Peppered with cinematic homages, Paul is the culmination of Pegg and Frost’s love affair with the American sci-fi of their childhood – from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) to ET (1984) to Mac & Me (1988). It’s also the culmination of their 18-year-friendship, which includes ten years of comedic collaboration, from TV series Spaced, to Edgar Wright’s bromantic genre spoofs Shaun and Hot Fuzz. They recently wrapped postproduction and ADR for The Adventures of Tintin, directed by their boyhood idol, Steven Spielberg (they play twin inspectors Thomson and Thompson).
Paul , however, marks the first time Pegg and Frost have co-written a script. In a playful allegory to their own lives and careers, they play Chris and Clive, two late-30s British man-children who are on a mission to fulfil their childhood fantasy: a road trip of America’s most legendary UFO sites. On the way, however, they pick up a real life alien (Paul) who is on the run from the FBI.
As soon as the script was written, Nick and Simon began the process of courting their dream director: Greg Mottola. Fans of his feature debut The Daytrippers (1996), they finally caught up with him on the eve (literally) of Superbad‘s US release, in 2004. “Superbad could have been a broad coming-of-age comedy à la Porkies,” Frost suggests, “but Greg made it sympathetic; it was warm – he wasn’t afraid to show two guys loving each other. And that appeals to us!”
Mottola’s understated visual and narrative style, which contrasts with the frenetic, highly stylised camera work perfected by Wright, was another reason they chose him. “Basically we needed to see Paul in a film like Daytrippers,” says Pegg, “which was a very low-key road movie, which frames the characters, and is all about performance – and is almost like very carefully filming a play. Being less visible as a director. It’s just a different approach [from Edgar’s].”
Working with Mottola and a cast of actors that included Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman and SNL alumni Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader meant that Pegg and Frost were very relaxed about watching their script evolve as part of the collaborative process. This was particularly the case with the character of Paul, whose final CGI incarnation is the product of many hands, and many layers of written, performance and voice work. “We wanted a character that you forget is a special effect,” Pegg explains. “Imagine if Little Miss Sunshine had Gollum in it, instead of Alan Arkin? That was what we wanted to do.”
Although the two originally wrote Paul with the charisma of Rip Torn in mind, Pegg admits that, “when we got Seth involved, we started tailoring the character to him.” All the scenes with Paul were originally shot with Rogen on video, prior to the proper shoot, wearing a motion capture device. During filming, Joe Lo Truglio stood in for the CGI character, and was encouraged to improvise on Rogen’s lines – which the latter then had to re-dub in post. “Jo would come up with stuff, and we’d react to that – and it feels very off the cuff; and when you watch it, it is like Paul is there.”
Although much is often made of the contrast between the British and the American sense of humour, Pegg is quick to distinguish between sense of humour and comedy: “The quintessentially British sense of humour tends to be a little dryer than Americans; they’re less ashamed of their emotions than we are, so they’ll just emote – whereas we bury them in sarcasm and irony. But when it comes to comedy, we’re quite similar. I love Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm – those shows are extremely sophisticated in their use of irony, and parody and satire – and very similar to the best of what we do [in the UK]. Or in Australia – I mean, I love Chris Lilley.”
