Edgar Wright Talks The “Pop Culture” of ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’

MakingOf: What’s your process of infusing pop culture into the film, yet keeping it subtle so it doesn’t overtake the scene?

(Edgar Wright): Well, in one of the books there’s a part at the end where Scott and Ramona kiss and it says “studio audience: applause.” I thought that was funny, so we took it one step further by having a laugh track throughout the entire scene. Scott Pilgrim would walk in like Kramer [from Seinfeld] to huge applause, and we would play the Seinfeld music at the top of the scene as well. It was a joke that kind of snowballed. I guess it’s nice having pop culture references because these are characters who have grown up consuming this stuff, and it’s like they’re leading their lives through the media they consume.