Edgar Wright, Michael Cera, and Jason Schwartzman of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Texas Travesty: So let’s get this ball rolling: The different exes in the film have their weaknesses, that Scott defeats them with, how would you be defeated? What is your foil?
Jason Schwartzman: This is already off to the best start, because we’ve never been asked this question. Let’s see, what’s my weakness?
Edgar Wright: Oh tickling. Somebody tickle me, I’d be fucked.
Michael Cera: Yeah.
EW: That’s the best sentence I’ve come up with all day.
MC: Actually tickling is a really good answer.
JS: Like in a fight?
EW: I bet you could take Brandon Routh out if you start tickling him.
MC: If someone choked me and squeezed my neck so hard that it completely deflated, I wouldn’t know what to do.
JS: If somebody tried to bury me alive…
MC: Tried to?
JS: If someone picked me up and carried me over the shoulders and was like “I’m going to bury you alive in ten minutes” I’d be like “No! No! No!”
MC: That’s the worst. It’s worse than the actual being buried alive.
JS: You know that moment before someone picks you up when you’re little and pretends to throw you into the pool? You know that feeling? That’s what my life has been like for the last thirty years.
MC: You know when you’re a kid and someone uses your neck as an ashtray?
(laughter)
JS: The other thing would be hair pulling. I hate hair pulling.
MC: I hate when they smush your face on the toilet and then they slide the seat on top of it.
TT: Speaking from past experiences?
MC: The past ten minutes.
JS: You wanted it? You got it.

TT: On the flip side, if you were a super hero, what would be your super hero name and super power?
MC: [to Jason] You had a really good one.
JS: I did?
MC: Yeah yours was The UltraSound.
JS: How do I do that?
MC: You can walk up and look into women’s stomachs.
JS: Oh yeah, I’m Ultra Sound Man. I can walk up and scan a woman’s stomach.
MC: See what they’ve eaten.
JS: I can see if they’re pregnant, what the sex is and how things are developing.
TT: Is that because your wife is pregnant that you want that power?
JS: Well that and I’ve always wanted it.
TT: It’s like X-Ray vision, but more detailed.
JS: Specific. Yeah, it’s like a specialist. It’s ilke being a doctor or being a specialist. There are superheroes who can throw things and then they’re like “We need to look inside and see what this is. Well I know a specialist, we can call him.” Then they call me in Beverly Hills.
MC: I’d be called “The Tailor”. I could walk up and go [touches Jason’s shirt] and their clothes would fit perfectly.
EW: Oh my God, that’s a good one.
JS: Your first name is James.
MC: You know there is a place in LA called “James’ Tailor”.
JS: Oh I know, I DIE for that place. I die, I die, I die.
EW: You guys came up with good ones. I haven’t got anything up my sleeve.
JS: That’s it! That’s your character. “Nothing up your sleeve man”
TT: Or everything up your sleeve, that could be your power.
EW: I’d like to be called “Wizard Sleeve” and I’d like to have the ability to…
MC: Wizard Sleeve? That’s gross.
EW: I could just produce anything out of my sleeve. Or other wizards. I’m like the Russian doll of wizards, like if I had a big sleeve I could pull out like eight Gandolfs if I wanted to.
JS: Not bad.
EW: Captain Wizard Sleeve
MC: You could be “never reveal your power man.”
EW: I’ve got Dumbledore up here, Gandolf over here, Merlin in my back pocket, Fred Savage in my wizard’s hat. I got four wizards.
MC: Fred Savage: is he in “The Wizard”? He’s reading the story? Oh no, that’s “Princess Bride”, but that’s also Fred Savage.
JS: “Okay, okay, okay….the shrieking eels”

TT: Did you guys get to hang out with the music artists who recorded for the movie at all? Beck? Metric?
EW: In some cases. Beck…Michael still never met Beck, actually. Beck did his stuff in LA kind of nine months before we started shooting. We hung out with the Toronto bands a bunch because they were around on set a lot. [We hung out with] Kevin Drew from Broken Social Scene, Chris Murphy from Sloane was our kind of music coach and Emily Haines from Metric. Those guys were around. The vocals that Michael, Mark, Allison and Brie Larson recorded for the songs were done in Metric’s home studio. So we were in their home studio. It was really cool. It was nice being sort of tapped into the scene.

TT: What did you do to bring these characters off the page and onto the screen?
MC: We rehearsed a lot.
EW: Yeah
MC: Did some fight training and choreography, music training but the rehearsal was most helpful stuff for me. Watching all the other actors find their characters was really fun and also really exciting.

TT: Did you play your music?
MC: No, except when I play the song to her. Otherwise, all the music was prerecorded by Beck, we were just synching along to it.
EW: You did the vocals on it.
MC: Mark Weber redid Beck’s vocals.
JS: Did Nigel produce that stuff?
EW: No, Beck produced the music on his own and Nigel did the vocals.
Mark weber who’s not a singer had to sing the first time in front of Nigel Godrich. Jesus Louisus. That’s insane.
MC: I’d be pretty nervous.

TT: Most people don’t wake up and know how to do fight choreography or how to work in a harnass, any mishaps?
MC: Nothing bad. I will say wearing a harness, you can’t believe it’s supposed to feel that way. I remember saying “this is wrong, this is definitely not how it’s supposed to feel.”
EW: It’s definitely like a hazing thing. You got some sympathy from the stunt guy. I tried it on as well, you get a lot of new found respect for people who do wire work. Oh my god.
JS: Yeah it was definitely uncomfortable.
EW: You found it faintly erotic though, right?
JS: Yeah , faintly…that’s an understatement. Is definitely doesn’t feel like you can have children afterwards, if you’re a man.
EW: There’s a reason Peter Pan was the boy who wouldn’t grow up.
MC: There’s also a reason mostly women play Peter Pan on stage.

TT: So Jason, what was it like to play a villain? Did you come up with a really evil laugh? Build a model of a death ray?
EW: Oh my god.
MC: Specific question.
JS: There are these books—these books aren’t on how to be evil but they did helpm me–there’s this author I love named Robert Green, one is called “The 48 Laws of Power”, one is called “The Art of Seduction” and one is called “The 33 Laws of War”. They basically outline how to get and maintain power using examples from history and ways to not f**k up getting power. Every morning and every night I would listen to the 48 laws of power and I was shocked at how many were obvious to me.
MC: Can you tell us a key one?
JS: Yeah I remember tons of them. One key one is if someone is older or more powerful than you and they say something that you know the answer to and they’re wrong and you want to impress them with how much you know, don’t say it because it’s actually threatening. Let them always think they have the right answer even though they’re dead wrong.
MC: You’ve done that to me.
JS: You’re RIGHT! That was one, also just thinking about if I was Scott Pilgrim and I liked a girl meeting all of her ex-boyfriends what would be most threatening to me. Yes, Brandon or these bigger guys I would be intimidated by, but ultimately I would be most intimidated, if I had a band, if I met someone who had a record label and was like a famous producer. Those are things I actually want to excel in and he’s already at the top of his game in those things. That is highly scary and because he’s so nice and patronizing, that is my idea of hell is to feel like someone is doing you favors all the time and apologizing.
MC: They don’t make it easy to hate them.
JS: That’s my idea of real evil.

TT: So what do you want the audience to take away from this film?
EW: If you watch the film, you’ll realize it’s not cool to cheat on people. It’s punishable on penalty of death. Scott Pilgrim is not a bad person, but at the start of the film he’s a bit selfish or at least thoughtless and not thinking about the feelings of the people around him. He learns to take responsibility for his own actions. The film is about him learning to deal with his new girlfriend’s baggage and deal with his own baggage and have his first adult relationship. So even despite all the kung fu battles, it’s essentially a rite of passage.

TT: So how was comic con? Any funny stories?
JS: We met Erik Estrada.
MC: We were held by Erik Estrada. Off the ground.
TT: Did you guys dress up for comic con?
EW: I did but then I got recognized immediately. You realize that the Green Hornet wouldn’t work because someone recognized me immediately.
MC: I wore a gorilla mask.
TT: Did you experience comic con in the mask or did you just trying to get from place to place?
MC: I never even went in to Comic Con except when we did the panel.
JS: Michael and I did walk over to Drama con. That was sad, it was a bunch of people walking around like Terms of Endearment.
MC: Then we went to the grammar festival, “Comma Con”.
JS: That’s a weird one because you go down to comma [pause] con. Then we went to the French one, the Comi-Cannes Film Festival.
EW: Oh my God, that’s awful.
MC: Then we went down to the zoo, they were having Llama Con.
TT: Did you go down the new age Karma Con?
JS: Well we went to get Boy George’s autograph.
TT: Oh, Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Con?
EW: No, Karma Chameleocon.
JS: Then we went to a weird poetry slash outlook place called Poetry and Prose and Pros and Cons-a con.
MC: We saw all the war vets down at Nam-icon. Also went down to Obamacon.
EW: That’s a good one. We also went to Osamacon took place in an evil network of caves.
JS: We never found that one.