A Trip To My Own Private Comic-Con With Paul

On how setting this at Comic-Con is an opportunity for deep-cut jokes.

Simon:  There's a line in the film - in the right audience, the ceiling of the theatre will fall down.  What we've got is Comic-Con in 2020.

Nick: There's lots of stuff. You know the presence of our Shauns and Nicholas Angels - this was entirely Nancy, our costume designer. Anyone who notices that will take in some good fun. There's plenty of little things in there that riff on - the notion is that Paul has been on Earth over 60 years just living in this base basically having an effect on popular culture. He's in touch with the kind of creative minds in America. So Paul is responsible for a lot of what we know. He has certain abilities that you've seen elsewhere because it was his idea. Which allows us to retroactively rip on every film.

Is he annoyed that he doesn't get the credit?

Simon: He's okay with it. But there's one particular scene we're looking forward to shooting - we should go back and re-edit the credits in the film.

Nick: Yeah.

In the scene we shot earlier, when everyone was going bananas in the auditorium [and you suggested it was Starbuck f@#&ing Apollo], who will that actually be?

Simon: We thought about who it was gonna be. It's gonna be Twiki.

There's a lot of Star Wars stuff out there. Does that mean George Lucas doesn't have any hard feelings about Tim in Spaced?

Simon: Not my idea. I said no Star Wars things.

Are you guys in the film at all eating any ice cream and making a point to make sure it's a different kind of ice cream?

Simon: No. There is no ice cream consumption.

Nick: This is a different thing. This is part one of the Pepsi and Klondike.

I was a fan of the ice cream, eating an ice cream sandwich and saying "I'd go for a Cornetto" but instead, no, it's an ice cream sandwich.

Simon: No, Edgar insisted, and quite rightly, that this film never be sold as part of a box set with our other two films. I think Edgar's right. This has to be something different. We won't make pains to stress that this is the third one in a series - this is a different kind of film altogether. We've written this together, there's a different director, same production company, but we want it to feel like it's a different thing. Obviously the temptation is to see it as that. No, there were a couple of little line references in the script which we took out which were kind of... at one point we were taking off in an RV and someone said "punch that sh*t" and we realized it was a Hot Fuzz line. So yeah, no ice cream allowed.

The movie's called Paul, you're on the road, is there a Christian theme? Paul on the road to Damascus?

Simon: I never thought of that, but yes, there is a threat in the movie about evolution versus faith. About what Paul represents. Paul's existence represents a threat.  So there is a little thread going through it which we had quite fun with.