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Edgar Wright & Nick Frost

THE WORLD’S END directed by Edgar Wright, written by Simon Pegg and Wright, with Pegg, Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman and Rosamund Pike. An Alliance Films release. 109 minutes. Opens Friday (August 23). For venues and times, see listings.


Edgar Wright and Nick Frost are chasing the sugar dragon.

Their regular collaborator Simon Pegg wasn’t able to make the Toronto stop of the epic World’s End press tour – which began in England more than a month ago and has been raging ever since – but Wright and Frost are here in the Trump Hotel, snacking on chocolates and espresso and discussing their oeuvre.

“We feel very fortunate that we’ve made three of these films where each time we’ve managed to inject personality and our personal experience into these genre films,” Wright says. “I almost feel like they’re Trojan horses now.”

“By the time people realize, it’s too late,” Frost says. “It’s emotions flooding out of the action scenes.”

“‘Wait, I just got Ken Loached!'” Wright says, laughing and unwrapping another chocolate.

The World’s End is the capper to the unofficial “Cornetto trilogy” Wright and Pegg began with 2004’s Shaun Of The Dead and continued with 2007’s Hot Fuzz. All three films co-star Frost, who’s been an essential member of the Wright-Pegg alliance since their 1999 TV series, Spaced.

Pegg plays a wastrel named Gary King, who at 40 ropes his childhood friends – among them Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman and Eddie Marsan – into recreating a legendary pub crawl in their home town of Newton Haven, only to discover that the town really, really isn’t what it used to be.

“We like to find light and fun even in the darkest material,” Wright says. “A man is running away from therapy and gets two interventions, one from his friends and one from the universe.”

The role of buttoned-down family man Andy was a change of pace for Frost, who tends to play the most irresponsible person in the room.

“I think he defines himself by his responsibility to his family,” Frost says. “You know, why should he be condemned by his wife for working hard? ‘You want a nice house, yet when I work a lot I’m reprimanded for that?’ So he can’t understand why that’s the case, you know.”

“At the start of the movie – and without giving too much away – neither Gary nor Andy is happy,” Wright explains. “But Gary’s solution is to go backwards, whereas Andy is committed to fighting forwards. And that’s the rift. You think at the start that maybe the others are all perfectly happy in their adult lives. But there are very few people in life who are [truly] content. There’s comedy and drama in flawed characters, characters with problems. But everybody has different ways of dealing with it, and everybody finds their own epiphany by the end – in the worst circumstances.”

I wouldn’t dream of revealing those circumstances let’s just say The World’s End uses the idea of English schoolboys growing up to become drones in more than a metaphorical sense. Wright is well aware of the parallel he’s drawing.

“That’s hopefully what good satire is about,” he says. “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers – the 50s one – is so potent that both the left and the right can read into it. And in a slightly similar way, with this you could be on Gary’s side, but you could also maybe be on the baddies’ side as well, for what they’re offering.

“I love comedies, but you watch them and even if they’re really funny you might still have forgotten about them by the time you’ve got back to your car. Hopefully with [our] films, they have things to chew on that you might think about a couple of days later. That’s always the idea.”

Norman Wilner introduces a screening of Wright’s Cornetto trilogy at the Rainbow Market Square tonight (Thursday, August 22). See listings.

Interview Clips

Edgar Wright and Nick Frost on the legend of Gary King:

Download associated audio clip.

Wright on what it means to complete the Cornetto Trilogy:

Download associated audio clip.

Wright and Frost on the way we’ve accepted the idea that our techonology owns us rather than the other way around:

Download associated audio clip.

normw@nowtoronto.com | @wilnervision

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