Montclair Magazine May 2016 | Page 53

Q&A Laughs Actually Filmmaker and fundraiser Richard Curtis leverages comedy to change the world. I n America, Richard Curtis is best known as the force behind romantic comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually. In the UK, though, the writer/ producer/director is also celebrated for harnessing the power of laughter for charitable giving. Since he cofounded Comic Relief in 1985, the non-profit has raised over £1 billion to promote global development. On April 30, the Montclair Film Festival, in conjunction with BAFTA New York, will present a day of festivities surrounding Curtis and his work, and bestow its inaugural Filmmaker Tribute to him. We talked to Curtis about love, loss and why he won’t write about serial killers. CURTIS COURTESY OF COMIC RELIEF; LOVE ACTUALLY: COURTESY OF WORKING TITLE FILMS WHAT ATTRACTED YOU TO FILMMAKING? I did comedy sketches at [Oxford] University. Then I wrote three-minute sketches for a satirical radio show, and worked on Not the Nine O’Clock News, which was a show like Saturday Night Live. After that, I took my skill at writing three-minute bits to half-hour sitcoms. The natural curve of my career mixed with my love of American films such as Woody Allen movies and Breaking Away, and made me want to try filmmaking, too. WHAT IS YOUR PROCESS LIKE? The difference between having a good idea and finishing a film is the difference between seeing a pretty girl at a party, and when she’s giving birth to your third child: It’s a very long journey. When I write, I might do 20 pages a day, then edit. I focus on different things each day – sometimes plot, or making the jokes funnier, or I’ll write endless conversations between two people that won’t appear WRITTEN BY CINDY SCHWEICH HANDLER A GOOD SIGN Andrew Lincoln and Keira Knightley portray one of the many couples whose stories are told in Love Actually in the movie, but I’m learning how they talk to each other. Almost all my films have been written with the mother of my children [broadcaster Emma Freud] editing them. She tends to be dissatisfied longer than me. HOW DO YOU FIND YOUR THEMES? Love and loss have emerged as the central driving forces of my life. Between 5 and 35, I fell in love with the girl; a sequence of girls; then it was full of love for Emma Freud and my children; I took care of my parents, and they died. I write from experience. I could never write a film about serial killers; I never thought of one. HOW DID YOU GET INTO GLOBAL FUNDRAISING? I went to Ethiopia in 1985 because a friend was going. We spent nights in corrugated huts – I’m in jeans and a backpack, and there are families in the other huts who won’t all live through the night. But at the same time that I felt the nature of human suffering, I was also convinced that effectiveness could counter it – wells being dug, nurses and doctors at work, agriculture being helped, not in terms of emergencies, but as an on-going attempt to end poverty. TELL ME ABOUT RED NOSE DAY. We were doing stage benefits in the late '80s, and I thought, “Why not do TV shows in front of 15 million people instead?” So me and a couple others asked the BBC if we could make great content, as funny as possible, and mix it with a more informal appeal. Last year was the first Red Nose Day in America, and this year we’ll have our second, May 26th on NBC. WHAT BRINGS YOU TO MFF? My daughter is a sophomore at NYU, and my family is in America for a year, our “year of saying yes” to things. And I’m a huge fan of Stephen Colbert. We’re going to show Love Actually while I give running commentary, and destroy it with my scurrilous memories and revelations. ■ MAY 2016 MONTCLAIR MAGAZINE 51