“The World’s End” with Wright and del Toro

At the Toronto Premiere of Edgar Wright’s latest movie, “The World’s End”, Inner Space’s Teddy Wilson introduced not only the director, but also surprise host, Guillermo del Toro.

It was clear that the two knew and respected each other’s work. In fact, del Toro also hosted the Scott Pilgim’s BluRay release. So they dove right into a discussion of both the technical and thematic aspects of the movie and the Cornetto  (or Blood and Ice Cream) Trilogy as a whole. However, as both are prone to tangents, this article does reorder some of the discussion. While much of what they covered is spoilers, I’ve separated out the few non-spoiler bits, for those who haven’t yet seen the movie.

The film was shot in 12 weeks, and shot in sequence. del Toro said it was the most technically complex of the trilogy, which Wright agreed with saying it was a combination of action scenes and “dinner table” scenes with people sitting around a table, talking. These scenes are difficult because of the number of eye lines involved.

Wright and del Toro spent a lot of time discussing the budget, and how to convince studios that certain things are needed. Wright commented that the budget had originally been for twice as much, with del Toro interrupting saying that “It’s a marvel since …everything from the script [that he’d read two years ago] was there, if not more deranged…I didn’t see anything compromised.”

del Toro has a theory that no one at the studio reads the budget, they just look at the numbers. If the bottom line numbers don’t change, then they don’t care.

Wright continued that the trick is to get the budget approved and then sneak things back in and justify the expense. For this film ALL the money is on the screen.

One way to keep the money on screen, Wright discussed, was that he had a crew that was “really behind it, so he can push them to the limit.” He did one stretch of 20 days straight with him sometimes covering the second unit. The shoot started in October and ended in December “for the last bit we didn’t see daylight”.

Now for the Spoilerish discussion (I really do recommend seeing the movie before reading.)

del Toro enthused about the fact that “they don’t save the world.” (I warned you it was spoilerish!) The lesson being isn’t to recapture the past but to lose your youth and accept the world. This lead to the most tweeted comment of the evening: “Success is fucking up on your own terms.”

Wright said he wanted to explore the perpetual adolescent, as exemplified by Gary King, (Simon Pegg), “you don’t want to be that guy who peaked at 18”.

del Toro later expanded upon it, “Make mistakes but learn and become more you, not someone else.” del Toro tied it to directing. “Scott Pilgrim is one of my favourite movies. Some directors, I won’t mention names, who fail then over correct to ‘normal’. But after Scott Pilgrim, you went F.U. and went to something crazier.”

Back to Gary, the studio fought the opening scene when it’s revealed that Gary is telling the story of the best night of his life to a support group. Wright said, “Gary needs to be a timebomb.” He likens his style of story-telling to Trojan horses, smuggle in relationships and tackle the thornier issues within comedy.

Wright discussed how the idea for this film arose. When he was 21 he wrote a script about a pub crawl, but didn’t do anything with it. For a while, in London, he and Simon Pegg used to go to a local pub called The World’s End, and he’d always found it kind of odd and funny to say “I’ll meet you at the World’s End.” Another of thematic strands fell into place while they were filming “Hot Fuzz.” It was shot in Wright’s home town and a few times they had to digitally remove McDonald’s and Starbucks. So he was thinking about the “Starbuckization” of his birthplace.

A final thread behind the film was alcohol as a time travel device, a form of regression. Gary King never left alcohol, while during the pub crawl his friends slowly revert back toward their teenage selves.

Wright found that it’s easier to blame an alien invasion for the young getting old, for your home town changing, than to accept that maybe the hometown wasn’t what you thought it was.

del Toro mentioned that “going back is a losing proposition”. But del Toro really enjoyed the argument for complete imperfection. He asked Wright, “Did you find yourself less worried about this film being perfect?”

“No” was the short answer, but Wright continued describing that this film “more than “Shaun of the Dead” is a pretty realistic/naturalistic approach in lighting, and filming.” On the press tour, Nick Frost came up with a description that Wright loves “it’s like if Mike Leigh and Ken Loach were co-piloting a jaeger.” This of course tickled del Toro.

The events within the movie get crazier as it goes along. In fact, Wright wanted to trick the audience into thinking that the robots would never come and the first thirty minutes is a straight comedy drama.

With each pub, the characters drink more and the rest of the group get more like their teen selves, and when abstainer Andrew Knightly (Nick Frost) finally “lets it rip…it’s like Withnail as a Tasmanian Devil”. Wright explained that when filming in sequence, “by the time you reach the emotional pitch the actors are exhausted and give very raw emotionally true performances.”

When Andrew gets into the fight, he goes ‘hulk’, in fact on set they called the foam bar stools that he swings about, “Hulk Hands”. Wright said that the key to great fight scenes is not just having the actors get the choreography down, but to have them acting through-out the entire fight. This is one of the reasons he minimized the use of doubles for the fight scenes.

Based on his work with Damien Walters, who Wright worked with in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”, Wright wanted everyone trained for “a blend of martial arts and Buster Keaton.” Bradley James Allan was the stunt coordinator (he was also the fight choreographer and fight coordinator on “Pacific Rim” and stunt coordinator on “Scott Pilgrim”) and was able to realize this vision.

To help with the surreal feeling, Wright wanted to get dancers and gymnasts for the fighters. “Not the usual bulky guys.” With people trained to routines, the fights could go as long as needed without a cut. He was also adamant that he wanted the role of the young “Blanks” to be played by young people, so some of those on set were between 15 and 21.

Now “The Blanks” had a couple of notable features. The first was their blue blood. An audience member asked “Why the blue blood?”

Wright listed several reasons: blue blood is a term for upper class, and the aliens did believe that they were better than the humans; it was also to remind people of their school years. When Wright was in school he had to use fountain pens and by the end of the day his hands would be smeared blue, so there was a touch of nostalgia. The third reason? When he was young he’d written a story that gave the villains blue blood and the idea had stuck. del Toro pointed out there was also a Flash Gordon nod too.

Wright wanted the Blanks to be like action figures. As action figures, the constructs were easily replaceable and duplicated. It also let him have a scene where the legs became arms!

Talking about the fight scenes, Wright added, “I know it’s bad luck to discuss any accidents on set, but Simon broke his hand jumping over a bar and spent the last two weeks filming in a removable cast. He’d take off the cast, do his scene, and the slip it back on again.”

One of the questions from the audience was if he decided to do ‘wipe’ style of transitions during filming or in the editing booth.

As to visual style, while as del Toro commented it was calmer than his previous works with only a few ‘quick cut’ bits, Wright make use of his dancers on set to do what he called ‘people wipes’ so at a certain point in the action instead of calling cut, he’d have someone in a dark coat walk past. Therefore, it was a deliberate decision done during the filming.

Wright and del Toro discussed that the true villain is Nostalgia “but music is an okay nostalgia”. Back to the budget the last piece was sorting out if they could afford The Doors’ “Alabama Song” aka “Whiskey Bar”. An audience member asked about the music, especially about teasing the Sisters of Mercy song “This Corrosion”.

Wright talked about how while he and Pegg were writing “Hot Fuzz” they only listened to action scores. For this film they listened to music from between 1988 and 1993. The start of Primal Scream’s “Loaded” had always stuck with him, and he was lucky to find a song that long enough for entire opening credit sequence.

As for The Sisters of Mercy, clearly the character of Gary identified with the band, (he has their name tattooed across his chest). What Wright and Pegg wanted was for Gary to have consumed and been consumed by these songs, and others like the Soup Dragon’s “I’m Free” so much that he can’t tell which thoughts are his own and which came from the songs. And with “This Corrosion”s choral opening, it was a fun tease at several points until it came to the final confrontation.

This is a movie about relationships and character arcs. del Toro said that “in the end the best results of a catastrophe is either there is no change, or getting what you want in a new way.” For the more adult of the gang, their characters do get what they want, just not how they imagined it. And Gary changes both the most, by giving up alcohol, and the least, by leading a gang of teens into trouble every night.

Another point they discussed were the names of the twelve pubs, and how they served as title cards for the action which occurred within. From the First Post to the World’s End, the movie takes you on a pub crawl like no other.

Catch it in theatres from August 23rd.