STUDYING FILMS
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STUDYING HOT FUZZ
Neil Archer
Dedication and acknowledgements
To the film students at Keele, to my colleagues, and (as ever) to G & N.
Thanks also to my editor, John Atkinson, for his relentless enthusiasm.
First published in 2015 by
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Copyright Auteur Publishing 2015
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E-ISBN 978-0-9932384-1-3
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-9932384-0-6 paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9932384-1-3 ebook
Contents
Fig 1: UK poster for Hot Fuzz
Its February 2007, a city in East Anglia. The worst of the English winter is on its way out, and the first sunny inklings of spring are making themselves felt. Every Monday afternoon I catch a bus from outside the Vue cinema, situated in one of the citys shopping centres, on the way to a neighbouring village where I work. While I wait for the bus this particular day, as usual, I browse the cinemas posters and other publicity for new or forthcoming movies. On this Monday I notice, with a significant amount of interest, a large image of the actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, their faces separated by the barrel of a conspicuously large gun, the lower part of the picture emblazoned with the name of their new movie: Hot Fuzz []. I remember thinking how smart and funny this poster was: vulgar and silly, but also somehow perceptive. Of what, exactly, I wasnt sure, but I wanted to work it out.
Superficially, it looked like any other glossy poster or hoarding you saw in a UK cinema that February. But Im sure only this one made me smile. It might have been the surprise of seeing the two slightly shambolic stars of Shaun of the Dead (2004) and the television series Spaced (Channel 4, 19992001) with aviator shades and toothpicks, photographed in a way more familiar from images of Hollywood stars such as Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone. It might also have been the crude, possibly dubious but also clever play on words so confidently placed as the tagline of the image: THEY ARE GOING TO BUST YOUR ARSE. Or maybe, and most of all, it was the sense of seeing such a knowingly imitative, knowingly bombastic image placed somewhere so undramatic, so English, as this East Anglian city, on the road to the Park and Ride, on the way to and from a village with an unpronounceable name. Whatever it was, the seeds of this book were planted at that very moment.
and a first major film role for its lead actor, Simon Pegg. Shaun of the Dead was of course helped along by its very astute titular reference to George Romeros classic Dawn of the Dead (1975), though what was interesting here was not the reference point itself, but the specifically local spin put on it; the unlikely nature of a zombie movie whose hero was called Shaun, let alone one named after him. Shaun of the Dead also made clever use of its setting as part of the publicity drive around the film, putting mock-ups of Peggs eponymous hero, competing for space with blank-eyed zombies, inside Londons phone boxes. This is a publicity practice often informally seen as a desperate publicity bid on the part of hopeless films, but one which here seemed quite apt, given the way the film made use of the same spaces: in this case, various parts of North London, where Shaun was largely filmed and set.
My anticipation of Shaun of the Dead, and my first viewing of it, were in fact mostly shaped by my own memory of living in London (not far, in fact, from the films locations), and my still-regular visits to Kentish Town, where my brother lived, and where I saw the film for the first time. Notably, this was on DVD; though like many other people born after the 1960s, I dont see such an important distinction, in terms of what we still rather vaguely call the cinematic experience, between home viewing and big-screen exhibition. Watching Shaun of the Dead one autumn evening in 2004, with the rattle of the trains passing through Gospel Oak station in the background, joins a long list of cinematic experiences set firmly within the often questionable comforts of various flats, bed-sits and student houses. Significantly, this image from my own memory was one that came back to me when I eventually saw Hot Fuzz; more specifically, in what is for me one of the films defining sequences, when the two policemen played by Pegg and Frost fall asleep over cans of lager and a DVD of Bad Boys II (2003).
My final recollection: its a seasonably warm Wednesday in July, 2013. I am walking down from my house to the Staffordshire town at the foot of the hill. I have a rare free afternoon, the sun is shining, so naturally I head to the local multiplex to see Pacific Rim (2013), in which piloted metallic giants fight massive lizards from another dimension. This particular Vue cinema fits snugly into one of the towns few commercial streets, just up the road from my nearest Morrisons supermarket. I spurn the option to browse for bargain Xbox purchases at the Game store on the corner, and resist the familiar, fragrant lure of McDonalds, deciding instead to go straight in to the coolness of the multiplex concourse. What I see as I enter brings back into mind the two memories Ive just tried, to the best of my abilities, to evoke; as hanging above my head, over the familiar concession stands for buttery popcorn and cheesy nachos, are once again the faces of Pegg and Frost to promote their new film
