Edgar Wright Gets Spaced, Part II

Here's the second part of Ed Grant's conversation with Edgar Wright, director the British TV series Spaced, which was just released by BBC Video.

Why all the interest in the series Spaced from America’s reigning pop-culture geeks? Wright says that the program’s appeal comes from its low-key origins. “The show has a daydreaming quality to it. Part of the charm is by seeing these geeks in a nondescript North London suburb acting out parts of American pop culture in an aspirational way,” said Wright. “For example, they’ll mime a big John Woo/De Palma shootout in a mundane suburb where there are no guns.”

The finest British sitcoms, Wright maintains, “tend to brilliantly focus on grotesques like Basil Fawlty, Alan Partridge or [The Office’s] David Brent. Spaced is actually a show about nice people. Not that it’s twee, or Friends, but that’s why it has a following among slackers and geeks. Because it’s like them looking in a mirror.”

As he promotes the DVD of Spaced, Wright is busy on two scripts, one of which is for Marvel’s Ant Man. It’s not going to be a Shaun-like spoof, says Wright. His take on the character? “With Hot Fuzz, our idea was, ‘who is the uncoolest cop in the world?’ The British cop, so let’s make the British cop cool. In the same way, ‘who’s the least cool Marvel character?’ Let’s make Ant Man really fucking cool! It will be funny, but differently funny from Hot Fuzz and Shaun.”--Ed Grant

Posted by Laurence Lerman on August 13, 2008 | Comments (2)