A few days ago I did not to go to Area 51 and speak to "Paul" screenwriters/actors Nick Frost and Simon Pegg but I did attend the NYC press conference to talk about the film that opens nationwide tomorrow.Simon Pegg and Nick Frost reunite for the comedy adventure "Paul" as two sci-fi geeks whose pilgrimage takes them to America’s UFO heartland. While there, they accidentally meet an alien who brings them on an insane road trip that alters their universe forever.Here is what they had to say about "Paul."How does 'Paul' compare to some of the other type alien movies that are out?Pegg: I think of all the alien films that have come out recently, and we do seem to be a part of a zeitgeist of alien cinema, I think that Paul is probably the only one who would pass you a joint rather than shoot you in the head. The others seems to be slightly malignant and Paul is the only one that's benevolent.! If you actually encountered an alien here on earth what would you ask them?Frost: I would ask them what they eat and how they prepare it.Pegg: He's a keen chef. I would, I guess, enquire about the secrets of interstellar travel. I mean, they'd have to have overcome an extreme hurdle to get here. That's the thing, I think there's definitely life on other planets, that question. There's more chance of their being life than there is not, if you know what I'm saying, but the thing is that we may never meet because of the distances between our worlds are so enormous.Frost: Maybe he's already here. Maybe he's inside. If the ship landed the doors opened and like a shrimp came out that wouldn't be any weirder than anything written by science fiction.I read in the press notes that prior to penning the script you actually did a road trip throughout the Southwest U.S. and drew a lot of inspiration from that. Can you encapsulate that trip, experience of it and in what ways did those ex! periences inspire you?Pegg: It was the single most important t! hing tha t we did prior to writing the film, making the trip.Frost: It's the only thing we did, too.Pegg: Yeah, that's true. We've traveled around America a lot. We've been to a lot of places in America, but always we've gone airport to airport and we've never driven. It's not until you drive that you realize just how enormous and breathtaking and beautiful and scary and lonely and varied and extraordinary this country is. And the fact that it has so many people in it and you can still go an entire day and not see a soul. A lot of what we experienced on the road in terms of some of the people that we met, some of the adventures that we had went straight into the script. The only thing that didn't happen to us on that trip was meeting the alien. We made that up, I confess. But a bird hit the window. We ran into some sort of scary hunter types at The Little Alien.Frost: We were the only people in The Little Alien before they arrived and we were being quite boisterous like we owned the ! place and then these two guys walked in who looked to be very serious men with kind of hunting suits on. We got quite quiet and went, 'Come on, lets just go.'Pegg: An atmosphere descended on the place, and so, yeah, that was important. When I look back on it now I think it's amazing that we actually considered writing the film without doing that.Frost: Originally, we were going to sit, or I think for the first few hours we sat a little table in the RV and tried to write things and we suddenly became very aware that that was ridiculous. What we needed to do was sit and watch America drift by.Pegg: Look out the window.In watching this I realized that there's a lot of road trip in science fiction. 'Star Wars' is a road trip. 'Star Trek' is a road trip. 'Lost in Space', 'Fantastic Voyage' and I could go on. Would you look at science fiction, that genre, as usually being a road trip movie or having that component somewhere in there?Pegg: I guess that it's a journey into the futu! re itself. The very nature of science fiction is about pioneer! ing into a time that we don't yet know or a technology that we don't yet know. So in that respect it has the momentum of a journey. So, yeah, it is. It's sort of about uncharted territory and that's what the road trip is all about, the sort of voyage of discovery. So in that respect, yeah and it's a metaphor for travel, I guess, science fiction. It's a metaphor for forward movement, forward momentum. For us, it was just about wanting to make 'Easy Rider' and put an alien in it. That was it. The agreement was to make Greg's [Mottola] first film 'Daytrippers', but instead of Liev Schreiber we'd have ET.Frost: Kevin Costner out of 'Fandango'. That's what we wanted to do, I think.And shoot somewhere that had nice weather since you're from England?Frost: Yeah.Pegg: But for some reason we went to New Mexico.Frost: New Mexico has one of the highest incidences of lightning death in the states.Pegg: Although, having said that, we fell in love with that place and we were completely enchanted ! by Santa Fe and New Mexico. It's a very spiritual place and we kind of ended up being slightly sort of dream catcher-y about it.There are so many references in the film. How did you guys go about figuring out what references you were going to put in there, what tributes and were they based on your favorite films and what are those?Pegg: It's more organic than that. We didn't have a checklist of films that we wanted to sort of name. Obviously, we're appealing to our love of 'Close Encounters' and 'ET', but we didn't really set out to make any references. It's just that that's our frame of reference culturally. We grew up on cinema and television and is what we sort of defer to for our metaphors in life, those touchstones. So, the cantina band music in the roadhouse was Greg's idea, I think, and it was entirely that thing of, like, we're in a situation where strangers are going into a sort of bar which is a bit unnerving and the first thing that springs to mind is that scene ! in 'Star Wars'. So we had the Dixie Band play the cantina band! music.F rost: And with Sigourney, as well. I mean, you've got Sigourney Weaver onboard and I think we all three had that conversation, like, 'Well, lets see if we can get it in somewhere we she says, "Get away from her, you bitch."' She was amazing, but in particular we were up in the ski basin in Santa Fe, the three of us and Blythe [Danner] and Sigourney we're all standing around and Sigourney was giving Blythe a line reading about how to do it, and I think that for all three of us that's one of those moments that you think, 'What an amazing job we've got.'Pegg: Then Sigourney had started telling a story about how James Cameron had only given her one take at that moment. So that 'Get away from her, you bitch' you've seen in 'Aliens' was the one time that she got to do it because she was like, 'I could've done it differently.' And we were like, 'What?!' That's like the most iconic delivery of a line in cinema history.Frost: I think as well as us putting references into the script t! here are also other references that he leaves his lovely imprint and his homage's to [Steven] Spielberg and 'Duel'.The scene where Paul eats a live bird, how did that come about? Also, Simon, are you going to be doing the sequel to 'Star Trek' and can you elaborate on the 'Mission Impossible' film?Frost: With Paul eating the live bird, again, working with the idea that Paul has been around and perhaps helping with the film industry and the television industry for the last twenty or thirty kind of years, it was our chance to get to reference to 'V'. So, in 'V' when you see, is it Robert Englund â€"Pegg: It's that women, isn't it?Frost: Yes. So, when you see her eating a dead bird it's because Paul eats birds. So it was a little reference to 'V'.Pegg: Also, he brings it back to life. We wanted the majesty of his healing powers to be wondrous and then he just suddenly eats it and we loved the idea of him eating a dead bird is horrible. Then immediately you think, 'Yeah, he's r! ight,' and then you go, 'Hang on. We eat chicken all the time.! Of cour se we eat dead birds.' That was the joke. We had Paul having this wondrous moment of using his resurrection powers and then suddenly he just eats it.Frost: What's also funny is when you write that you just think, 'Oh, that's easy. We'll just shoot it and that'll be that,' but when you come to film that kind of thing and you work out that there are laws here that you cannot show an indigenous bird being eaten you have to kind of find a bird that's not indigenous to the states. What did we use? Like a Dutch Starling, I think we used. Something weird.Pegg: All I know about 'Star Trek' is that it's being written and they're very happy with how that's going. I think there's a lot of excitement at Bad Robot about the forthcoming script, but I know nothing of it and I'm just about to finish 'Mission Impossible'.Can you comment on how at the end of this film Paul seems to be the most human of all the characters, helping everyone to be better humans?Pegg: Yeah. I mean, the joke of th! e film is that the least alien person in the movie is the alien. He's kind of the most at ease with himself. He's the most sort of relaxed, the most sort of well adjusted, the smartest guy and he's the alien. Graeme and Clive are the aliens. They're the ones that have come over from a different land into this different world. Ruth is an alien in that she's lived this very cloistered life and suddenly the universe has opened up to her. Everybody is in some way alien and Paul is the catalyst that helps them come to terms with that. We just thought that was a really interesting idea, that our alien hero was actually more human than they were. He's like a cross between E.T. and Bill Hicks.Frost: I like that.Can you talk about when 'At World's End' was coming and if it depends on what Edgar Wright directs next?Pegg: I think that 'At World's End' was the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' sequel that came out a few years ago. I don't know. Me and Edgar are going to try to get together an! d write our third thing. Whether or not it's called that I don! 't know, as soon as we can, basically. Edgar is now finished with his 'Scott Pilgrim' promotion. As we speak he's just finished promoting in Japan and so he's going to have some time, hopefully after 'Mission Impossible' I'll have some time so that we can sit down and get the ball rolling and hopefully turn it over slightly quicker than normal. We've written two films together now. So this should maybe not take as long as 'Shaun' and 'Hot Fuzz' did. And of course Nick will be involved from the beginning. So it's just a question of logistics and practicality and timing, but we're so ready to do it.In the film and the script there's a strong emphasis on Darwinism over creationism and how close minded Kristen Wiig's character is at first. Why did you think it was important to emphasize that?Pegg: I think it's mainly because we were interested comedically in the idea of someone having their world view altered completely. In order to do that we had to have Ruth's particular faith be at t! he very extreme end of Christianity, the literal interpretation of the bible because by Paul's very appearance that is then called into question and that opens up the whole comedy of her trying to swear. We're not trying to tell anyone how to think. I grew up in a cathedral school. I had religious people around me as a kid. They all had great senses of humor. We kind of like to assume that everyone has a sense of humor and comedy is an arena where you can rehearse ideas that might not be comfortable to you in the real world. It's like a roller coaster. You can experience fear and know you're not going to do die. This is a really interesting idea. If an alien came down to earth we would have to question, all of us would have to question what we believe about the universe because Paul has his creation stories as well. I'm sure that his people have their creation stories.Frost: That's not something that we did lightly as we were writing. We had to think about this and take it ! seriously and not be flippant about it. Then as writers, if yo! u start to censor yourself about certain things then where does that stop. I think it's more insulting to Christians to imagine that they wouldn't have a sense of humor.Pegg: Everything has to be on the table comedically, as well. As long as you're in a position to talk about it, like, if you've experienced it, it should be joked about. If there is a God and he did create us he sure as hell gave us a sense of humor. So it's an insult to him not to use it.Can you talk about putting the sexual tension into the movie?Frost: Did you say sexual tension? I guess you felt that sexual tension.Pegg: It's funny that Graeme Clive were like a married couple almost. They're very codependent and I think that Kristen, Ruth and Paul present themselves as threats to that because Clive is very jealous of Graeme's relationship with Paul at first. Then they finally break the ice together and share a cigarette because they go through that very physical moment when Paul gives Clive his knowledge.Frost: I! t's something that we've done in the past as well, as mates, like, if he talks about a girl which means that I get moody about it, just joking and then he does the same.Pegg: I have friends that Nick, if I talk about them then Nick gets angry and it's similar. There's some guy that Nick hangs out with called Danny and I'm sick of hearing about him.Frost: He's just a mate.Pegg: He's not. He's more than a friend. I just don't like him.Frost: You'd like him. He's cool. He does things that you won't do.Spielberg was mentioned earlier. Simon, can you talk about working with him on and do you plan on screening this film for him at some point?Pegg: Well, both Nick and I worked on 'Tintin' because Nick and I play the Thompson Twins, almost identical detectives.Frost: It's going to be the first time ever that we weigh the same.Pegg: Albeit in the performance capture world which is an amazing technology and was great to work with that, but not only that. Also, with Steven. It was in ! making 'Tintin' that we talked about 'Paul' with him. I showed! him a p icture on my phone of us with the E.T., with the alien head bust that we took on our road trip with us and he goes, 'Wait. What is that?' I said, 'We're making this movie about this alien called Paul who you've had a direct hotline to over the years and he gave you the idea for "E.T." and "Close Encounters",' and he's like, 'I love that.' He started riffing on the idea and he said, 'Maybe I could be in the film. Maybe I could do like a [cameo],' and we were like, 'Did you just say that?' Then we really started to laugh at the idea of Steven Spielberg literally phoning in a cameo. So I emailed him a little later and I said, 'You remember that said to us? You did say it because we taped it and legally you're obliged to go through with it,' and he's the coolest guy. He loves making films. He liked the idea. Of course he will see it because he's very much a part of it, not least because it's a tribute to him, but because he's in it.When do you think he'll see it?Pegg: Well, if h! e's around next week for the premiere then hopefully he'll come to that.Frost: It's quite nerve racking.Pegg: When Greg had to direct him he forgot to say action. Steven was at the mike going, 'Can I start?'Can you guys talk more about yourselves as aliens, whether in this movie or in real life as Brits and how you've coordinated the clash of the British and the American sense of humor? Also, can you talk about getting such a great American cast for this?Frost: There is a percentage of us in Graeme and Clive. Even though we're not the nerdiest, geekiest people in the world, sometimes â€" we call them normal sometimes â€" if regular people could hear us it'd really like that thing of, 'What are they saying? What language are they speaking?'Pegg: We do have big, nerdy elements to our characters and we do love our science fiction and we're not quite as sort of low functioning as Graeme and Clive are at first because they literally live in their own world. But in some respects ! I think we've taken our experiences in coming over here to Ame! rica and working and doing our press tours and meeting people over here, we've taken those experiences and put them into Paul. Sometimes it's easier to forget that we're foreigners. We speak the same language and so we just have this kind of natural feeling like we're related or that Britain is an extension of America in some way. It's not. We're different countries and we are foreigners here. Sometimes we feel extremely integrated and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we feel, like, 'God, they really think we're foreign.' I remember when we were in Austin once and we were having breakfast. Nick asked the waiter for some buh'er and the waiter said, 'Pardon me?' Nick said, 'Can I get some buh'er for my toast here?' 'What?' Then Nick had to go, 'Butter.'Frost: He's talking about the differences in languages, but tuna, trying to order a piece of tuna or a tuna fish sandwich is like, 'What?' and you actually have to say 'Tuuunna.' There are points where you do go, 'Oh, we're different. We'r! e in a foreign country.'Pegg: From that I think we extrapolate the fact that we are very lucky in the United Kingdom because we have this huge annex of potential in America and that we can show our stuff to you because you understand it. There are great movies that come out of France, Sweden, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Scandinavia that don't really get scene over here because of the subtitles thing and because people are less likely to want to read a film than to watch it. So we have that huge potential whereby our films are considered for the Oscars and they're still foreign films. 'The King's Speech' is a foreign film. It should've been in the Foreign Film category, but it's not and it won the Best Picture, for better or for worse. So we're very lucky in that respect and it enables us to make a film like Paul and share our sense of humor with you and our senses of humor aren't all that different. We find the same things funny. There are tiny differences in the way ! that we use humor. Socially, I think that British people tend ! to be a little dryer just because we're a little more ashamed of ourselves than you guys are.Frost: We're ashamed of our emotions.Pegg: We're ashamed of our emotions and you guys are much more prone to emoting and not being frightened of that. You clap louder. You cheer louder. You cry more. You laugh louder. We're like, 'I'm afraid that everyone you know is dead.' 'Okay.'Frost: 'Oh, well. Onwards and upwards.'Pegg: On chat shows here, if you mention like, 'I was going through Idaho the other day,' there's someone who will go, 'Well, yeah! Yeah! I've seen Idaho on a map!' Whereas I'll see Americans on British chat shows and they'll say something and they'll look to the audience like, 'Why aren't they clapping? I just mentioned the place name.' But it's because we have different approaches to our emotions and I love the openness of America. I'd much prefer to watch a film with an American audience because they're more collaborative.Frost: When we watched the premiere for 'Paul' there! were a couple of beats where we thought, 'Ah, this is going to get a big cheer, a big laugh,' and there was nothing at all. I was sitting next to someone and I said to them, 'America will like it more.' There are certain jokes that are for American audiences primarily.Pegg: So that's the only difference, I think. And you see that in Graeme and Clive in the way that they're sort of response to Paul is very restrained and they learn to open up. Paul teaches them to be not just more human, but kind of more American as well.Frost: Just to talk about your second point about the American cast. We have a giant wish list of people that we want to work with and because of 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' and Greg and 'Superbad' that kind of gives you a little calling card which means potentially now people who we really want to work with will maybe get our script and it won't just get to their agent and be binned or shredded. So it's always nice to have a wish list of the best pe! ople you can possibly have and we were very lucky to get them ! and to h ave an opportunity to work with American us's, so to speak.Pegg: We ticked off a large portion of that wish list with this film, particularly with Jason [Bateman], Bill [Hader], Kristen, Joe [Lo Truglio] in terms of the comedic…and Seth [Rogen]. I can honestly say that I forget Seth's in the film because I just see Paul now. I genuinely forget that Seth is in the movie. He did such an amazing job with his character. I was coming back from the premiere in London and I was sitting in the car thinking about everybody and thinking how amazing it was that we'd finally got there and had our premiere and I was thinking, 'Who did I miss tonight? Someone wasn't there that I really wanted to see and speak to? Oh, it was Paul,' and he's never existed.Frost: And also it's a challenge to have this kind of talent. John Carroll Lynch. It's like, 'That's John Carroll Lynch.' What an amazing actor. There were lots of times that me and Simon would go off into a little corner and say, 'We ha! ve to start bringing the heat or else we're very in trouble.' You have to bring your A game. So working with these people is a real challenge and it was a real challenge to us to be good and to not sit back and think, 'Well, lets not sit back and do the same old â€"' excuse my language 'shit that we did in "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz".' It keeps you on your toes and I think that's important, not just in film, but in life, to challenge yourself and to move forward and not stay the same. PAUL opens March 18, 2011.Source: LatinoReview
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