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I Was Always Luke Because I Had Blond Hair, And My Mate Stu Was Han. Han Was The Cool One. The Jedi Were Never The Cool Ones.

-Simon Pegg

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I Was Always Luke

Simon Pegg

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I Was Always Luke Because I Had Blond Hair, And My Mate Stu Was Han. Han Was The Cool One. The Jedi Were Never The Cool Ones.

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As A Kid, I Was A Huge Fan Of Movies And Acting. My Mom Was In The Sort Of Community Theater, And I Always Hung Around Down There, And I Was A Massive Fan Of Everything I'm Kind Of Involved In Now. But Fairly Ordinary And Cheeky.

I Like To Work In Films, But I'd Love To Work In The Technical Side Of Film. I'd Love To Work With, Say, Greg Nicotero [the Walking Dead] In Kind Of, Like, Special Makeup Effects. I'd Probably Say, "good With Clay And Latex." Although I Don't Know What Kind Of Job That'd Get Me.

Being A Geek Is Extremely Liberating

When You Go Into A Movie And You're Surprised By It - These Days With Brand Recognition Being Such An Important Thing And Essentially Trailers, The Way Trailers Have Evolved Encouraging People Not To See The Film Unless They've Already Seen The Film Which Is Kind Of The Paradox Of Marketing These Days Anytime That You Enjoy Genuine Sense Of Wonder And Surprise In The Movies It's Priceless.

Now There's A Whole Generation Of Filmmakers Who Grew Up Making Their Own Films With Video Cameras, And Have Dined Entirely On A Diet Of Popular Culture. It's Been Reflected In A Lot Of Their Work. It's Self-reflective, It's Quite Knowing, But It's Very Literate.

Rory Is Very Established In England, Which You Are Seeing Right Now With Bond. But His Father Roy Kinnear Was A Very, Very Beloved Comedy Actor Here In The Uk. And Rory Actually Even Looks A Bit Like His Dad. And So It Makes A Lot Of Sense To Me That Rory Has Such Good Comic Chops Because It's In His Blood. He's Very, Very Funny As Sean.

There Are Actually Quite High Profile British Tv Star Cameos In It That You Probably Wouldn't Even Notice, That The British Wouldn't Even Notice, Let Alone The American Audience.

When Men Write Women, They Tend To Write Women The Way They Want Women To Be, Or The Way They Resent Women For Being. They Don't Really - They Seldom Nail It. It Takes A Woman To Write A Really Good Female Character. I Like That.

I Do Get Very Angry At Things. My Wife Has To Count To Ten Because If She Gets Annoyed At Me Being Annoyed, Then I Get Annoyed At Her Being Annoyed At Me Being Annoyed.

I Lived In The Cultural Equivalent Of Tatooine When I Was A Little Boy. I Didn't Live In London, I Didn't Live Right In The Middle Of Where Everything Was Happening, I Lived On The Very Edge Of It.

Sometimes You Just Wish You Could Make A Film And Then Have It On Dvd So You Can See Your Mom. But, No, I've Never Really Had That Moment. Not Really. Not Seriously.

Nira Park, Who Is My Longtime Producer And Friend - I've Know Her Since We Did Spaced, The Tv Show - She Gave Me This Script The Last Day Of Filming The World's End. She Said, "take A Look At This. It's Filming In London Next Year, And You Might Like To Look At Jack." I Trust Nira Implicitly.

Films Used To Be About Challenging, Emotional Journeys Or Moral Questions That Might Make You Walk Away And Re-evaluate How You Felt About... Whatever. Now We're Walking Out Of The Cinema Really Not Thinking About Anything, Other Than The Fact That The Hulk Had A Fight With A Robot.

Bill Hicks Wasn't Just A Comic, He Was A Crusader Against Humanity's Relentless Capacity To Underachieve

A Movie Is A Creative Process From Its Conception, Through Its Writing, To Its Execution, To The Editing. I Think With The Best Films There Is Some Kind Of Contribution From One Person All The Way Through That. The Best Films Are Made By People Who Write, Direct, And Edit, So There's Continuity.

There Are Some Incredible Television Shows. It Seems A Sort Of Succumbed Place To Be. At The Moment, I'm Quite Happy Sort Of Flitting From Place-to-place. I Wouldn't Want To Relocate From Where I Am Right Now In Terms Of Where I Live.

I Love My Job Very Much, And I Don't Think I Would Change It. In Fact, I Know I Wouldn't, Because I Can't Do Anything Else.

Happiness Is Where You Start From Rather Than Where You Go. God, I Sound Like Yoda.

The Nuts And Bolts Of Shooting A Film And Writing A Film Are Still Really Difficult. But What Makes It Easier Is The Fact That You Know You're Going To Go To Work With Your Best Mate.

Spoilers Are Cowardly. They're Just People Who Want To Anesthetize Themselves Against The Tension And The Experience That The Director And The Artist Have Set Up. If You Go In There Knowing What's Going To Happen, It's Like Reading The Last Page Of The Book. It's Just Cowardly.

I Think I Would Probably Be He-man Because Battle Cat Would Clinch The Deal For Me Because I've Always Wanted A Large, Green Cat.

We've Kind Of Grown Up In A Post-star Wars Era, And What Star Wars Did To Cinema, In Terms Of An Explosion Of That Kind Of Blockbuster Culture. It's Thrown Up A Generation Of Geeks. With The Evolution Of Computer Games And The Internet, That's All Impacted On Us As A Generation, And Affected The Creative Element Of That Generation Enormously. So Whereas The Different Schools Of Filmmaking...

We Might Not Know We Are Seeking People Who Best Enrich Our Lives, But Somehow On A Deep Subconscious Level We Absolutely Are. Whether The Bond Is Temporary Or Permanent, Whether It Succeeds Or Fails, Fate Is Simply A Configuration Of Choices That Combine With Others To Shape The Relationships That Surround Us. We Cannot Choose Our Family, But We Can Choose Our Friends, And We Sometimes, Before We Even Meet Them.

Like Behind The Car Or In The Pub, To Do A Scene, A Proper Nice Dramatic Scene, It's Always A Treat. And They're Usually Shot As One, So You've Got A Big Chunk Of Dialogue To Learn, And You Feel Like You're Working.

We Are Never More Creative Than When We Are At Odds With The World And There Is Nothing So Artistically Destructive As Comfort. Princess Leia Taught Me That.

Suddenly, The World I Had Scrutinised For So Long Was All Around Me, As If I Had Leaned Forward And Climbed Into The Television Like Alice Through The Looking-glass. I Had No Idea Just How Deep The Rabbit Hole Would Go.

My Worst Job Was Packing Animal Feed In A Warehouse In Gloucestershire When I Was A Student. It Was A Very Strange Environment. It Was Hung Heavy With Oat Dust, The Place Was Infested With Mice, And Everyone Who Worked There Was Over 60, And I Was 18. It Was Crazy. Apologies To Anyone Who Works In Animal-feed Packing Industry And Loves It.

If I Was A Supervillain, I Think I'd Probably Ban All Smoking And Drinking. That's Exactly What I'd Do: I'd Remove All The Cigarettes And Alcohol From The World. That Would Piss So Many People Off. That's Worse Than, Like, Murdering Puppies. For Some People.

We Don't Watch The Film Anymore Because We've Seen It So Many Times, So We'll Introduce It, Walk Out And We'll Come Back In Right About When I Wake Up In The Morning And Walk Over To The Shop And Everything's Changed.

It Wasn't Until A Year Later, When A Young Woman With Danish Pastries On Either Side Of Her Head Knelt Down In Front Of A Walking Dustbin To Record An Important Message, That Love Truly Came To Town." - P 16 [re: Princess Leia]

Plainly It Isn't An Exact Science, Despite It Being A Complex Interaction Of Micro-decisions And Corresponding Thought; Perhaps It Doesn't Always Work And We Pass By Some Potential Soulmates Like The Proverbial Ships In The Night, Never Quite Connecting. Then Again, Perhaps The System Is Tenacious And Continues To Run Like A Computer Program On Infinite Loop, So That If At First You Don't Meet, You Are Drawn Back Together For Another Try.

I've Appeared In Those Kind Of Films And Have Great Fun Doing It, And I'm Always Up For A Challenge. I Think With Things Like Mission: Impossible And Star Trek, Those Things Are Such An Ensemble, It's Not Like I'm Ethan Hunt. I'm Benji. I'm The Guy That Does The Computer Business. I Know My Place.

I Realized That If I Went Snowboarding, You Can't Think Of Anything Else When You're Snowboarding. You Can't Hesitate Or Think About Anything Other Than Not Falling Off And Breaking Your Neck. If You Want A Holiday Where You're Not Gonna Think About Work And You're Not Gonna Think About Anything, Snowboarding Is The Best Way To Do It. Or Skiing, I Guess. I Don't Ski, So I Don't Know.

The Worst And The Best That The Internet Ever Did Was Give Everybody A Voice.

Being A Geek Is All About Being Honest About What You Enjoy.

I Hesitate To Say I Was The Class Clown, But That Was Kind Of How I Interacted With Other Kids In School, And I Very Much Appreciated The Responses I Got. The Validation Of Laughter Is Often A Very Heavy Psychological Balm.

The Simple Fact Is That What You See On The Screen Is Pretty Much Real.

This Idea Of Popular Culture Became Something That Belonged To Us Rather Than Something That We Looked At From Far Away. We Realized We Could Be Part Of It And Create It, Instead Of Just Being Consumers Only.

We Realised That It Was Important To Embrace This Popcorn Logic, That It Works, That It's Funnier When You Fire 20 Rounds From One Tiny Pistol. Then It Becomes The Joke, It's Funnier When You Pay Less Attention.

In The Most Basic Terms It Was About How When We Experience Art Without Critical Awareness We Consent To The Ideas Being Promoted, Either Intentionally Or Unintentionally, By The Filmmaker. For Instance, If You Watch A Racist Comedian And Laugh At His Jokes, You Are Consenting To The Prejudices Inherent Within Them. Similarly, If You Watch A Movie Which Perpetuates Conventional Ideas About Race, Gender, Etc., You Are Consenting To Them And Not Affecting Change In Any Way.

It's Why I Get Miffed At All The Dashing Around In Recent Zombie Films. It Completely Misses The Point; Transforms The Threat To A Straightforward Physical Danger From The Zombies Themselves, Rather Than Our Own Inability To Avoid Them And These Films Are About Us, Not Them. There's Far More Meat On The Bones Of The Latter, Far More Juicy Interpretation To Get Our Teeth Into. The First Zombie Is By Comparison Thin And One Dimensional And Ironically, It Is Down To All The Exercise.

The Trouble With Addiction Is That You Can Park The Car But You Can Never Switch Off The Engine Or Stop Yourself From Hearing The Revs.

One Thing That Irritates Me Is When People Kind Of Make Assumptions.

Often You Read Something About Yourself, And Either You've Been Ironic, And That Doesn't Work In Print, Or It Paraphrases Something That You Said, And Has A Different Meaning.

I've Only Played Two Sort-of Slackers, In Spaced And In Shaun Of The Dead. They're Different People, But They Have The Same Kind Of Everyman Quality, Particularly As A Twentysomething.

If I Did A Tv Show, It Would Have To Be In North London Because I'm A Bit Of A Homebody, And My Work Takes Me Away From Home Enough. But Yeah Absolutely. Television Has Never Been More Exciting Than It Is Now.

Unfortunately The Necessity To Promote A Film Sometimes Works Against It, In That You Are Forced To Reveal Information [about It] That In An Ideal World You Would Hold Back.

I Was The Naughty Kid That The Teachers Liked. I Bullied A Kid In The 1st Year When I Was In The 2nd, Who Then Hit Puberty Like A Plane Crash And Grew Into A Gorilla Who Bullied Me When He Was In The 4th Year And I Was In The 5th. That's Karma.

I Defy Anybody To Not Look Cool With The Guns. My Granny Could Look Cool Doing That!

If There Is No Fate And Our Interactions Depend On Such A Complex System Of Chance Encounters, What Potentially Important Connections Do We Fail To Make? What Life Changing Relationships Or Passionate And Lasting Love Affairs Are Lost To Chance?

Ultimately, We Are All Products Of The Experiences We Have And The Decisions We Make As Children, And It Remains A Peculiar Detail Of Human Condition That Something As Precious As The Future Is Entrusted To Us When We Possess So Little Foresight. Perhaps That's What Makes Hindsight So Intriguing. When You're Young The Future Is A Blank Canvas, But Looking Back You Are Always Able To See The Big Picture.

Decisions We Make

You Know What, Despite My Complaints About The Phantom Menace And Episode Ii, When Episode Iii Comes Out I'll Be First In Line. I Genuinely Love It.

It's Hard, Really, To Make Any Physical Movement That Hasn't Been Done In Another Film. If You Grab Someone's Hand, It Doesn't Mean You're Referencing Other Films With Grabbing Hands...

The Revolution Of Video Had A Massive Affect. We Grew Up In A Time Where Suddenly You Could Own Films. Before, They Had A Theatrical Run, And Then Perhaps They'd Come Back, Or You'd Catch Them In A Retro Cinema.

That's Always Important To Us, Is Being Truthful. Not Guessing, Not Making Any Assumptions. Just Coming At It With Knowledge.

I Think We All Mistake Certain Things For Happiness. I Think We Mistake Comfort For Happiness And We Mistake Pleasure For Happiness, And Entertainment For Happiness, When Really These Are Just Things We Use As Proxies For Our Happiness. We Use Them To Cheer Us Up Or Try And Achieve Brief Happiness, When Really Happiness Is Something Much More Profound And Long Lasting And Exists Within Us.

Chris Martin's A Good Friend Of Mine. I'm Actually Apple's Godfather. He's An Old Friend And We've Been Mates For Quite A Few Years Now.

I'm Simply Saying That Our Deepest Thoughts, Desires And Preoccupations Manifest Themselves In Art, Whether We Intend Them To Or Not. That's What Art Is For; It's Not Cerebral, It's Emotional.

When You Meet People That You Know From Other Films - As Often Happens To Me, And As Tends To Happens To You When You're An Actor, You Constantly Meet People That You've Seen In Other Films. But When It's People Who've Kind Of Had A Seismic Effect On Your Life, It's Quite Extraordinary.

The Trouble With Improv Is That It Is Often About Being Funny In The Moment Without Any Real Consideration For The Bigger Picture.

I Think The Jokes Would Have Been A Bit Broader And A Bit More Obvious In Terms Of The Day-to-day Of Country Life.

Doctor Who Was A Big Part Of My Childhood So It Was A Great Honour To Be In It.

I Just Love Listening To The Laughter.

I Think That The Joke And The Ghost Story Both Have A Similar Set Up In That You Kind Of Set Something Up And Pay It Off With A Laugh Or A Scare.

When You're A Student And You Just Want Some Money To Feel Like You're An Adult, You'll Pretty Much Do Anything Within Reason.

There Seems To Be This Tendency Toward Denigrating Romantic Comedies As Of Late Because It Becomes Something Sort Of Cheesy Or Whatever. Whereas This Embraced What It Was. As A Fan Of When Harry Met Sally Or Annie Hall, As A Demonstration Of What Romantic Comedy Could Be And Should Be, I Immediately Phoned Nira Back And Said, "yeah, I'd Like To Do This. It'll Be Fun."

There's This Thing Of You Can Live In A City And Be Completely Alone, Not Notice Anything Going On Around You.

I Was Always Luke Because I Had Blond Hair, And My Mate Stu Was Han. Han Was The Cool One. The Jedi Were Never The Cool Ones.

I Think At Its Best The American Sense Of Humor Is The Same As The British Sense Of Humor At Its Best, Which Is To Be Wry And Ironic And Self Deprecating.

A Biological Agent, I’ll Buy. Some Sort Of Super-virus? Sure, Why Not. But Death? Death Is A Disability, Not A Superpower. It’s Hard To Run With A Cold, Let Alone The Most Debilitating Malady Of Them All.

If One Of Your Best Friends Is Making A Star Wars Movie, You're Not Gonna Not Abuse That Privilege. I Defy Anybody To Say Otherwise!

The Only Thing That Would Deter Me At The Moment Would Be The Idea Of Doing One Thing For A Very Long Time. There Is No Doubt In My Mind That Television Is An Incredibly Auspicious Medium Right Now. It's Where A Lot Of The Serious Acting Is Taking Place.

It's A Fun World To Exist In, And I Relish Doing Those Movies As Much As I Do The Smaller Ones. They're Always Immense Fun. I Don't Know If I Am - Unless We Do A Benji Film, I Don't Think I Am An Action Hero Really.

Also, If You Watch The Film Once, There Are Lots Of Things That You Won't Get Because There Are Punch Lines In The First Act, The Setup To Which Isn't Until The Second Act.

Jewish Comedians Do The Best Jewish Jokes, And Anyone Else Doing That, They Don't Have A Right To, Because They're Not Coming From That Experience. I Know That's A Slightly Heightened Example, But It's The Same Thing. We're Bumpkins, So We Can Make Bumpkin Jokes.

Being A Geek Is All About Being Honest About What You Enjoy And Not Being Afraid To Demonstrate That Affection. It Means Never Having To Play It Cool About How Much You Like Something. It’s Basically A License To Proudly Emote On A Somewhat Childish Level Rather Than Behave Like A Supposed Adult. Being A Geek Is Extremely Liberating.

The Main Jokes In This Film Are About Big Things, Love And Life And Zombies - We All Get That.

American Audiences Tend To Be More Expressive Than British Ones.

Having Done Spaced, I Can't Even Remember It Being That Difficult On Spaced, But We Know What The End's Going To Be Like. We Know Why We're Putting In This Amount Of Work, Or Why A Shot Might Be Particularly Tricky, Because We Know That What We Do Is Create A Whole Package. It's The Writing, The Performances, And The Style Of Camerawork, That's What We're Working Toward, And We're Prepared For That.

Films That Rely On Their Cast To Be Funny Are Often Episodic And Feel Like A Series Of Loosely Connected Sketches Rather Than A Satisfyingly Structured Script.

I Used To Lie In Bed In My Flat And Imagine What Would Happen If There Was A Zombie Attack.

You Grow Up Watching Certain Films Or Admiring Certain Filmmakers, And To Write A Love Letter To One And Have Them Validate It, It's Extraordinary.

I Mean, Yeah, I'm Sure That Python And The Other Things Have Paved The Way For A Greater Understanding Of The British Sense Of Humor, But I Don't Think It's All That Different Than The American Sense Of Humor.

Being A Geek Means You Never Have To Play It Cool About How Much You Like Something.

The Thought Of Filming In London Was A Big Draw Because I Could Stay In My House. I Read It, And I Was Really Taken With It Because It Felt At Once Very Unapologetic For What It Was, Which Is A Romantic Comedy. But At The Same Time, A Little Spiky And A Little Truthful.

Every Person Should Have Their Escape Route Planned. I Think Everyone Has An Apocalypse Fantasy, What Would I Do In The Event Of The End Of The World, And We Just Basically - Me And Nick - Said What Would We Do, Where Would We Head?

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