Lorna Irvine passionately explains her fan love-affair with the acclaimed British talent.
Edgar Wright's visual style is instantly recognisable: a retina-molesting, explosive reinvention of the montage, it uses fast edits, whip-pans and extreme close-ups of the mundane juxtaposed with the spectacular, to dazzling effect.
I first became aware of Wright's work when me and my then boyfriend got obsessed with the Paramount Comedy channel in the mid-nineties (We seemed to be in a minority of about twenty, sadly.). Both Asylum and Mash and Peas had his trademark zippy direction and camerawork, but also that daft-clever oddball humour that is typically British.
The former was a launch-pad for Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, nee Stevenson, who played, respectively, a pizza delivery boy and scatty woman into Countdown, trapped in an absurdist-styled asylum populated by odd characters including the likes of Julian Barratt, playing a kind of jazz poet (hmmm- who he?), the latter introduced a bizarre double act, one Matt Lucas and cheeky pal David Walliams, who as Gareth Peas and Danny Mash, essentially parodied Victoria Wood's ''really contrived'' songs and Tony Hart's homo-erotic relationship with caretaker Mr Bennett (it helps at this juncture if you are old enough to remember Hart's kids' TV show Take Hart, which brought mischievous Plasticine hero Morph to our screens, yay).
Success finally appeared in the form of Spaced, which ran for just two series between 1999 and 2001 and was my sitcom- finally, characters I could relate to (at that time I was a dizzy writer who remained unpublished) who lived their lives through the Day-Glo prism of pop culture, signed on, got stupidly hedonistic and fought over the last Jaffa Cake, failing, yet somehow determined that one day, life would amount to something more. It was surreal, goofy, touching and featured the most loveable dysfunctional family I'd ever seen, headed by the will-they won't-they relationship of Tim and Daisy (Pegg and Hynes again, also the co-writers) two friends who faked a romantic relationship in order to share a flat.
What made it so brilliant was not only that I recognised the numerous references (from Evil Dead to Leigh Bowery, via Kia-Ora orange juice adverts) but, unlike the schmaltzy Friends, people didn't have fabulous hair and tans, and things simmered away unresolved. I freely admit crying at the very last episode as the first bars of Lemon Jelly kicked in, feeling a little bereft. It was like losing a friend. It still gets me today- although I've had years of counselling and I'm okay now, I'm fine, honestly (gnashes teeth, bites the curtain).
Wright himself is that rare thing- a witty, likeable man (you won't catch him shouting at Krishnan Guru Murthy in order to sell a movie) with immaculate taste in horror/cult flicks and music: he picked Goblin's Suspiria theme as an antidote to Michael Jackson's Thriller as part of his Hallowe'en playlist for 6 Music a couple of years ago, which is waaaay fucking cool...and also shot music videos for the fabulous Charlotte Hatherley, who he used to date.
The fact that he not only comprehends but embraces all the sub-texts within pop, sci-fi and other stuff once considered 'too low-brow' makes him all the more endearing to a geek-girl like me. He represents the perennial outsider, the ones who got ostracized at school for being weird or different. But, this is all about him not me, and like I say, I'm cool now, I'm fine (chomps maniacally at strands of hair.)
French and Saunders and Murder Most Horrid for the BBC followed Spaced and official Hollywood debut Scott Pilgrim vs the World, based on the legendary graphic novel, ramped up his profile to a whole new worldwide audience in 2010—not bad for a self-confessed geeky lad from Poole in Dorset who once made a film as a kid titled Rolf Harris Saves the World (any further comment would be ill-advised at this stage, methinks.)
Fast-forward to summer 2013 and The World's End, the final part of the Blood and Cornettos trilogy, is due to arrive on the big screen very soon. The trailer is fantastic.
I need not bang on, due to a limited word count and desire not to piss off my editor with hyperbole about the first two: loving homage to Romero zombie flicks Shaun of the Dead (2004) and follow-up, cop/ buddy movie parody Hot Fuzz (2007) but suffice to say, I'm more excited than Spaced's Tim Bisley were he to discover that a Princess Leia lookalike who owns a pub has moved in next-door...
Edgar Wright, you make geeks sexy and I salute you, sir...even if you are a year younger than me, you bastard. It's not stalking if it's an open letter in article form, oui?
www.edgarwrighthere.com/
@edgarwright
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