dvd extras with Simon and Edgar "we didnt want to do a spoof"

[Two Lane Blacktop]

this is NOT A SPOOF!

from the dvd extras with Simon and Edgar "we didnt want to do a spoof"

Ah...  that must be why I liked it.  

2LB

[MacGuffin]

'Dead' Spoofmeister Gets a 'Life'

English filmmaker Edgar Wright, who co-wrote and directed the recent horror spoof "Shaun of the Dead," is in negotiations to shoot "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life."

The Universal Pictures project tells the story of a young slacker who meets the woman of his dreams but finds that he can win her only by first battling and defeating her seven evil ex-boyfriends. It is based on the graphic novel "Scott Pilgrim Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life."

Wright recently directed a music video for Charlotte Hatherley's "Bastardo," which is styled as an homage to classic British girls' magazines.

[Ravi]

'Dead' Spoofmeister Gets a 'Life'
The Universal Pictures project tells the story of a young slacker who meets the woman of his dreams but finds that he can win her only by first battling and defeating her seven evil ex-boyfriends.

Wow, this sounds awesome.  Seriously.  No sarcasm.

[modage]

SHAUN OF THE DEAD won Best British Film at the Empire Awards.  i'm not sure i recall the girl to the far right being in the film....  it looks like everyone waiting till hermoine comes of age, that simon pegg has the jump on you.

[Myxo]

This beat Vera Drake for best British film?

[MacGuffin]

Edgar Wright is the luckiest guy to be associated with zombies since George Romero first released them on the world back in 1968. Wright is the co-writer/director of the new horror comedy Shaun of the Dead starring co-writer Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. All three worked on the hit UK sitcom Spaced.

For those of you too stupid or lazy to ever look at the internet here is what Shaun of the Dead is about. Two normal English guys, Shaun [Simon Pegg] is a retail worker at an electronic store is always making excuses to his girlfriend for his lazy drug dealing couch potato friend Ed. But all of that gets put aside when London is overrun by the walking dead. Shaun must now take control of his life and become a leader or become dinner.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Hello Edgar, have you heard of SuicideGirls?

Edgar Wright: I have actually. Eli Roth is a good friend of ours now and he told me about it. He told me he did an interview with SuicideGirls specifically so he could get a password.

DRE: He wouldn’t stop emailing me. He said, lets do the interview come on!

EW: That’s funny. SuicideGirls gets a lot of press in the UK.

DRE: How was that dinner with Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth?

EW: It was great. It was me and [producer] Nira [Park]. Then we hung with Quentin the next night as well. The other person that Simon Pegg and I met at San Diego was James Duval from Donnie Darko. Tarantino brought David Carradine to a screening of Shaun of the Dead. They said they were coming but went to the wrong cinema so they showed up 20 minutes late. When we didn’t see them sitting there we assumed they weren’t showing up. But Quentin didn’t want David Carradine to see it 20 minutes in so we went to have a drink. We ended having a drink with Caine for two hours. I got drunk with Frankenstein from Death Race 2000.

DRE: A lot of times people think that the creators behind this kind of movie sit around smoking pot, drinking and writing jokes.

EW: That didn’t really happen but there may have been a couple of times when we sat in the pub, The Shepard, which inspired that pub in the movie. I’m not a big of a drinker as Simon or maybe I should say that I can’t hold my drink but I remember sitting in the pub going “If we were holed up in here how would we defend ourselves?” Pool cues are good, stools are good, hat stands are good, and Molotov cocktails. So we did sit around thinking what we would do in the face of the apocalypse.

DRE: Did you ever read Max Brooks' book, The Zombie Survival Guide?

EW: Not before we made the film. But I did read The Worst Case Survival Guide.

DRE: I heard that George Romero has seen Shaun of the Dead.

EW: We sent him a print and we’ve spoken to him a number of times. When we sent the print they had to send a security guard from Universal which is very funny. Like George Romero is going to pirate. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a headline in Variety saying, George Romero sentenced to prison for pirating Shaun of the Dead. He’s never made money off his own films but off Shaun of the Dead he will.

To get a nod from him is like getting a nod from the Pope. A benediction from the zombie king.

DRE: So your television show, Spaced, is very popular over in the UK.

EW: It is, but to put it into context, it gets about half the viewers of The Office which is about 5 million so Spaced gets about 2.5 million viewers. But it’s big cult hit on DVD.

DRE: When is the Spaced DVD coming out over here?

EW: I don’t know because it gets wrapped up in legal stuff because we used a lot of music. The music is so integral.

DRE: Shaun of the Dead gets very serious towards the end. Was that always the way it was going to be?

EW: Yeah because though it’s predominantly a comedy you spend a lot of time getting to know and love the characters. To treat their demises in a jokey would have descended the movie into camp. We wouldn’t call the movie a spoof but it is a horror comedy so the horror is horrible and the comedy is funny. We wanted to literally stick to our guns so when a loved one goes it’s a nasty thing. We wanted to have the more tragic elements towards the end and we wanted the treatment of the problem and the events to be weirdly realistic.

DRE: I have this conversation with many zombie fans, my building is pretty secure but we would have trouble getting food.

EW: That’s the thing. In the beginning of the film Shaun and Ed are just a couple of lovable losers who go to their neighborhood bar to escape all their troubles with work and their love life then they do the exact same thing when the zombies come. Where do they feel safe? The pub. They can drink there, eat there and there are big locks on the doors. It’s a lousy idea.

DRE: When did you come up with the title?

EW: It was pretty early on. At one point it was called Teatime of the Dead then we thought Dave of the Dead sounded too ordinary. It could have been Dwight of the Living Dead, I think Shaun came up as working title then certain people began writing about it and it just stuck. Even though Variety magazine called the title the worst joke in the film I like it now. It shows that we are totally wearing our love for those older films on our sleeve. It’s almost intended as a companion piece.

DRE: I really liked the idea that not only is it Romero’s rules but it could very well be in the same universe.

EW: That’s what is happening in Pittsburgh and this is what’s happening in North London. In the film it’s not entirely clear whether it’s a local, national or global thing.

DRE: What made you not want to use the new fast moving zombies?

EW: Slow zombies are like the classic Reebok trainers. You can’t have a scene with a fast zombie. You can’t walk through a crowd of fast zombies or have a discussion about Prince’s career if two of them find you.

DRE: It’s a small town so I guess there’s not as many zombies there.

EW: It’s just the beginning of the situation. It is set in London but it’s North London. It’s not the London you see onscreen. It’s not Richard Curtis’ London or Guy Ritchie’s London but the actual London where most people live because it’s the suburbs. It’s kind of Mike Leigh’s London, ok it’s a Mike Leigh film with zombies. What’s great about the slow zombies is that one on one you are alright. If you only keep running they are going to get you, if you get cocky they are going to get you and when you fall asleep they are going to get and that’s what great about them, there is a lovely creeping horror to it like quicksand. It always annoys me that you can just run away from zombies just the way the Dalek can’t get up stairs.

DRE: You seem like a personable fellow but can you stay focused on a set with people who you’ve known for years are making very funny jokes? Do you laugh or just say, that was good let’s move on?

EW: A bit of both. With such a low budget ambitious film there was never a light day of shooting so sometimes you don’t get a chance to muck around with the guys. It’s a shame but you’ve got to get on with it so I go into Kubrick comedy mode, just laser focus! The real bonus is that Simon and Nick not only are best friends in real life but they used to be flatmates so you could not buy their onscreen chemistry.

DRE: Did you ever think about shooting this on video instead of film?

EW: We thought about it but we did the TV show on video so we wanted to do film. When you make a movie you want to do it on film. I’m not against digital filmmaking because sometimes it works really well like in the movie The Celebration [directed by Thomas Vinterberg] and I’m a big Robert Rodriguez fan but I didn’t like the look of the second and third Spy Kids films and I certainly didn’t like the new Star Wars film.

DRE: Did you watch any specific movies to prepare for Shaun?

EW: Yes but weirdly enough not zombie films because we’ve seen those so many times. But we watched things like Assault on Precinct 13, Straw Dogs and The Birds. The Birds has a very similar structure to Shaun in that it’s a good half hour before it kicks in and you get your first bird attack. We also watched movies that had a lot of setup and payoff like Gremlins, Back to the Future and even Die Hard. The first action scenes in Die Hard don’t happen until 40 minutes in.

DRE: The structure of Die Hard is brilliant and that’s why people rip it off so much.

EW: Right but they always get it wrong in the rip-offs. They always want to start with a bang which is why there is no explicit violence in the first 25 minutes of Shaun. At the first test screening an executive noticed that the first death went over so well. Then he wanted to cut straight to the first death. We told him that it was because of the buildup.

DRE: I think my favorite scene is when the two groups of people in hiding bump into one another.

EW: Sure in Dawn of the Dead you’ve got Stephen, Fran, Roger and then in any one mile radius you will have ten others of those groups. There are eight million stories in the naked city. In fact we did comic strips that were origins of the zombies. We did the checkout girl and called it There’s Something about Mary and the guy who has one arm and is dressed as a best man which we called My Best Friend’s Wedding. Then everyone’s life intersects and it became like Raymond Carver zombie Short Cuts.

DRE: I read you might be doing an action comedy next.

EW: That’s the idea. Current titles include Hot Fuzz, RosenFuzz and Hard Fuzz.

DRE: So it’s a movie all about Nick’s genitals [co-star Nick Frost shaved his genitals for Shaun of the Dead].

EW: [laughs] We want to do a cop action film in the UK because there has never been one.

DRE: Isn’t that because only one in five cops have a gun?

EW: Well you have to be with a special armed unit. Most street cops wear armor but not guns. We want to do an action film without any guns!

[modage]

DRE: Shaun of the Dead gets very serious towards the end. Was that always the way it was going to be?

EW: Yeah because though it's predominantly a comedy you spend a lot of time getting to know and love the characters. To treat their demises in a jokey would have descended the movie into camp. We wouldn't call the movie a spoof but it is a horror comedy so the horror is horrible and the comedy is funny. We wanted to literally stick to our guns so when a loved one goes it's a nasty thing. We wanted to have the more tragic elements towards the end and we wanted the treatment of the problem and the events to be weirdly realistic.

who would've thought?  

[tpfkabi]

i just now saw this.

i thought they overused the backwards stinger or whatever you call it as a sound effect and those quick cut sequences were annoying.

does anyone have a screen capture of the blonde girl's arse at the end?

[Reinhold]

i watched it in school. it's one of my more fond high school memories.

the juke box sequence alone was hilarious... not to mention everything previously listed.

i liked the coldplay interview in the special features.

[MacGuffin]

Comic-Con 2006: Shaun 2 Unlikely
Director Edgar Wright nixes sequel talk.

At a panel at this weekend's San Diego Comic-Con, Director Edgar Wright dispelled rumors of a possible Shaun of the Dead 2, long rumored to be subtitled From Dusk 'Til Shaun. Nick Frost added his own humorous title: Night of the Living Ed. However, humorous titles aside, it looks like the sequel will not be happening.

"Shaun of the Dead 2 seems unlikely," Wright said. "We don't want to do a cash-in."



Comic-Con 2006: Shaun of the Dead SE?
Director Edgar Wright comments on the rumors.

Although it has been rumored that a possible Special Edition of Shaun of the Dead may be headed to DVD, Director Edgar Wright put those rumors (mostly) to rest at this weekend's Comic-Con.

"To be perfectly honest," he stated, "there isn't much more to put on a DVD." Throughout the Con, he made statements that he isn't into bringing out products just to cash in. "We put the kibosh on it 'cause we didn't want to rip you off."

[Derek237]

Well I'm glad there isn't an SE on the way, seeing as I just bought a copy today for cheap. Not only that, but there really isn't anything more you could ask for as far as the special features go. Not to mention it has one of the coolest DVD menus I've ever seen. 

I do hope they eventually decide to make a sequel, though.