Interview: Director Richard Curtis on Rock, Politics, Sex & ‘Pirate Radio’

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CHICAGO – The legendary Richard Curtis returns this week with “Pirate Radio,” the story of Radio Rock and the first disc jockeys to ever play rock and roll in the United Kingdom. Co-starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Sturridge, and many more, “Pirate Radio” is another ensemble comedy from the man who made the beloved “Love Actually” and wrote “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” and created “Black Adder”. Curtis recently sat down with HollywoodChicago.com (and Matt Fagerholm of Film Monthly and Locke Peterseim of RedBlog) to discuss his new film and its inspirations.

Naturally, if a writer is going to make a film about the power of rock music, he probably has a pretty close kinship to the tunes of the era himself. Curtis vividly remembers tuning into Radio Rock on his transistor, a moment copied for the very first shot of “Pirate Radio”.

Philip Seymour Hoffman (left), Rhys Ifans (center) and director Richard Curtis (right)ÊstarÊin Richard Curtis' rock and roll comedy PIRATE RADIO, a Focus Features release.Ê Photo Credit: Alex Bailey
Philip Seymour Hoffman (left), Rhys Ifans (center) and director Richard Curtis (right) star in Richard Curtis rock and roll comedy PIRATE RADIO, a Focus Features release.
Photo credit: Alex Bailey

Curtis says, “In England, it was hilarious in the sixties. I went to a boarding school, and it really was like 1949. All the hair was unbelievably short, you couldn’t run in the corridors, you couldn’t talk after lights out, you sung endless hymns with the wet pilgrim in them. That’s why it was so fantastic to listen to rock n roll undisciplined.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in Richard Curtis' rock and roll comedy PIRATE RADIO, a Focus Features release.  Photo Credit: Alex Bailey
Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in Richard Curtis rock and roll comedy PIRATE RADIO, a Focus Features release.
Photo credit: Alex Bailey

Even tuning into Radio Rock was an adventure in itself - “You were like a safe-cracker, because the stations were hard to get. They had very small frequencies, and it was the thing about volume level. If it was too quiet you couldn’t hear it, but if it was too loud, the matron who stalked along the corridors could hear it, so you had to get that perfect level.”

His first favorite song was “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” by The Four Tops, the first single he bought and a song he remembers watching climb the charts, as made-up as those charts may have been. Curtis says, “I remember Chapel was on, which was compulsory, and a guy called Richard Griffiths and I were hiding in the music rehearsal room. I remember the DJ saying that “Reach Out (I’ll Be There)” had gone from number sixteen to number TWO. I was unbelievably excited, because these days all records enter in number one, but in those days they went from thirty, although the great thing about Pirate Radio is they made up the charts. They really were piratical. They didn’t pay PRS, they made up the charts.”

Beyond The Four Tops, picking the music for the incredible soundtrack to “Pirate Radio” was a crucial part of production - “Well, you know, it’s so interesting now because you write on computers which are also a jukebox. So the moment I started [writing] it, the first thing I did was download about sixty songs that I was tempted by, and that got up to about 300. I always use pop music to cheer me up during very long days of writing and about 15 of the songs were actually written in to the script. January Jones is called Eleanor so that we could play “Eleanor” [by The Turtles] and the guy was always going to say at the beginning, “We’re going to broadcast all day and all of the night” [making The Kinks song a natural fit].”

“And then I did an iPod with thirty songs per DJ to give them all a sense of it, and when we edited the movie, all of those were on a computer. We had a music editor, and he and I would meet at the end of each day and do a new section. I wanted music all the way through the film, apart from the Ken Branagh bits. We ended up being self-selecting. You think you want one song for a scene, and then you play it next to the scene and it doesn’t work. It’s a song that only becomes interesting after thirty seconds, and it’s only a twenty second cue. So you find your way, as if by magic, to the songs.”

Director Richard Curtis (left), January Jones (center) and Chris OÕDowd (right) on the set of Richard CurtisÕ rock and roll comedy PIRATE RADIO, a Focus Features release.  Photo Credit: Alex Bailey
Director Richard Curtis (left), January Jones (center) and Chris ODowd (right) on the set of Richard Curtis rock and roll comedy PIRATE RADIO, a Focus Features release.
Photo credit: Alex Bailey

What most interested Curtis about the story of Radio Rock might surprise you. It wasn’t just about the music. It was something that has always interested him - “friendship and group dynamics”.

Curtis explains, “In this movie, [while] the historical passion idea was pirate radio and pop music, the comic idea was eight megalomaniacs in a small house. I sort of thought whatever the American equivalent would be, David Letterman and Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien not only working in the same space, but actually living with each other 365 days a year. So that was the comedy idea, therefore that required eight big characters.” 

His recent films (and “Black Adder”) have displayed a political motif in Curtis’ work. He says, “The Girl in the Cafe was clearly a political film. Black Adder is a series about how stupid older people are, so it’s a young man’s show. The political point here, in a way, is just that I always feel that governments are solving problems of the generation before. Young men of 28 join politics, and by the time they’re 45, they still seem to be dealing with old stuff. That’s why the environment issue still isn’t being taken seriously, because it’s a bunch of people who still think that oil is more important. I think it’s political by chance, but it’s a political story I’m quite interested in.”

Youth is clearly a major theme of “Pirate Radio”. “I think it’s a film partly about being 24—for everybody. I think most people end up in a flat with too many people, one of whom has had sex with everybody, one of whom has never had sex, dreadful food, bad hygiene, and listening to music all the time. For me, that was Camden Town, 1979—The Specials, Madness, Blondie, The Pretenders. In a way, it’s a movie about the freedom of your twenties when money doesn’t matter. You do the job you want to do, you don’t have any children. The weird thing is you often end up living with people you don’t like, because it’s a bit random. It’s the one person who can afford it, or it’s the guy who owns the place, or some girl who’s a friend of his mother’s who has to move in. I hated the four people I moved in with, and yet we were happy.”

(leftÐright) Will Adamsdale, Tom Wisdom, Bill Nighy, Katherine Parkinson and Ralph Brown starÊin Richard Curtis' rock and roll comedy PIRATE RADIO, a Focus Features release.Ê Photo Credit: Alex Bailey
Will Adamsdale, Tom Wisdom, Bill Nighy, Katherine Parkinson and Ralph Brown star in Richard Curtis rock and roll comedy PIRATE RADIO, a Focus Features release.
Photo credit: Alex Bailey

Philip Seymour Hoffman was the first choice to play The Count. Richard Curtis explains why, “My brief to them was that The Count was meant to be both funny—which I hope everyone is, he tries to say “f—k” first on the radio—but he was meant to be the soul of the film. I loved the idea of having a really good actor deliver that speech about, “These are the best days of our lives.” The first thing I ever wrote in the film, oddly enough, was the speech he delivers as the boat sinks. I was listening to “Don’t Dream it’s Over” by the Crowded House, and he actually says, “I want to say to all you politicians, don’t dream it’s over.” My intention when I first made the film was that at the end of the movie, we were going to have a compilation of all the great rock songs from the moment the boat went down to now. But it was very confusing when we hoped to get the final cut. So I wanted the best actor to play that part, not necessarily a comedian.”

As for returning to “Black Adder,” something that is appears as a rumor every few years, I’m sorry to report that Curtis offers no clarity on the subject, first saying no, but then pointing out - “Oddly enough, I love the fact that The Police got back together again, and Cream got back together again while they’re still alive. And when we were young, we always said that we’ll do another Black Adder when we’re old and hate young people. Because it was young people pretending to be old people and show what idiots they were. But Tony Robinson is in his mid-90s now, so I’m not hopeful.”

“Pirate Radio” will be released in theaters on Friday, November 13th, 2009.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

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