Prime Minister : “General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.”
I tell my friends and students that everyone’s entitled to a guilty pleasure at the movies – one film you know may not be the greatest thing, but that makes you feel good. And who can ever argue with that? We have a tradition at our household come Christmas time, and it’s to watch “Love Actually” (2003) at least once. Yep, you read that right…there are certain Decembers that we have seen it more than once. The above speech is at the very top of the movie, and I have never not cried when I watch it. Hark, I’m a little teary-eyed as I write this to you because I just read it. I’d compare “Love Actually”- with all its different storylines and characters – to a big holiday buffet where there are so many dishes to put on your plate. Some of them are good – others not healthy – but you’re just going to eat it and enjoy because it feels comforting, and ‘tis the season.
Written and directed by Richard Curtis – who was Oscar nominated for penning “Four Weddings and a Funeral” (1994) – the film covers the hectic five weeks leading to Christmas’ Day as seen through eight different couples experiencing different stages of love. Their stories are very slackly connected – for the most part we move episodically from one to the other. If we get hyper critical, we can comment that there are too many storylines, but that would be – going back to my banquet analogy – like complaining about too many dishes to pick from. Some you care about and feel deeply connected with – others not so much, (the thread about the young Englishman wanting to go to America to hook up with ladies has never worked) but fortunately Curtis keeps things moving. In my repeated viewings, there are years that I find myself more involved with one segment. I always love Colin Firth’s plotline in which, brokenhearted, he isolates himself in the south of France and meets Aurelia, his Portuguese housekeeper. The two of them not speaking the same language and having a back and forth where they misinterpret what they’re saying to one another — they each misunderstand what the other says – but it’s obvious to us they’re falling in love. He tells her in English “It’s my favorite time of day, driving you,” and she says in Portuguese, “it’s the saddest part of my day, leaving you.”
One thing is unequivocal – this is a terrific ensemble and their commitment to the proceedings makes it work – and there are some terrifically acted moments. Who could ever not be moved by watching Emma Thompson’s character figure out her husband’s interest in a co-worker? As Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” plays, Thompson stands to the side of her bed and a torrent of emotions overcomes her. And how can you not smile from ear to ear at the sight of Hugh Grant shaking his moneymaker to the beat of the Pointers Sister’s “Jump” through the stairs of 10 Downing Street?
Then there’s the fact that so many of the supporting players were not well-known at the time and have gone on to meteoric success. There’s a very young Keira Knightley and Chiwetel Ejiofor before Oscar nominations came calling. Andrew Lincoln before “The Walking Dead” made him a household fame – as well as Martin Freeman before “Sherlock” – and in a cameo, January Jones pre-“Mad Men” fame. Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, the late Alan Rickman, a scene-stealing Bill Nighy and the irrepressible Rowan Atkinson and his gift wrapping bit. “This is so much more than a bag!” Indeed.
The part involving Billy Bob Thornton as a US President who is a bully takes a surreal prescient quality, and Hugh Grant standing up to him becomes even more triumphant that ever. “And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the President should be prepared for that,” he declares. Amen.
I wish you all a generous serving of “Love Actually.”
Mark: “But for now, let me say – Without hope or agenda – Just because it’s Christmas – And at Christmas you tell the truth – To me, you are perfect.”
Love,
Roger
Available to stream on Fubo TV, Philo and Spectrum and to rent on Vudu, FandangoNOW, Redbox, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, Microsoft, Apple TV, DIRECTV, Amazon and AMC Theatres on Demand.
Written and Directed by Richard Curtis
Starring Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy and Rowan Atkinson
135 minutes
Writer and Director Richard Curtis on Writing “Love Actually”
“After ‘Notting Hill,’ I took my time, and I thought that I might write the film that turned out being Hugh’s story [in ‘Love Actually’] and the film that turned out being Colin’s story [in ‘Love Actually’] as whole films. I’d worked out whole films on those subjects, and then I thought, Oh, I don’t want to do these because they are just turning out to be a shape I know. And I said, “I’d be more interested in writing a film about love and what love sort of means, and how, you know, about the subject than rather than one example of a story about that subject.” And then I remembered how much I loved Robert Altman’s movies with lots of stories — ‘Nashville’ and ‘Short Cuts.’ And how much I loved those Woody Allen movies with three or four stories. And ‘Pulp Fiction.’ And ‘Smoke.’ And I suddenly thought, Oh, I’ll write one of those. And then if I write one of those, I can not only deal with the Jolly-People-Fall-in-Love-and-Kiss ones, but I can also deal with the Emma Thompson story and the Laura Linney story and the father and son story and stuff. So, you know, I found something I wanted to do rather than write something I thought I ought to write.” (vulture.com)
Writer and Director Richard Curtis Reflects on the Making of “Love Actually”
“This film is my ‘Pulp Fiction.’ I love multiple storylines, but I soon realised how tricky they are. At first, we had 14 different love stories, but the result was too long, so four ended up going, including two we’d actually shot. One was based on a poster in Alan Rickman’s office of two women in Africa. The camera actually went into the poster and heard them talking about their daughters’ love lives. Another involved Emma Thompson’s son getting into trouble at school and the camera following the harsh headmistress home. We thought we had a good mix of people who were quite famous and those who weren’t. Funny how unbalanced it all looks today, now that Martin Freeman is the Hobbit, January Jones is in ‘Mad Men,’ and Chiwetel Ejiofor is in ‘12 Years a Slave.’ I knew from the start I wanted Hugh Grant as the prime minister and Emma Thompson as his sister. And I wrote Martine McCutcheon’s part for her, too. I even called the character Martine, though I had to change it before the read-through so she didn’t think she’d already got it. Bill Nighy’s was the strangest casting. I had two famous guys in mind to play the ageing rocker Billy Mack, and I couldn’t decide who to ask. But at the read-through, Bill did it so perfectly he became a definite yes. I’ve never told anyone else who I wanted. I’ll put it in my will. Although all the strands come together in the airport at the end, it still felt like making 10 separate films. It was a massively difficult edit. The order I originally wrote it in didn’t work at all, so we had to reorder it completely. It was a bizarre four-month game of 3D chess.
Once you’ve made a movie, it becomes a diary – an incredibly expensive momento – of the days you spent filming. I have a very perverse view of it when I watch it now. I think: “Oh, it was hot that day, they weren’t in a good mood, I couldn’t decide what coat they should wear, I had to give them notes on how to kiss.” I’ve made so many mistakes in my career. I voted against Hugh Grant being cast in ‘Four Weddings.’ And here, I had so many arguments about toning down Bill’s costumes, but Bill was having none of it because they were so fun to wear. Also, in every film I’ve done, the bit I like most has had nothing to do with me. That’s the awful truth. In ‘Four Weddings,’ it’s Auden’s poem. Here, it’s Emma crying to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now.’ It’s the most deeply striking thing in the movie. I love the end of Colin and Aurelia’s plot, too: him leaving his family Christmas to fly to France and jumping around in frustration at the airport when he misses a cab because he was too nice to get in it, meeting her sister and father, the walk through the town, the translation moment in the restaurant. The song “Christmas Is All Around” was just a joke, because “Love Is All Around” had been at No 1 for 15 weeks and I liked the idea of a compromised character like Billy Mack covering it. I feel that today, 10 years on, Billy would be releasing the Calvin Harris remix to make some extra cash.” (theguardian.com)
Bill Nighy on Playing Billy Mack
“I know it’s disappointing, but there wasn’t one person I was trying to emulate in playing Billy Mack. You’re supposed to give up reading NME when you’re 39 and I gave up at 54. I was obsessed with rock stars, so my character is an amalgam of several. Unlike Billy, though, I’ve never said fuck on live TV, which is quite a feat because I use the word obsessively. And I’ve always felt bad about insulting Blue [writing “We’ve got little pricks” on their poster], but I understand they took it well. I don’t think it did them any harm. And it wasn’t true – it was a filthy lie from Richard! So we were safe. I also felt bad about the having-sex-with-Britney-Spears gag. Luckily, or unluckily, I’ve never met her, so I’ve never had to account for myself. Richard is a true believer. He doesn’t make romantic comedies in order to, well obviously he wants to make money, but it’s real and he finds different ways of expressing it. ‘Love, Actually’ is an old-school ensemble film, all the stories are good value, and it’s entered the language, and because it’s Christmassy it’s perennial. We didn’t all film together, but we had a big trailer park for all the cast. There were so many famous people in there, we used to talk about being on Liam Neeson Way or Emma Thompson Road or Hugh Grant Avenue. And it was a masterpiece of diplomacy, too; we all had the same size and type of trailer. I recorded the song Christmas is “All Around” in Abbey Road studios. It was a big deal. I’m not a singer, as you may have spotted, so it was daunting. Billy’s band was very cool: the fact the girls were a tribute to Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love video was such a good joke. When we did the filming, the huge hangars at Shepperton studios would fill up: everyone suddenly had some crucial reason to be in this particular hangar. It freaked me out: I had to do my dodgy middle-aged rock jokes in front of all these blokes. My favourite line – the one they’ll write on my tombstone and the one kids still shout at me, is: “Hi kids! Don’t buy drugs – become a rock star and they give you them for free.” (theguardian.com)
Richard Curtis on “Love Actually”
“…with ‘Love Actually,’ that [ending] was really important to me. I remember noticing at an airport, it was actually while we were shooting the Mr. Bean film and I was stuck airside, and I suddenly saw all this extraordinary emotion. And I thought, That is the proof that there is so much overflowing love in the world and it’s absolutely core to people’s lives. And that was real documentary footage that we shot without anyone knowing we were shooting, and we had to rush up to people and ask for their permission to use it. But, in this movie, I always knew from the beginning that the movie was gonna end with a really ordinary day featuring the Domhnall character. And then when I finished, I thought it would be nice to include just a moment of the other characters. And then once I decided to do that, I thought it would be nice to just thread in some
About Writer and Director Richard Curtis
Richard Curtis is a film writer and director, responsible for films such as “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” “Mr Bean,” “Love Actually,” “The Boat That Rocked,” and most recently “Trash” and “About Time.” In the other half of Richard’s life, he is co-founder and vice-chair of Comic Relief, which he started after visiting Ethiopia during the 1985 famine and led to the fundraising event, Red Nose Day. He has co-produced the 14 live nights for the BBC, and since 1985, the charity has made over £1.25 Billion for projects in the UK and internationally. In 2015, he helped bring Red Nose Day to the United States with the partnership of NBC and Walgreens – where it has so far raised nearly $150 million to help children in the USA and around the world. Richard was a founding member of Make Poverty History, the campaign for the MDGs and worked both on that and on Live 8 in 2005. As part of his contribution to the MPH campaign he wrote “The Girl In The Cafe” for HBO and the BBC – a television drama based around the G8 summit – which won 3 Emmys. In 2015 he helped found Project Everyone to work to make the Global Goals famous and effective – and is now a UN Advocate for the SDGs. (project-everyone.org)