He says that cinema is in his blood. And she doesn't exaggerate. Edgar Wright filmed his first film at the age of 14: "I have loved cinema since I was little, I didn't know how I was going to channel that love, but at 14 I already shot that first film, which I showed to my schoolmates at lunchtime. It was my debut", recalls the filmmaker in a conversation with La Vanguardia at the Sitges Festival, where he has gone to collect the prestigious Time Machine Award, which in other editions has gone to figures such as Elijah Wood, Guillermo del Toro, David Cronenberg , Jaume Balagueró or Santiago Segura.
After that first teen film, Wright became a film and television professional. A multifaceted professional who directs, writes the scripts, produces and, occasionally, also acts, although he confesses that "above all I'm a writer, I really like directing, but I do it because I write and sometimes I get in front of the camera just to have fun" .
His is a very varied writing that touches on genres as disparate as comedy, western, horror, science fiction... In addition, Wright works for other directors. He was the architect, for example, of the script for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, directed by Steven Spielberg in 2011. Even then fans were promised that there would be a second part, but that sequel never just arrived. Wright doesn't know how that project turned out, because "it's his day, he was very busy with two other jobs and he can't write the sequel, which Peter Jackson had to direct."
It seems that Wright will not participate in that long-awaited second part, but he does not lack work. Last year the British director presented Last Night in Soho, a film that also passed through Sitges, starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy and plagued by ghosts from the 60s. The film is very different from his previous work, Baby Driver (2017), an action film with Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey and Lily James that hit the box office.
"The secret of making movies is to have fun and do different genres, that variety is an important challenge for me, that what I want is to tell different stories," says the director who, no one is unaware, is very similar to the actor Paul Rudd. He laughs at the comparison, but confirms that this resemblance has been the source of anecdotes, "the other day they sent me some photos to sign, one was mine, but the other was Rudd's, I told him, because we are friends, and he told me that It had happened to him too, we both find the confusion funny, but it also flatters me, because Paul is much more handsome than me".
Wright, who today has an endless agenda of interviews, says goodbye to La Vanguardia with a smile and also with a promise: "I am too young, 48 years old, to receive the Time Machine Award that is given to established filmmakers, so I want to think that this is only half an award and that in 30 years I will return to this Sitges Festival so that they give me the other half of the prize that I am missing".
