A strange thing happened as I was editing this interview with Simon Pegg for his new film HECTOR AND THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS. Just as I got to the portion of the conversation where we wrapped things up, Simon (who was speaking from an SUV going through Los Angeles) said something interesting: “They’re dragging me to Joan Rivers at the moment.” Needless to say, it occurred to me that this interview was originally done well before Rivers’ passing on September 4, and Pegg was minutes away from recording an episode of her web series “In Bed with Joan.” I did a little digging, and as far as I can tell that episode hasn’t been posted, but I hope that one day soon it will be because the idea of Pegg and Rivers doing an informal chat just tickles me to no end.
But I digress. HECTOR is the story of a psychiatrist who abandons his job, patients and even his girlfriend (played by Rosamund Pike of THE WORLD’S END and soon to be in GONE GIRL) because his is profoundly unhappy and wish to travel the globe in search for the key to true happiness. The film was directed by Peter Chelsom (FUNNY BONES, SERENDIPITY, SHALL WE DANCE, and even HANNAH MONTANA: THE MOVIE), and bares a slight resemblance in places to THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (without the fantasy sequences). And the upshot is, Pegg is quite great in this role that allows him to step out of pure comedy and try something that flexes his dramatic muscles without abandoning the funny entirely.
I’ll have an interview later in the week with Chelsom, who is a fascinating man to chat with. But in the meantime, please enjoy my phone chat with our old friend Simon Pegg…
Simon Pegg: Hi buddy, it’s Simon. How are you?.
Capone: Good. How have you been? Where are you right now?
SP: I am in a SUV on a street in Los Angeles.
Capone: Peter said he was following you in your limo.
SP: I wouldn’t call it a limo; I would say “jalopy.”
Capone: And then I said to him, “Well aren’t we all really? Isn’t that really what we’re all doing, just following you in your limo?”
[Both laugh]
Capone: There’s a quality to HECTOR that made it feel like a fantasy film to me. There’s this hero’s journey, there are these exotic locations, there are a couple of really beautiful women. It has a slightly elevated reality to it that I don’t know if we were supposed to take it at face value, and I almost think it makes it better because of that. What do you think about that?
SP: Well, we always approached it as being—and I’m sure Peter said the same—is fable-istic, with magical realism, the moments of showing what we’re showing and Hector’s animating, and the airplane exterior, which is a crazy monologue for it all, and the stuff that is figurative. It’s all contributing to this idea that it is a fantastic fable. As we establish, Hector at the beginning, you come across his books, like “Tintin,” and that really sets the tone. And when he goes to Africa, it is like the Africa you see in old-fashioned stories—giraffes and zebras. And when you get to China, it’s temptation and intrigue. It uses these broad strokes, but in a way that paints a realistic picture. So we would paint to create this combination of a fantastic universe and one that was about something very real and very human.
Capone: I hope people pick up on that, because I think it makes all the difference to understand this story and your character.
SP: I do too, I do. Yeah, I agree.
Capone: The big-picture questions that I was thinking about after seeing this were lead by, Are we ever really happy with the amount of happiness we are feeling at any given moment? Don’t we always want more? I feel like Hector falls into that trap a little bit. Why do you think it is that we are never quite satisfied?
SP: I think it comes down to understanding what happiness is, and if we think we haven’t got enough then we aren’t happy, or we don’t understand what it is. Happiness, as the film says, is knowing everything. Is knowing what misery is, what despair is, abandonment, fear, and understanding that when you experience happiness, you experience it knowing what the other things are, and it helps you to understand what happiness is.
In this day and age, because there’s this strange change in social convention in terms of the way we settle down and have children, it’s now something that is put off and deferred to a later time. We’re given this new extension to our youth, which is about 20 years before people are actually settling down. But it’s created this huge vacuum, which has become, rather than a new phase of life, an extension of childhood, and commerce actually encourages that. We’re constantly sold things that keep up in a state of the rest of arrested development. We are infantilized by something—I don’t know whether it’s government or slightly more insidious hegemony. It’s a state of not being sure why you’re here because your childhood is prolonged.
I’m going to sound like a preachy parent now, but I think that the thing that brings your life into focus the most is having children because you feel a biological imperative that makes you understand a lot of things and answers a lot of questions for you, about your place in the universe and what you’re here for. And I think because that act is considered to be something very grown up, people put it off, and it keeps people in a state of limbo. I’m not saying every one should go and have children. Not everybody should; not everyone wants to. But for me, it was the key to understanding what happiness is and having a clearer idea of what it means to me. And I went through the whole thing of suddenly realizing it has to be everything. You can’t be just happy, otherwise you’ve got nothing to compare it to. You can’t know what the dark is until somebody switches the light on. So it took me until my middle age to actually sit down and say, “Yeah. I’m happy.”
Capone: Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that.
SP: Yeah, I feel quite zen about it all. I’m 44 now, and I’ve reached a point in my life where I understand what it means to be happy and how to be happy, and not always being happy is fine by me.
Capone: I imagine that if you personally were going to map out a path to happiness, working with people like Stellan Skarsgard and Jean Reno and Christopher Plummer—who in my eyes are all royalty in their respective nations—is a good start on a road to happiness. Especially Stellan Skarsgard, who you spend a lot of time with in this film. What do you get from watching him and these other guys just as an actor.
SP: It was a privilege to work with all those guys and Toni [Collette] and Rosamund [Pike], and a lot of the crew and even the cast that isn’t as well known, because whenever you work with good actors it’s extremely helpful to start because you get to bounce off that. But with someone like Christopher Plummer, who was in a scene that I literally had to just watch, it was nice, because it’s tempting to do anyway when you work with people like that because you're getting a live performance by a very renowned actor up close. But it was really, really good fun. The short answer is I was very lucky to be supported by such a incredible actors, and it made me feel safe and inspired me to try and do my very best work.
Capone: You mention Rosamund, I find her to be so fascinating as both an actress and, from what little I have read about her, as a person. It’s great that you get to work with her again. Tell me in your estimation what is special about working with her?
SP: It’s just very easy with Rosamund. She’s incredibly grounded as a person. There’s no complication working with Rosamund, and we had a fantastic fun time on THE WORLD’S END playing two people who were at absolute loggerheads with each other. And then to generate a deeper friendship through that. We knew each other before that, but THE WORLD’S END really consolidated us as friends, and then to go and play a couple who are essentially cruising through life really because there was nothing else available, it was really easy to settle into that routine with her. We could play it very comfortably, and that was fun because it was the opposite of Gary and Sam, which was kind of nice. She’s just great. She’s got a really good attitude towards work, and she’s a movie star without any of the accompanying craziness that you get sometimes.
Capone: Let’s talk about working with Peter. I think FUNNY BONES is such a great study of the dark edges of comedy and comedians. And I noted that psychiatrists and comedians are these two people who have chosen as their life's work to make other people happy, yet a lot of times they are deeply depressed people. What do you think about that?
SP: It’s an interesting concept. FUNNY BONES is like the darkest film about comedy I think that’s ever been, even more so than THE KING OF COMEDY. It’s a very interesting film, and it’s about funniness, and it manages to be really dark. I think that’s something that fascinates Peter. He’s long been a fan of comedy, and he’s from Blackpool, which is that part of England that the film is set, and I think he’s intrigued by the notion of comedy and havoc and can convey seriousness in a way.
I wouldn’t say HECTOR is an outright comedy, but it certainly is a combination of light and dark, and I think what he really understands is how one totally compliments the other. You can have a film which is just joke after joke after joke, and there be no light or shade at all. I’d say AIRPLANE is the exception to that. But certainly with our work, what we’ve done with Edgar [Wright], certainly we’ve tried to filter in some more serious stuff just to counterpoint what’s going on with the laughs, and I think Peter takes that even further with this, because at one moment you’ve got a Jacques Tati-Stan Laurel smashing plates, and the next minute he’s being pistol whipped. So those tonal shifts are really interesting.
Capone: In looking at some of the things you’ve got coming up, you’re in a position now where when you’re thinking about accepting a role or pursuing a part, how much of a role does fear play in the process of selecting what you’re doing next? Do you read a script and say, “I’m not sure if I can do that, therefore I must try to do it”?
SP: For me, it always has to be about two things: obviously the script, and the director. Sometimes you can take a chance on one of them, like a film where you really admire the director, and the script’s okay and you think, “No. you know what? I’m going to go with this because it’s that personal.” And you can read the script and not know the director and think, “This script is too good not to do.” But if they’re both in place, if both those things are there already, then it’s a no-brainer. With this one, that was very much the case. I was a huge fan of HEAR MY SONG and FUNNY BONES, so when I heard Peter was involved in this, I was like, “I would love to read it.” And I read it, and because I really enjoyed it, that was like there’s no reason not to do this.
It’s tough picking jobs, and I find it’s hard to be objective sometimes; it’s hard to get a feel for things sometimes, but now and again you are gifted with something that is fairly simple, and that to me was this. I’d like to think this also was a segue for me into doing things that are perhaps a little more serious. I don’t want to limit myself to just outright comedy. I’d love to be able to do a greater variety of roles, and I hope people will allow me to do that. Often, audiences are a little reluctant with people they know who do comedy to let them do anything else [laughs]. But I feel like it’s a good way to transition into a different phase of my career, hopefully.
Capone: You strike a nice balance of both your strengths in this one, for sure. And then, of course, you get situations where Terry Jones offers you a part, and you just say, “Hell yes.”
SP: Absolutely! Well that was a great example of going with it because it’s someone you really admire. I really wanted to work with Terry, and the process is very important to me. It’s not all about the product to me. It’s not about what I can get out of it. It’s about what I can experience during it, and if I get a good film at the end of it as well, that’s a bonus. If I enjoy the process, I feel like I’ve done well.
Capone: I guessing you saying “I really wanted to work with Terry Jones” is the understatement of this conversation. [Both laugh] You’ve done a couple of Q&As for HECTOR so far. I’m curious if people because of the nature of the film, have you become something of a touchstone for happiness tips from audience members now? Are people coming up to you and pouring out their hearts at these things?
SP: It’s happening a bit, actually. Everyone I’ve shown it to back home has, without fail, emailed me or phoned me the next day and said, “I’m still thinking about this film. It’s got me really thinking about my life,” which I love, because I feel like that’s the best thing any film can do, really. Entertainment is very important, and it’s not to be looked down upon as a function of so-called art. But I think the best thing it can do is leave you feeling unsettled almost, or at least wanting to think about things a little bit—re-evaluate your opinions of things, have a look at what your preconceptions of something are. I think this film does encourage people to say to themselves, “Am I happy? And what makes me happy?”
That’s a big question to ask. It’s something we’re constantly encouraged to differ. Commerce gives us so much to make us think we are happy. You eat this, you buy that, you wear this, you watch this—all these roots to happiness. Drink this, take that. All of them are really just quick fixes. They’re ways of producing a temporary euphoria that stands in for happiness, but when it dissipates, when it goes away, if you’re not still happy, then you’re not happy. And people watch the film and think, “Shit, maybe I’m just faking it.”
Capone: I feel like that’s one of the messages of the film. Hector goes on this incredible journey of discovery, and a lot of what he writes down as the keys to happiness are things that he left behind, and maybe it’s because he needed fresh eyes to notice it.
SP: Yeah. He’s the complete antithesis to some of the characters that have done well for me in terms of people like Shaun and Gary King, who are perennial children, who are people who are clinging desperately to their childhood, not accessing their adulthood in any way for fear of death, maybe. But Hector closed down in his childhood early, and now he has no access to those formative feelings. We set the parameters of our emotional make-up when we are very young, towards love, loss, sex, and death—all those things we experience at a young age, and we set the way that we regard them. And if we don’t access them, if we can’t access ours inner-child, then we can’t really understand who we are and how we feel.
Capone: I don’t want to give away the ending, but that’s a great final shot that goes to what you’re saying. That idea of the child restored.
SP: That’s Peter’s BEING THERE moment.
Capone: Exactly. But anytime we see a little bit of Hector’s childhood, it breaks your heart. Was there a particular aspect of playing Hector that was tougher to crack than maybe some other parts of him?
SP: Well it was a great, fun role to play because it was this combination of closed off, pre-mature adult and budding, youthful and exuberant child character. I feel like I had already reached conclusions that Hector had reached when I started playing him. I had a greater understanding of who I was and where my happiness was coming from. So it was fun to dip back into a time when I wasn’t so sure and try to connect with me at a less enlightened time in my life. I don’t think I was ever as buttoned up as Hector, or certainly not as reluctant to get out of my childhood, because I’m a renowned child. I’ve built a career out of being connected to my childhood. But yeah, that was a fun little time.
Capone: Well it sounds like it was a little more relatable than people might realize.
SP: Yeah.
Capone: I was joking with Peter about the scenes in China with the woman [played by actress Ming Zhao, in her first film role]. First of all, she’s stunning. I’ve never seen her before. And the way she plays the character is about as sweet as anyone could ever be, and I thought it was funny that it’s almost not fair, because he put this woman in front of Hector who not only could no man resist, but I don’t think any woman would blame their man for being with. They’d almost be disappointed if you didn’t consider it. That’s a strange sequence because I think we’re supposed to find a way to be okay with it if he actually goes through with it.
SP: Yeah, it was a tricky moment, because right up until the edit, we filmed two scenes. We filmed two versions: one where he did go through with it and one where he didn’t. And we wanted Hector to be sympathetic, and irrespective of how beautiful Ying Li is, that sequence in the film represents temptation. Also at the same time, her character was important to preserve in a way, and if she’d gone through with it, there might have been-- There’s a very sweet misconception there where she thinks he knows what she is [a prostitute], and he doesn’t know what she is, so they betray each other in a way. And I think if she’d gone through with it, there would have been less sympathy towards both of them, so we decided in a moment of complete, ridiculous unbelievability that he would fall asleep at that point in his life. Oh my god, no he wouldn’t!
But that was a model-actress called Ming Zhao, and Peter found her, auditioned her, and she just had a wonderful innocent quality, which is very much how she is, and she comes along and presents this obstacle in a way, a challenge to Hector. It was amazing because we genuinely went back and forth and back and forth about whether he should or whether he shouldn’t. And it came down to whether it would make him unlikeable.
Capone: I think you made the right decision, but no one would fault you for going the other way.
[Both laugh]
Capone: Tell me about flying those model airplanes. That looked fun. Were you actually doing that?
SP: No, we had the genuine model aircraft expert just off camera doing it. It’s a pretty tough thing to do, and I had to act at the same time, and I’m terrible at multi-tasking, and the plane had to do specific things as well, so I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I would have just crashed that thing into the ground, I’m sure.
Capone: So you can’t act and operate heavy machinery at the same time?
SP: No. I’m not that complex.
Capone: I’ve been seeing the BOXTROLLS trailers all over the place. It looks incredible.
SP: Yeah, I think it’s very awesome. I’m very proud of that movie.
Capone: Yeah. And the photo that I keep seeing of you from KILL ME THREE TIMES, it’s terrifying—the mustache, the black getup, it looks great.
SP: Well that was a great example of a script that I read, and I didn’t know Kriv [Stenders], the director, and I hadn’t seen RED DOG. But I liked the script so much that I was like, “This feels like something that’s worth doing.” It’s a great little Australian indie, and it’s a real treat. It’s a crime caper with a great, interlacing plot, and a chance for me to be a complete bastard, which is nice—the anti-Hector.
Capone: Do you actually play an Australian?
SP: No, no. I play a sort of Brit. He’s a very weird character called Charlie Wolfe. He’s, for some reason, this distinguished mustachioed Brit operating as a hit man in the Outback, as you would do [laughs].
Capone: Well that would be scary to Australians, I think. And this Terry Jones thing just warms my heart.
SP: Yeah, I can’t wait to see it. I’m hearing good things. They’re dragging me to Joan Rivers at the moment…
