I had a short but fun telephone interview yesterday with Richard Curtis, who wrote the screenplays for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones’ Diary, two films I enjoyed tremendously, and who has written and directed a new film that will open in October called Pirate Boat. Formerly titled The Boat That Rocked–I guess the title must have tested poorly–it tells the story of a freighter that operated off the coast of Great Britain in the mid-1960s, broadcasting rock and roll music. “This was an era when there was only one radio station,” Curtis told me, “and while 
the BBC would broadcast rock and roll by dropping in a song amongst big band music, operettas, quizes, and all sorts of far. Never was there a greater mismatch between supply and demand.” Which was addressed, in due course, by pirate radio stations, operating in international waters just outside the territorial limit. The film, whose terrific cast includes Kenneth Branagh, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy (so wonderful in Curtis’s Love Actually), Talulah Riley, Rhys Ifans, Gemma Arterton (all pictured below right), was filmed on what had been an old hospital vessel; Curtis remarked on two mysterious doors in the hold, marked Survivors and Non-Survivors. Curtis said he got wonderful cooperation from the people who hold the rights to the music from the period. “We only got two or three refusals,” He said, “although oddly enough, some of the bands who had the biggest reputation for doing drugs were the ones who put clauses in their contracts saying we 
couldn’t use their songs in scenes where there was overt drug use.” Younger cast members were well acquainted with the music of the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, although there were some discoveries: “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and the Shondells, “Friday on My Mind”, by The Easybeats, and “Happy Together”, by the Turtles. “Ultimately, it’s a film about friendship,” Curtis told me. “There’s also some sex and romance, because I like those things, too. But ultimately it’s about friendship. All my films are.” Can’t wait to see it.
Added on August 28th: Well, I did see it, and it’s not really very good. I guess there’s something irresistibly fun about seeing good looking people play make-believe while sixties music is played real loud, but there is, unfortunately, no real plot, no genuine characterization, and not very many good comic moments.