Interview: Storbritanniens sjoveste mænd

Kino.dk fik en kop te og en god sludder med de tre verdensberømte briter, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost og Richard Curtis.

Richard Curtis er manden, der skrev den særlige hjertevarme humor i nyklassikere som ’Notting Hill’, ’Fire bryllupper og en begravelse’ og ’Love, Actually’.

Sidstnævnte film var tilmed instrueret af Curtis selv, og nu er han tilbage som instruktør og forfatter med filmen The Boat That Rocked, om livet på en pirat-radio-båd i 1960’erne.

En film om ungdom… og pirat radio selvfølgelig
Om, hvad der inspirerede filmens handling, forklarer Curtis: ”I thought pirate radio was funny because of the idea of having to actually live with the people you work with all hours off the day on a boat. Think about the biggest names of Danish entertainment and image they would all have to live in the same house!”

Curtis tilføjer dertil, at filmen først og fremmest handler om det at være ung. Curtis var selv ung i de dage og plejede at snige sig væk fra messe for at lytte til Top 40-listen.

En af filmens stjerner, den charmerende og aristokratiske Bill Nighy (’Pirates of the Caribbean 2 og 3’, ’Valkyrie’), lyttede også til den ulovlige lyd og forklarer: ”I listened to it just like everybody else, you had to really – 20 million people did, and you couldn’t get the good music anywhere else!”

Det er hverdagen der betyder noget
'The Boat That Rocked' er en film om et årti, hvor alting eksploderede og musikken mere end noget: ”The music was stupidly important, but it’s important to all young people, it’s important to me, and I’m not young,” fortæller den snart 60-årige Nighy, og fortsætter “Every generation wants a soundtrack that expresses them as brand new people in the world, and we were lucky to have some good records around.”

Om Curtis formår at skildre en generation er op til publikum at bedømme, men selv var han opmærksom på, at selvom filmen bygger på ægte begivenheder, ville han ikke glemme det vigtigste - den gode historie: “The real history inspired me, but I didn’t do any research really. It worried me to know too much, because it stops you from writing a story,” pointerer Curtis.

Filmen har dog en særlig realisme over sig, som er ny for instruktøren. I stedet for at følge karakterernes højdepunkter, som i ’Love, Actually’, har 'The Boat That Rocked' en mere løs struktur og fokuserer mere på besætningens hverdagsliv ombord på båden. Curtis uddyber: “The older I get I get more interested in the flow of life. I’m starting to think that it’s not the big moments that really matter, but the texture of your life. It’s not where you are going, but what happens when you are going there.”

Drømmecast
Noget af det mest bemærkelsesværdig ved 'The Boat That Rocked' er den ultimative rollebesætning.

Foruden Bill Nighy spiller Kenneth Branagh, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill) og den komiske Nick Frost, kendt fra ’Shaun of the Dead’ og ’Hot Fuzz’, store roller.

“They showed me a list of American actors, and I thought we are never going to get Philip, so we sent him a script with nothing to lose. And he said yes. He does films for the experience of doing them. Apparently this was a world that he wanted to live in,” siger Curtis om, hvordan de fik Oscar-vinder Philip Seymour Hoffman ombord.

iPods og Boat Camp
Nick Frost spiller en af bådens mest erfarne deejays, Carl. Til at forberede håndværket fik alle skuespillere udleveret iPods med periodens bedste musik. De indspillede derefter hver en times radio, som så blev brugt som brudstykker i filmen.

Nick Frost fortæller om sin deejay-udfordring: “I have some experience as a deejay, but with modern equipment. I had to learn to love it the old way, and look like a very experienced deejay. The chatting between songs came easy, and I researched where all the groups on my playlist where playing from 1967-69 so, I could use it.”

I stedet for den traditionelle boot camp blev skuespillerne søsat i en såkaldt boat camp.

“We were on the ship for four days and three nights. We rehearsed at daytime, and then ate and drank wine and played table football at night. We kind of became our characters before we even started shooting,” erindrer Frost med et smil.

Meningen var, at få holdet til at være i karakter hele tiden. De særlige optagelsesforhold på havet og instruktørens ønske om at fange hverdagen betød nemlig, at man altid kunne blive filmet.

Nighy fandt det ikke svært at være i rollen som Quentin, radioens leder og Kaptajn, men han forbereder sig dog aldrig på sine roller. Noget han engang løj om til instruktørerne, men nu føler sig gammel nok til at afsløre.

At der var misundelse ombord, afslører Nighy dog gerne: ”I was slightly disappointed that I didn’t get to be a deejay, because I always wanted to be one. But I have used this press tour as a campaign to get myself a deejay-job, and it worked. Somebody offered me a job, so I am a deejay now, and those guys who were deejays in the movie they won’t be deejays!” hoverer han.

Personlige film
Begge skuespillere virker oprigtigt begejstrede for samarbejdet med Curtis.

Om kritikken mod Curtis’ film, siger Frost: “Richard is often criticized about being too cheery, and it offends me slightly. He does something brave. He puts a lot of himself on the screen for people to see and judge. He puts his heart on the screen.”

Curtis selv sammenligner kritikken med det virkelige liv ved at konstatere, at når man laver personlige film, kan man kun forvente, at nogen ikke bryder sig om dem – ligesom nogen ikke bryder sig om en selv.

Det er trejde gang Curtis og Nighy arbejder sammen, og rosen fra Nighy er mere end stor:

“I love working with Richard Curtis, if I had to work with Richard Curtis every day I would be perfectly happy. He is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met, he is quietly deeply impressive. He is a great comic writer. He is a very cool man, courteous and funny, and as a director he is unfailingly smart around what’s funny and what’s not funny. And I love the films he make” siger Nighy uden at blinke.

Instruktør-håndværket er rimelig nyt for Curtis, som er en legende når den kommer til at skrive komik. Om hvorfor han valgte også at instruere, siger han selv: ”I’m directing now because I spend 10 years watching other people working on my work. I’ve learned directing comedy from watching other people, so I don’t know if I could do a tragedy, because I haven’t seen it done.”

At bytte partner i mørke
Det viser sig at være et par bløde mænd vi har besøg af.

I filmen er der en scene, hvor Frost’s karakter rundhåndet låner en pige ud til bådens jomfru. Hun ved det bare ikke!

Det viser sig, at scenen faktisk bygger på rigtige begivenheder fra de glade 60ere, men Frost selv kunne aldrig gøre det, da han tror følelserne ville være komme i vejen. Om det at kysse Gemma Aterton (Quantum of Solace) indrømmer han dog: “My first onscreen kiss was with a Bond-girl, so it will be downhill from now on for me. In the future I’ll be kissing Phillip Hoffman or an alien.”

Den ellers ret så sjove scene vil Nighy aldrig få at se, da han aldrig ser sine egne film: “I can’t stand the sight of myself, and I don’t like the sound of myself. I did watch myself on film once when I was twenty or something, and I hated it so much that I swore I would never do it again. I walked the streets all night thinking: ‘it’s over’,” fortæller skuespilleren, som heller ikke forstår, hvorfor han altid får rollen som den selvsikre og lettere flamboyante type.

“I am the only English actor you’ll ever meet that hasn’t been offered a part in a Harry potter-movie”, slutter Nighy af, som var det led i endnu en af hans hemmelige kampagner.

Elsker Susanne Bier
Curtis arbejder pt. på Susanne Biers engelske film, ‘Lost for Words’.

Om dette fortæller han: “I just love her (Bier) films, she’s a flawless filmmaker and my brother and I are trying to write her a romantic comedy with some drama in it. It’s inspired by films such as ‘Lost in Translation’ which seems to be about romance, but it’s more complicated.”

Lad os håbe den kommende semi-danske produktion bliver lige så sjov og hyggelig som 'The Boat That Rocked'. For som Frost meget rigtigt pointerer: ”If there is room in the world for ‘Hostel 2’ then there definitely room for a happy movie as ‘The Boat That Rocked'.