Elisabeth Donnelly

[Fun interview to do, genuinely nice guys. On the Hot Fuzz DVD special features, there is a quick shot of my big head backstage when they’re in Cambridge, MA. I only learned about it from two dudes that I didn’t know so well separately telling me. Very odd. I saw Simon Pegg in NYC years later and we had a quick chat and it was very pleasant and I felt like I was moving on up in the world. Also, let’s be honest: look at that Joe Cornish, who made an awesome film!]

In the midst of a whirlwind world tour to promote their new film, ‘Hot Fuzz,’ the jokes are fast and furious

By Elisabeth Donnelly
Globe Correspondent

“Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, the UK for four days, Amsterdam, then New Amsterdam, New York, and then we came to Washington, and then here,” said the floppy haired Edgar Wright, director of the new cop spoof “Hot Fuzz,” the follow-up to 2004’s much-loved zombie romantic comedy “Shaun of the Dead.”

“In two days we’ll be in Chic-aaaago,” added actor Simon Pegg, attempting the rounded vowels of a Boston accent.

“All in the span of about three weeks,” finished Wright, “We’re slightly going on dementia where certain phrases get stuck in a loop.” Wright and “Fuzz” stars Pegg and Nick Frost were in junket land, where the city changes every 36 hours and nearly every second of their time is devoted to working on their online video blog, charming their legion of ardent fans at regional “Hot Fuzztivals,” and giving the press interesting quotes — such as Wright’s assertion that ” ‘Hot Fuzz’ is [‘Armageddon’ director] Michael Bay meets Agatha Christie.” (A more accurate quote would replace “meets” with a rude and hilarious sexual innuendo)

The multitalented funnymen, longtime collaborators also known for the cult British TV show “Spaced,” were jet-lagged and exhausted yet committed to providing the best “Hot Fuzz” preview screening experience possible. The 30-something Fuzzers convened in the lobby of the new Ritz-Carlton early Sunday afternoon before heading to Cambridge for the screening. Pegg, who is skinnier and more attractive than his shlubby film persona suggests, was the first one to appear, wearing a navy-blue army cap pulled low over his eyes. Wright was late as usual, and Frost, (“I call him Frosty and he calls me Peggy,” Pegg said) had disappeared for a smoke. In a surreal touch, a basketball team arrived at the hotel, and a continuous stream of extremely tall men poured into the hotel while Pegg talked about his and Frost’s night at “Old Bar or something,” where he drank so much that he ended up buying a commemorative T-shirt.

Once the “Hot Fuzz” team, including video blogger Joe Cornish, was accounted for, the four Brits jumped into the shiny black SUV that was taking them across the river to Harvard Square’s Brattle Theatre.

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Last night I watched a well-received film featuring terrible prosthetics, and it was both well entertaining and basically lacking in that-hard-to-pin-down quality, soul. Anyways, I realized that I have a particular aversion to this director - who is very talented, and whose work, so far, has been far more good than bad but oddly unsatisfying - and part of it’s due to the fact that I do not care, one whit, about any of the humans in his work; the human condition is sacrificed for cool shit, party tricks, and it all goes down like something delicious and kind of forgettable. It was also full of guns and you know what? I’m seriously not in the mood for any movies that treat death in such a cavalier fashion.

I will admit in this case that my feelings err on the side of irrational because I think this man’s ego - the desire to point out how clever he is in every frame - leeched into his turns behind the camera on my favorite TV show, leading to the chilliest, worst episodes (it should be obvious who this is, obviously). It’s funny, too - my favorite TV show is familiar with death, and there have been shootouts, but a high percentage of the deaths on the show have mattered and have had weight and I think that’s important for the psyche.

But I also think that directors along the likes of this guy and the other guy with a movie coming out soon (hint: the star of my favorite TV show would be the Kevin Bacon-like link), directors who have done entertainments, who have tried action and done something reasonably novel enough even if that doesn’t make them the next great artiste; well, I feel like people should chill out about that person’s oeuvre. (Funny - both of these directors have taken on actors about my age as muses, and they’re not very good in most of their works!) They’re talked about in far too elevated terms when I think they’re just … pleasant talents - who make moderately entertaining, above-the-norm work with a woman problem - who certainly have the potential to go all David Gordon Green-like run of trash in the future.

In short, nobody’s going to be talking about this guy in 20 years, but the amount of ego laced throughout his work means you know he thinks that could be the case, and it’s so annoying. And I think he’s part of a movement of overrated writer-director types, and I think there need to be more straight-up humanists making movies and art out there, and not just easily impressed little boys.

I interviewed photographer Gregory Crewdson for The Paris Review Daily, where we talked about the movies (Lynch, Hitchcock, Malick), the pursuit of things that are perfect, digital versus film, and Mad Men, of course. In the “good news” category: Wes Anderson is finally working at a quicker pace. Hooray!

Fun fact, I don’t know if this remains in the final piece: Mr. Crewdson watches Mad Men on his iPad, because it reminds him of looking through the ground glass on his 8 by 10 camera, which makes a lot of sense.

Safety Not Guaranteed is an excellent movie, sharp and funny and wrestling with stuff beyond just a goofy meme. It was a really pleasant surprise, made more surprising since I hadn’t seen any previews for it or heard much about it beyond some mild Sundance buzz.

One note, however: Jake Johnson is funny and cute, and a good comic presence if not much of an actor (honest question: what comedians right now are actually good actors?). In the still above, he’s making that Nick Miller-on-The New Girl smelled something bad face and if he keeps doing that, it’s gonna freeze. Mark Duplass, on the other hand, let it be known: he’s super hot. I’ve interviewed him, I’ve been impressed by how hot and charming and smart he is and it all comes out in schlub on screen, er, mostly in films I have little to no desire to see.

The other thing that was amusing was that in a lot of ways, Safety Not Guaranteed was like the really good version of Another Earth, the horrible sci-fi romance from last year. Despite the fact that Brit Marling is basically a star who looks like an ethereal Princess Buttercup and gives great interview (unlike Aubrey Plaza), Another Earth just took an interesting premise and patched it onto an inert story about grief, and it was padded-out-to-be-a-feature-length with gratuitous shots of Brit Marling walking and closeups of Brit Marling’s face.



But both Safety Not Guaranteed and Another Earth took young women wrestling with some sort of sadness, stuck them in the lives of these shabby, crazy men hiding out from the world, and they find a sort of romance blossoming with the question of time travel and regrets framing everything or the idea of another earth in space with another you. It’s an okay formula, very good for making a cheap film and aiming it at festivals, but Safety Not Guaranteed was really impeccably written in all aspects, and that made it a great movie, not just another piece of wonky indie stuff that serves as a calling card.

I wrote about why Joachim Trier’s films - Oslo, August 31st and Reprise - are just the best, for The Paris Review Daily. I also get a kick out of how the star of both films, Anders Danielsen Lie, is a doctor in real life, released a concept album about autism, is married to a supermodel, and the couple of films that he’s been in - including one he made as a ten year old that was nominated for an Academy Award - have done wonderfully. Do his friends hate him for being very successful at life?

For those who like to keep score (check Richard Rushfield’s “The Painfully Brief Candle of Modern Auteurs,” a totally fun theory) Trier is now two for two with great films, and I’m really curious as to whether he can keep it up - for two directors that I was very excited about at one point, Wes Anderson and David Gordon Green, their third film was where the seams started showing (Team Rushmore, less The Royal Tenenbaums), and they’ve been up and down ever since, one director sticking to a vision, the other… not. I think it’s different for foreign directors that can get arts funding, however.

I have slight issues with the use of the word “auteur” as an French, chic-sounding catch-all replacement for “film director,” as, contextually, Kael and Sarris-ly, at the least, it referred to seeing a director’s signature even in work-for-hire stuff, when it’s more used willy-nilly these days with relatively visionary directors of any stripe, including writer/directors. Kind of like the evolution of the word “peruse,” which I think means to read thoroughly and carefully in the OED and now is used for indicating that you flipped through something.

Adam Yauch’s death is a massive bummer. Partially because it was cancer, something that has been wreaking havoc on my life, month after month; and just hearing about his cancer diagnosis, it didn’t sound dire, it really didn’t. (My guess is that it was too close to the lymph nodes? But what do I know.) Cancer sucks. It’s not an automatic death sentence, but it definitely is a reminder of the absolute game of chance that rules everybody’s life. Cancer can strike, kill, or be dealt with and how your body responds to it… it’s just a roll of the dice. Which is really hard.

There’s a tendency to talk about disease like “oh, they did X and Y. This is how they sinned, they deserved it.” You talk about it that way because it’s comforting, because then you won’t get a disease. It’s a spell to protect you for the future, but when it comes to cancer, nothing rational applies. All the kale in the world may help, or it may not.

I think you could argue that the Beastie Boys was the undeniable band of my generation, and to know that they won’t be Beastie Grumpy Old Men hits me in the heart. MCA always seemed like the older brother, reminding me of my cousins who had the wisdom and slightly scary affect of age, who were undeniably men with scruff, men who had sex.

I spent three weeks in Stockholm as a teenager, and I made my parents tote a copy of Hello Nasty abroad with them when they met up with me in the last week. I used Yauch’s Buddhism as a lure - “Mom, he’s Buddhist like you and he raps about it! Don’t you want me to be listening to this music?” I had to hang out with an Swedish semi-relative of mine, and we got through that mutual teenage awkwardness when he taped a Beastie Boys interview for me, and we watched it together. The Beastie Boys all made fun of the Swedish interviewer. I laughed a little bit harder than Marcus.

When I interviewed Zoe Kazan for The Exploding Girl, I got to go to the Oscilloscope offices. It was thrilling. I saw some Beasties prizes, Moon Men and Grammys, I thought about when the Beasties used their gigantic platform to talk about respecting women and how exciting that recognition was. I saw an older, still super-cute Adam Horowitz, and he looked like my dude and I was like, sweet. (Ironically, Adam Horowitz and Kathleen Hanna got married for health insurance, which is a situation I understand.) Apparently my VHS of the best of the Beastie Boys videos imprinted on me at a young age.

But I got to talk to The Exploding Girl’s director, Bradley Rust Grey, in Adam Yauch’s office. There were mandalas on the walls. Tokens of the fact that he was a serious Buddhist. The energy in the room was a good place. I felt safe. It reminded me of my mom’s math classroom in high school, where she had put quotes by Rumi and about mindfulness on the walls.

The Beastie Boys defined cool for me when I was a teenager. When they liked something, it was probably worthy. I listened to Ben Lee because of them, and I liked it. They were good tastemakers, and I think part of the reason I veered towards cultural journalism was because I wanted to share that same thrill of discovery of something new, some great way of looking at the world through art or film or whatever.



What Adam Yauch did with Oscilloscope wasn’t unexpected, considering what good taste the Beasties had. But he started a film company around 2008 - when jumping into the fray was pitting yourself as Joan of Arc against the armies - and did a good job of buying up great documentaries and challenging films (The Messenger is wonderful, Oren Moverman is a genius) and some of them even got Oscar nominations. Contextually, studios were killing their indie divisions at the same time and movies would play film festivals and just go off into oblivion. Oscilloscope was very necessary. It still is very necessary. It’s a barometer of a bunch of engaged people with fantastic taste, which is a very good part of Adam Yauch’s legacy.

Still taken from “Give Us Today Our Daily Terror,” Martijn Hendricks, 2008

I have to go to Bodega Bay, California for a wedding in September. Bodega Bay is best known for being the setting of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, although most of the buildings featured in the movie have been torn down. (Tippi Hedren still signs autographs there, though.) It’s the week after a wedding on a farm in the middle of Kentucky bourbon country, which will be fun.

These weddings are the closest thing to a vacation this year. I want to go to Paris, but instead I’ll go to California. Should we try to camp at Big Sur in between weddings? Or just hang out for the week in LA and see whether we can get jobs there? What would you do?