Everyone's in love with the Hot Fuzz guys. Me included -- and I didn't even get to hang out with them like our Cargill did. *seething jealousy*

Here's the thing: Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright -- they wrote Fuzz together, Pegg stars as supercop Nicholas Angel, and Wright directs -- love movies. I mean really, really love movies. Even the bad ones. They love the idea of movies, love what movies do for us -- remove us from the everyday, give us a chance to kick back and forget our troubles, let us grab some vicarious thrills. You don't need to read the many funny and revealing articles about Fuzz and interviews with the guys as they promote the movie around the U.S. -- though there's a particularly good one in USA Today, of all places. You just need to see their work: whether it's the zombie romantic comedy Shaun of the Dead or the buddy cop action of Fuzz -- or even Wright's fake trailer for Grindhouse, for a "foreign" horror flick called Don't -- it's clear they're making fun of what they love best. There's a possessiveness about their satire that says, "It's okay for us to poke fun at this stuff because we love it, but we'll defend it against anyone who merely trashes it."

Like the rote regurgitation of the Scary Movies. There's no love behind them, nor any understanding of what is so much fun about the movies they're attempting to razz -- they're just throwing eggs, engaging in juvenile and mean-spirited vandalism, almost as if they're jealous of the power of The Movies and would rather destroy it than try to figure it out. The Scary Movies are not for people who truly love movies -- they're for people who go to the movies and then talk on their cell phones or get up in the middle to get more popcorn and make me wonder why the hell they came to the movies in the first place.

But Pegg and Wright get that power in the deep-down way that serious movie fans do, and they know how to appropriate it to make their films not just send-ups of straight-up fare but actually really excellent examples of those genres, too: Shaun of the Dead is one of the best zombie movies ever made, period.

It seems like an obvious thing -- don't all people who make movies love movies? -- but the fact that it bears mentioning means that it isn't, and they don't. Too many movies are just so much hackwork, designed by corporate committee and honed by focus groups and calculated to make as much money as possible by trying to be all things to all people, and usually fail to be anything to anyone. Pegg and Wright would be a blast to hang out with, I suspect, because they are us: they're fans first, and they make movies out of a fan's love, not only of a desire to make a buck. That they make way more than a few bucks with their fannish canoodling anyway says something about the love missing from too many of their competitors.

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us