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A redblog Q&A with Pirate Radio Star Tom Sturridge

Earlier this week, I and others sat down for a short talk with 23-year-old British actor Tom Sturridge, who plays the central character in Pirate Radio, opening this weekend. Though he grew up around show business, Sturridge has so far only appeared in a handful of films, including 2004's Being Juilia and Vanity Fair.

Written and directed by Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and originally known as The Boat That Rocked when it was released last spring in Britain, Pirate Radio tells a fictional story based on the real-life outlaw disc jockeys who quasi-legally broadcast rock and roll radio to England in the late 1960s from ships anchored in the North Sea. The rag-tag DJ crew is led by Curtis regular Bill Nighy as the owner and ship’s captain; Phillip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, the station’s sole American voice and most passionate believer in the power of rock; and Rhys Ifans as the preening Jagger-esque hedonist Gavin. Introduced into the middle of all this floating summer of love madness is Young Carl, played by Sturridge. 

(You can read my  Q&A with Pirate Radio director Richard Curtis here.)

The following are some highlights from our chat with Sturridge:

On Being the Child of Filmmaker Charles Sturridge and Actress Phoebe Nicholls

Sturridge: In a weird way, it was kind of the opposite of a show-business childhood. I was a very clichéd, rebellious child, and I really didn’t want to have anything to do with what they did. I didn’t see my mom in a play until about a year and a half ago for the first time. There was no sort of fracture on any side of our relationships, but I wasn’t somebody who spent time on sets. I did a film when I was seven, Gulliver’s Travels directed by my dad, which was more due to the fact that he was out of the country and wanted a way for his son to be with him and so he put me in it. I wouldn’t really call that acting, I’d call it standing.

And so it wasn’t until when I was 17, when they were casting Being Julia that I got involved in the business. I was quite a big cinephile when I was a kid, and I really wanted to meet the film’s director, Istvan Szabo. And the casting director was my friend’s mother and she kinda showed him all the professional 17-year-old actors, and he didn’t like any of them. So after that the only other 17-year-old boys she knew were her family friends. And so she started getting them in, and I really wanted to meet Istvan. It was that experience meeting him and by chance getting the job and the experience of making the film that got me into acting more than anything.

On How Twenty-Somethings Today Feel About the Sixties

Sturridge: I think every contemporary band and musician has in some way been influenced or is referencing music that began in the ‘60s in the same way that the Stones were referencing the blues. It’s not an alien idea, this music—unlike any other period, it still abounds in our culture: Beatles music, Rolling Stones music, The Who, especially in England. You can’t watch a film or a TV advert or a television program without listening to them.

My dad gave me his record collection when I was younger, so I was very familiar with the music. The story itself, the idea of pirate radio and what was happening on these boats, I was completely ignorant of, and learned about when I read the script. But in England, it’s so pervasive, this music, that you can’t not know it. Richard Curtis has a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of pop music from 1956 to the present day so it was an education because he would bring out weird B sides everyday that no one had ever heard of.

What’s amazing about it, I think, which is very different from being young now, is how the music of the ‘60s was born of an energy created by this postwar conservatism, and young people not having a framework to express how they feel. Especially in England, the ‘50s were very, very repressed; people were recovering from what had happened in World War II. You didn’t tell your mother what you felt about love and sex and how to live, and so this kind of energy built up that exploded with this music, and I think that’s something that any young person can empathize with.

A redblog Q&A with Pirate Radio and Love Actually Writer-Director Richard Curtis

Earlier this week, I and others sat down for a short round-table conversion with Richard Curtis, the writer-director of Pirate Radio, opening this weekend. Curtis is the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the writer-director of my number-one rom-com of all time, 2003's Love Actually. (In the '80s, he also helped create one of my favorite British comedies, the twisted historical Blackadder series starring Rowan Atkinson.)

Originally known as The Boat That Rocked when it was released last spring in Britain, Pirate Radio tells a fictional story based on the real-life outlaw disc jockeys who quasi-legally broadcast rock and roll radio to England in the late 1960s from ships anchored in the North Sea. The rag-tag DJ crew is led by Curtis regular Bill Nighy as the owner and ship’s captain; Phillip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, the station’s sole American voice and most passionate believer in the power of rock; and Rhys Ifans as the preening Jagger-esque hedonist Gavin.

Other familiar comic faces in Pirate Radio include Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) as a “chunky” (and gloriously hairy) ladies man, and Rhys Darby, best known as the Flight of the Conchord’s manager Murray. Kenneth Branagh plays a British government official trying to shut the pirate radio stations down, and Mad Men's January Jones shows up as a dazzling love interest. Introduced into all this floating summer of love madness is Young Carl, played by Tom Sturridge. (A Q&A with Sturridge will be published tomorrow.)

The following are some of the highlights from our chat with Curtis:

On Youth and Music, and the Freedom to Live with People You Hate

Curtis: England was hilarious in the ‘60s. I went to a boarding school and it really was like 1949. All the hair was unbelievably short, you couldn’t run in the corridors, you couldn’t talk after lights out, you sung endless hymns with the word “pilgrim” in them. And that’s why it was so fantastic to listen to rock ‘n’ roll—it was undisciplined.

I had a tiny little radio, and you were like a safe cracker, turning the dial—they were hard to get, these stations because they only had very small frequencies. And it was the thing about volume level as you listened. It was too quiet you couldn’t hear it, but if it was too loud the matron who would stalk along the corridors could hear it, so you had to get that perfect level.

I’ve got very passionate memories of “Reach Out I’ll Be There” by the Four Tops. It was the first single I bought, and you know the way you can remember weird moments from your youth? I remember chapel was compulsory and a guy and I were hiding in the music rehearsal room and remember the DJ saying that "I’ll be There" had gone from 16 to number two, and how unbelievably excited I was. I was locked in a boarding school and sort of sensed this amazing world of freedom.

Also I think Pirate Radio is actually a film partly about being 24. At that age, most people end up in a flat with too many people, one of whom has had sex with everybody, one of whom has never had sex…with dreadful food, bad hygiene, and listening to music all the time. For me that was Camden Town, 1979: The Specials, Madness, Blondie, The Pretenders. And in a way it’s a movie about that nostalgic thing, about the freedom of our 20s when money doesn’t matter, you do the job you want to do, you don’t have any children. The weird thing is you often end up living with people you don’t like, ‘cause it’s a bit random. It’s the one person who can afford to live there, or the guy who owns the place, it’s some girl who’s a friend of his mother’s who has to move in. I hated the four people I lived with, but we were happy.

Nicole and Gwyneth, Sittin' in a Tree

I'm not sure there are two actresses I like less than Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman. OK, maybe there are: Julia Roberts and Kristen Stewart, for starters. But Gwynnie and Nic are definitely up there on my Not All That list. Which is why I cannot imagine anything worse than watching them portray a married couple on the big screen. That's right, I said married couple.

Nicole is going to be playing the successful Dutch painter Einar Wegener -- a man (cue Austin Powers quotes) -- who was the first person to undergo a sex-change operation, way back in 1931. You didn't know they could do such things back then, did you? Neither did I.

Wegener's story inspired New York Times' bestselling author David Ebershoff to write The Danish Girl, a fictionalized account of Wegener's life, including his marriage to fellow artist Gerda Gottlieb... a marriage that persevered even after Einar Wegener became Lili Wegener.  Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, best known for one of my favorite vampire films of the past few years, Let The Right One In (take that, Twilight!), will be overseeing the adaptation of The Danish Girl, which will soon be going into production. Charlize Theron was originally slated to play Gerda, but then dropped out and was replaced by Paltrow. 

I might have had more interest in this one if Theron was still on board, but now... no.  I'm still reeling over the fact that Gwyneth had the audacity to refer to Billy Joel as "William" in her much maligned GOOP newsletter.  (Don't even get me started on the ridiculousness of GOOP overall.)   In my opinion, it just doesn't get any faker or more pretentious than Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow.  The former can act, but scares the crap out of me with her over-Botoxed forehead.  The latter cannot act, no matter what the Academy wants us to believe.  And no, I'm not panning on the thought of these two starring in a film together simply because I don't like them.  Kidman's Moulin Rouge! and Paltrow's Sliding Doors are both movies that I absolutely adore (Sliding Doors because of its concept, not because of Paltrow's performance).  But in a heavy drama such as The Danish Girl, there is no way I can deal with both of them on-screen at the same time, when they will obviously both be vying for a gold statuette. 

This ends my rant of the day.  I feel much better now.

The Big Honey Hunt? More Like The Big Dolla-Dolla Bill Hunt.

Now Hollywood has done it.  They have chosen to mess with my favorite series of books from my childhood: The Berenstain Bears.  Forget the Chipmunks and their "squeakquel," forget Marmaduke, forget Ramona and Beezus, forget Locke's warnings of the inevitable Family Circus film -- The Berenstain Bear movie MUST BE STOPPED.  They will ruin Mama, Papa, Brother and Sister Bear, I am sure of it!  (I just learned today that baby Honey Bear joined the fam in 2000, too.  I also learned today that the Berenstain Bear Country attraction at Cedar Point amusement park, which I used to go to like ten times per summer, was retired over ten years ago -- sob!  The hits keep coming.)

I find no comfort in the fact that director Shawn Levy is overseeing this project.  Sure, I liked the first Night at the Museum, but let us not forget that he was also responsible for Just Married, The Pink Panther and Night at the Museum 2 among other questionable titles.  The bad outweighs the good on Levy's resume, if I may be so bold.

I *might* have been OK with this whole thing if the plans called for a 100% old-school animated adventure.  Unfortunately, however, the big-hit-or-disastrous-miss combination of live-action and CGI animation will be employed. I don't want to see a CGI version of the Bear family, dammit!  CGI is NOT all that.  Why oh why won't anyone out west come to their senses?

I need a shot of honey.

Owen Wilson to Provide Voice of The Great Beast of the Apocalypse Marmaduke

Owen Wilson has worked with Bill Murray on several Wes Anderson films: The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and the upcoming Fantastic Mr. Fox. So you'd think somewhere along the way Murray might have taken the Butterscotch Stallion aside and said, "Someday they're going to back a truck up to your front door and offer you a whole bunch of money to voice an animated funny-papers pet. But also, someday the world is going to be overrun by zombies, and you may find... well, never mind..."

Like a bearded, long-haired, naked, unwashed prophet, I crawl out of my cave every six months to warn you of the impending doom. First of the the Chipmunks sequel (which is nigh upon us), then the Marmaduke movie. And I'm still telling you, The Family Circus Motion Picture is coming... you won't listen and believe me until it's too late.

But it is too late to escape the Great Darkness Dane: Wilson has signed up to do the voice of Marmaduke in the live-action/CGI film from Fox (which also brought us Garfield and Alvin and the Chipmunks). And of course a la Beverly Hills Chihuahua and G-Force, Marmaduke has to have a gang of animal pals, including Marlon and Damon Wayans, George Lopez, Fergie, and Wilson's Night at the Museum peer Steve Coogan. Marmaduke will be directed by Tom Dey, who helmed Wilson's Shanghai Noon (as well as Failure to Launch).

So maybe Murray did talk to Owen about doing animal voices in big family movies. Maybe the wise one said, "Eh, take the check, put a pool in at the bottom of your existing pool. Set up a bowling alley and putt-putt course in your kitchen. Buy an island and build a yak farm and moto-cross track."

 

"Do you have any regrets?"          "Maybe Garfield."

An X-Files Reunion, Kind Of

Before I went to bed last night, I saw a short blurb about Chris Carter teaming up with the crew from The X-Files again... and visions of a third movie danced in my head until my alarm clock blared this morning.  Alas, I was tricked.  There's still not another official X-Files movie in the works just yet, but Chris Carter is going to appear with Gillian Anderson (Scully), Mitch Pileggi (Skinner), executive producer/writer Frank Spotnitz and executive producer/director Rob Bowman for a kind of random Q&A session at the Beverly Wilshire hotel on the afternoon of November 14.  "Believe Again: A Celebration of The X-Files" is what the shindig's being called, and it's all in the name of charity.  If you're in the Los Angeles area, tickets are $50 and the organizations benefiting from the event are listed on the ticket order page. 

For those X-Files fans who aren't able to attend, there's still reason to be excited. I would bet good money that some sort of announcement about a third movie will be made on the 14th. Carter has always said that he would like to wrap up the series' mythology with a film that takes place (and is released) in 2012, the year in which the extraterrestrial invasion alluded to in the show is set to go down. 

And guess who's dropping hints that he'd be on board?  Mr. Fox Mulder himself, David Duchovny.  In this interview with The Daily Beast, he states: “As far as the X-Files movie I’d like to do next, if we get a chance to do it, would be a return to the heart and soul of the mythology, which is the alien-oriented conspiracy. I think it’s natural for The X-Files to have another movie in 2012, so we’ll see if we get to do it.”

Until we know for sure, here is something to entertain you: pictures of a much younger version of myself at an X-Files convention. (Behold the level of my nerdiness!)  The first is in a recreation of Mulder's office... the second is me being stuffed in the trunk of a car by the Men in Black (one of whom I think might be Tommy Lee Jones, straight from his role in the movie of the same name.)

Revenge of the Ouija Board

Remember all those sleepovers you went to in elementary school and junior high where you played the Ouija board with your friends and attempted seances and chanted "Light as a feather, stiff as a board" and tried to lift people off of the ground with just two fingers and whatnot?  And then when none of it worked you convinced each other that the Ouija board was silly and that seances were dumb... but then couldn't help but wonder if maybe you should've tried to lift Susie instead of Jenny.

Seriously, though, in my case, when I played the Ouija board in fifth grade and it failed to state that I would marry Chachi in the future, there was no doubt in my mind that the whole thing was a sham. Now that I'm an adult, I'm of course thankful to have had no part in Scott Baio is 46... and Pregnant, but I guess that's neither here nor there.  What I'm trying to say is that two decades have passed since I last thought about the Ouija board, and now it's suddenly back in the limelight and is clearly seeking vengeance against the Gen X and Y'ers who dismissed its prophecies all those years ago.

First, the mysterious lettered board played a supporting role in the breakout hit of the year, Paranormal Activity.  But that was just the beginning. In the near future it's going to get the front-and-center treatment in an Ouija board movie produced by Transformers' Michael Bay.  We've alluded to this project when discussing the childhood game adaptation trend in posts about the Monopoly, Candy Land and Asteroids movies, but now we've got a few more concrete details.  Tron Legacy writers Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz have signed on to pen Ouija's screenplay, and so far the word is that they're going for a "supernatural action-adventure" revolving around the rules for the using the board, such as "never use it alone," "never use it in a graveyard," and "always move the pointer to Good Bye at the end."  You know some fool in the movie isn't going to obey these rules, and will therefore be doomed to come face-to-face with gruesome demon-spirit-ghosties. 

As much as I've boo-hooed the other game adaptations, I feel kind of hopeful about this one. That's probably because Kitsis and Horowitz are writers and executive producers on my favorite TV show, Lost, and so I have great faith in their abilities. I mean, it has to be better than 1986's Witchboard, right? (Yes, that's none other than Whitesnake video vixen Tawny Kitaen in the trailer below...) 

Peeking in on Makeovers for True Grit, My Fair Lady, and maybe The Third Man

I understand the knee-jerk revulsion we sometimes feel when hearing of older films being remade, whether it’s our favorite horror or science-fiction films, or a cherished classic. Studios love projects that come with built-in name recognition, and yeah, more often than not they screw it up. Though that’s not entirely to blame on the act of remaking itself. The big secret? Two-thirds of all movies are mediocre at best. Remakes break along about the same lines. (Redo or not, Tony Scott’s Taking of Pelham 123 is no better or worse than most Tony Scott films.)

Not all remakes are bad, not all are created purely out of lazy Hollywood greed. Sometimes filmmakers want to revisit a beloved film from their own favorites list and sometimes a fresh combination of director, writer, and actors can bring something new and exciting to a familiar tale. (Not that good intentions are always enough—Peter Jackson made his King Kong purely out of love for the original, and while the end result was fine, it was also a bit weighted down by that genuine devotion. And the less said about Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, the better.)

All of which is preface to the following slew of remake news and rumors. All of which I find exciting, not dismaying.

A rumor floated around last week, posted by CHUD.com, that Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire might be attached to a remake of the classic 1949 Carol Reed film, The Third Man—aka, the “Orson Welles film” non-film-school-geeks actually like to watch. The rumor set off the usual gagging noises from film critics and classic film lovers. After all, the original Third Man is a nearly perfect film, a mystery thriller set amidst the physical, economic, and moral ruins of post-WWII Europe. Written by the British novelist Graham Greene (a personal fave), It stars Joseph Cotton as Holly Martins, a pulp writer who comes to Vienna to find out who killed his old friend Harry Lime. The film is sometimes best known for the wonderful, now-iconic zither theme by Anton Karas.

More over the jump about The Third Man, plus My Fair Lady and True Grit.

What Men and Boys and Chippendales Dancers Want?

Last week New Line announced a pitch for a new Selena Gomez project called What Boys Want, about a teenage girl who can hear what Mel Gibson is thinking. (SPOILER! It ain't pretty!)

Well, no, actually Mel isn't involved. The movie instead will take the premise of Gibson's 2000 What Women Want, flip it, and set it in high school. Gomez is, of course, part of the latest Disney crop of young stars (as Zac and Miley fly the coop). (And no, I would not know that if I didn't have a teenage niece who grew up glued to the Disney Channel. Oh, you should have seen the hi-larious battles for the remote when I was babysitting and High School Musical and Blade Runner were on at the same time.)

But no sooner had the ink on the Gomez Want news dried then rumors started swirling that Paramount has its own take on the Gibson film (the second-highest grossing rom-com of all time!) in the hopper: According to Pajiba.com's sources, a script is being written for a What Women Want sequel, to star Cameron Diaz and to be call, natch, What Men Want.

So it's going to be a live-action adaptation of every issue of Maxim magazine ever published and every beer or truck commercial ever aired? What do we want? We want to go fishing and drink beer and eat sandwiches all day then come home and grill things and watch movies and sports and play video games on wide-screen HD. (Says the guy who used to read books in the fishing boat and still takes a stack of them with him fishing in Canada--though for the cabin now, not the boat.) Men (and women) out there, what am I forgetting? Or rather, what am I forgetting that we can mention in a family-ish blog?

So we've got the teenage What Boys Want and the grown-up What Men Want. How about complete the trilogy with What Grumpy Old Men Want? (That's easy. To sleep all night without having to get up to pee.)

Finally comes the news that Tony Scott is planning to direct a film about the Chippendales dancers. That's right,  everyone who was clamoring for a male version of Showgirls, your prayers are finally answered. Actually, that may not be the worst comparison. Whereas Showgirls was directed by Paul Verhoven of Total Recall, Basic Instinct, and Robocop fame, Scott of course is the director of Top Gun, True Romance, and most recently the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123.

And the story Scott wants to tell is less glistening shaved chests and more gritty greed and paranoia. It will be about the creator of the Chippendales strip clubs, Somen "Steve" Banerjee. A Native American night club impresario, Banerjee became filthy rich off the men's revue. But consumed by success and excess, he eventually hired a hit man to kill his choreographer partner and two other former Chippendales dancers he felt were his competition. However the hit man was an FBI informant, the plot failed, and Banerjee ended up hanged to death in jail while awaiting trial in 1994. Wheee! So think more along the lines of Boogie Nights than the bare-chested joy of a Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley dance-off.

Huzzah! Gervais to Host Golden Globes!

You might have felt it creeping up from the dark corners... Or noticed "important" snoozy films like Amelia (my review is coming, I swear!) beginning to seep into the cineplexes... Yep, awards season is coming.

I honestly don't mind awards shows as much as some, as long as you understand they have nothing to do with the quality of films. But more on that rant as we get deeper into the fray this winter.

No, I can totally tolerate awards shows if they have just enough self-deprecating humor in them. Or barring that, lots of drunk celebrities. Which is why I love the Golden Globes: The show put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press has zero to do with awarding quality films and everything to do with celebrities getting tanked. (You can read my live-blogging of last winter's Globes here.)

And this year promises to be even more fun, as the show's producers have tapped the brilliant Ricky Gervais to host the shenanigans--the first time in 15 years the Globes have even had an emcee . Plus, the selection of Gervais follows a promising trend of late in the improvement of awards-show hosts, such as Hugh Jackman nailing the Oscars last winter and Neil Patrick Harris lifting the Emmys out of its usual host-funk this fall.

As for Gervais, the comedic mind behind the original UK Office and Extras has not had a great run of it on the big screen. Both Ghostown and The Invention of Lying have their strengths and Gervais is good in them, but he's yet to be involved in a film that comes close to matching the stunning satirical genius of his UK TV work.

So why was he selected to host the Globes? Well, his auditions have been his relentlessly hilarious bits at the podium of various awards shows over the years. Like Tina Fey, you know when Ricky steps up to either hand out or accept an award, it's going to be dead funny, with spot-on skewering of the awards system and stars by way of pumping up his own faux-inflated ego.

Of course, I always enjoyed Jon Stewart doing a similar style of self-deprecating mockery at the Oscars, but his shtick didn't always go over well with viewers or some of the stars whose importance he was poking. But I doubt Gervias will face a similar problem--having a British accent in America always allows you to get away with a bit more cheekiness. And again, it's the Globes. They're a joke in terms of integrity anyway, and everyone is drunk.

The Golden Globes air January 17. In the meantime hop on over the jump to enjoy clips of Gervais's previous award-show appearances!