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The Boat That Rocked - an interview with screenwriter Richard Curtis
In a career spanning Not The Nine O'Clock News to Love, Actually, via Four Weddings and a Funeral and Blackadder, Richard Curtis is one of the UK's most successful screenwriters. With his latest film, The Boat That Rocked, now released on DVD and Blu-ray, Neil Davey finds out more
Richard Curtis is explaining the inspiration behind pirate radio comedy The Boat That Rocked.
"That moment in the movie when Philip Seymour Hoffman says 'these are the best days of our lives.' I think the film is about a time when people leave home and move into a horrible flat with six people, two of whom they hate, two of whom they like. One of them has sex with everyone, one of them's never had sex with anyone, and you listen to a lot of the music of your period.
"I think in a way the film is autobiographical more about that sense of what it's like hanging out with your friends and playing and listening to music, than it is about my youth where I was the little boy who listened to music under my pillow."
For this film, Curtis has assembled a vast and stellar cast, from Bill Nighy to Hoffman, and an impressive soundtrack. Strangely, the music was harder to assemble than the cast.
"The great thing about actors, they can fit in a few films," reveals Richard. "Phil is a good example. The first time we asked for his availability, he couldn’t do it, but then we shifted our film two weeks down, and he got them to shift his film one week back…"
The soundtrack though was a lot tougher to put together.
"There are songs we tried to get and couldn't. 'If Paradise is Half as Nice' for some reason, and we wanted 'For What it’s Worth' by Buffalo Springfield, but they decided it's been used too many times in too many ads, and they wanted the song just to be by itself. And there was a Doors song we wanted, which was way over a million, so we couldn't have that."
That wasn't the only challenge of course. The film is partly shot on a boat which, as Richard laughingly explains, has its own peculiar set of pros and cons.
"Filming on the boat was fantastic because it's an actual three-dimensional set, so everywhere you put the camera there's some sky, sea, rust, funnels, all that kind of stuff. Also, it was quite close to what we were filming, with 12 men of a certain age, out in the middle of a boat playing loud music and smoking a lot. The logistic problems were if you got stormy seas, the boat would drift dramatically back to land, and you'd hear a loud alarm go off and they'd say if we do one more take we’ll hit the rocks! All that Jaws/Waterworld stuff didn't occur, but people arriving on the small boats did tend to get sick. Emma Thompson found it a nauseating experience."
With so many talented people on board, Richard was happy to let the actors play around with the dialogue. "I used to say: 'say what you want to say at the beginning of a scene. Indeed, if you can think of anything funny in the middle, do that as well.' The original cut of the film was longer. A lot longer, double the length. The DVD is immense," he adds.
It also gave Richard the chance to work with someone he's long admired: Kenneth Branagh.
"I thought Ken was too grand to be in any work of mine, having no rhyming couplets, and no Nazis. He came along to do the read through as a favour, enjoyed it and realised it would be a small amount of time, and he could grow one of the many moustaches he hopes to grow during the long course of his career."
* The Boat That Rocked on DVD, Blu-ray and a CD of the soundtrack, are available to buy now.
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