Was there any actor or director whose work was particularly helpful or inspirational for Hot Fuzz?
EW: I think we really wanted to cover all areas of the cop film. Within the two-hour running time, we pretty much cover the corruption cop genre, the fish-out-of-water cop genre, the serial-killer thriller cop genre, the buddy-action film. There’s a lot of ground that we cover. I suppose people like Tony Scott, Michael Mann, John Woo, there’s a lot of those elements, certainly in terms of the action and the overcaffeinated, ADD aspect of it. Obviously there’s the classic ’70s directors like Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin, Don Siegel, so we definitely tried to cover a lot of ground. It’s a very kind of immersive tribute to the cop genre. SP: The actor that influenced me most was Robert Patrick in Terminator 2. He’s the cop that I base Nicholas Angel on, the unstoppable, transforming man. AVC: You kind of run like him as well. SP: Exactly, that’s exactly what I did. That was entirely a rip from him. But I did like his sort of bemused seriousness, and I wanted Angel to be something of an
