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The Daily Beast: "Scott Pilgrim Gets a Life"

Okay, it's not quite television-focused but given that it does deal with one of my favorite all-time television series (Spaced), I figured that I had to plug it here.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, entitled "Scott Pilgrim Gets a Life," where I talk to Michael Cera, Edgar Wright, and Bryan Lee O'Malley about their feature film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which hits theatres on Friday. Based on the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, the film stars Cera as the titular hero and features a huge cast that includes Brandon Routh, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman, Aubrey Plaza, Mae Whitman, Alison Pill, Kieran Culkin, and more.

Plus, Edgar Wright and I talked about Spaced and the similarities between the British comedy series Spaced (which Wright co-created with Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes) and Scott Pilgrim itself, part of an amazing half-hour interview at San Diego Comic-Con (which was itself interrupted by the appearance of a Ramona Flowers t-shirt-clad Michael Cera), the morning after the top-secret Scott Pilgrim screening.

What you won't read in The Daily Beast piece, however, is the brief aside between me and Wright about the woeful US adaptation of Spaced, which never made it out of the pilot stage. (You can read my brutal review of it from 2008 here, which Wright thanked me profusely for writing.)

"When I talk about that pilot, I'm always very quick to completely absolve the cast, even though we're f---ing furious about it and I'm not really happy about it at any point" said Wright. "You realize the people who are in the show... it's a job. It was the way that it was handled in terms of the respect--aside from me and Simon [Pegg], just Jessica [Hynes], who a trade didn't even mention--that was bulls--t. But one of the funniest things was watching it for the first time with Simon, Jessica, and Nira [Park]. We all sat and watched it and soon as it started we went, 'ARGH!!!' and just held each other. It was a very surreal experience."

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World will be released nationwide on Friday.
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