The Boat That Rocked / Pirate Radio

[size=150:4u0c3hvl]The swashbuckling rock rebels of Radio Caroline

[size=100:4u0c3hvl]In the Sixties, only one station truly tuned into the spirit of the age. Radio Caroline sparked a pop revolution – and now it's inspired a movie. John Walsh sails back in time

Wednesday, 18 March 2009


Sinking feeling: Radio Caroline staff, including John Peel (centre, with side burns) dock in Felixstowe after the station's closure on 15 August, 1967

[size=100:4u0c3hvl]Sometimes,"
remembers Dave Lee Travis, "
when the weather was really rough, we had to attach an old two-shilling piece on to the arm of the record player to keep the needle weighted down on the record against all the pitching and tossing. And when it got really bad out there, we'd call it a Half-Crown Day."


With its quaint references to pre-decimal currency and ancient audio systems, this sentence must sound like a foreign language to anyone born after the Sixties. But it summons up rich feelings of nostalgia for early rock 'n' rollers. The needle that Travis remembers so fondly landed in the grooves of a million records spinning on turntables in the production suite of a ship anchored in the North Sea, broadcasting the heady excitement of early Beatles and Rolling Stones, The Who and The Kinks, Motown and Stax, to a British audience mostly starved of rock rhythms, crashing drums and invitations to Spend the Night Together.

It was the heyday of offshore pirate radio, a short-lived but vividly recalled phenomenon of the mid-Sixties, when bedtime for children and teenagers meant taking your transistor radio under the covers, tuning to 199 metres, medium wave, and listening through your plastic earpiece as a succession of hyperactive, logorrheic young men introduced records, whooped with glee, sang along, talked like carnival barkers, made suggestive remarks, told childish jokes, did animal impressions, speculated about the behaviour of listeners in their boudoirs, held competitions and never seemed to calm down or sleep. It was our first experience of 24-hour radio, and of the cult of the disc jockey. And it's the subject of the new film by the British director and cash cow of our indigenous movie world, Richard Curtis.

In 1964, the mainstream music radio shows heard on the BBC's Light Programme (which became Radio 2) were relatively staid affairs hosted by polite "
presenters"
rather than DJs – affable, rather suave men such as David Jacobs, Brian Matthew and Pete Murray. They played all the groovy new pop records – Herman's Hermits, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Cliff Richard, Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Beatles – but in a hefty smorgasbord that included helpings of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Frankie Vaughan, Ray Charles, novelty records and elevator jazz. The DJs had technicians to spin the records for them, as though to soil their hands with technology was beneath their dignity. Between them, they played about three hours of rock 'n' roll a week. Since the mid-Sixties was the heyday, the Golden Age, of British and US rock, this was a scandal. Or as Richard Curtis put it at a preview last week: "
This was the worst mismatch of supply and demand in history, with the possible exception of Cheryl Cole and all the people who want to go out with her."


British radio piracy didn't happen by accident. It was the work of an extraordinary young Irish entrepreneur called Ronan O'Rahilly. At only 25, O'Rahilly had taken London by storm. He ran a Soho club called Scene. He was an agent and PR man for pop singers and actors, and numbered among his clients George Lazenby, the wooden male model who played James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. (O'Rahilly gave Lazenby the worst career advice in history. When the latter was offered a seven-film deal by the Bond producers, the agent advised against it, on the grounds that Bond would be passé by 1970.)

Among his musical charges was Georgie Fame, the young keyboard player with the perfect delivery for blues and jazz. Fame was having trouble getting his music played. O'Rahilly formed his own record company to put Fame on disc, and hawked the result around the BBC and Radio Luxembourg (a commercial station broadcasting from the Grand Duchy) without success. With remarkable chutzpah, he decided that, if the available stations wouldn't play his clients' music, he would create his own one – without going to the British government for a licence.

Offshore radio – broadcasting across national airwaves legally because the station is located outside national waters – had existed for a few years. Scandinavia had started it in 1958, followed by Radio Veronica in Holland. But it was hard to set up: you needed, for one thing, a boat. By a happy stroke of synergy, O'Rahilly's businessman father owned the port of Greenore in Northern Ireland, where lay an old, 763-ton, Danish passenger ferry called the MV Frederica.

Through his record company, O'Rahilly raised enough money to reinvent the vessel as a radio ship. He renamed it Caroline after Caroline Kennedy, the six-year-old daughter of the late US president, whose sweet image in a magazine had appealed to him. He anchored the MV Caroline in the North Sea, in international waters near Frinton, Essex. He put the word out that he was looking for disc jockeys, recruited at startling speed – and on Easter Sunday, 29 March 1964, random twiddlers of radio dials across the nation could hear the voices of Simon Dee and Chris Moore announce: "
This is Radio Caroline on 199, your all-day music station."
The first song they played was (ironically) The Rolling Stones's "
It's All Over Now"
.

Meanwhile, a rival had appeared in the form of Australian businessman Alan Crawford, who owned the Mi Amigo, formerly part of the Swedish radio station, Radio Nord. Crawford fitted out the ship and began broadcasting on 12 May as Radio Atlanta. For O'Rahilly, it was like encountering an irritating twin. But he and Crawford made common cause, the two stations merged, the Frederica sailed to anchorage beside the Isle of Man, and became Radio Caroline North;
the Mi Amigo stayed offshore from Frinton as Radio Caroline South.

The pirates lasted three years, until August 1967, broadcasting 24 hours a day, selling advertising space (which, with the exception of Radio Luxembourg, was something new to British radio) and setting the tone for every chatty, breezily intimate, harmlessly matey DJ who followed. Their ship-bound camaraderie communicated itself to listeners as a spirit of carefree liberty that prefigured the hippy explosion. Caroline's popularity grew until it could claim 25 million listeners – half the population of Great Britain. It's the sense of complicity between pop DJs and their audience that Richard Curtis has tried to harness in The Boat That Rocked, his second film as writer-director after Love Actually. In the movie, Radio Caroline has become Radio Rock, heading for the last days of its reign before the government deep-sixes it with legislation.

The DJs are played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (as The Count, a hip but conceited American based on Emperor Rosko), Rhys Ifans ("
the coolest man on earth,"
dressed in a very gay purple hat), Nick Frost from Shaun of the Dead (as Dave – fat, lecherous and sarcastic), Chris O'Dowd from The IT Crowd (as Simon, an Irish dreamer who falls foul of a scheming woman played by January Jones from Mad Men), and Rhys Darby from Flight of the Conchords (Angus, an Australian buffoon from the genus of Alan "
Fluff"
Freeman). Bill Nighy, a veteran player in Richard Curtis's screen family, plays the O'Rahilly character, Quentin, complete with velvet jacket and long cigarette-holder.

It's an ensemble comedy with a warm heart: funny in places but more dedicated to matey larks and collective enthusiasm than jokes. There's Carry On slapstick, sex, and a small spliff reference in the trailer that seems to have been dropped from the final cut. But is it a true representation of life at sea in 1966?

***

"
I don't want to be seen to support this film,"
says Dave Lee Travis, one of the early arrivals on Radio Caroline (and still broadcasting on Magic Gold). "
No, I haven't seen it – but I know one or two things about it that are wrong. People will watch it and say, 'Oh – that's what it was like on board Radio Caroline.' But it wasn't. I don't mean just the physical details. There are bits of naughtiness on the part of the people who made it, but I'm not going further than that."


Johnnie Walker, another Radio Caroline star and one of the few who remained after the government outlawed the pirates in 1967, has less of a bone to pick with the film-makers. He was, after all, called in by Curtis as an "
adviser"
, along with Chris Evans and Chris Moyles, who were asked to advise the actors how you conduct an hour-long radio show broadcasting to millions. What production details about the Caroline and her crew did Curtis want to find out?

"
Nothing, actually,"
said Walker. "
I think Richard didn't want to do much research at all. He studiously avoided books about pirate radio, including my autobiography. He listened in when he was a boy, he loved the pirates and wanted to create his fictional idea of what it was like."


Did Walker like the movie? "
I think for younger people, born after the whole pirate thing, it's an introduction to an really exciting, rebellious time in British history. If Curtis had stuck to the real story, it would've been a dull film, because we lived quite boring lives."
Walker (born Peter Dingley) started spinning records at the Locarno Ballroom in Birmingham. The day after he lost his day job as a car salesman, someone at a DJ gig asked if he'd heard of a pirate station called Radio England.

"
I found the whole concept,"
he says, "
glamorous and romantic and exciting."
He discovered the station's whereabouts, took them an audition tape and was duly hired.

How was his first day on board ship? "
Once I got over the excitement of seeing a proper radio studio for the first time, and an enormous transmitter, Radio England was a bit disappointing. There were no cabins or bunks;
no sleeping accommodation had been built for DJs, so we bedded down in sleeping bags in the hold. The American planners had just wanted to get the ship on the air as quickly as possible."


That seems, I venture, amazingly short-sighted of the planners. "
It was worse than that. There were rumours that the boat had been used to ship back dead GIs from Korea, and that the hold we slept in was where they put the body bags..."


Walker soon jumped ship, when he learnt that Radio England was scheduled to change to a Dutch format. "
I went up to London, went to Wimbledon Palais where they were having a "
Caroline Night Out"
and next day I was in Caroline House, my tape was played to Ronan, and word came back to me: "
How soon can you make it to the ship?"


Like many Sixties scenesters, he took to the entrepreneurial O'Rahilly straight away. "
I was captivated by him, He had enormous charm, huge charisma and he made you believe that anything was possible. He epitomised the spirit of the Sixties."
Did he direct his DJs as to the kind of music he wanted? "
He believed in freedom,"
says Walker, like a good Sixties kid. "
He used to say, 'Why hire people who know and are enthusiastic about music, then tell them what they should and shouldn't play?'"


Dave Lee Travis was raised in Manchester and found his DJ-ing feet in the city's groovy clubs. In 1964 he spent some time touring in America with Herman's Hermits;
back in England, he "
thought radio might be fun. I'd heard about the pirate ships, so I went down there and managed to talk myself into a job. I'd no idea then how important it was going to be in changing the face of British broadcasting."
He found O'Rahilly "
a man with a mission, basically. He was determined to make his pirate radio work, he felt very strongly about it. He was a very forward-thinking guy."


Travis's first day on board was memorable. "
At dinner, the captain welcomed me, sat me down with rest of crew, and said, 'Just for Dave's benefit, we'll have to go through the lifeboat drill.' They told me if the alarm sounded, we had to go up and stand by the boats and that I was stationed on the top deck. I'd only been asleep for a couple of hours when alarm went off. I got out of bed, was about to put my trousers on when someone grabbed my hand and said, 'No time for that, quick quick!' So I was in my underpants in the North Sea, I went up to my post by a boat on top deck and I stood there almost naked, freezing my arse off, waiting for instructions. After five minutes, I thought, Nobody's given me orders, I can't hear anything, this is crazy – and as I went downstairs, I heard muffled laughter. It was a first-night wind-up. I unloosed a lot of expletives."


The real-life Radio Caroline resembled Radio Rock in having two-berth cabins for the DJs, but had no bar or entertainment area. "
It had a mess hall, with tables bolted to the floor, nothing too fancy, you understand. And you couldn't go sunbathing on the top deck because there wasn't much call for that in the North Sea...."


And so we reach a crucial question: just how did a dozen or so type-A personality, pop-savvy young men in their early twenties, with millions of adoring fans writing to them, keep themselves entertained? Drink? Drugs? Relentless sexual intercourse? The question exercises Travis a bit. "
Naow,"
he says with a grimace. "
That's the whole thing, isn't it? The film's going to be full of that. They'll probably think of every conceivable thing young fellows could get up to. Sadly, it was a bit more boring. We didn't have women on board, or parties. There'd be five or six DJs, plus the Dutch crew. What we were doing was changing the face of pop-music Britain. It was brilliant to be able to choose our own music from the record library. In my time I've been to so many stations where some young guys, who've been put in to run the station, give you a list of records to play, and don't know what they're doing."


***

Naturally, The Boat That Rocked indeed features some of the behavioural extremes that Travis denies. Chief among them is sex. At the start of the film we meet Quentin's godson Carl, an 18-year-old virgin expelled from public school, who is looking for girls. His determination to lose his virginity is a plot strand, as is the sexual prowess of a young sex god called Midnight Mark who recreates the famous album sleeve of Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland with a score of naked girls around him. Later, a party of competition winners comes on board and pairs off with the cooler DJs. "
Oh God,"
breathes Irish DJ Simon, looking over the side, "
It's like a boatful of honey."


Walker groans. "
The idea of a competition with 200 winners coming to the ship, including 100 girls, didn't happen. I wish we'd had half the fun that The Boat That Rocked DJs did."
Did women never appear on the boat at all? "
During the summer, couples in sailing boats would come alongside and, if we had a friendly captain, he'd allow them to tie up. We'd get the engineer to take the boyfriend on a tour of the generators, and us DJs would move in on the girlfriend, and give her a tour of the more, er, social areas of the ship."
Did the DJs never carouse? "
At Christmas we'd crack open a few beers. Towards the end of Caroline, there was some marijuana and we'd smoke a few spliffs. But the wild times were on shore. A week's shore-leave would be non-stop party, and the hardest thing was getting to Liverpool Street station at 8.30am on Monday morning – the greatest sin was to miss the train to Harwich."


The end for Caroline came at 3pm on 14 August 1967, when the government, annoyed by the legal loophole that had allowed it to invade the airwaves, implemented the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, making it illegal for persons subject to UK law to work on, supply or advertise on pirate ships. (In the film, a campaign to outlaw our heroes is conducted by a nasty government minister called Dormandy, played by Kenneth Branagh.) Other stations, such as Radio London, were forced off the air. Most Caroline DJs departed for the mainland. Not, however, Johnnie Walker. Why did he choose to stick around? "
I totally believed in what Radio Caroline was doing, and I knew that for millions of people the station was part of their life. I didn't see the fairness of taking it off the air. I knew the BBC would produce a very insipid imitation of pirate radio. So when Ronan said, "
I want to keep Radio Caroline going, I said, 'If so, I want to be a part of it.'"


Radio Caroline kept broadcasting illegally until March 1968, when the money ran out. "
There was a Dutch company which made sure the ships could maintain their anchorages in terms of diesel oil and supply boats. When the bills stopped being paid, they sent tugs, hijacked the ships and tugged them into Amsterdam."


It was an ignominious ending to an heroic enterprise, but it had fomented a revolution. Ronan O'Rahilly's initial desire was to get clients' records played;
three years later, the BBC's conservative music policy was dead, and the airwaves were full of pop on Radio 1, featuring a score of former pirate DJs. Years later, when the BBC's monopoly was broken and commercial radio arrived, the situation sounded oddly familiar. It sounded as if the pirates were back.

Caroline's Greatest Hits: Download the memories

The Beach Boys - Wouldn't It Be Nice

The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever

The Rolling Stones (I Can't Get No) - Satisfaction

Otis Redding - My Girl

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Purple Haze

Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston - It Takes Two

Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual

Cliff Richard - The Minute You're Gone

Herman's Hermits - I'm Into Something Good

The Byrds - Mr Tambourine Man

The Supremes - You Can't Hurry Love

Donovan - Mellow Yellow

The Yardbirds - Shapes of Things

The Who - My Generation

Sandie Shaw - (There's) Always Something There to Remind Me

The Small Faces - All or Nothing

Cream - I Feel Free

The Four Tops - I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)

The Seekers - I'll Never Find Another You

The Righteous Brothers - Unchained Melody

Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone

The Kinks - You Really Got Me

The Troggs - With a Girl Like You

The Monkees - I'm a Believer

Watch a trailer for 'The Boat that Rocked' and enter our competition at [url=independent.co.uk/tbtrcomp][/url]

[size=150:rm6koibw]Enter The Independent's 'The Boat That Rocked' competition

Wednesday, 18 March 2009

[size=100:rm6koibw]To celebrate the release of Richard Curtis’ new comedy The Boat That Rocked in cinemas 1 April, The Independent is offering one lucky person the chance to experience life aboard the real boat that rocked.

Directed by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill) and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Nick Frost, Rhys Ifans and Gemma Arterton, The Boat that Rocked is an ensemble comedy, where the romance is between the young people of the 1960s and the pop music. It's about a band of DJs that captivate Britain, playing the music that defines a generation and standing up to a government that incomprehensibly prefers jazz. In 1966, British pop music's finest era, the BBC played just two hours of rock and roll every week. But pirate radio played rock and pop from the high seas 24 hours a day. And 25 million people, more than half the population of Britain, listened to the pirates every single day.

The story that inspired the film came from Radio Caroline, the actual radio station that led the music revolution in the sixties. Still going strong on Sky Channel 0199 and on the internet, Radio Caroline is about to celebrate its 45th year on the waves and you could be part of those celebrations.

Answer the question below correctly and you could be chosen to join the DJ’s on board as they broadcast to the nation. You will get the full tour, meet the DJs and even have the chance to introduce some tunes live on air. Good luck!

On top of this, we also have five Limited Edition [url=Robert’s Radios][/url] for the winner and four runners up.

For your chance to win, answer this simple question:

Which famous Richard Curtis title is named after an iconic London district?

A. Notting Hill

B. Piccadilly Circus

C. Soho

Click here to enter the competition, using the reference code TBTR09[/url:rm6koibw]

Competition closes 3 April.

Visit the Official Site: [url=theboatthatrocked.co.uk]

For more information on Radio Caroline, please visit:

2009 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Terms & Conditions:

- No cash alternative is available

- Winner must be available Easter Weekend to fulfill prize

sargifster wrote:1st of April. Not long to wait now!

Have you US folks got a release date yet?

gezyka wrote:
The Beach Boys - Wouldn't It Be Nice

The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever

The Rolling Stones (I Can't Get No) - Satisfaction

Otis Redding - My Girl

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Purple Haze

Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston - It Takes Two

Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual

Cliff Richard - The Minute You're Gone

Herman's Hermits - I'm Into Something Good

The Byrds - Mr Tambourine Man

The Supremes - You Can't Hurry Love

Donovan - Mellow Yellow

The Yardbirds - Shapes of Things

The Who - My Generation

Sandie Shaw - (There's) Always Something There to Remind Me

The Small Faces - All or Nothing

Cream - I Feel Free

The Four Tops - I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)

The Seekers - I'll Never Find Another You

The Righteous Brothers - Unchained Melody

Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone

The Kinks - You Really Got Me

The Troggs - With a Girl Like You

The Monkees - I'm a Believer

dontlookback wrote:

sargifster wrote:1st of April. Not long to wait now!

Have you US folks got a release date yet?

I don't know if it's going to be released in the U.S.
(I hope so,though.)

sargifster wrote:

dontlookback wrote:

I don't know if it's going to be released in the U.S.
(I hope so,though.)

Aww.

Hope it is soon.

Do you all want spoilers when I've seen it?

dontlookback wrote:

sargifster wrote:1st of April. Not long to wait now!

Have you US folks got a release date yet?

I don't know if it's going to be released in the U.S.
(I hope so,though.)

[size=150:t3h6mvy7]Pirate radio is star of Richard Curtis film The Boat That Rocked

March 15, 2009
Stephen Armstrong

[size=100:t3h6mvy7]Director's love of pop inspired movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Kenneth Branagh

[size=100:t3h6mvy7]Last year, a 16-year-old Italian girl, the niece of a friend, came to stay with me. It was her first time in London. What would you like to see, I asked — the tourist stuff, like Big Ben and the Tower of London? Or Carnaby Street, Selfridges and Hoxton? No, she said, I want to see the door. The door? The door from Notting Hill — the blue door where Hugh Grant lived. So we trotted over, asked around and found the door — except the blue door has been auctioned off and replaced by a new one painted a rich glossy black, so it looks like every second door in London. All the same, we took four photographs of her outside “the door” so she could show her friends when she got back to Arezzo.

It’s hard to think of another British film-maker who could inspire such Beatles-style devotion in a girl who was, after all, only seven years old when Notting Hill was released. The English Tourist Board hasn’t issued a guide to Guy Ritchie’s East End, after all. Richard Curtis, however, has delivered something of a low blow to poor Alessandra and her friends with his new film by setting it in the middle of the North Sea.

The Boat That Rocked is an unashamed tribute to the handful of pirate radio ships anchored off the UK coast during the 1960s, which broadcast rock’n’roll to a beat-starved nation rationed to two hours of pop a week by the BBC. At their peak, about 25m people — more than half the population of Britain — tuned into the pirates every day. Many of the DJs hailed from Australia or America, with their bustling, highly experienced pop music stations, and the on-air stars shattered the dreary RP intonation of bow-tied BBC announcers. Inevitably, the government decided that Something Must Be Done and, in 1967, outlawed any contact with the offending ships — which meant the stations’ advertising revenue was cut off and their supply ships were barred from sailing from UK ports, ultimately starving the pirates of revenue and even food. In a classic case of woolly government principle meeting nervous populist pragmatism, the BBC promptly hired most of the pirate DJs to front the launch of Radio 1.

The film boasts an astonishing cast: Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as the loud Yankee main man on Radio Rock;
Bill Nighy as the ship’s owner and captain, Quentin;
Rhys Ifans as a cocky, sensual mike controller, Gavin;
Nick Frost as the sarky jock Dave;
and Kenneth Branagh as the cold, cruel minister determined to close down the fun. It’s the kind of cast in which Jack Davenport, Chris O’Dowd, Ralph Brown, Rhys Darby, Will Adamsdale, Tom Brooke and Mad Men’s January Jones “also appear”.

The film is less tightly focused than Four Weddings and Notting Hill — Curtis was inspired by National Lampoon’s Animal House and the M*A*S*H movie, which are closer to a series of loosely connected sketches than a narrative where each scene advances the next. And ultimately everyone, Hoffman included, plays second fiddle to the real star, Curtis’s lifelong passion: pop music. The film is drenched in the tunes of 1967, and the tomfoolery on Radio Rock is constantly cutting to scenes of hard-working Brits entranced by the pirate sound. There are even choreographed dance routines.

Curtis, 52, was born in New Zealand to a nomadic Unilever family, living in Sweden and the Philippines before settling at school in England, and pop was, ironically, his only constant in an ever-changing world.

“Pop music is absolutely my favourite thing,” he enthuses, sitting in a windowless room at the heart of BBC Television Centre during a brief muffin-and-coffee break from the chaos of preparing this year’s Comic Relief programming. “I’ve absolutely no talent at all, but so much enthusiasm. My dad had about eight records — Smetana, Mantovani, Nat King Cole, that sort of thing. But baby-sitters would come in with their box of records and put on the Supremes.

“When I lived in Sweden, I remember standing in the snow outside the Foresta hotel, waiting for the Beatles to come onto the balcony. And I have strong memories of being at school — where I was generally a well-behaved boy — but I’d sometimes hide in the music rehearsal rooms because Pick of the Pops exactly overlapped with chapel. I even remember standing against the radiator to get so hot that I could be put in the sanatorium by matron, so I could listen to the first playing of the Beatles’ White Album.” He stops and smiles. “I can even tell you that the No 1 this week is Flo Rida, with his cover of Dead or Alive’s You Spin Me Round. It’s always been my first love, so to make a movie about it was a logical thing.”

And clearly Richard Curtis movies are always about love. This is why impressionable adolescent Italian girls are drawn to him, and why cynical hacks and stand-up comics like to mock his work — albeit in such intimate detail, they’ve clearly watched everything from beginning to end. It’s unfashionable to love — if you send reams of fevered verse to the one whose mere existence can slice through your heart every minute of the day, you’re liable to get a restraining order. Curtis doesn’t even have the Byronic self-mutilation of a Romantic poet to justify his addiction to the emotion. He seems so damn nice: cheerful, softly spoken, self-deprecating and devoted to charity, founding Comic Relief and Make Poverty History, organising the Live 8 concerts.

So why has he returned to the lurching passion of alternating loss and fulfilment during two decades in which British cinema generally explored gangsters, identity and adversity in a series of grotty flats and suburban houses?

“It’s peculiar, isn’t it?” he muses. “I’ve never been very interested in unpleasant stories. I’m extremely interested in the unpleasant things in the world, which is why I spend half my time doing Comic Relief. For some reason or other, I’m more interested in writing about things I’ve enjoyed and that are meant to give people pleasure than I am in writing about murder. I can’t really explain it. I attribute it to a happy childhood with no residual anger.” He warns, however, that his embrace of on-screen joy may be about to end. “The other films I’ve been thinking of writing were one about my dad, who was very ill and died last year, and I’m halfway through writing a script about malaria.” He shrugs apologetically. “So I thought, you know, we deserved to have a bit of fun. The last-chance cafe before I become old and serious. ”

It’s tempting to search for Curtis in his movies. His 1989 debut, The Tall Guy, was set in Camden and featured Jeff Goldblum as Rowan Atkinson’s foil in a live West End show who courts a nurse — all technically true of Curtis at the time he wrote the thing. Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994 charted Hugh Grant’s on-off romance with Andie MacDowell via meetings at various weddings. Curtis wooed Emma Freud, his partner and the mother of his four children, in similar circumstances. The pair even vowed never to marry, just as Grant and MacDowell swear eternal devotion to each other and their unmarried status at the film’s rain-soaked climax.

It’s easy to assume, therefore, that Tom Sturridge plays a version of Curtis: Carl, a kid from a public school who joins the pirates on their tiny boat at his mother’s behest to learn a little about the world. The basic facts are very different — Carl has no father, whereas Curtis still talks about his with immense affection — but they share a wide-eyed passion for the demented DJs who people the good ship Rock, from Hoffman’s Count (based on the pirate star Emperor Rosko) to the world’s most annoying man, Rhys Darby’s Angus “The Nut” Nutsford, who is clearly a version of Kenny Everett. “One of the things the pirates did was bring a lot of black music in from America,” Curtis enthuses at one point, “and suddenly this whole wonderful world of popular music was being pumped into people’s homes.”

So is he Carl, in some tiny way? He body-swerves the question. (“Richard doesn’t like talking about himself very much,” I’d been warned before the interview.) “Those days are such a distant memory,” he shrugs. “What is drawn from my life is the sense of claustrophobia I hope you get from all these slightly odd people living on a boat all the time — I work in an office with eight other little offices next door to each other. There’s a director here, a writer here, a journalist there. And I was thinking: if this was the boat, and we only had that small kitchen and the little TV area to live our lives . . . well, imagine what it would be like to have Chris Moyles, Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand and Terry Wogan all living in your house, 24 hours a day. I think it was very, very, very intense, and two or three years was enough for most of them. In fact, one year was probably enough. When you see the footage, they’re happy when the boats come in.”

He briefly, and wryly, compares the forced intimacy of the pirate ship with the intensity of making Blackadder — “lots of men with big ideas sharing a room” — then points to further similarities between comedy and rock’n’roll. “It’s not always true, but a lot of rock stars and a lot of comedians — and I’d include myself in this — are in their prime between 23 and 27.” He was writing for Not the Nine O’Clock News and Blackadder during those years. “It’s that time when there’s no money in it, and you’re still discovering new jokes and doing things for your friends and having first thoughts, and you’ve got lots of ideas and you’re not repeating anything,” he nods thoughtfully.

That gradual, creeping success must have seemed strange to him, not least because comedy writing was his third choice of career after pop star and, surprisingly, actor. “I thought I was a good actor at school because they only did Shakespeare. As long as you had a big ruff and learnt your lines, you were considered to be acting,” Curtis remembers. “But when I got to university, I found there was something about me that was utterly bland on stage. I went up for Othello, got cast as the clown — a part none of us remembers — then got a note telling me I’d been promoted. ‘Good news!’ it said. ‘We’ve decided to cut the part of the clown, and you are now playing Third Gentleman.’ I thought the only way I could get on was to write stuff myself, so I joined a group of people performing a revue. One of them was Rowan, and when I got on stage with him, I knew I had no talent and he had all of it. From that point, I gave up.”

He began writing with Atkinson and went on to make comedy history. The acting bug never quite left him, and he’s managed a few cameos over the years, but they haven’t been terribly successful. In The Tall Guy he played a man coming out of the gents as Jeff Goldblum went in. Afterwards, he asked Goldblum: “How did I do?” And he said, “No, terrible, you smiled at me. In toilets, everyone always looks away.” Mike Newell even cut his kilt-wearing legs from the Scottish scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral because he said they were overacting. Curtis clearly relishes telling these stories as proof that acting, like music, involves a shamanistic power bestowed on only the few. And, though he avoids comparison with Carl, he constantly reflects that boy’s awe and excitement at the talent and the adventures he’s witnessed. It’s as if he feels he can never quite pay life back for the things it decided to give him. His next television project, for instance, is the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which piloted last year, directed and co-written by the late Anthony Minghella. Astonishingly, Curtis seems partly driven to televise Alexander McCall Smith’s books because he feels a tiny bit guilty about Comic Relief.

“ It is our responsibility to raise as much money as we can, so the films we show about Africa tend to be about the darker, more unhappy side of things,” he says, speaking carefully. “But when you go to Africa, that is not your experience. You see bad things, but you see happy, funny, witty, contemporary things. When I went to Ethiopia the first time, during the famine, I had this brilliant driver who was completely obsessed with Bobby Bare and Billie Jo Spears. I was driving towards desperate tragedy listening to Dolly Parton and just thinking, ‘It is a peculiar world.’

“So The Boat That Rocked is not a film about Jimi Hendrix dying of drugs or someone being killed at a Stones concert. It’s about a pirate radio station that people loved. In the same way, the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is about crimes, but they’re not big crimes. It’s meant to be a real effort to say something positive.” He pauses, then sounds faintly irritated. “There’s this idea that if you write about someone falling in love — which happens a million times every day — that’s unrealistic and sentimental, but if you write about women being brutally murdered by a serial killer — which happens, if we’re unlucky, maybe once a year in the UK — then that’s searingly realistic.” He sighs. “I just don’t understand the mathematical truth of that.”

The Boat That Rocked opens on April 3

sargifster wrote:1st of April. Not long to wait now!

Have you US folks got a release date yet?

blondesnotbombs wrote:

sargifster wrote:1st of April. Not long to wait now!

Have you US folks got a release date yet?

August 28. We still have a while to wait.

blondesnotbombs wrote:

sargifster wrote:1st of April. Not long to wait now!

Have you US folks got a release date yet?

August 28. We still have a while to wait.

aom192 wrote:

blondesnotbombs wrote:

August 28. We still have a while to wait.

We'll tell u hw it was

blondesnotbombs wrote:

sargifster wrote:1st of April. Not long to wait now!

Have you US folks got a release date yet?

August 28. We still have a while to wait.

[size=150:c1k9q6tp]The Premiere That Rocked
[size=133:c1k9q6tp]Curtis and co swing into London town
24 March 2009

[size=100:c1k9q6tp]London was transported back in time for a taste of the swinging Sixties, to celebrate the release of writer/ director/ all round Working Titlesman Richard Curtis' new comedy The Boat That Rocked.

Showcasing the largest number of Brit stars at any single UK film event (outside of the BAFTAs and this weekend's Jameson Empire Film Awards, of course), the premiere boasted an almighty guest list including a bespectacled Bill Nighy, nice-guy Nick Frost, rabble-rouser Rhys Ifans, King of thesps Kenneth Brannagh and newbie Tom Sturridge. To accomodate such a raft of talent, the red carpet was extended from its usual run along one side of Leicester Square to completely encompass the park in the centre. Here the crowd were entertained with a heady mix of bobbing bob-haired girls and pumping Sixties pop.

Not to be outshone by the bevy of go-go booted dancing girls were Bond girl Gemma Arterton - like a gorgeous brunette Dusty Springfield in her asymmetric turquoise mini dress - and newly platinum-haired fellow St Trinian Talulah Riley, both of whom star as the good-time-girls who steal the hearts of the radio DJ crew of said rocking boat.

Taking the decks on deck are a cracking comedy ensemble. Frost takes on the ladies in his role as silver tongued, big-boy - DJ Dave. Philip Seymour Hoffman brings a taste of America as bad-ass beatnik The Count. The IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd gets the laughs, and the tears as hapless daytime host Simple Simon;
Flight of the Conchords' Rhys Darby is Antipodean odd-man-out Angus, and the decidedly mono-syllabic Rhys Ifans as devilish dandy Gavin. Helming the ship - and the pirate radio station they operate on board - is Curtis favourite Bill Nighy, playing mover and shaker and general money maker, Quentin.

Amid the flashback to a bygone era, Empire stopped a few of the stars for a chat about their own journey back in time on the good ship Radio Rock.

First off was Kiwi comic Rhys Darby, whose turn as The Seekers advocate Angus extends the lovably irritating twit qualities of Murray, his siganture role in cult musical sit-com The Flight Of The Chonchords. He fuelled speculation that there might be a movie spin-off of the HBO show in the pipeline: "
[Co-creator] James Bobin likes the idea of doing a film. When you do a film, you've got to have a really great story. I'd definitely love to do it, but we'll have to wait and see."


Also out for the night was seriously cool, dapper chap, Bill Nighy: "
I didn't have to think about it at all. I said yes before I'd even seen the script, and he said, 'Well, aren't you going to read it?' And I said, 'Well, I'm going to say yes anyway. I know it's only going to be good.' I knew what it was going to be about, and I was around when pirate radio started, and it was close to my heart because I love all the music, so there was nothing that wasn't attractive about it."


Nick Frost told us about his numerous love scenes: "
Easiest day's work I ever did. I like to think of myself as a gentleman. It's not just me getting off with women - it's another actor where you have to brush your teeth and put on deodorant. It's very important."


And he was especially blase about getting naked for the part: "
I just take my pants off, et voila: ready to rock! I played rugby for many years, so it is par for the course that you will have to take your kit off in front of thirty men, which is just what a film shoot is."


And then twenty-two year old star of the film, Tom Sturridge - who has a little of the floppy-haired shyness of a young Hugh Grant - told us a bit more about the experience of working on the movie: "
It was amazing, going to work on a boat every morning, with the sun coming up over the ocean - it's not really work. Listening to all that music every day. It was beautiful. It was kinda terrifying, but fortunately, my character was going on a boat to live with his idols and I was doing the same thing so it was apt."


And finally Curtis got in the last word: "
The overall message is that we're very lucky that every generation has pop music playing through all our lives - and we should enjoy it while we can."


Once inside, Curtis talked more about his love of pop, and almost choked up when he noted that Paul McCartney, one of his childhood heroes, was there in the audience for the film. Given that the film is a celebration of Sixties music as much as anything else, it was appropriate that Sir Paul was there to see it - accompanied, incidentally, by many of the original pirate DJs.

New U.S. Release
[size=150:5lspow0d]The Boat That Rocked
(U.K.-U.S.)
By DEREK ELLEY

[size=100:5lspow0d]A Universal release, presented in association with StudioCanal, of a Working Title (U.K.) production, in association with Medienproduktion Prometheus Filmgesellschaft. Produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Hilary Bevan Jones. Executive producers, Richard Curtis, Debra Hayward, Liza Chasin. Directed, written by Richard Curtis.

The Count - Philip Seymour Hoffman
Quentin - Bill Nighy
Gavin - Rhys Ifans
Dave - Nick Frost
Minister Dormandy - Kenneth Branagh
Carl - Tom Sturridge
Simon - Chris O'Dowd
Thick Kevin - Tom Brooke
Angus - Rhys Darby
John - Will Adamsdale
Felicity - Katherine Parkinson
Charlotte - Emma Thompson
Marianne - Talulah Riley
Twatt - Jack Davenport
Desiree - Gemma Arterton
Eleonore - January Jones
Bob - Ralph Brown
Mark - Tom Wisdom

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, plus a heavy dose of Swinging ‘60s nostalgia, fuel “The Boat That Rocked,” Richard Curtis’ hymn to the wild days of U.K. pirate radio. More reminiscent of his eccentric TV comedies (“The Vicar of Dibley,” “Mr. Bean”) than his bigscreen romancers “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill,” Curtis’ second outing as writer-director throws together a large cast of wackos on a boat off the east coast of Blighty. Pic generally stays afloat on the strength of its characters but sometimes threatens to sink under its overlong running time and vignettish structure.

Heavily promoted retro laffer, which launches April 1 in the U.K., and thereafter Down Under and across Europe, should do OK based on Curtis’ name, though it lacks the universal appeal of his first helming outing, “Love Actually.” Very Brit-specific item is likely to do more modest biz when it sails Stateside Aug. 28.

Though it had been around for a while, British pirate radio -- a direct result of pubcaster BBC’s government-sanctioned monopoly on broadcasting -- mushroomed during the mid-’60s following the explosion of Britpop/rock, which the conservative BBC Radio hardly played. Operating from boats outside British territorial waters, pirates beamed a 24/7 diet of popular music to as many as 25 million listeners (half the U.K. population) before the government effectively crushed the pirates with legislation in August 1967. Many DJs migrated to BBC Radio, which gradually bowed to popular pressure, but only six years later was its broadcasting monopoly officially ended.

It’s 1966 as the film opens, and the Beeb is still airing less than 45 minutes of pop each day. But on Radio Rock (based on the famous Radio Caroline), which operates from a rusty old fishing trawler in the North Sea, the party is in swing around the clock. On board, upper-class twit Quentin (Bill Nighy) rules a raggedy bunch of dope-smoking, sex-starved DJs who are national idols, in defiance of government minister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh), who’s bent on shutting down the “sewer of dirty commercialism and no morals.”

Among the vinyl-spinners are the Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a grizzled Yank who wants to be the first person to broadcast the F-word on British radio;
tubby Dave (Nick Frost, “Hot Fuzz”), who fancies himself a ladies’ man;
seriously spacey Thick Kevin (Tom Brooke);
melancholy Irishman Simon (Chris O’Dowd);
unloved Kiwi Angus (Rhys Darby, “The Flight of the Conchords”);
silent lothario Mark (Tom Wisdom);
and the boat’s sole distaffer, Felicity (Katherine Parkinson), “a lesbian who cooks.”

Standing in for the audience is Quentin’s young, fresh-faced godson, Carl (Tom Sturridge), who arrives on Radio Rock one stormy night. Awed by the laddish atmosphere on board, Carl is gradually accepted by the team.

Pic shifts back and forth between the boat, where Dave is doing his best to relieve Carl of his virginity, and London, where the fanatical Dormandy bullies his assistant (Jack Davenport) into finding loopholes to sink the pirates. Curtis also cuts in dozens of tiny snapshots of ‘60s Britain -- teens, secretaries and the like listening to the outlawed radio -- expertly designed and garbed by production designer Mark Tildesley, costume designer Joanna Johnston and makeup/hair designer Christine Blundell.

Curtis’ background as a sketch writer has never been clearer than here: The nearest thing to a throughline is Carl’s sentimental education and the growing suspicion that one of the men on the boat may be the father he never knew. This strand is resolved near the end by a classy cameo from Emma Thompson as his airy mom, though by then, it’s almost lost amid a number of smaller narratives, including the rivalry between the Count and star DJ Gavin (Rhys Ifans, in the pic’s wackiest perf).

After a lively opening hour, the pic starts to lose its sparkle as Curtis tries to develop the subplots at the expense of the script’s comic buoyancy;
the film could easily lose a half-an-hour, to its benefit. Though the tempo picks up again in the final 40 minutes, the movie’s fragile sketch structure almost breaks under the mini-”Titanic” setpiece of the final reels.

For a script that relies more on character-driven than situational comedy, it’s the perfs that count, and these are thankfully strong. As the devil-may-care Count, Hoffman melds well with the Brit cast, though it’s Nighy who predictably steals the show with his uniquely dry delivery. Branagh, every inch an old-style, stiff-upper-lip Brit, starts as a caricature (“We have their testicles in our hands, and it feels good!”) but later adds a touch of genuinely menacing ballast. Amid a colorful cast, young Sturridge is excellent as Carl.

The soundtrack overdoes the Little England parody at times, but more successfully deploys a host of ‘60s pop/rock classics, laid over musical montages in which Emma E. Hickox’s antsy editing cleverly makes the cast almost seem to dance. TV d.p. Danny Cohen’s mobile widescreen lensing of the tiny, claustrophobic boat is far from the warm vistas of “Love Actually” but fits the edgier subject matter.

Though it positively reeks of the ‘60s, “The Boat That Rocked” lacks the sheer grit and darker underbelly of Michael Winterbottom’s ‘70s equivalent, “24 Hour Party People.” It also isn’t quite the timely, anti-establishment comedy it promises to be at the start, but it’s as close as any comedy by a middle-class entertainer like Curtis is likely to come.

Camera (Deluxe color, widescreen), Danny Cohen;
editor, Emma E. Hickox;
music supervisor, Nick Angel;
production designer, Mark Tildesley;
art director, Thomas Brown;
set decorator, Dominic Capon;
costume designer, Joanna Johnston;
make-up/hair designer, Christine Blundell;
sound designer (Dolby Digital/DTS Digital/SDDS), Simon Gershon;
visual effects supervisor, Richard Briscoe;
visual effects, Double Negative;
special effects supervisor, Richard Conway;
associate producer, Emma Freud;
assistant director, Ben Howarth;
second unit director, Martin Kenzie;
casting, Fiona Weir. Reviewed at Soho Screening Rooms, London, March 24, 2009. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 134 MIN.


With: Olivia Llewellyn, Francesca Longrigg, Amanda Fairbank-Hynes, Stephen Moore.

[size=100:3dgddw1k]Rhys Darby interview

We talk to the New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby, who stars in the new Richard Curtis film The Boat That Rocked, out on April 1st.

Straight outta New Zealand, Rhys Darby has made waves with his sound effect-laden, character-heavy stand-up performances. After appearing in Flight Of The Conchords, the NZ music-comedy series that has taken the UK and USA by storm, he has now set his course for the silver screen. The Boat That Rocked is only his second film credit, after Yes Man earlier this year, but is this the start of a long career?

We met him in London, the night after the new film premiered, and chatted about how he became involved with Richard Curtis' latest, as well as his career ambitions, his views on comedy and acting, and his home country.

How did you get involved in the film?

Richard Curtis wanted to meet me, he was in LA for a long weekend and I was there... I think Emma [Freud, broadcaster and Curtis' partner] was a fan of the Conchords TV Show... or, then, someone told me the other day that he had seen it! Either way, he's always been looking for hot new comedy talent, I think, and he's been known for that, so I got to meet him and we had a bit of a connection, because he was originally born in New Zealand... he was only there for five minutes before he came over here!

Of course, the role that he wanted filling in this movie suited me down to a tee, so I guess I was just lucky.

Did you bring a lot to the role? Was there much improvisation on set? Your character, Angus 'The Nut' Nutsford, for example, uses a lot of sound effects in his on-air routine...

Yeah! The script was all there, you know, what I brought to it in particular I guess was during the DJ sessions, which I created and scripted myself. And that included the funny sound effects and things. When they show the extra footage of the movie, you'll see a lot of extra footage that we all did - that'll be on the DVD I'm sure.

And as well as that during scenes, he would say to us 'If you want to improvise, feel free to jump in and say a word here or there...', because there are such great comedy actors on this movie, and we're all quite willing to have a go at that. So I helped out there - if I wasn't in a scene, I'd definitely yell something out [laughs]. So he was very accommodating, he never once told me to shut up.

What was the cast like? It has a good mix of established and up and coming comedians and actors.

Very much so, and I think that's what makes it work. Obviously, the DJs themselves, they were a great mix of people stuck together on a boat and all trying to get along, kinda like a band that has been put together. You've got people who are into different things, and here they are off on tour. So we connected in that same way.

Was Philip Seymour Hoffman intense on set?

He wasn't intense at all. When he switches on, when he's acting, and he becomes this thing, and he's very good at it obviously. When he's not on, he was just laid back, down to earth, one of the guys, talking silly stuff just as much as the next guy. There was no one that stood out in any way that didn't get on with the person next to them.

I think we all had the idea - we all loved the idea for the movie, so we were together as one enjoying what we were doing. We were way out on a boat, drinking a few beers, listening to rock and roll music all the time, when we weren't acting - you just get into that spirit of 'we're lucky to be having this job!'.

There are some great tracks in the film... Are you into that? Would you call yourself a music geek?

No, not at all. I do actually like the 60s and 70s music, and I go through sporadical periods of getting into music, but the last three years, since the birth of my child and this whirlwind of a career that I've been doing since I stopped doing stand-up and started doing the acting, I've barely bought a CD, barely had time.

But most of the music in the film are standards and stone cold classics anyway...

Exactly, yeah. I do love that music. I used to watch this TV show called [1980s Vietnam drama] Tour Of Duty, which had a soundtrack from the '60s and I used to watch it and it really encapsulated the time and the music. This explosion of music that had real meaning, and had great riffs! Everything today it quite derivative of that.

So have you closed the book on your stand-up career, then?

Oh, no! No I haven't. I stopped doing it every night! Which is what I was doing - it was my job, man, and I loved it, but it got to the point where you'd go to work, and you'd spend 20 minutes or half an hour on stage, and then you get in a cab and go to another one. And you're doing the same set every night, and then you try to work in new ideas.

It became quite monotonous, and acting was a new challenge for me. I've kept the stand-up going on the side-line, and because I've been doing less and less of it, when I do do it I enjoy it because it's like 'Aw, I'm doing stand-up tonight, yes! Bring out the classic gags!'

And I've just done a tour of Australia, because I've got this DVD out now, so all my material is so exposed, and if it's not on that, it's on YouTube, so I've got about 20, 30 if I'm lucky minutes of new stuff, so I just do all my classic stuff. And this tour of Australia, it was sold out, and I was really amazed that people came. I hadn't really been there before, it was all based on the Conchords fans. And after doing those Australia dates, I've decided to take a break and not do it again until I've got a whole new hour, and I can do a new show. And I say that now, but at the same time I'm probably going to be swept away with making movies and stuff...

Is it hard to make that transition from stand-up to acting?

I found it very easy. When I used to write my one-man shows, they were all essentially like plays, where I would play all of the different characters... and all of the objects! So I was essentially doing a lot of acting in my stand-up, so I found it very easy to move from there.

Is acting a secret ambition of yours, then?

Yeah, right from the beginning I wanted to get into television and film. I mean, I grew up watching Monty Python, so for me that was the ultimate. Any expression of doing comedy, the easiest thing was to do stand-up - doing it on a stage. And then later on, once you get good enough and people get interested in you, they might chuck some cameras on you, and all of a sudden you're basically acting. And of course they made movies and stuff, and that would be my goal. So now I'm moving into those areas.

Yeah, and there are those actors who have made the transition, like Eddie Izzard, Richard Pryor... those who started off more stand-up, then moved into acting...

Steve Martin is another one. When he decided to stop stand-up, he never went back. I've just read his autobiography about his crazy stand-up years, how he became just the biggest thing ever, and he just walked away. And I don't think I could ever walk away from it, because I'm always thinking of funny ideas, and I enjoy getting those ideas out there. I think of myself as a comedian first and foremost, and an actor second, because it is just in my nature to see the lighter side of things and to have a laugh. And acting is a side-aspect to being a comedian - not all comics can act, but certainly hardly any actors can do comedy.

Well, stand-up is one of the hardest things to perform...

That's what they say! [laughs]

What's it like coming up as a comedian in New Zealand? Stand-up is a big thing in Australia, is it similar there?

In New Zealand, well, you know - there's one full-time comedy club. Then there are other places that offer comedy once a week or once a month or once a year - 'It's our yearly show, folks!' - so it's a small but perfectly formed comedy industry. It's a bit picky because everybody is fighting over which gigs you can get, but you know we have internationals come over every year for the big festival.

It's definitely on the comedy map now, plus, with the Conchords and what I'm doing, people are thinking 'wow, there are some funny people from New Zealand - and they sound funny, too!' It's a bit like the Irish thing, do you remember when with the Irish - you'd basically just have to be Irish and you'd be funny? You've got that now coming from New Zealand, because we sound slightly different as well. It's a kind of novelty thing. But if you don't have the gear to back it up, it'll soon go away.

But it's a very vibrant time for New Zealand comedy at the moment, and it's great to be at the forefront of it with the flag, going 'woo-hoo! come on, guys!'

But there's a problem with gaining international success, right? Australia had that with its film industry, where its big stars would move away to Hollywood, do you think that could happen with New Zealand?

That's not gonna happen to me! And the same with Bret and Jemaine, they live in New Zealand. Because it works so well as a getaway. If you wanted to work in the film industry, back in those earlier days, you had to live in LA, or New York... but now I think the way that the world has turned out, we can travel so easily, so I can say I want to live in Auckland, New Zealand. And when something comes up, I can pop on a plane. Or if I've got a project, I could show it to you, and the Americans or the British might say 'that's amazing, let's make it', and I'll say 'we're making it in NZ, let's go!'. To have that kind of power is a great position to be in.

What have you got lined up?

I'm doing in indie film in about two weeks in LA, and I get to play the lead. Romantic comedy. It's in the vein of something like A Fish Called Wanda. There's a bit of romance there, but ultimately it's just a load of wacky situations and cool sorta stuff that I can do. I get to use my own accent and improvise as well, so it's a perfect vehicle for me, and I'm looking forward to doing that.

Are you worried about going onto the international stage, and having to suppress your accent, or giving up control?

Well, I don't know where I'm going with this thing. At the moment, I think people are wanting me to be me. They enjoy me being various versions of me. So. That is easy for me! [laughs] So I'll just keep doing it, you know! And if I get to the point where I want to do something different, say I want to take on a serious role, actually 'act', as a person from a different country. That'll be a new challenge, but at the moment I'm so new to the whole game, I've only been acting in front of the cameras for two years! This is only my second film - I'm still very new to it all. So I'll just keep on rocking for a couple of years, and I'll see where I am after that. I'll just enjoy myself!

Rhys Darby, thank you very much!