'Pilgrim' director, cast dish on making their comic film

With his films "Shaun of the Dead" (2004) and "Hot Fuzz" (2007), writer-director Edgar Wright proved himself adept at dusting off genre films, revitalizing them with a humor that nimbly lent itself to homage more than parody.

In his latest film, "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," Wright gives the big-screen treatment to the graphic novels of Bryan O'Malley. The titular character, played by Michael Cera, sets out to win the heart of Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), an enigmatic and conflicted recent arrival in Toronto from New York City. In order for the unlikely hero to earn the hand of his beloved, Pilgrim must battle a league of Flowers' evil exes.

With graphic devices taken directly from comic books and '80s video games, Wright creates a world that toggles between the fantastic and the realistic, working with an ensemble cast of some of Hollywood's brightest young talent.

We sat down recently with Wright, along with stars Cera, Winstead, Anna Kendrick, Jason Schwartzman and Brandon Routh, to discuss the filmmaking process, unattainable love and Steely Dan.

American-Statesman: I really think this is a movie first and a comic-book movie second. How do you balance and prioritize those ideas?

Edgar Wright: You're given the opportunity to make a major studio film, so you gotta kind of wear two hats. One is that I've got to be true to being a fan of the material and represent what Bryan's done. But then, on the flip side, you're constantly kind of reminded by the studio that it has to be a film for general audiences, as well. You've just got to strike that balance, and I hope we did that. It's funny when people in some interviews have said, 'Do you feel like it's niche in the sense that nobody over 30 is going to enjoy the film?' And I kind of think, 'If everybody under 30 went and saw the film, that would make us trillionaires.' It seems like, as niches go, the under 30 is a huge demographic.

Michael, even though it's a comic movie, there are a lot of subtleties in the acting. How do you approach the roles as actors in terms of being grounded in realism versus playing big characters.

Michael Cera: This movie has a big range of tones. So some scenes you have to be really big and cartoony and completely over the top, and in other scenes, it becomes a little more realistic.

Did you work with Edgar a lot on that?

Cera: Yeah, we rehearsed the whole movie quite a bit for a few weeks before we started shooting, and that was really helpful for me to figure out how big to go on things and when to bring it down.

Anna, the writing for your character is very smart and realistic. Did you worry at all about sounding too clever with the dialogue?

Anna Kendrick: I watch the movie and I feel like my character is more based in reality than any other character. So, in a way, I was sort of really envious of some of the other performances that people got to play with. It's absolutely perfect casting, because I never would have done Roxy the way Mae (Whitman) does it; I never would have done Envy the way Brie (Larson) does it. I was just so impressed coming in and seeing how far people took things and how much fun they were having. So, by comparison, I really felt like I wasn't on dangerous ground.

It seems like it would be fun to be part of an ensemble cast like this one a long shoot, but I would imagine it would be taxing, as well.

Brandon Routh: It was tedious at times, because even if you gave a great performance, that's only one-third of the shot. The others thirds are, did the camera move and the lighting effect that might be going off behind you that they had to time, because a lot of the effects were done in-camera and not added in post or CGI. So, there were some scenes that were longer than others.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: It's the most fun movie I've ever been a part of. But the actual process of shooting it was just extremely hard work. Of course, Edgar was the hardest worker of everybody, but I think we all kind of had to take on that mentality of just trying to do whatever it takes to get it done and get it done well. It was tons and tons of set-ups and long hours and lots of repetitive actions, but it was all worth it.

Jason, I assume you came late to the filming. Was it weird at all to enter this long shoot and this group of people who had already been working together for almost six months?

Cera: It's like passing the ball to Michael Jordan at the buzzer.