Richard Curtis

Speaker 40:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a comedy writer. Author of some of the nation's favourite television shows, Black Adder, Mr. Bean, and The Vicar of Dibley, and one of its favourite films, Four Weddings and a Funeral, he enjoys success without celebrity. Educated at Harrow, he got a first from Oxford, where he began his writing career. When he's not writing, he spends his time working on comic relief, which he founded more than ten years ago, or being with his family in Notting Hill, the scene of his next film. Comedies, he says simply, will only work if the people writing them find them funny. He is Richard Curtis. Does it go further than just finding them funny, Richard? Isn't it also to do with their having to be of you, as it were, come from the heart?

Richard Curtis1:15

Well, I do yes, I do leave my ideas to stew for years and years to find out whether or not they actually mean something to me. I remember once thinking of a fantastic idea for a film at a petrol station and writing it for the next eight weeks and printing it out and then throwing it away the next day because it actually was, you know, a clever thought, but it meant nothing to me. It wouldn't be worth spending the two years making thereafter.

Presenter1:37

But I'm thinking more than that. What about the vicar of Dibli, for example? Do you care a lot about the ordination of women?

Richard Curtis1:45

I I felt very passionate about it for a while. I don't know why it was that I got so obsessed by it. I went to a wedding of some friends of mine and a woman was doing the service and it just seemed so right that a woman would be taking care of such a personal and intimate thing in your lives, you know,'cause your mum has tended to look to those things over the years. That I felt that it would be fantastic to have an image of a good female priest in front of the public so that all the foolish objections would evaporate.

Presenter2:11

But if you were to get married and and like Charles in four weddings and a funeral you haven't been you wouldn't mind being married by a woman priest. Is that what you're saying?

Richard Curtis2:19

No, I'd absolutely um love it. In fact, Charles used to get married at the end of Four Williamson Funeral, but then when Em and I decided not to get married we changed the film.

Presenter2:28

This is Emma Freud. What Charles did get married to her, did he?

Richard Curtis2:29

What

Richard Curtis2:32

In the original draft, yeah, but then we changed it. You should have a lot of things.

Presenter2:35

How many times? Five, would you?

Richard Curtis2:36

Yeah.

Presenter2:37

We'll talk about that in a minute, but it does bring us to the other point that there is a certain autobiographical element in that too, isn't there? I mean, a lot of people say I think actually the head of your company has said that when you found Hugh Grant you found your alter ego.

Richard Curtis2:52

Not in real life of course. Hugh is a dreadful scoundrel An immoral cad. Um but uh he's certainly I've been unbelievably lucky at how beautifully he does the lines that I write. We always auditioned a lot of people and could never quite find the guy. When we cast Jeff Goldblum, the tall guy, it wasn't that we hadn't tried forty Englishmen. So uh I have got lucky with Hugh, yes, and have hung on to him.

Presenter3:17

But why di why is it then that so many people come in and your lines sound flat and then one comes in and they spark?

Richard Curtis3:21

I think it's good probably a very bad writer. I can only find one person in a hundred who can make it work. Um we've talked about this, why it is that there are people who get it exactly right. I'm looking for I think we're looking for a particular kind of sort of heightened realism, which is very easy to slip into a two-dimensional

Richard Curtis3:39

perodic performance, which we don't want, nor a too realistic performance, which will mean it's not funny and it's just somewhere stuck between those that the right performance.

Presenter3:40

One.

Presenter3:47

And the minute he opened his mouth you knew.

Richard Curtis3:50

Yeah, pretty well.

Presenter3:51

Actually.

Richard Curtis3:52

He did come in saying he was never he was to think he was giving up acting, so perhaps we also gave it to him out of the kindness of our hearts.

Presenter3:58

So you've you've found the right man, uh you found the right film budget of three million, it's gross more than two hundred million?

Presenter4:05

Did you always know it was going to be a success? Did you know when you wrote it, This is the one?

Richard Curtis4:10

No, absolutely not. And nor did anyone else. Polygram, who released it in America, had on their schedule that it would make naught dollars in America because they had no confidence in it. And the director, once you'd finished it and the Sundance Festival were going to show it to open it, said please make sure they watch it again and that they're not buying a pig and a poke, I remember was his very insulting phrase. So no, it it took us all by surprise.

Presenter4:33

Tell me about your first record.

Richard Curtis4:35

Uh first record is Don't Worry Baby by The Beach Boys. It is the record I would most need on the Desert Island, um because the Beach Boys always make me happy. I remember when I got my A level results going upstairs on my own into a room with the envelope and putting this record on while I opened the record in case things turned out badly.

Speaker 44:53

It makes me feel alive.

Speaker 44:57

And make me wonder

Speaker 44:59

And she is young.

Presenter5:20

The Beach Boys and Don't Worry Baby and Memories of Opening the A Levels which got you into university, which is where you met Rowan Atkinson.

Presenter5:26

Didn't you intend to be on the stage yourself, some kind of Olivier?

Richard Curtis5:30

I thought I was the great actor of our generation, yes. I'd I'd given a very moving Hermione uh at school, I remember in a particularly pretty

Richard Curtis5:39

green velvet dress. Except I remember when I died I was dragged off stage and one of the people who was meant to drag me off stage didn't come, so one guy did it and my wig fell off as he pulled. He grabbed my legs and the wig fell off. So that was the the biggest laugh of my career.

Presenter5:53

But were you writing at school as well?

Richard Curtis5:55

Yeah, I used to write for the school magazine, which I was once once a week.

Presenter6:00

Yeah.

Speaker 46:00

Hmm.

Richard Curtis6:00

But no, I wanted to be an actor. I thought I was going to be a great actor and then I went to Oxford and realized to my horror

Richard Curtis6:06

That I was no good at all.

Presenter6:08

Was that because of Rowan, because he was so much better?

Richard Curtis6:11

No, this was before even before Roe and I realized I was rubbish. I remember I would always be cast as Fabian in Twelfth Night, even if the play wasn't Twelfth Night, some dreadful, dull, middle ranking servant. And then I met Ro and he fair and squarely put me in my place. There was total silence.

Presenter6:25

You you were his kind of sidekick, his fall guy, weren't you?

Richard Curtis6:29

I became that, yes. I used to do sketches on my own and then Rowan sil s slowly embarrassed me out of them. And once in a while I'd give Rowan a sketch and he'd say, Oh, God, no, that's dreadful and then I'd perform it and we'd get some laughs and he'd say,

Richard Curtis6:42

I'm not sure you're doing it as well as you should. Let me have a go, and that would be the last time I saw it.

Presenter6:47

But you were his kind of invisible man, I think you said in the end, that you were on the stage with him really rather like in the tall guy, the Jeff Goldblum character Dexter stands alongside.

Presenter6:57

Ron Atkinson. Ron Anderson.

Richard Curtis6:59

Anderson. I sent that part to Rowan, and the character was called Rowan Atkinson. And he rang me up and said, What part do you want me to play?

Presenter7:07

Let let's be clear for those who don't remember it, uh th this guy stands alongside the Ron Anderson character and gets hit around the head all night, every night on the stage.

Richard Curtis7:15

Yes, that's right. It wasn't as bad as that. I mean, Rhoda's complete, um, sweetheart and always, uh

Richard Curtis7:20

Lovely to me, but the audience had no idea I was there. I remember my total mortification. David Bowie came to see this the show and watched me. I was on stage for fifty minutes and between leaving the auditorium and coming backstage and shaking our hands, he'd forgotten who I was. He asked me what I did in the show.

Presenter7:39

So it was time to get off. It was time to to discover that you should write instead.

Richard Curtis7:43

Yeah, well that's what had happened really, is that after I found I couldn't act I thought the only way I was ever gonna get on stage was writing.

Presenter7:48

But those are the days of freedom, aren't they, Dox? And you you're just writing for a a kind of captive audience if you like. You're not writing for a market, you can just let it rip.

Richard Curtis7:55

Yeah.

Richard Curtis7:56

That's right, yeah. And you're writing th well, of course it's the thing you have to remember all the way through a comedy writing career, is that you really are have to go on writing for your friends because if you don't think something's funny, then you'll never convince the public that they are.

Presenter8:09

You must remain true.

Richard Curtis8:10

You've got to do that.

Presenter8:11

So what you see

Presenter8:19

Yeah.

Richard Curtis8:19

Sick.

Presenter8:19

Conversely.

Richard Curtis8:19

Echo.

Presenter8:19

Yeah.

Richard Curtis8:19

Yeah.

Richard Curtis8:20

Is Frank Sinatra sing If I Loved You from Carousel?

Richard Curtis8:24

My dad had a small but very select record collection which had a lot of Rogers and Hammerstein records in it and I considered that a great gift because Rogers and Hammerstein were, as it were, the Beatles of the years before.

Speaker 48:36

Off you would go in the mist of day

Speaker 48:43

Never, never to know

Speaker 48:54

I loved you if I loved.

Presenter9:04

Frank Sonata, singing Rogers and Hannerstein's If I Loved You and that was recorded in nineteen forty five.

Richard Curtis9:09

My dad'll be a bit angry about that'cause he was always a Crosby man, really.

Presenter9:13

It was your father, apparently, who intended you should go into personnel man human resources, as we now call it. How did you escape?

Richard Curtis9:20

He was very keen I should do a proper job and he wasn't sure that writing was a proper job. So he gave me a year after I left Oxford and said, I'll give you a year and at the end of it we can see how much money you've earned.

Richard Curtis9:32

In the writing and I think I'd earned three hundred and sixty seven pounds or something like that. But just before the year was up, um Berlin got asked to do Not the Niacot News and I hung on to his coattails and all was well.

Presenter9:43

Your father was was a big noise in Unilever.

Richard Curtis9:45

Work for you.

Presenter9:46

By the name of Tony Curtis.

Richard Curtis9:48

That's right.

Presenter9:48

It sounds like a good material good material for a script. How did he come by the name?

Richard Curtis9:52

Um it was a comic circumstance. My dad's name's Anton Chikuto and came to Australia, um from Czechoslovakia and found it so tiresome that no one could spell his name that he went through the phone book to try and find the most anonymous and pleasant name that he could find. And he picked Tony Curtis and then two years later Tony Curtis also decided that Tony Curtis would be a good name,'cause Tony Curtis's real name isn't Tony Curtis either. And um so my dad was stuck with a

Speaker 110:13

And he cuts his

Speaker 410:13

Uh

Speaker 110:13

Yeah.

Richard Curtis10:21

in some ways more tricky name than the one he had at first.

Presenter10:24

And you were brought up in New Zealand, Manila, Stockholm, Folkestone, and Warrington.

Richard Curtis10:28

That's right.

Presenter10:28

Uh pretty eclectic mix, how come?

Richard Curtis10:31

Uh the the Umilever moved us around. And it was a wonderful way to be brought up, in fact. I mean life in Manila was more luxurious than any life I've experienced since. I thought that just signing for anything meant you had it. We spent a whole life at the Manila Polo Club swimming and bowling and riding. It was heaven. And then Sweden was, you know, full of snow and cold and cosy and I was very happy. And then we came to Folkestone just when I went to boarding school. So and what about Warrington?

Presenter10:59

And what about Warrington?

Richard Curtis11:01

Placed.

Presenter11:01

Uh

Richard Curtis11:01

Uh

Presenter11:02

Yeah.

Richard Curtis11:02

Richard was found too, you know.

Presenter11:04

But you've obviously always, forgive me, been a bit of a clever clogs. I mean, you got into Harrow, I think, without any preparation and you've you know um you're too embarrassed by the brilliance of your exam results along the way. We won't mention

Richard Curtis11:15

I got stupider and stupider. No, no, no. I was I mean, I think I was c uh clever when I was tiny. Um, I found university work quite difficult because you were expected to read

Richard Curtis11:26

You know, Shakespeare, and at the end of a week, say something about King Lear, which it took Shakespeare, you know, forty years of his life to work out how to write.

Presenter11:33

But but just l before we leave school, you're also very popular.

Richard Curtis11:38

Wait a second. Who told you that?

Presenter11:39

Well, you became head of house, didn't you?

Richard Curtis11:43

Yeah.

Presenter11:43

And you banned fagging, so you must have been popular.

Richard Curtis11:46

Actually, no, I don't know about that, you know, because all the boys who had been fags um wanted to have their payback. So it was reestablished um the the moment I left.

Presenter11:57

But in all of this, as you say, music was your first love and you really wanted to be a Beatle.

Richard Curtis12:02

It would have been nice to be one of the Beatles, wouldn't it? Well, no, the Beatles were were and have always been my greatest uh

Richard Curtis12:07

Greatest passion.

Presenter12:08

Didn't you dream about them as a child?

Richard Curtis12:10

I did. Every night when I went to sleep I would have exactly exactly the same dream, which was it was one of my gorgeous sisters' birthdays. I would look destitute, I'd forgotten to buy them a birthday present, everyone would be disapproving, and then I'd swing open the kitchen cupboard doors and there would be all four Beatles squeezed in with their instruments. They'd come out and play a song or two, give us all a kiss and go. And that made me so happy I'd just doze off in blithe contentment.

Speaker 412:38

I know this love of mine

Speaker 112:39

What's up?

Speaker 412:42

We'll never die, and I love them.

Presenter13:09

The Beatles and And I Love Her.

Presenter13:12

Not the Nine O'Clock News launched you as a as a television scriptwriter, Richard Richard Curtis, but it was Black Adder that really established you. It it wasn't exactly an overnight success, was it?

Richard Curtis13:23

No, the first series was very hard work and not very successful, extremely expensive. And in fact I have the two letters. I have the letter from the B B C saying they won't do another series of Blackadder, followed by the one congratulating us for winning a BAFTA for the next series.

Speaker 413:40

Uh

Presenter13:40

Uh

Speaker 413:40

Yeah.

Presenter13:40

So what changed them?

Richard Curtis13:43

Well, we promised to do it extremely inexpensively. The first one was shot on film at Anik Castle and um stuff, whereas um I met Ben between Ben Elton between the first and second series and we chatted about it and he said he loved the first series and would like to write a second one with me, but would only do it if we did it in front of a studio audience and then we decided really to do it with no filming at all.

Presenter14:03

And how did it work, writing it together? That's quite difficult, I would have thought,'cause writing is a solitary business.

Richard Curtis14:06

Well, we had for it's remained a solitary business. Um it was just when computers had been invented and we just swapped discs. I'd write an episode or he'd write a first episode and then we'd hand it to the other person and they'd rewrite it with the one single rule that we weren't allowed to reinsert any jokes of ours that the other person had cut.

Presenter14:26

'Cause they either worked straight off or they didn't.

Richard Curtis14:28

Yeah, no. Uh, our argument was that if you tell a joke at a dinner party and um no one laughs, you don't say no, but wait, what's very funny, I'll tell that joke to you again.

Presenter14:38

And you worked on it, of course, with a lot of strong characters in the cast: Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Miranda Richardson, Tony Robinson.

Presenter14:45

How possessive were you about your work, or did you let them change it? Did it move in the doing?

Richard Curtis14:51

Um

Richard Curtis14:53

We had a fantastic producer, John Lloyd, who'd also done the Nightcott News, who was never happy that anything should be anything but fabulous. So it was a very argumentative and passionate rehearsal room. But, you know, in some ways it it always was. Ben and I were used to arguing about what had been funny, so already by then it had been through lots and lots of drafts. We always had a read through months before, um and two or three episodes would just be wiped because they weren't funny enough. So it was no surprise that we kept on arguing until the final moment.

Presenter15:24

We should just talk about the very last episode of Black Adder, because it it was wonderful. I I well, I think it was anyway. I wondered if you were.

Presenter15:31

Perhaps quite proud of it. It was the the end of the First World War when the chums go over the top quite literally, rather like Butcher Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, they go into slow motion, don't they? I into certain death.

Richard Curtis15:45

Well it was where we started. We we realized what a good time the World War would be First World War would be to set a show'cause they were in very confined circumstances, classes who'd never met before. But we felt odd about doing it and the first thing that Ben and I said was we'll only do it if we can have a very grave and realistic end. So that was that was where we began. And I seem to remember this may not be true, but I'm sure it is true that Ben's uncle G. R. Elton, who was a great historian, wrote to Ben after a couple of episodes and said, You're doing something wrong here. This is not a funny thing, the First World War, and then wrote to him again after the sixth episode saying it had been all right.

Presenter16:24

Because it managed to capture something, didn't it?

Richard Curtis16:26

Well, I think it showed the total you know, the total destruction. Um, that everybody everybody died. The books about the First World War are very interesting'cause the first half tend to be quite amusing. They're full of anecdotes of people gathering optimistically and funny food and uh football matches and class clashes and then just the horror when the first day came and everybody.

Presenter16:46

Yeah.

Richard Curtis16:47

Everybody dies.

Richard Curtis16:50

Yeah.

Presenter16:50

Record number four.

Richard Curtis16:51

Um, record number four is uh is an opportunity, Sue, for me to make an important public apology. I wrote a song when I was very young called Meaningless Songs in Very High Voices about the Bee Gees, which was uh a mistake. The title should have been Fantastic, Long Lasting Pop Songs by

Richard Curtis17:10

The greatest songwriting duo since Leonard and McCartney and I want to apologize now because I love the Bee Gees and all that they do and this is a song they wrote for Diana Ross.

Speaker 417:19

On a journey for the inspiration to anywhere in every

Speaker 417:25

Salvation, I need you to get me nearer to you, so you can set me free.

Speaker 417:33

We talk about love, love, love

Speaker 417:37

Talk about love.

Speaker 417:40

We talk about love, love love.

Presenter17:49

Diana Ross singing Chain Reaction

Richard Curtis17:51

I saw the Supremes in Disneyland in nineteen sixty three. I was actually just walking around and they were an incidental thing between one ride and another. These three girls in chiffon where they're singing. If only I'd sort of known I would have paid more.

Presenter18:07

You're obviously a total aficionado. You're a walking Bible of lyrics, aren't you?

Richard Curtis18:11

I remember pop song lyrics, yes. I hardly remember anything else. I can't remember anything about my own life. I can't remember when I met my girlfriend or anything, but I can remember.

Presenter18:18

Yeah.

Presenter18:19

But these songs kind of litter your films, don't they? Certainly, It Must Be Love, I think, was uh was a tall guy, wasn't it?

Speaker 418:25

Yeah.

Richard Curtis18:26

Proudness, yeah.

Presenter18:26

And love is all around, of course. But lots of others. Let the heartaches begin. All sorts of things littered through the film. That's what I'm saying.

Richard Curtis18:31

Well, I I write u using pop music in order to

Richard Curtis18:36

Cheer me up. You know, I think that trying to write comedy is a bit like just trying to remember get yourself in the sort of mood you are in with your friends at the end of a dinner party, cheerful. And the only way I can artificially bolster myself is to put on uh happy pop music.

Presenter18:50

I still just want to get your origins absolutely right, because what is amazing reading about you we've mentioned obviously Rowan Atkinson in the Oxford days, but Angus Deaton was there as well and then you all went off to Edinburgh and

Presenter19:02

Jimmy Malville, Griff Rhys-Jones, Clive Anderson, you bump into. It's it's amazing that that your generation was probably the biggest comedic generation since John Cleese et al., really, wasn't it?

Richard Curtis19:14

Uh yeah, I mean, I think we were we were very lucky in those days, certainly. You know, sketch performers moved on to sketch shows. I think something like Not the Nightclott News, which Griff and Rowan and Pamela and

Richard Curtis19:26

Um, Mel did. It was very lucky then that you could perform in a group of people so as to learn your craft before you went out on your own. I don't think that ever

Presenter19:34

But Edinburgh was ra really the meeting point of it all, wasn't it? Was that where Ben Elton and Adrian Edmondson and everybody from the Manchester contingent, as it were, came up and

Richard Curtis19:42

I think they also performed there. I think Rick performed in a show written by Ben called Death on a Toilet. That's my that's my memory. But things then shifted and people started doing more stand up comedy to get started.

Presenter19:42

Yeah.

Presenter19:45

So written by

Presenter19:53

And you, meanwhile, after uh not the nine o'clock news and uh Black Adder, then started to do Mr Bean with Roanoke.

Richard Curtis20:01

Yeah.

Presenter20:02

How do you write, mister Bean?

Richard Curtis20:04

It started as a stage thing. Mr Bean was something that Rowan and I used to do on stage. And so we would basically write it in the rehearsal room. We'd have a little idea, boy cheating at exam or

Richard Curtis20:15

Man trying to change changes swimming trunks on a beach and then you'd work it out in the rehearsal room me and Howard Goodall and all of us laughing a lot as you worked it out as you went inched your way through it. But after that as we did more Mr Beans you I would try and at least lay them down at home but it did require me to pretend to be Rowan very embarrassingly and I remember writing one about Rowan meeting the queen mum and just standing completely rock still miming shaking hands for about an hour and a half and thinking well what could I do now what have I got I've got the zips on my trousers I've got my shoes I've got I might have something in my pocket you just have to act it out again

Presenter20:50

Two

Presenter20:55

And these flies were undone, weren't they, Fanny?

Richard Curtis20:56

Eventually, yes, we went for that.

Presenter20:58

Who wrote who wrote the one about trying to burst the aeroplane's sick bag full of sick?

Richard Curtis21:05

Do you know, I can't remember that who wrote they might I mean, Robin Driscoll joined us as well, who worked on the film, and um I think we're all profoundly ashamed and no one would take credit for that.

Presenter21:15

Yeah.

Presenter21:16

Next record.

Richard Curtis21:16

It was terrible too. That joke was terrible when we were making the film though, we had to just do it so many times and the poor American actor would be flown across in order to have cold soup smashed on him thirty times. It was a nightmare.

Presenter21:18

It was terrible when we were making

Presenter21:31

Number five.

Richard Curtis21:32

Oh, well number five is quite an apt thing at this stage because um we do sometimes have fun in rehearsals and you know you got it right when you start to laugh. And this is a record of Elaine May and Mike Nichols, a great film director, who made a graduate and working girl and everything and Elaine May's written lots of wonderful films herself and this is them, when young, trying to rehearse a sketch about a mother and a son.

Richard Curtis21:57

Mm.

Speaker 121:58

Um

Richard Curtis21:58

Um

Speaker 421:58

Yes, dear.

Richard Curtis21:59

Yeah.

Speaker 121:59

Can I talk to you for a minute?

Speaker 122:03

You know, we we haven't given much thought to my my college education and and to what I'm finally gonna be.

Speaker 422:09

Well, you asked me not to push you, and I respect.

Speaker 122:12

And you and Pa have been very good about it, but I want something now that'll take some education, but i it's something that I want very much and if you and Pa are willing to make the sacrifices and send me to school

Speaker 422:23

Uh

Speaker 122:25

Buddy, how could you ask?

Speaker 422:26

That we

Speaker 122:27

Would do anything Anything for you to be a professional. Mother, I want very much to be a registered nurse. Stop laughing.

Presenter22:38

Mike Nichols and Elaine May in Nichols and May at work. So tell me about four weddings in a funeral. Where did the idea come from and why four weddings?

Richard Curtis22:47

Uh I went to a lot of weddings. I did add it up. I've been to about seventy two or something, so I'd had a lot of time.

Presenter22:53

And you were always late and you always swore.

Richard Curtis22:54

Always late. Always late. I remember arriving once at a wedding in Exeter during the Best Man's speech. I mean, I was that late. I missed the whole service and the walk and the dinner and just arrived at the end of the best man's speech. And once at a wedding, some girl asked me where I was staying that night, and I, being a spineless weakling, said I had been going to stay at a hotel, but now I was going to stay with friends. And she said, Shame, I'm going to stay at the hotel. And I said, Oh, shame, I'm staying with the friends. And I went off with the friends. It was so odd.

Presenter23:24

I wrote

Presenter23:27

You didn't leap out of the car at the last minute.

Richard Curtis23:27

Happy. Oh, you didn't leap out of the car at the last minute. I didn't and I remember playing boggle that night with five horrible men with beards and thinking, What have I done?

Presenter23:37

How long did it take you to ride?

Richard Curtis23:40

Uh, it took I mean, I I can't can't really remember, but it seemed to take a lifetime. Um, it was originally Four Weddings and a Honeymoon. There was originally a rather sort of tacky comedy section set on an island.

Presenter23:45

Well it did take a lifetime.

Richard Curtis23:53

But my friend Helen Fielding told me that was too childish and it was time I grew up.

Presenter23:56

Helen Fielding Bridget Jones.

Richard Curtis23:58

That's right, yeah, who edited um The Tall Guy for me.

Presenter24:01

Oh, did she?

Richard Curtis24:02

Did she? And finally, you know, we we worked through the film and Em did all her horrible editing that she normally does on four weddings, writing Emma Freud, mother of children. Mother of children, and very, very ruthless and I would say almost unpleasant script editor. She goes through it all. The things I dread are the bloody letters C D B, which stands for could do better. And you just think, Oh no, I worked on that for a week and I can do better.

Presenter24:13

Emma Freud, mother of children.

Presenter24:30

How many rewrites altogether, then?

Richard Curtis24:31

Well, I think I worked out that between, you know, the ones for myself and then the ones for M and then the ones for the director and producer and then the ones after having heard it read that there were I think I worked out once that it was seventeen. I think that's probably an understatement.

Presenter24:42

Click on

Presenter24:44

But she d Emma does it, this script editing for you, not'cause she's just'cause she's a good script editor, but because, it seems to me, you need this process to be gone through with somebody who's on side, not to say loves you.

Richard Curtis24:57

Yeah, I mean I do think that uh there is a problem, but somebody who really, really knows you really, really knows what you're trying to get at and doesn't want to change it into another film, one which

Presenter25:07

And hasn't got an agenda of it.

Richard Curtis25:08

Exactly. They say that directors in Hollywood make films that remind them of the script that they originally read. Um and so I like to work with people who are fond of me and then uh but it's most important that Emma makes sure that uh the film is everything I taught her about and that we dream about rather than just the best that I can do at the time.

Presenter25:27

And also because you said uh that in films I quote you nothing fraudulent can escape discovery. Can you explain it more?

Richard Curtis25:35

Well film is a very, very slow process and you are eventually stuck spending an entire day filming thirty-five seconds and then you have to edit those thirty-five seconds for you know five days and then you show it in front of an audience and so any weaknesses are eventually revealed because you go into such detail. You can't just get through it on the sort of swing of live performance.

Presenter25:59

Record number six.

Richard Curtis26:00

Uh the next record is by Paul Simon. It's called Some Folks' Lives, Roll Easy. And uh you know from my perfect parents to my perfect children I've had a life that's rolled easy and this song is a good reminder that for all people it is not always so.

Speaker 426:17

I know I ain't got no business here.

Speaker 426:24

You said if I ill got so low, I was busted.

Speaker 426:34

You could be trusted

Presenter26:45

Paul Simon and some folks' lives roll easy, which yours obviously has, Richard. But uh comic relief you founded because well, d to an extent out of conscience, perhaps. I don't know, just needed to help people.

Richard Curtis26:59

Um I don't know. I mean I I happened uh upon comic relief, I went to Ethiopia by chance really in order to accompany a friend. And when I got back decided I would try and organize something to raise some money. I mean I think that I o oddly enough thinking about why I do comic relief, I think it might be to do with Manila. I think it might be to do with the fact that when I was very young we used to drive from the airport past you know huge towns full of people living under corrugated iron.

Presenter26:59

Yeah.

Richard Curtis27:28

to our gorgeous enclosed house. So I was very aware of the sort of simultaneous presence of poverty and

Richard Curtis27:37

Good fortune. And um

Presenter27:38

Hmm.

Richard Curtis27:40

Eager to try and redress that in any way I can.

Presenter27:42

Well, you give a lot of time to it, and it's brought us so many treats from Torville and Bean to Prime Cracker and all that's the important thing, isn't it, that you're asking

Presenter27:52

Quite often people you know, not just to knock off something for charity, but to do something really to give of their best.

Richard Curtis27:59

Well, that's what we try and do. We try and have, you know, special special fun and something like Prime Cracker, you know, Helen Mirren had to fly back from LA in order to do it, but it was something she wanted to do and thought uh would be fun. And um I hope every year we manage a few of those. This year we're gonna do a Doctor Who and we've actually got the Daleks to come out of retirement. They've been longing, they've been getting bored stiff in that cupboard.

Presenter28:24

What for you in terms of helping people has been the greatest achievement of Comic Relief?

Richard Curtis28:30

True, it it there's not a single greatest achievement. We work in lots of important areas supporting lots of small projects. It's the fact that as we you know, when you read the newspapers and you read about something like child prostitution, you know that comic relief is part of that battle. And when the dreadful things happened in Miranda, you could be sure that comic relief would eventually be there doing something, which we are. You know, we're working with the widows of the Holocaust who saw all their families murdered and are now trying to we lend them small amounts of money to start up businesses so that they can support the surviving relatives and things. So it just gives you some security and I think it should give people to give comic relief some security that when they are faced with how difficult life is for someone that they've actually done something to help.

Presenter29:15

And when you're not working on comic relief, you're trying to make this follow-up to Four Weddings and a Funeral, which is called The Notting Hill Film. You've been working on it for four years.

Richard Curtis29:25

Yes, it's been a very long it's been a very long time.

Presenter29:28

It's released this summer.

Richard Curtis29:29

We've actually edited the name just down to Notting Hill now. It's just going to be called Notting Hill, I think. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be released this summer.

Presenter29:32

It's just going to be record nothing here, I think.

Presenter29:37

But Not has Notting Hill got anything to do with it? What's it about?

Richard Curtis29:40

It's set in in a little bookshop in Nottinghill. Uh it was I what I wanted to do was write a film which where I wouldn't have to get up so early in the morning when we were shooting. So I thought what I'll do is I'll set it in the street in which I live. But the ironic thing is they then hired um England's greatest uh designer who rebuilt my street in Sheppardston. So I had to get up, go out my front door, drive an hour to arrive at my front door every day.

Presenter30:02

Every day. And it's Hugh Grant again. He's a bookseller.

Richard Curtis30:04

Again, Hugh Grant is playing a unsuccessful bookseller, uh, a divorced man with uh few hopes and ambitions, into whose shop walks the most famous film star in the world.

Presenter30:16

Julia Roberts.

Richard Curtis30:17

That's

Presenter30:17

True.

Presenter30:19

Seventh record.

Richard Curtis30:20

Uh seventh record is a um song by a woman called Iris Dement. I do feel as though um I've received my emotional education throughout my life from a series of extraordinary female singers, from Joni Mitchell to Kate Bush to Joan Armitrani to Chrissy Hind, and this is my latest obsession. She's a sort of country and western singer who is an angel.

Speaker 430:42

Ay gay.

Speaker 430:45

Jai to Mama.

Speaker 430:50

I made my love earth smile.

Speaker 130:52

Bye, love.

Speaker 430:59

I can give comfort to my friends when they're hurting.

Speaker 431:08

I can.

Presenter31:09

Uh

Speaker 431:09

Hey

Presenter31:12

Iris de Men singing My Life.

Richard Curtis31:14

That that song we used in a documentary we made with Billy Connolly going back to Mozambique. I think Comic Release financed out probably an extraordinary fifty minute section when he reunited a dad who hadn't seen his children for because of the civil war for eight years. Which was really heartbreaking, the daughter wailing with joy and the son not recognizing his dad, shaking his hand politely. And we played that piece of music over it, which is very interesting,'cause it's about a very poor family in Mozambique and it's written by the you know, a daughter of a very poor family in America and the heart is in the same place as Comic Relief is meant to prove. We're the same the world over.

Speaker 131:35

King is

Presenter31:51

Hmm.

Presenter31:52

So what about you on a desert island? No family, no women, no children, on your own, no Man Friday?

Richard Curtis31:55

The children

Richard Curtis31:57

No man f

Richard Curtis31:59

Right.

Presenter32:00

Own devices, hinterland.

Richard Curtis32:01

Actually, you know, I wouldn't I I wouldn't be good. I'm always b whenever I'm left on my own I turn into a sort of pathetic twenty three year old bachelor eating rice and bacon and uh watching the television until three in the morning. So I wouldn't be good.

Presenter32:15

Couldn't build the hut. Couldn't.

Richard Curtis32:17

But I would no, I w I wouldn't be good at building the hut, no.

Richard Curtis32:21

I don't know what I'd do. I'd have to find a rice field. I do like rice. I'm sure I could cook that.

Presenter32:27

Tell me about your last record.

Richard Curtis32:29

Last record is my final uh hold all really. It's Bob Dylan singing my favorite pop song really, Let It Be Me and um it says how I feel about my favorite person, Emma.

Speaker 432:42

I bless the day I found you.

Speaker 432:48

I won't farms around you.

Speaker 432:54

So happy.

Speaker 432:59

Let me me.

Presenter33:04

Bob Dylan and Let It Be Me if you could only take one of those records.

Richard Curtis33:10

I'd have to take the Beatles record.

Presenter33:11

Oh, the people.

Richard Curtis33:12

I guess I did.

Presenter33:13

I can say I dare you not to take Bob Dylan.

Richard Curtis33:14

No, I know, but he's got such a funny little croaky voice, doesn't he? And I love the sound of Ringo's rather rather delicate drumming in the background. I love her.

Presenter33:24

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Richard Curtis33:26

Um I would take the I think the Guinness Book of Pop Singles, edited by Tim Wright and his brother,'cause every day I could open it and be reminded of a pop song I'd forgotten. So I'd say, Oh, look, Love Grows Where Rosemary Goes, I'll sing that all day today and that would keep me keep me happy for ten years.

Presenter33:38

They all look

Presenter33:44

And a luxury.

Richard Curtis33:46

Um, I think I would take the um Pizza Express in Notting Hill. I could then have both rest you know, eat in and take away. So, um, I think that would be my luxury.

Presenter33:57

Richard Curtis, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island disc. Thank you.

Richard Curtis34:01

Yeah.

Presenter34:01

Yeah.

Speaker 434:09

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.