Faster Filmmaker Q&A: “Pirate Radio” Writer-Director Richard Curtis on Borrowing a Boat from Cabbage-Stinking Estonians, Overestimating Leonard Cohen’s Miserablism and Learning to Love the Early Climax

Mannerly Englishman Richard Curtis hasn’t given up on pop music, and neither should you.

For elaboration on this point, please consult his new film “Pirate Radio” (reviewed here).

For elaboration on this film, please consult the brief interview below.

So what’s with the title change?

I think it’s ’cause everyone loved the word pirate. It was called “The Boat that Rocked,” and over here, when Focus got their hands on it, it became “Pirate Radio.” Since that’s what it’s about, and pirate’s a cool word, I’m happy to go along with that. You know, there are always suggestions. When we did “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” everyone hated that title. They said nobody like weddings and everybody hates funerals. You always have a list of about a hundred and it comes down to about five, and then down to one. Most options had the word pirate in them. So it might have been “Piratical Radio,” or “Here Be Pirates” or all that kind of stuff. “Pirate Days?”

How did the story come to be?

There was a moment when I was working on “Bridget Jones,” the second “Bridget Jones,” and I remember going into the editing room, and the director said, “Which of these three songs should we do when Bridget’s running to kiss Colin Firth?” And I said, “Oh, look, do ‘em all. Just put all three of them in. They’re all great.” So obviously I’ve been wanting to do something where I can just use music all the time. I’ve always thought it’s good to do films about stuff you’re really interested in, not stuff you think other people will be interested in. And I knew I’d love to do something about pop music, rather than just featuring romantic pop songs in romantic movies. But it took me a long time to think of the right thing. I didn’t want to do a movie about someone forming a band and then starting to take drugs and eventually having a reunion concert. Because that’s not my experience. My experience is as a fan. That’s why the fans are quite central to this. And then I suddenly thought, well, pirate radio: One, it was an exciting time; two, I loved the music; three, it can also be about something else. Because in a funny way this is a movie about that experience, that I think everybody has, when they just leave college or whatever: You move into a grotty apartment with too many people, really bad food, one person who has sex with everybody, one person who’s never had sex with anybody, and you have no ties and responsibilities. So, slowly, it mounted up in my mind as a pleasurable thing. I also was interested in the sort of chaotic narrative of it. Having written a lot of romantic films recently, which have this quite rigorous format, I loved the idea of being able to just hang out. On a boat.

Your casting seems very clever, with each person tuned in to his own way of being funny but also to the dynamics of the group. Did you write the roles for these actors?

Only Bill Nighy. I always thought that Quentin was going to be Bill. But the others, it was a series of extremely pleasant surprises. I mean, I don’t think I ever dreamed I’d get anyone as wonderful as Philip Seymour Hoffman to be in the movie — and that character is complicated, because I wanted him to be big and boisterous, but also I wanted him to be the soul of the film. So that was a delightful surprise: We sent it to him and he said yes. Some of the others it was different — it was a long search to find Tom Sturridge, who plays Carl. Which reminded me of the long search we had to do to find Hugh Grant. I think often the central character in a movie, if you’re not careful, will be the dullest. Because on the whole he tends to be the person to whom things are happening. Also, it’s not meant to be full of very carefully plotted moments. It is slightly messy. We devised a pretty deliberate rehearsal policy, where we actually rehearsed the film on the boat. It’s a horrible boat, that we found up in Scotland, full of bearded Estonians who hadn’t seen land for 20 years and smelled of red cabbage. And we just hung out on the boat and then every hour or so I’d say let’s do this scene or play that game, so everyone got very used to coexisting with each other, rather than it being a big deal. And then when we shot the scenes, all the actors were there for almost all of them, and it just so happened that we were focusing on that conversation in the corner, rather than the other conversation in the other corner. So there was a very democratic feeling about the shoot.

How’d you go about narrowing down the list of songs?

About 15 of the songs were written into the script. So we got permission for them before we shot those scenes, because they had to be those songs. So I had “Whiter Shade of Pale” and “All Day and All of the Night,” and the two songs that are named after the girls — we didn’t want to call someone Eleanor and then play “Bernadette” when she came on board. But, you know, pop music in movies is really interesting, because it doesn’t turn out as you expect. You often have a favorite song, but it turns out that actually, for a movie, that song’s no good, because the good bit only comes after 47 seconds and you’ve only got a 35-second cue. And so you end up with a song that you didn’t think you liked, but which climaxes sooner. On the whole, the music is from the time. One or two things are outside the period, but I thought the musicologists would actually enjoy me making mistakes more than if I’d got it perfect.

Have your feelings about the music changed during or since making the film?

This is interesting. I’m increasingly interested in how pop music resonates. This is a weird thing to say, but my sister died recently, and my other sister, under the pictures of her at the funeral, had written, “To know know know her is to love love love her — just to see her smile makes your life worthwhile.” And I can’t think of anything sweeter to say about somebody. And that’s a song from the early 1960s. No one meant that to have such meaning. But it really does. I don’t think a poem by Shakespeare’s going to be as good. So, I think that pop music is lasting. And sometimes songs really surprise you. “So Long, Marianne” is a much less miserable song than I thought it was — there are all those lovely girls singing in the background. A friend of mine who’s a musicologist was just saying what’s happening to the Beatles is really interesting. That we always say, “How did Mozart last? How is it that Bach lasted?” And what happens is that things suddenly mean something to the next generation, and then people reinterpret it. The only thing I don’t like about this film is that it might imply that I think this is the best music. ‘Cause actually, I’m still hearing such fantastic stuff. I watched that movie “(500) Days of Summer” the other night. And all the music on that was great. And my daughter is listening to Taylor Swift and I absolutely love her. And I can’t imagine a better song than these new Black Eyed Peas songs. And there’s a guy called Bon Iver…. There’s so much good stuff in so many different genres now. So I think that pop music is going to go on being interesting. It’s always been interesting. Sure, there’s always been bad stuff, but there’s always been good stuff too.