KICK-ASS was your first film as a producer. You’ve worked with Matthew Vaughn on his other movies in different capacities, so was that a big help?
Without a doubt. It was nerve-wracking anyway, but it would have been deeply so if it was someone I hadn’t worked with before, and assuming that level of responsibility it was great to be working with someone I know and trust, and he knows and trusts me so it makes life a hell of a lot easier.

The film was actually made outside of the studio system, you didn’t have studio backing to start with, is that correct?
That is absolutely correct. They all said it was shit.

Really?
They didn’t quite say it was shit, but they all passed a bit more politely than that. We could have made a version of the film with the studios, but it wouldn’t have been a version of the film we wanted to make. They said, you need to make Hit Girl 18 years old; it needs to have less violence. So we said, “You mean it needs to be like every other film”. They were absolutely insistent that the problem they had was people wouldn’t go and see a movie with a 12-year-old girl as the hero. They didn’t care about whether she swore or killed people, because it’s not a morality thing. The decisions they make are only ever driven by economics. They were doggedly determined that the 18 – 34 year-olds were; A) the only people who would go and see the movie, and B) wouldn’t see a movie with a 12-year-old girl.

And how wrong they were.
It was one of those things where I was a 36-year-old male, so only two years outside their key demographic, and I thought 12-year-old girls with knives sounded great.

She was absolutely the best thing in the whole film. She had the best lines, the best action. And have they not seen LEON?
[Laughs] Exactly. Did they not see TAXI DRIVER?

It is slightly disturbing that men of our age actually find those characters exciting figures to watch on screen.
Exactly. The main thing is some of it is fun and there is something iconoclastic about having a 12-year-old girl saying and doing things that people find… One of the things I find odd is that there is an immorality around it. I couldn’t give a monkey’s about people swearing or not, but as far as I am aware, there is no appropriate age for killing people, and that was one of the big debates. I’m not particularly into 25-year-olds stabbing people, let alone 12-year-olds. Does age really matter in this debate?

It is a comic book movie, and the violence is comic book violence.
I think so. It’s a heightened thing. If you come out of that thinking it’s real there probably wasn’t much hope for you anyway.

Or you live on a South London estate where it is a common occurrence.
In a way, that is one of the things I find odd in that actually there is a commentary on that kind of thing. That’s what motivates Dave to go down that road, was wanting that kind of shit to stop - the KICK-ASS morality debate.

But when you look at the cartoons that kids watch on TV, even back to the earliest day of the classic Warner Bros with Roadrunner or Tweety, they are incredibly violent, yet kids will watch them all day without turning into psychopaths.
Think of the hundreds of ways Itchy and Scratchy have met their bitter end. The weird thing is, when I was growing up, my mother never let me watch Tom and Jerry because she thought it was too violent. There you are – and look how I repaid her [laughter].

KICK-ASS and THE INCREDIBLES are two of the best superhero movies that have ever been made, because both films respect the superhero genre, but make fun of it as well.
I think THE INCREDIBLES is very close to being a perfect film. It’s funny you should mention THE INCREDIBLES because it is one of my and Matthew’s favourite movies, and we both think it is so well crafted. I actually watched it the other day with my daughter, and she also really enjoyed it, which is great.

But she hasn’t seen KICK-ASS yet?
I haven’t yet watched KICK-ASS with her. I think four is a little young, but she did meet Chloe Moretz when she came on set, and saw her in the purple wig and all of it, so she does have a very firm grasp of who Hit Girl is, and even has a T-shirt with Hit Girl on it, which is her favourite T-shirt to wear.

But not the one with the slogan on? She’s not going to nursery with a T-shirt saying “OK you cunts, let’s see what you can do”?
[Laughter] Exactly.

KICK-ASS 2 is going ahead now?
Obviously we are tied up on the X-MEN movie at the moment. On KICK-ASS we had this peculiar journey where we finished the script before they the comic. I think this time we’ll do it the other way round. Hopefully Mark [Millar] will finish the comic, then we’ll start looking at a script and develop it in a more traditional way. It’ll never be a more traditional film. By dint of the fact that we are rather busy, he can get on and do his thing, and once X-MEN is finished we can start looking at KICK-ASS 2: Balls to the Wall, which has got to be one of the great titles.

You don’t think it’s going to come a cropper like Kevin Smith’s film, which had to change its name from A COUPLE OF DICKS to COP OUT?
Hopefully not. We’ll see.

Is KICK-ASS 2 going to be done independently again, or are the studios more open to it now that it’s proven itself a viable concern?
It’s too early to say. If we wanted to make it with a studio, we could, but it did well enough as a movie for them to want to back it fully. It just becomes a question of whether we want to go down that route, It did well enough as an independent movie, so it is just a question of how we go around it.

Was it difficult getting the funding to make the first one without studio backing?
Thankfully not. Matthew’s got an amazing record as a producer, and as an independent producer. What it really meant was we had to work out what was the lowest price we could make the film for. If we’d made it for the studios it would have probably cost double the amount of money, just because the way they approach everything. Raising that budget was relatively easy. It wasn’t a walk in the park, or a total doddle, but when you put together the economics that we put together, people said, “OK, that all makes sense”.

So you didn’t have to make too many compromises?
In terms of the actual material, we didn’t have to make any compromises at all, which was the great thing about doing it independently. We worked out how much we could make the movie for by being very smart with our production plan. There were a few comprises at that stage, but there weren’t that many. We still ended up with Nic Cage and a fantastic cast, really well-built sets. I guess the compromise we made was we had to shoot it in the UK, with some of the exterior work done in Canada, and even less of the exterior work done in New York. If we’d had a bit more money we would have done more in New York, if we’d had a bit more money we might have had a helicopter shot or two, but when you look at the movie you don’t go, “That looks like it was shot for a price.” Did you feel like that when you saw it?

Not at all. I was too busy laughing and enjoying to care.
The distraction factor.

The problem with a lot of Hollywood movies is they just throw money at them without concentrating on the story, or figuring out an easier or more creative way of doing it within a budget, or simply trying to fix it in post with CGI.
I totally agree, and that is one of the strange pleasures of working on something that is independently financed, where can’t just say we can go back and get more money. You can’t turn round to people and go, “Oh, remember when we asked you for £2, we meant £3. When we said you would get 10% of it for £2, we need to make that 5% because we need to get another two quid from someone else.” So you are constantly having to think and use your brain to come up with ideas and solutions. It’s really invigorating; it’s good fun – really good fun. It forces you to think outside the box, and work hard.

Do you think a lot of British filmmakers are going to have to start doing that now that the UK Film Council has been disbanded and not giving grants?
Yeah, but I’m not entirely sure that is a bad thing. The UK film industry has an amazing number of really, really talented people. We have unbelievable technicians; we’ve got all the raw material you need, and sometimes you need that extra heat of having to do things yourself, and having to think and not be propped up by, essentially, government support. Does that make people lazy? I don’t know, but for me it might actually be invigorating for the film industry. It might make people address whether their films have a commercial viability to them.

Also, they can’t use the excuse, I’m waiting for my funding application to go through before I can make by film. Now they are either going to have to get on and make their film with what they have, or look for funding elsewhere.
That getting on and making the film or looking for funding means you are going to have to come up with things that have a commercial viability. In the long run that has to be invigorating for the industry to make it a healthy, robust, money-making business, it will attract more and more private finance, and studio finance. If you get money from people who don’t care if you don’t make money back for them, your business model is only viable for as long as they want to prop you up. It’s incumbent on us to get out there and compete in the real world. I’m not sure it is an entirely negative thing. The key thing is, as long as the tax rebates remain in place, that’s a different issue. That’s pretty vital for the UK film industry and has worked pretty well for us. If the government starts tinkering with that, it could raise some very serious issues. While we have to come up with projects that have economic viability in the real world, we have to help with the fact that Universal Studios can make a film in England or could make a film in Romania, and a lot of that 40,000-foot viewpoint doesn’t take into account whether Romanian technicians are as good as British technicians, they just look at hard, bottom line numbers and see that they pay £100 a week in Romania, or £1000 a week in England, then it’s Romania. In the end it ends up biting them in the arse because there isn’t the skill set there. At the moment, with the tax rebate the way it is, you’re evening out that economic playing field to begin with, so they think, it is only 10% more to film in the UK and we acknowledge that the technicians are an awful lot better. We also acknowledge we can say to Nic Cage, “Do you want to come to England for four weeks to film”, is an awful lot easier than asking him if he wants to go and sit in the back end of nowhere for four weeks and film. There are a lot of compelling reasons, and as long as we have that ability to slightly water down the price difference between us and the Eastern European competitors. Sorry, you just got a fucking big rant about the UK film business.

That’s good. It’s an important issue at the moment. The whole industry is divided over whether the UKFC being axed is a good thing or not, and a lot of the people who are working in it think it is a good thing.
Good, I’m with them. Obviously I feel sorry for people who have lost their jobs, and I’m sure there are some films that fall apart because of it, and that’s also a shame, but I guess, short-term bad, long-term good.

But it’s not just the film industry that’s suffering; it’s museums, art galleries, theatres are all having their budgets cut. The film industry has a rather myopic view of the cuts.
That’s an argument I’ve had with loads of people most of the time. Can we really say that the film industry should enjoy a position of privilege over…?

Schools…
That’s something I find very difficult. It is odd to me that people in the film industry should enjoy some position of privilege and get more rebates and more of a prop up than shutting the steelworks in Middlesborough that costs thousands of jobs, and shutting down the UK Film Council costs a few hundred jobs for a bunch of ne’er-do-well reprobates, like myself.

We have a copy of the KICK-ASS: CREATING THE COMIC, MAKING THE MOVIE book to give away, along with three copies of the KICK-ASS comic for the runners-up. Click the link at the bottom of the page to enter.

KICK-ASS is released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 6 and can be pre-ordered from Play and all good retailers.

Film © 2009 KA Films LP. All Rights Reserved.