5 Off My Head - Stalking Scott Pilgrim

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If you follow me on Twitter then you probably read that I shot lightning bolt like across the city after work last evening to see Edgar Wright, Michael Cera, Anna Kendrick, and Jason Schwartzman in person at the Apple Store in Soho for Scott Pilgrim. How could I not? I wish I'd gotten there earlier, they were tossing out copies of the film's soundtrack on vinyl but I was too far back to get my mitts on one. After seeing the movie - my review - I've been going insane with lust for a copy of the soundtrack but it's not out until August 10th. Ugh! Why must I wait? Now now now! It's sooo good. Ahem.

Anyway I sped over there after work and watched this fabulous foursome in person and I didn't take notes but I figured I'd ramble off five random things I remember about the conversation cuz it was a fine time and I was there and should commemorate it somehow.

1 - My favorite acknowledgment was that Jason Schwartzman and Edgar Wright based Jason's character of Gideon Graves on Swan from Phantom of the Paradise and Z-Man from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls . Of course they did!

Perfection!

2 - Anna Kendrick plays Scott's sister Stacey and got to meet the character's real life inspiration, Bryan Lee O'Malley's sister Stacey, who told her she needed to play the role more "half-Asian." The name tag that Anna's wearing in the film is actually real life Stacy's name-tag from the same coffee shop. It actually says under her name "Certified Coffee Agent," which Edgar Wright found hysterical. Kendrick commanded us to go add that to the film's IMDb trivia page. It isn't there yet! Come on, people! But I'm not doing it myself.

Anyway I liked Anna Kendrick well enough before this but she really won me over last night. For one she seemed sorta... excited... in the way I'd be excited... about Chris Evans getting cast in the movie. And then they were talking about the first big read-through of the script, which she couldn't be there for, and she said she'd heard that Mae Whitman was doing an impression of her and she seemed terrified of that, and I totally agree - if Mae Whitman's doing an impression of you, it's probably something to be terrified of.

She also said that her entire part could've been shot in a day, a few hours even, but she ended up being on set for four weeks because she'd need to be in the background of several fight scenes making an "OH!" face, over and over again. Ha.

3 - The 9 year old stand-in for the little girl that plays the drummer of Crash and the Boys was a weirdo. Michael Cera told this hysterical story - and that important to know, because you need to imagine this tsory coming from Michael Cera - A bunch of people including Cera and this 9 year old stand-in were all sitting backstage in the middle of shooting on some big green leather couch and the little girl suddenly asked if anyone had a knife. Everyone said no, little girl, we do not have a knife. And she said that she really just wanted to cut that couch open and go live inside of it. My kinda girl!

4 - Jason Schwartzman told this funny story about how the stunt coordinators - people that've worked with Jackie Chan for years - sat him and Michael Cera down after a particularly epic day of shooting their big fight scene and showed them an edited-together compliation of the moves they'd just shot and the video ended and Jason and Michael were all, "Yeah! We looked awesome!" and super excited but then it slowly dawned on them that the video was shown to them as a sort of "How Not To" guide, and their every move was then dissected and torn apart for how terribly wrong and awful it looked. Aww.

5 - I can't remember the exact number but the musician Beck threw up approximately a million songs for all the different bands in a tiny little span of time and they had them all before the movie even started. So they were able to listen to them while shooting, and edit them into the DV cuts on set, and even listen to them for that first script read-through. Edgar Wright said they had the easiest time getting bands to sign on to play all the different bands music - apparently Radiohead (amongst many others) producer Nigel Godrich makes it easy to get anybody you want. The soundtrack is so good! I want it I want it! Damn back to the beginning again, then...
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