Edgar Wright on Shaun Of The Dead

Can you give us a little background into how you got started as a filmmaker?

I started making my own amateur films in Somerset when I was 14. My Dad had bought a Super 8 camera and I spent many a free period and after school session coralling my friends into little mini epics. My first 15 minute film was called Rolf Harris Saves The World and involved the bearded one fighting international terrorists. I used to project them in lunchbreaks and charge 50p admission.

This continued through art college and culminated in me making a 16mm version of one of my amateur films, A Fistful Of Fingers. We made it with money from local business, cast it with local schoolfriends and shot the whole thing in 20 days. It was borne out of a tremendous energy from everyone involved, but also complete naviety. Still it got some good reviews, got me an agent and got me my first TV job - from Matt Lucas and David Walliams - on their Paramount sketch show 'Mash & Peas'.

How did you first get together with Simon Pegg?

After 'Fistful' and a move to London, I was extremely lucky to fall in with Matt and David - to be honest there couldn't have been a better first proper directing job than making sketches with them. Around the same time I met Simon, first at one of Matt & Dave's stand-up shows, then at a rehearsal for a second Paramount show, Asylum. I had seen Simon do stand up and very quickly saw him as a kindred spirit. The show was an odd, blackly comedy that was made up of different stand up routines. It was pretty disjointed, but as we developed it, Simon and Jessica Stevenson became the lead characters.

Why do you think you work so well together?

Not only do we have similar taste in music and films, but we very quickly built up a shorthand together, when writing and filming together. I love writing for Simon, because he has an uncanny knack of making anything sound funny.. I see him as a brilliantly funny everyman, like a Jack Lemmon type. Simon's great at being the good guy and is very funny with it.

How did Spaced come about?

After Asylum was made, Simon and Jessica Stevenson emerged as such a great double act that it was suggested that they write a vehicle for themselves. They very kindly insisted that I direct.