Simon Pegg as British supercop Nicholas Angel. At the supreme moment creative climax - - idea!
Through the ages, artists have attempted to depict the shimmering, transcendent, adrenalin-charged moment when a human being achieves insight - - when the the two sides of the brain hyper-connect with the lymbic system and all the other ancient parts, the skull splits open, shafts of light reach to the heavens, the music plays, and reality is reduced to a cone of perception between mind and muse.
In the religious world this comes bundled with the ideas of ecstacy and revelation. Caravaggio's Conversion on the Way to Damascus comes to mind, and the literary and film treatments of the creation of Michaelengo's Sistine Chapel ceiling are stuck in my memory for some reason. But in the secular world this kind of insight is connected with untethered humanistic creativity...
...and I propose a new champion.
In the British-made celebration-of-all-things-action/horror -slash- sendup of idyllic rural life Hot Fuzz, our hero Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), leading a siege of the supermarket but pinned down in the frozen food aisle by "a couple of blokes with a f---load of cutlery," sees a way out. But, audaciously, at the moment of creative climax, rather than let music and cinematography convey the ecstacy, Pegg and director Edgar Wright have our hero utter a single word, "idea", through action-hero clenched teeth. The word is a totem, an incantation that rises up out of his brain stem. It's a thrilling and hilarious moment, as if at the moment of sexual climax a character uttered the statement "orgasm."
Idea! I've started grunting it whenever I have a good idea around the office. People look at me funny, but I like to mark those moments and think of them as being as manly and edgy as a supermarket brawl.