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Richard Curtis and Bill Nighy on the set of The Girl in the Café.
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HBO:
Richard, tell us how this all came about.
Richard Curtis:
What happened is my life took a strange turn, which is that I decided about eighteen months ago that I'd stop writing and sort of dedicate my time to a bit of almost activist politics. Because there was this G8 Conference happening in the U.K. in July of this year, when it seemed there was a genuine opportunity of a historic breakthrough for the poor.
Traditionally, I work for a charity for six months out of every two years. And I thought, well maybe instead of fundraising I should do some consciousness-raising. And since there was actually a plan on the table for how to halve extreme poverty by 2015, I wanted to see whether anything I could do might make that more likely.
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"I work for a charity for six months out of every two years. And I thought, well maybe instead of fundraising I should do some consciousness-raising."
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— Richard Curtis
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And one of the things that I then thought of was, look, I've got this film which is meant to be a movie-movie. But the way to get to lots of people quickly and inject something into the bloodstream is to do it on the television.
And I went through the normal tortures of whether or not it was good enough or right enough. And finally, we made it. So that's the sort of genesis of how it started.
HBO:
The relationship between the two main characters has such a gentle, understated humor and poignancy. How much of that was in the script, and how much did the actors bring to it?
Richard Curtis:
I think that you can never underestimate in any artistic endeavor how complicated the chemistry is. You know, why is it that when the one member of a band who never wrote a note leaves the band, the band collapses? Even though nobody knew they were key to it? It's a strange thing.
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"With this film, it could have turned out a lot of ways. I had the idea that I definitely wanted Bill Nighy, who I had just worked with in "Love, Actually" to star in it. And that gave it a certain quality-allowed me to be very sure that the leading character would be able to be funny as well as being tragic. That's a tricky combination." |
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— Richard Curtis
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With this film, it could have turned out a lot of ways. I had the idea that I definitely wanted Bill Nighy, who I had just worked with in "Love, Actually" to star in it. And that gave it a certain quality-allowed me to be very sure that the leading character would be able to be funny as well as being tragic. That's a tricky combination.
I then got very lucky and managed to get the services of David Yates, who'd just done these two extraordinary things on British TV called "State of Play" and "Sex Traffic." And he added a whole sort of sensibility of patience and sort of documentary realism.
And then when we got together, we then started to try and find the girl. And it was very hard, because there was a possibility that the girl in the film would either appear to be slightly mad or very Left-wing or you know, a bit obsessed or obsessive.
And that we found one girl who could do it. And she had these extraordinary qualities of sort of patience and every-woman-ness, and ordinary-ness and simplicity. So, it's the same old muddle of influences, which lead to the finished product.
HBO:
The love story seems linked in many ways to the epiphanies the characters experience while at the G8 conference, and the way those epiphanies change their lives and draw them closer. How did that evolve for you?
Richard Curtis:
Every film has its challenges, and this film was exceptionally tricky, the end effect of which is probably more passionate about the politics than it is about the romance. You know, the last film I did, -"Love, Actually," I had to try and tie nine stories together. And that was in some ways a huge challenge. So every film is a wrestle.
And I suppose what I was wrestling with here is when two people get involved with both their own jobs, which a lot of us have in our lives... how you interact with the job that the person you love does. But also with big public emotions with great core passions of concern... what that does to a relationship is quite a complicated thing.
And as such it was great for me. Because the movie's about the two things I'm most passionate about, which is love - otherwise, I wouldn't have so obsessively written all these romantic movies, and sort of poverty-stricken injustice, because I've run a charity for twenty years, and it's a large bee in my bonnet.
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"I learned the lesson there that you don't have to be sort of sentimental about the epic nature of other people suffering. The best thing you can do is just try and do something to alleviate it."
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— Richard Curtis
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HBO:
Can you talk a little about "Comic Relief" and the work you do through that organization and how it relates to this film.
Richard Curtis:
Well I saw - like so many people did - the "Live Aid" concert twenty years ago. And it did have a profound effect on me - the sense that while I was having such a good time, other people's lives were so hard. And I happened by odd circumstance to go to Africa and to Ethiopia at that time. Not really intending to do much, but to learn a bit. And I learned the lesson there that you don't have to be sort of sentimental about the epic nature of other people suffering. The best thing you can do is just try and do something to alleviate it.
I remember very well how practical all the doctors and nurses I saw at work there were. So I came back and did the one thing I could practically do, which was contact friends of mine in comedy and we started doing something called "Red Nose Day," which happens every two years here in the U.K., which is a seven-hour telethon, six hours of which is the best comedy we can possibly produce, and then one hour of which is films from Africa... and also films about causes of social injustice in the U.K.: disability, homelessness, things like that.
And I've done ten of those. Ten fundraising events. We've raised three hundred and fifty million dollars, so that's about five million pounds. It's about five hundred, six hundred million dollars.
I just suddenly thought, Wait a minute. There is a political dimension to this. Bob Geldof once said to me that he made more money over tea with the President of France than he did in the year and a half he spent on "Band Aid" and "Live Aid." Because all President Mitterrand did was alter some tariff or some tax and suddenly there was two hundred million dollars there.
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"So I suppose the point of this film, apart from I hope making a good film, is that I would love to feel that people who see the film might think, I'm just an ordinary person like the girl in the film. Is there anything I can do?'" |
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— Richard Curtis
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So what I decided to do, twenty years after "Live Aid" and after ten "Red Nose Days" was to just see whether or not one could have an effect on these men at the G8.
So I suppose the point of this film, apart from I hope making a good film, is that I would love to feel that people who see the film might think, I'm just an ordinary person like the girl in the film. Is there anything I can do?' And just at this particular moment, there is something that people can do. You go on our website at ONE.org and send a message to politicians in America that this is a subject of concern.
The eight men who turn up at the G8 in Gleneagles will know for damn sure that a billion people passionately want change. They have the power to deliver that change. Someone will do that change, and why not now?
HBO:
Do you feel it's possible to reach the millenium development goals by 2015?
Richard Curtis:
Well, there are huge reasons we need to. The main reason for doing it is basic simple humanity. You cannot have fifty thousand people dying a day from avoidable poverty, which none of us would notice, it wouldn't alter the texture of our lives one jot. It wouldn't be like closing down the transport system. It wouldn't make any difference to us. And yet it would save a continent.
The actual broader issue, which I think will eventually come into play, and just hasn't come into play quite as powerfully now as it will eventually which are the two massive issues of trade and security. Africa will be an increasingly unsafe continent if it stays this poor. It will be prey to all sorts of extremism.
Wouldn't you be extreme if you saw your family dying around you? If twenty percent of your population was dying of AIDS, wouldn't you be cross?
And secondly, the trade issue in Africa, which is an enormous market for the world. And to have sort of a fifth of humanity out of the game is madness as well. So I think in the long-term it'll happen. We just have to try and make it happen before an extra billion lives are lost.
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