The Richard Curtis Christmas Special!

Summary

Sentimental Garbage Podcast Summary: "The Richard Curtis Christmas Special!"

Release Date: December 19, 2024
Host: Caroline O'Donoghue
Guest: Ella Risbridger

---

1. Introduction

In the festive episode titled "The Richard Curtis Christmas Special!" of Sentimental Garbage, hosts Caroline O'Donoghue and Ella Risbridger delve deep into the life and legacy of British filmmaker and screenwriter Richard Curtis. Transitioning from their usual chick-lit and "Sex and the City" inspired discussions, Caroline and Ella explore the sentimental culture embedded in Curtis's works and its impact on society.

---

2. Richard Curtis: England's Answer to Nora Ephron

00:25 - 02:09

Caroline introduces Richard Curtis as "England's answer to Nora Ephron," highlighting his unique position in the film industry. Unlike many screenwriters who also emerge as public figures or performers, Curtis remains primarily behind the scenes.

• Ella Risbridger remarks, "Curtis is also one of the reasons we know him not because of his films, but the people he got to be in his films..."

This comparison underscores Curtis's significant influence on British romantic comedies, akin to Ephron's role in American cinema.

---

3. Sentimentality and Realism in Curtis's Films

02:05 - 08:44

The duo discusses Curtis's reputation for creating sentimental and arguably unrealistic romantic narratives. Caroline emphasizes, "...we don't really interrogate what that is, but really he is a screenwriter."

Notable Quote:
[02:11] Ella Risbridger: "People look down on rom coms and Richard Curtis writes about love. And people don't like stories about love that have happy endings. They think they're stupid and unrealistic..."

Caroline and Ella argue that love and relationships are fundamental human experiences, making Curtis's focus on them both relatable and enduring despite criticisms of unrealistic portrayals.

---

4. The Richard Curtis Extended Universe

08:44 - 14:47

Ella introduces the idea of Richard Curtis's "extended universe," likening it to a Venn diagram where figures like Hugh Grant and Helen Fielding intersect with Curtis's production company, Working Title.

• Caroline notes, "...Richard Curtis is the king."

This section explores how Curtis's network of collaborators perpetuates the unique sensibility found in his films, creating a cohesive and recognizable brand.

---

5. Hugh Grant: The Perfect Co-Star

14:47 - 22:31

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Hugh Grant, Curtis's frequent collaborator. They explore the dynamic between Grant's on-screen cynicism and Curtis's heartfelt sentiments.

Notable Quote:
[21:35] Ella Risbridger: "...they all love each other, so..."

Caroline describes Grant as embodying the tension between being an "English gentleman" and a "sexy man who hates everyone," a duality that adds depth to Curtis's romantic narratives.

---

6. Interiors and Aesthetics in Romantic Comedies

22:31 - 35:23

The hosts delve into the importance of set design and interiors in conveying character emotions and relationships. They contrast Curtis's richly detailed settings with the more generic backdrops of modern Hallmark-style films.

• Caroline: "...rom coms are, you know, or any kind of romance films. They are films about emotions, and emotions are conveyed through conversations rather than through action generally."

This segment underscores how Curtis's attention to the physical space enhances the storytelling by reflecting the internal states of characters.

---

7. The Brownie Scene in Notting Hill

35:23 - 71:28

One of the episode's highlights is the in-depth analysis of the "brownie scene" in Curtis's film Notting Hill. Caroline and Ella dissect how this scene encapsulates the core themes of acceptance, friendship, and love.

Notable Quote:
[66:35] Ella Risbridger: "...we're all being so blatantly honest with each other."

They praise the scene for its authentic portrayal of flawed yet lovable characters, emphasizing how it serves as a "Rosetta stone" for understanding Curtis's filmmaking approach.

---

8. The Role of Music in Curtis's Films

71:28 - 84:26

Music plays a pivotal role in Curtis's storytelling, with iconic pop songs often underscoring emotional moments. The hosts discuss how films like Yesterday and About Time use music to enhance narrative depth.

• Caroline: "...Richard Curtis believes that love is the most important thing in the world."

They also touch upon Curtis's collaboration with musicians and his reliance on nostalgic tracks to evoke specific sentiments, reinforcing the emotional undertones of his films.

---

9. Critiques and Defense of Curtis's Work

84:26 - 93:07

Addressing common criticisms, Caroline and Ella defend Curtis's films against accusations of being elitist, white-centric, and lacking political depth. They argue that Curtis's genuine empathy and belief in love as a universal theme transcend these critiques.

Notable Quote:
[83:46] Ella Risbridger: "...Richard Curtis believes that love is the most important thing in the world."

They emphasize that while Curtis's films may have certain limitations, their heartfelt portrayal of relationships and emotional honesty make them resonate deeply with audiences.

---

10. Conclusion: Richard Curtis's Philosophy on Love

93:07 - End

In wrapping up, Caroline and Ella reflect on Richard Curtis's enduring legacy. They highlight his commitment to depicting love as a complex, beautiful, and essential human experience.

• Caroline: "...I'm so glad that these sentimental films are made by somebody who's genuinely empathetic about the human condition and cries at David Bowie lyrics..."

Their final thoughts celebrate Curtis's ability to blend humor, emotion, and realism, ensuring his place as a beloved figure in British cinema.

Notable Quote:
[84:22] Ella Risbridger: "...somebody who's genuinely empathetic about the human condition..."

---

Key Takeaways

• Richard Curtis's Unique Position: As a screenwriter, Curtis crafts deeply emotional and sentimental romantic comedies that stand out in British cinema.

• Influence of Collaborators: His long-term collaborations, especially with Hugh Grant, create a distinctive flavor in his films.

• Attention to Detail: Curtis's focus on interiors and aesthetics enhances narrative storytelling, making his films visually and emotionally engaging.

• Defense Against Criticism: Despite criticisms, Curtis's genuine portrayal of love and relationships resonates with audiences, emphasizing universal human experiences.

• Enduring Legacy: Curtis's films continue to influence and shape the genre of romantic comedies, blending humor with heartfelt emotion seamlessly.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "Richard Curtis is England's answer to Nora Ephron." — Caroline [02:09]

• "People look down on rom coms and Richard Curtis writes about love. And people don't like stories about love that have happy endings." — Ella Risbridger [02:12]

• "I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her." — Caroline [54:32]

• "Richard Curtis believes that love is the most important thing in the world." — Ella Risbridger [83:46]

---

This episode of Sentimental Garbage offers an insightful exploration of Richard Curtis's influence on romantic comedies, his collaborative networks, and the sentimental yet realistic portrayal of love in his films. For fans and newcomers alike, Caroline and Ella provide a comprehensive understanding of why Curtis's work remains cherished and impactful.

Transcript

[Podcast Advertiser]

Did you know that two out of three listeners say podcasts are the best way to learn about the things they care about most. That makes podcasts the perfect place to introduce your brand, where ads are more relevant and trusted than any other media channel. Want to learn more? Download the full podcast pulse 2024. Report now at podcastpulse2024.acast.com and see how you can make your brand part of the conversation.

[Caroline]

Foreign hello, and welcome to the Sentimental Garbage Christmas Spectacular, the annual festive bonanza where we dive into a huge cozy topic. Like it's a big tub of miniature heroes and we only eat the ones that interest us. My name is Caroline, and I only got this gig through my close personal friendship with Rowan Atkinson. And joining me is the unrealistic expectation of London living arrangements. Hi, it's Ella Risbridger.

[Ella Risbridger]

Hi.

[Caroline]

Hi.

[Ella Risbridger]

Happy Christmas. So nice to be back. Happy Christmas. You're back again. Now it begins.

[Caroline]

This is, like a really festive tradition that burdens me every year from, like, July onwards. I'm like, what's it gonna be this year? How are we gonna do it?

[Ella Risbridger]

Especially, I think, and this year, last year, we were very set on our very serious topic of Anastasia. Yeah, lots of trigger warnings for the Christmas episode. And I think this year we were not set at all. We drifted, we had thoughts, and then.

[Caroline]

We landed on Richard Curtis.

[Ella Risbridger]

Richard Curtis, which I think is actually a, long overdue, and B, maybe the only place we ever could have landed for the Christmas special. I mean, we've done Nora Ephron, and he is England's answer to Nora Ephron.

[Caroline]

Wow, what a place to start. Richard Curtis is England's answer to Nora Ephron. I think what's, like, fascinating to me about Richard Curtis, the more I delve into him, is that, like, you know, we think of him, I think, as just as a filmmaker, you know, and we don't really interrogate what that is, but really he is a screenwriter. And it's incredibly rare for there to be a screenwriter who is not also a performer, who we know the name of.

[Ella Risbridger]

Can you name another one? I mean, you probably can, but yeah.

[Caroline]

I mean, ordinary person. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Name a screenwriter.

[Caroline]

He's the only one who's like, like, Nora Ephron was a public figure. She was a journalist. She was, you know, a wife of a famous person. She was mixing in a crew, right, that, like, were highly, like, highly publicized at the time, I guess.

[Ella Risbridger]

But so is Curtis.

[Caroline]

So is Curtis.

[Ella Risbridger]

Curtis is also one of the reasons we know him not because of his films, but the people he got to be in his films, the people he surrounds himself with. He is also married to someone a bit famous.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Or, you know, of Dynasty.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

There is a tie in to that sense of like London centric, English eccentric literati.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

That we all kind of know about. Either people aspire to it or they hate it or they think it's impossible. Everyone feels some type of way about the London elite, the London media elites of which Richard Curtis is the king.

[Caroline]

Yes. Yes. It's so well put. And like, I. I think that that is the trick that pops is, is that, you know, for example, Sharon Horgan is a famous screenwriter, but she's also in her projects, so we know what she looks like. And Phoebe Waller Bridge. It's him. And that thing of like, it's Richard Curtis. We could probably pass him on the street and not know him. I mean, I have now watched so many interviews with him that I would know him intimately.

[Ella Risbridger]

I was about to say I could recognize him, but then I remembered that you and I have spent the last few weeks just sending little clips of.

[Caroline]

Richard Curtis, rich and barely holding it together while he cries about how much he feels about things. Which, again, I love that man so much.

[Ella Risbridger]

But I think that's. That's sort of why I feel that it's. It's almost overdue to have a Richard Curtis sentimental garbage episode. Because Richard Curtis is very sentimental.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And while I would never describe the films of Richard Curtis as garbage, some people do. People look down on rom coms and Richard Curtis writes about love. And people don't like stories about love that have happy endings. They think they're stupid and unrealistic, which is crazy, given that so many people get and stay married.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And even when they get divorced, they get married again. People love love, but they feel weird about it.

[Caroline]

In films, it is the most like, you know, it's the most defining aspect of sort of being a human being alive is the connections that you form to other people. It's true. It's true. And I remember when we had Monica in here last year when she did Love actually episode, she spoke about how she wants to rebrand the rom com as the relationship comedy. Because all the best rom coms, like, yes, you have your two leads who are inevitably falling in love with each other, but also you. And especially so in Richard Curtis movies, you have family members, you have friends, you have old friends, you have new friends, you have colleagues, you have kooks who work in the bookshop with You.

[Ella Risbridger]

Sisters.

[Caroline]

Sisters. When you see kooky sisters, you know, and like, and those. Yes, you have this main relationship, Everything, everything. But they're cross hatched through and shaded with all these other kinds of relationships and how those relationships react with the central one, like, for example, Notting Hill. Apparently Richard Curtis main idea going into that, as he said, was that every Wednesday he goes to his best friend's house in Clapham and he goes there for dinner. And one day he was on his way over there and he said to himself, what would happen if I were to turn up with Madonna? And then he thought, well, my two best friends, I can't remember their names but he likes them a lot. Wouldn't know clue who she was. But my other best friend, Helen, she would know exactly who she was and she'd flip out and she'd make everything weird. And the whole idea from Nottingham came from that. So really, the kooky sister in Notting Hill is a kind of a mirror shadow of Helen Fielding.

[Ella Risbridger]

No. Helen Fielding.

[Caroline]

Helen Fielding, his best friend.

[Ella Risbridger]

That was such a reveal to me.

[Caroline]

Yeah, right. Like, think about. It's so weird.

[Ella Risbridger]

Hang on, hang on, go back, go back. Helen Fielding and Richard Curtis are best friends.

[Caroline]

They are best friends.

[Ella Risbridger]

And I'm learning this now.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

I feel like the secret knowledge has been kept from me and now revealed.

[Caroline]

I know because, like, everyone knows that he adapted Bridget Jones, but I just.

[Ella Risbridger]

Thought that was joking. All kinds of things.

[Caroline]

Yeah. She's Scarlett Curtis, godmother.

[Ella Risbridger]

Come on, come on now it's Christmas.

[Caroline]

Now it's people being friends and godparents.

[Ella Risbridger]

No, but this is exactly it, right? This is how I feel about the whole Richard Curtis extended universe is being like, let me look at your weekly dinners with Helen Fielding. Who are the other two? What do you talk about? What do you eat? Are your houses as they are?

[Caroline]

Yeah, I think so.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yeah. I want to watch, I want to be. I want to see that whole extended universe of his life, which I think is interesting because there are so few men about whom we feel that kind of. I hate to use the word parasocial, but I'm going to. Yeah, that kind of almost parasocial thing of being like. And what else do you people do? You all hang out together.

[Caroline]

That's so true. What do you talk about? Because we're so used to this kind of the female attention economy thing of like, yes, you want to, you know, read her books or listen to her podcast, but a part of the trade, or, you know, read her cookbooks or read her Journalism or whatever part of the trade. Like, I know you've had this with your cookbooks of, like, telling people bits about your life and showing bits of your home and having to negotiate how much of your home you show and how much of your cat you show. And, and. And I think women in today's kind of attention economy who want to work in the creative arts have to make this whatever size pact with the devil that they have to show something of their private lives. Because if people are going to commit to spending, you know, 15 quid on you every couple of years, whatever your thing is, they need to feel like you're your friends. Yeah. And that's what we've been taught. And men rarely have to deal with that. Like, no one really cares about Martin Scorsese's private life. Except he's got this daughter now who's great, which I'm glad to know about her, but that's more of a bonus. But again, to have that sort of like, who are Richard Curtis friends? Who does he have to dinner? What does he think about? Who's, you know, what does he eat? What does he eat?

[Ella Risbridger]

What do they cook? Are they good cooks? I want to know.

[Caroline]

Because the emphasis in Richard Curtis films is that it's always bad cooks. Isn't that funny?

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes, Because I think that's quite an easy way to show they're just like you.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And it really punctures through the. It's a kind of attempt to puncture the kind of potentially rarefied atmosphere of Richard Curtis film. Right. Because, you know, the beautiful interiors where there's so many books and which people love to say is unrealistic. I. I have thoughts on that. I don't think that Richard Curtis films are as unrealistic as people like to say.

[Caroline]

Let's start with that subject, then, because I think there's. We could get. We could dart around really easily and not get mean what we say and say what we mean. So let's talk about the idea that Richard Curtis makes unrealistic, hyper sentimentalized films.

[Ella Risbridger]

Well, I think a very good place to start with is Caroline. And I think this is a good place to start. Is something Richard Curtis said in. I think it was a screenwriting masterclass.

[Caroline]

Is on the BFI, it's on YouTube.

[Ella Risbridger]

Great. You know, things. And I can't remember the exact quote, so I might mangle it, which is to say that people call his films unrealistic. But if someone writes a movie about a soldier breaking out of prison, breaking into the house of a pregnant woman, and raping her, a thing that has happened two times only ever in history, people will call it a searingly realistic and gritty drama. Whereas if Richard Curtis makes a film about two people falling in love, something hundreds of thousands of people are doing right this very second, right when we're recording, right when you're listening, hundreds of thousands of people are falling in love. People think that that is an unrealistic film with unrealistic expectations and that that is stupid. He didn't say stupid. He was more tactful than that.

[Caroline]

He made it clear he thinks it's stupid.

[Ella Risbridger]

He did. He did make it clear, but in a tactful and dignified way. And I think that there is something very tedious about condemning Richard Curtis is unrealistic. Because it's like, okay, but you probably have kissed someone in your life. And if not, like, okay, cool.

[Caroline]

It's like, okay, maybe you never lived in Notting Hill, maybe you never owned a travel bookshop. But I think you definitely kiss somebody who you thought was out of your league.

[Ella Risbridger]

Right? You kiss someone who you thought was out of your league, you felt weirdly betrayed by that person, or you didn't. Or you betrayed them in a way that is so small that even in the telling of it to your friends, you're like, oh, no, I've made a terrible mistake. Or. Or, you know, if you look at the whole Richard Curtis oeuvre, which I think doesn't necessarily just mean Richard Curtis films, you know, there are, like, other films, like About a Boy, which also contain this similar worldview. Yeah, people have relationship. People have relationships all the time. And, you know, they work out loads. Like, we're really interested as a society in the relationships which fail. And in being like, oh, so. And so is getting a divorce. This is whatever. And we're interested, particularly in, like, art, in stories that have a very sad and tragic ending, but we're not that interested in. And then it all worked out. I mean, I guess it's the Tolstoy thing, right? Of all happy families are alike, and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Something that has been so picked over and talked to death, I'm not even going to give it any more air time. But I think there is a prevailing sense that that is true. And I, like, I know from my own life as well, like, when I had a very tragic love life full of death, people were very interested. And now I have quite a boring love life full of like, did you feed the cat? No one's that interested. Which, personally, I Love. But it is. I can see why people love a tragic story because it feels like it has depth and it has richness and it. Oh, God. And you know, how much did they suffer? Whereas I think because, like, because of the ending of a happy, of a happy romance, we assume the whole story to get there is somehow belittled by how cheerfully dull the ending is.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

Whereas actually, I think that to get to that point is often very twisty and turny and full of like, very heightened emotions. Like the thing you feel when you've just got a crush on someone and you're trying to find out if they also have a crush on you and whether there are any obstacles to that, like getting in the way of you kissing.

[Caroline]

And they frequently are, like in real life. Weirdly, like, the older I get and the more I, you know, have my friends around for dinner who are in their Hugh Grant stage of life where they, they run whatever their version of a failing traveling bookshop is and they don't quite know what to do with their love life is. I am sort of astounded by like the impossibility of love and connection at all of like, yeah, okay, there's x amount of people who live within either your world or the fringes of your world geographically. Spe then some of them have to be single and then some of them have to sort of be in the right kind of age as you and sort of be interested in the right kind of things as you and sort of like it actually, you know, you think about there's so many options in the world, but actually when you get into any kind of community or society, people really do feel their options are quite small. Particularly after people start getting married off. And then it's like, oh, and also after you dwindle them all down after all those things, you have to be attracted to each other and available at the same time.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's like you have to like, be properly attracted to each other. Yeah, you. That you have to have a weird magic, indefinable thing that isn't just like, you're both good looking because, like, you know, you could put two good looking people in a room and they will not fall in love even if they're both objectively beautiful.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Even though everyone wants it to happen. We've all done it. We've all been like, invited our two single friends over and like, now kiss. Have you ever done it successfully set two people up? Yes, only by accident. Like our friends Jamie and Janina who met on my website, met on my blog.

[Ella Risbridger]

No, they didn't.

[Caroline]

They met in the comment section of my blog and now they are going on 12 years together. Hi, Jamie and Janina, if you're listening, you.

[Ella Risbridger]

You. Did you make that happen or did you just have a friendship circle?

[Caroline]

Well, that's.

[Ella Risbridger]

In which.

[Caroline]

That's neither here nor there.

[Ella Risbridger]

Okay, that's your great success. I won't take it from you.

[Caroline]

And also, Kirsten Ash. I set them up. Actually, do you know what? I am a qualified setup. I will set you up with people. I'll do it.

[Ella Risbridger]

Oh, yeah. And I suppose you knew my partner as well.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

So. Okay, okay. Maybe you are the setup witch. Maybe you are putting people in rooms and making them kiss.

[Caroline]

Maybe it was me all along. But. But while we're talking about unrealisticness, I think the other unrealistic thing that people talk about with Richard Curtis is the lives. Right. The lives that are depicted within it are often criticized for representing this tiny segment of, like, London life that we are told is impossible and doesn't exist. And the longer I live in London, the more I realize it actually is possible and does exist.

[Ella Risbridger]

It is possible. But I. And I think that it has always been possible depending on kind of the things you value. You know, when you and I were first in London, Caro, and we were very poor and writing for websites, all of which are now defunct.

[Caroline]

All of which. Yeah. All our back catalog erased. Mercifully erased.

[Ella Risbridger]

Thank God. Thank God and God for the collapse of the free press because all my.

[Caroline]

Embarrassing secrets went down with it.

[Ella Risbridger]

Don't. People might start hunting, but we were always having, like, stacks of books in our houses and, like, having elaborate dinner parties where we ate some very nice and some very terrible food. And that, I think, was because we had seen too many Richard Curtis movies.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And we were trying really hard to create in, like, a very small flats and house shares to be like. And this is how.

[Caroline]

How it's done.

[Ella Risbridger]

This is how it's done. You know, I.

[Caroline]

You're so correct. Actually. Would we be. Would we have been 22 having dinner parties if we hadn't all moved to London to be with Richard Curtis in our back pocket? Yeah, I think not. I think, like, do girls move to New York to be Carrie Bradfordshaw and girls move to London to be Hugh Grant?

[Ella Risbridger]

But I think moving to New York to be Carrie Bradshaw is more unrealistic just because of the sheer amounts of money. Whereas I actually think you can do Richard Curtis on a budget.

[Caroline]

You can. Yeah, we did.

[Ella Risbridger]

Because all it really requires you to do is have a White House that's full of books and to have some friends who are also in the arts.

[Caroline]

Yeah. And that's pretty much Everybody in their 20s in London who you can meet very easily if you are also in the arts. Like, that's that thing of struggling together and finding each other, you know, Which.

[Ella Risbridger]

I think is why I will always have such a, like, deep place in my heart for the Richard Curtis films that are about me. And my friends are trying to make stuff and we just read a lot and eat a lot, and sometimes we have money and sometimes not. You know, that kind of like. You know, I try very hard to look at Richard Curtis critically, but I can't make myself do it. Or rather, I actually. I feel like I've given it a really good go in the last couple of weeks, but ultimately, I return to. I don't know what my life would look like if I hadn't been following a template that Richard Curtis and his band of. Yeah, like, artists and writers kind of forged for us.

[Caroline]

It's okay. There's two layers to that now because there's the. There's the top layer, which is the thing that we see on the screen. Right. The money on the screen, which is the dinner parties in Notting Hill and the camaraderie in Four Weddings and the. And the friends in Bridget Jones Diary, like, all laughing about, oh, shit, her marmalade, blue soup and omelette is, you know, and. And, you know, and going out to dinner and all that. So there's that layer of it going on. But, you know, those. The characters tend to be like. I think in Notting Hill, one's a financier and one's a whatever. Like, they're not interesting jobs generally. I think he has the sense to temper it, to not put too many sort of writers and gallerists in there.

[Ella Risbridger]

One's a failed chef, isn't he?

[Caroline]

One's a failed chef. That's tr. But then there's the layer below that, which is. Once you do any reading about the real people who are behind this, it's like, you know that, for example, Richard Curtis and Helen Fielding are best friends.

[Ella Risbridger]

I do know that now.

[Caroline]

I know that. And the relationship between Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, which is that they are college friends and, you know, they did Blackadder together, and then that's sort of like, weirdly, Richard Curtis's meal ticket was kind of Rowan Atkinson, but obviously nobody thinks of it that way anymore. And then you think of this kind of strange relationship that Hugh Grass Grant and Richard Curtis have, oh, much to.

[Ella Risbridger]

Discuss, much to uncover.

[Caroline]

Can I just start with Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant over the whole. Please? I have so much to say. I've been thinking of nothing else for weeks. I could monologue, I could filibuster. Because.

[Ella Risbridger]

It'S your podcast, babe.

[Caroline]

My podcast. And I'll say what I like.

[Ella Risbridger]

Monologue about Hugh Grant as the kind of semi fictional avatar for Richard Curtis.

[Caroline]

So there's the thing. A few years ago, we talked about the Nor Ephron episode. We talked about Meg Ryan being this kind of avatar for Nora Ephron. Right. And like how the sort of the Nora Ephron could be like, famously quite cutting and quite spicy in a room. And, you know, she wouldn't necessarily have everybody's feelings, you know, at the center of her jibes or whatever she was saying in a room. And Meg Ryan is kind of her avatar on screen. She's the person who says all of Nora Ephron's most beautiful lines of dialogue. She's the star of her most famous rom coms. But Meg Ryan has this heart shaped face. She looks like Doris Day. She's got this wonder and sparkle about her. So even the sharpest lines come out so soft and so honey ish. Right. And I think with Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant, if you hear them ever talking about one another, there's like this brotherly irritation going on where they're like, oh, yeah. Like, I feel like, yes, of course, we're stapled together until we die. We love each other very much, we hang out all the time. But I do sort of hate him on some level kind of thing. And it's like very cozy to witness. And I think why that works is that, like, if you watch interviews with Richard Curtis, the man can't like get through a David Bowie lyric without bursting into tears. Like, he really means it. He really is as sentimental as his movies are.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes, of course. Because he's so earnest. Like, he really kind of says it with his. Everything. He means with his whole chest.

[Caroline]

Yeah, like Comic Relief. He means with his whole chest. Like his movies. He means with his whole. Everything. He does. He means with his whole fucking chest, I think.

[Ella Risbridger]

And that's what makes even the worst bits of his output.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Kind of watchable is because you're like, oh, he really cares about this. He really means it. You know, I'm not gonna name any names, but yesterday, a film that I have watched.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

You know, it's thin.

[Caroline]

We'll get to it later if we need to.

[Ella Risbridger]

I Don't think we will need to. But it's thin, but it is sort of watchable. And, like, did I cry? A very small amount. Did I think as I was gently tearing up at, you know, a bit in yesterday. This is so stupid. But I did think Richard Curtis really means this moment.

[Caroline]

He really means it, though, and he's not being cynical.

[Ella Risbridger]

But what is interesting is that Hugh Grant has made an entire career on being Mr. Cynicism.

[Caroline]

Yes. Hacked off you. As he would have done on YouTube. Twitter.

[Ella Risbridger]

Exactly.

[Caroline]

Hacked off you. He is like a cranky man and he doesn't care who knows.

[Ella Risbridger]

And in his interviews, he's always just like, my perfect day watching Colin Firth fail. It's like, okay, man. And it's like everything about Hugh Grant's thing is like, I'm spiky, I'm aggressive, like.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And I think what is compelling about that is Hugh Grant's not. This is a Hugh Grant episode. But to do a Richard Curtis episode.

[Caroline]

It'S to do Hugh Grant episode.

[Ella Risbridger]

And to do a Hugh Grant episode, you have this kind of internal tension in Hugh Grant between, like, foppish guy in Four Weddings and a Funeral just trying his best, and the whole getting a blowjob in a car off Sunset Boulevard, you know, And Hugh Grant has always been keeping those two things in tension, which is why it's so interesting in Bridget Jones when he's a baddie.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

Sexy baddie. Who you nonetheless warm to, because Hugh Garnt has been throwing those two balls up in the air his whole life. It's like, am I an English gentleman? Sweetheart. Eccentric. Notting Hill.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

Am I a sexy man who hates everyone and gets blowjobs in cars? And the answer is life is a rich tapestry.

[Caroline]

The answer is life is a rich tapestry. Yeah, you're right. They are the two balls that he's been juggling. And that's why we have not stopped watching for 30 years.

[Ella Risbridger]

Hugon could do anything and I would be like, yeah, I kind of see it, except from Heretic, which seems too scary for me.

[Caroline]

I went to see Heretic with our friend Tash the other week and it kept me up until three in the morning because I could not get those images out of my head.

[Ella Risbridger]

And Maytash tell you the whole plot. And I thought I was right not to see it.

[Caroline]

You were right not to see it. It was very upsetting. But he is incredible in it because he's doing. He's exactly that very thing you just described of like, he's keeping that juggling ball in the air at the same time. Both balls, which is the dink gentleman and the. I'm a fucking psycho who hates people, Right? But when you get that Richard Curtis dialogue and that Richard Curtis feeling and sentiment through this very cynical sieve that is Hugh Grant, it makes the perfect mix of what we want to see on screen and what we want to feel about people.

[Ella Risbridger]

Well, yes, which is why, and this is again, not a Richard Curtis film in any way, but About A Boy is a perfect Hugh Grant vehicle because it's Goldenheart in an outwardly shallow caddish thing. You know that bit at the beginning of a boy when he's like, got a new godchild and he's like, I.

[Caroline]

Don'T know why he can't hold it.

[Ella Risbridger]

Holding the baby and his arms are all over the place. And he's just like, you know, ignore her until she's 18. And then let's face her. I'll probably try and shag her. He's like a line which is so monstrous, like he's holding a newborn baby and he's like, let's face it, I'm gonna ignore her until she's 18 and then I'll probably try and shag her. And it's like, oh, you're a monster. Which is the Hugh Grant thing. Right. To be saying something in an open neck shirt that you're like, okay. Or to be playing someone so horrible that then you're like, actually, he's doing something.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Like him as Daniel Cleaver, particularly in that first Bridget Jones. Like, yeah, he's awful. But, like, there's no way in which you wouldn't forgive that man. At every turn where he goes, you and me. Little's good.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's too much. But then I think you've got to then look at Richard Curtis, right? This is the man that Richard Curtis has been like, you're gonna be. You're gonna say the lines. I write for men. You're gonna be the man.

[Caroline]

And I think, I think from what I can tell, reading between the lines of different interviews I've read and watched, is that, you know, he, you know, he got Four Weddings and then he wasn't quite sure if he wanted Hugh again for Notting Hill, but then it just kind of nothing, nobody else worked out. And it sort of ended up with Hugh Grant again. I think Richard Curtis did resist this marriage. I think they have both tried to resist this deep soul marriage. And that's what makes it so interesting.

[Ella Risbridger]

But it is interesting, isn't it, to Think of them as a kind of artistic cohort who graduated the generation before we did.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And I really get it. Like, now we, you know, there's loads of people I kind of know who, if I ended up in an artistic partnership with them, I'd be like, oh, right, Yeah. I guess we're working together again. Fun.

[Caroline]

Yeah, honey.

[Ella Risbridger]

Okay. And then to be like 20 years later, to be like, we are now two halves of a coin.

[Caroline]

Yes. We will be mentioned. Both of us will be mentioned in the other person's obituary. That must be a crazy thing to know for a guy you love but sometimes feel weird about, you know, which is just like our end life. And I think that's why, I think actually, you know, when we were discussing our notes for this episode, we kept coming back to this kind of image of sort of a three circled Venn diagram. And one of those Venn diagrams, one of those circles is Working Title, the production company, the very famous production company owned by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who made Like Billy Ell, My Beautiful Laundrette and all of Richard Curtis's films. And one circle is Hugh Grant and one Circle is Richard Curtis. And some of those things interlap at some places and not in others. For example, About a Boy is Hugh Grant in Working Title, but not Richard.

[Ella Risbridger]

Curtis, I would argue, which makes it a Richard Curtis film. Whether or not Richard Curtis was involved. You know what the other reason, And I think it's interesting to look at About a Boy, Right, because it's a Richard Curtis film where Richard Curtis had no hand in it. He didn't write it, he didn't direct it. It's only vibes that make it a Richard Curtis film, which makes it a quite good lens to try and figure out. Okay, why does everybody think that About a Boy is a Richard Curtis film? I thought it was a Richard Curtis film until I looked on Wikipedia and it's not. It's not. And I've been telling people that as a fun fact for the last three weeks.

[Caroline]

And people are always surprised that it's not a.

[Ella Risbridger]

That it's not Richard Curtis. So what is it in that film that has nothing to do with Richard Curtis that we think of as key elements of Richard Curtis? And it's obviously Hugh Grant. It's obviously Working Title. It's also pop music.

[Caroline]

Yes, yes. Big part of Richard Curtis is pop music.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's also there being two kind of big pop song moments in About a Boy, you know, the. When he has his rap CD and he's walking along the corridors.

[Caroline]

Yes. Shake your mm.

[Ella Risbridger]

Show me when you're working with it.

[Caroline]

Shake your mm.

[Ella Risbridger]

I love about a boy. So there's that and there's obviously killing.

[Caroline]

The asshole, which is such a Richard Curtis moment.

[Ella Risbridger]

Such a Richard Curtis moment. Because Richard Curtis loves to have a big pop song, sometimes more than one, playing a key role. Love actually is absolutely crammed with music.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if anyone wants an in depth study of love, actually, last year's episode, Malachi Hussey, go look it up.

[Podcast Advertiser]

You can trust podcasts to deliver results for your business. 80% of podcast listeners say they'll consider a brand recommendation by their favorite host. Even more impressive, 88% have taken action because of a podcast ad. If you're looking to connect with highly engaged audiences, now's the time to dive in. Download podcast Pulse 2024 for all the latest insights and see how podcast ads can drive real results for you.

[Ella Risbridger]

But you know what? Like, what you get a sense of with Richard Curtis, actually, is he obsessed with music? Because you've got, like, two of his big things that he directed and wrote, like Yesterday and the Boat that Rocked.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

Which are both about, like, the power.

[Caroline]

Of music and specifically the power of, like, baby boomer music. Right. It's like all of the music that you get in Richard. Crazy movies. It's boomer music. It's music he would have been a kid for. So it's like Beach Boys, the Beatles. It's Bill Withers. You know, it's like, it's that.

[Ella Risbridger]

Which is very interesting in terms of being like, I'm building a temple to the. To the greats who came before me.

[Caroline]

Yeah. So we both watched About Time recently and both cried. Both cried. And you know this. I'm kind of interested in talking more about Time because I think there's just a very. It's very interesting to me without necessarily being a movie I like that much.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's like, I don't know that I want to see it again, but I know that I'll see it about four times more, probably over the course of my life.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Which is how I feel about most of the Richard Curtis type movies. To be like, I'll be in a room where this is on.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And I'm not gonna turn it off.

[Caroline]

No. Who? No, of course not. Because there's like. I think they're so pleasurable to look at even if they were on mute. And they're like, if you're not paying attention to them, they're still just lovely to have around, which was why I think I was. I was reading something that Richard Curtis is responsible for the top grossing British films. Like, if you look at like the top ten British grossing films of all time, they are mostly all Richard Curtis movies of like, they are just pleasurable to have around, even if you're not focusing on them.

[Ella Risbridger]

I wish there were thousands of them.

[Caroline]

Yeah, right.

[Ella Risbridger]

Like, that's actually something that really surprised me. Much like the Nora, when we did our Nora Ephron Christmas special a few years ago is realizing how few there are.

[Caroline]

Yeah, exactly.

[Ella Risbridger]

We think of them as. I think that's actually one reason I do think that this is kind of a brother episode to the Nora Ephron and that Richard Curtis is to London. What Nora Ephron is to New York is they've kind of shaped our consciousness of a city and of like, kind of what a film should be. There's actually only about five.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah. They're just revisited so frequently. And they're also clipped in culture so much and referenced in culture so much that they are just these huge texts, even though they were just like movies made on a medium budget 15 years ago that nobody really thought they were doing anything amazing.

[Ella Risbridger]

You know, I mean, if you want a key example of them being clipped. Richard Curtis has a new film on Netflix, an animated film in which the animated children are watching. A real cut of love, actually. And it's really trippy. I hate when they cut in an animated film to a real.

[Caroline]

No, it's awful. Awful.

[Ella Risbridger]

No, but the Clay people were the people.

[Caroline]

Yeah. And the. But sorry to go back to about Time and yesterday as these kind of twin. They're both directed by. Written and directed by. And they both kind of were in a fairly short. You know, maybe there was five or six years between them, but they were one after another. I'm pretty sure it was About Time and then Yesterday. And they are both, to me, really feel like things that you create when you're in your mid to late 60s. Do you know what I mean? When like, I think the older, especially particularly men I've noticed the older that people get, the more they want to go back to the beginning and they more want to make sense of like how everything fits together in the grand scope of their life now that more years are behind them that are in front of them.

[Ella Risbridger]

About Time is such a movie for. Of that. Right?

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

The central premise is what if you could just go over and have a redo or even just look at it.

[Caroline]

Just leave and let's look at It. Yeah, it's mostly just concerned with just looking at how lucky you were in that particular moment of, you know, in your life.

[Ella Risbridger]

I mean, also, it's such a kind of central tenant, isn't it, of being like, oh, but if I did things differently, I wouldn't have my kids.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's such an obvious metaphor that. I mean, to be honest, the. The obviousness of the metaphor is what makes it a bad movie and what makes it a good movie is everything else.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

You know, you're looking at the central thing being like. Yeah, right.

[Caroline]

Like, you.

[Ella Risbridger]

You have certain regrets in your life, but you can't change them because otherwise you wouldn't have your kids and things wouldn't be how they are now. You know, I am a person who really doesn't really have very many regrets because it's so pointless. I feel. I've always felt very strongly like, ah, but if that had been different, I wouldn't be here. And that would be awful. I like. I really like it here. But that movie is just that concept made into two hours of like, oh, well, wouldn't have my kids then. But then what makes it a very compelling movie is just like, okay, yeah, take this simple human emotion and just talk about that in the guise of different characters bopping around.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

For a while. And I think that's what Richard Curtis does so well is he takes this very obvious truth. Mm. And it's just like, you wanna think about this for a bit?

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And I think there's something really beautiful about the simplicity at the heart of a Richard Curtis film. She's like, we care about. We care about the people around us.

[Caroline]

And I think what's kind of incredible about. About time is it. I know it sounds simple and a lot. You know, it doesn't take, you know. You know, a genius to realize the kind of. The time mechanics of it don't really work and you can't really count. You know, if you're someone who cares about that. I'm not. But if you are someone who cares about that, it doesn't.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yeah. If you care at all about, like, metaphysics of the time travel, don't get hung up about it.

[Caroline]

But it's incredibly ambitious film in that it's someone. It's clearly who wants. Who has done the Meet Cute and who has done the. Here are the two beautiful leads getting together. There's a problem, and then they sort it out. But he wants the rest of it. He wants the kids, he wants the ailing parents, he wants the ways people Fit together in larger ways. He wants the whole life. And, like, it's interesting that he chose a movie about time travel to fit to do what he really wanted to do, which is like, I'm interested in the ways people love each other, you.

[Ella Risbridger]

Know, which I think is, again, interesting to come back to that sense of like, it's unrealistic or it's realistic, actually. You know, the breadth of relationships in a Richard Curtis film is really realistic to me anyway. You know, a person, you know, at any given time, most people you run into, and I suspect this is partly an age thing, like, for us anyway. But most people I talk to are must being like, ah, yeah, this thing's going on with my mum or this is going on with my aunt. And I've just got to make sure this and my sister's this and my kids are this and like, my friend, I need to just go and, like, help out a friend who's having a hard time. And I feel like the older I get, the more I exist in this network of. We've said this before on the podcast, but please hold. Putting you through of kind of juggling various relationships and then kind of figuring out how a new relationship would fit into those existing frameworks and templates and people with different needs. You know, you think about a lot of Richard Curtis films like this. There's interesting disability rep. And I would not kind of ever position myself as someone to say whether it's kind of good or bad disability rep.

[Caroline]

But the fact that it consistently exists.

[Ella Risbridger]

Consistently exists. You know, there's the brother who's deaf in Four Weddings. There's Bella who uses a wheelchair in Nottingham, Notting Hill. The. Yeah.

[Caroline]

In about time. There's a kind of a learning disabled uncle, I think is. Yeah. Which treated very tenderly.

[Ella Risbridger]

Which is, yeah. Very much addressed as like, this is just part in all of those kind of.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

This is part of our lives. Which again, I think, interesting in terms of. About a boy feeling like a Richard Curtis film because of course, that is some of the most interesting mental health rep. Oh, yeah.

[Caroline]

How do you feel about that? As somebody who's written a lot about mental health?

[Ella Risbridger]

I think it's great, actually. I feel. I love it. I love that film. The sense of like, mental health is like an ongoing thing for all of them. And how the mum doesn't get better, they just get more people around them.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Which for me is like one of the most beautiful messages in the film ever is two isn't enough. You have to have backup.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

As anyone who has ever spoken to me for more than 10 minutes will know. I love to say two's not enough. You have to have backup.

[Caroline]

Yeah. That's such a beautiful thing about that film that you're right. There is no like the mum gets new meds or a new therapist. It's like. No. They just needed their network to be larger so that more people could carry the burden of this, like this illness she will have for the rest of her life. But it's okay, you know.

[Ella Risbridger]

But that is to me interesting. I think that's part of what makes it feel Richard courtesy.

[Caroline]

Yeah. It's so interesting that he's not, crucially not on that movie.

[Ella Risbridger]

But I think that would about a boy exist without the Richard Curtis.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Like extended universe without the Richard Curtis sense of. This is the kind of movie that people want to see.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Like actually, when you get right down to it, people want to see films about. About people who might not live in the same kind of house as you. Although I really think that I spent a long time trying to model my house on most Richard. Like a house that could be in a Richard Curse.

[Caroline]

But as you say, can everyone afford to live in Notting Hill? No, but can everyone have a bunch of books thrown around the place and some nice paintings? Kinda, yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yeah.

[Caroline]

I mean, depending on your definition of nice painting. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Not everyone can afford to live in a big house in Notting Hill. But also the griminess of the house in Notting Hill cannot be understood.

[Caroline]

I'm obsessed with that flatline because people.

[Ella Risbridger]

Talk a lot about the, you know, oh, it's not realistic. They live in Notting Hill. Sure, fine. You have to have some slack. Also, London is constant, like a constant shifting sounds of where is expensive and where is cheap. And that has been the case for 500 years just of being like. And now all the peasants live in the city and now they all live in Essex. You know, it's the thing of just being like, the people with no money get shuttled around depending on where the rich people think is cool and artsy. That's apart from now, obviously, where rich people are just expanding outwards. But there'll be a correction, you know, at some point. But yeah, London's shifting sands. You can't just be like, Notting Hill's very fancy because like, well, 20 years before that it was not fancy at all. And who knows where it will be in 20 years from now.

[Caroline]

However.

[Ella Risbridger]

However. The house is foul.

[Caroline]

The house is foul.

[Ella Risbridger]

Like it's a big house, but I don't know do you remember there was a whole. Like, we definitely knew people who were living in houses that were too big for them but were weirdly, like, horrible.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. The house sucks. I love how much it sucks because. Okay, you come in. There's like, a galley kitchen that goes straight to the doorway, which I recognize very much from London living. And then everything looks grimy and shitty. It's so clearly fridge.

[Ella Risbridger]

I find unpleasant fridge.

[Caroline]

There's a bicycle just hanging out. Which, again, is very city living. This is. He says, I'm opening monologue. This is a house I bought with my wife. And then she immediately left me. And so it's like you could see the project it was going to become and then didn't because it's just him and this guy who lives there now.

[Ella Risbridger]

Like, I totally. I can't actually remember whether there are, like, bits of timber, but it really feels like there could easily be, like. And we bought these timbers where we were gonna put up a different wall.

[Caroline]

The thing that's so important to me about that house is. And I feel like I know the layout of it so well. Like, it's two bedrooms upstairs.

[Ella Risbridger]

I feel like I've been there, you know?

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah. And the big sort of brown couches that are. Maybe they were fancy once, but they don't look good now. They. In the kitchen because he, the character, owns a travel bookshop. There is a huge marketing cutout of a Japanese woman in a kimono that clearly. It's like, this was obviously. He obviously got a release of some Japanese books into his store. A cutout was sent. He meant to recycle it. Or maybe he thought there'd be something for it at home. He brought it home and now it just lives stuck up in the kitchen for no reason forever. And that, to me, is so, like, oh, that's so well observed. Of how people actually live in their space.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes. Of being like, it's supposed to go to the bin. Of course I meant to throw it out.

[Caroline]

I put it out with recycling, but they didn't take it. And now I just have it.

[Ella Risbridger]

Which is why it's so wonderful, right, that you see it through her eyes.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Julia Roberts.

[Caroline]

Because, like, Anna Scott.

[Ella Risbridger]

Anna Scott. But you're seeing it through Anna Scott's eyes. And you can see her taking in.

[Caroline]

Like, this is a shithole.

[Ella Risbridger]

A shithole who lives like this? And of course, that's the thing that very rich people have that normal people do not, which is someone to throw away their promotional cutouts for them.

[Caroline]

Rom coms. And interiors are always an interesting subject, I think, because there's Nora Ephron houses and there's Richard Curtis houses, and both of them are versions of each other, which is like, lots of soft furnishings and lots of books and lots of light.

[Ella Risbridger]

And then there's Nancy Meyer's houses.

[Caroline]

Yes, Nancy Meyer's houses, which is like coastal grandmother is how it's often called, but huge kitchens, fantasy kitchens, and, like.

[Ella Risbridger]

The kind of houses I've never been in in real life.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

But, like, I've been in the Nora Ephron houses, and I've been in 1 million Richard Curtis houses.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And how it's always fascinating to me about how, you know, rom coms are, you know, or any kind of romance films. They are films about emotions, and emotions are conveyed through conversations rather than through action generally. And so what Richard Curtis and Nora Ephron were really good at doing is. Is. And why it's such a cliche in romances now is making sure your eye is still pleased while conversations about emotions, which are internal, are happening. So it's like the cue cards in love actually. It's like the. The Race to the Press junket. They're like all these, like, big physical visual moments. And also when people are just standing around, your eye needs to travel somewhere. And so having a perfectly tailored space to that character is so important because your eye moves as people talk in those spaces.

[Ella Risbridger]

I tell you what is interesting here is thinking about this vis a vis the formerly Hallmark, now Netflix Christmas movies.

[Caroline]

Yes. Okay.

[Ella Risbridger]

Because they have tried to do a. They have a kind of interior character all of their own. And everything that, you know, Nora Ephron achieves with a bowl of fruit and Richard Curtis achieves with a bookshelf, they do with wreaths.

[Caroline]

Wow. Okay.

[Ella Risbridger]

Wreath city in all.

[Caroline]

Tell me more.

[Ella Risbridger]

You must have seen these films.

[Caroline]

I am. Actually. You and I went through a whole marquee movie phase a few years ago, but I haven't revisited them since I had enough.

[Ella Risbridger]

I mean, what they do is they just fill every available space with Christmas wreaths. And it's interesting because that's clearly what they're doing is being like, it's still a Christmas film. It's still a Christmas film. It's still a Christmas film.

[Caroline]

Even though we're talking about fertility, it's a Christmas film.

[Ella Risbridger]

I mean, I think they've really sacked off on that. And now it's just more like. I watched one the other day called A Royal Date for Christmas.

[Caroline]

Okay.

[Ella Risbridger]

And it was about a duke ok. And you could tell that he was an English duke, even though he was played by a Canadian man who had clearly never been to England.

[Caroline]

Oh, they're all Canadian. They're all shot in Canada, I believe. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

The Canadian man, you could tell that he was English because when someone said pyjama to him, he said, no. Where I'm from, we call it sleep garment. That's just a little.

[Caroline]

That's what we say.

[Ella Risbridger]

But it's interesting, isn't it, because they are not concerned with realism at all, those Hallmark movies. And they. The background in their films is simply to convey neutral American Christmas. Neutral American Christmas. And so they're not trying. It's like when you hold that up against a Richard Curtis or a Nora Ephron, where it's like every part of this background has to be thought through because your eye will go like, what's going on?

[Caroline]

Yeah, your eye moves around.

[Ella Risbridger]

Whereas when you're watching a Hallmark movie, the dialogue is designed. If you skip a scene, it doesn't matter.

[Caroline]

Yeah. They are made to be background, really.

[Ella Risbridger]

They're made to be background. And so the backgrounds are much bigger. And they're just big wreaths.

[Caroline]

Yeah, big wreaths.

[Ella Risbridger]

And sometimes a bakery counter.

[Caroline]

What's interesting as well, because I'm re watching Friends right now. Gav is watching Friends for the first time, as you know, and he's been.

[Ella Risbridger]

Putting his sneak a Gavin Friends episode. I'm just putting it out there into the universe.

[Caroline]

He gets too shy about podcasts, but I really want him to do a Friends episode too. He's got so many takes.

[Ella Risbridger]

Let's put some Christmas pressure on him.

[Caroline]

But what's interesting is how Friends as a show, I think, has more in common with cinema of the 90s than it does with sitcoms of the 90s. I think that it's playing. It's drawing from Richard Curtis and Nora Ephron much more than it's drawing from Seinfeld or Cheers or something. You know, it's those interior. Like, for example, Monica's apartment. Right. Like, every single thing in that apartment is picked out to reflect Monica, who Monica is Monica wants to be. And the fact that Monica inherited this apartment from her grandmother.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes. I mean, I also am re watching Friends. Friends. Not just because of Gav, but I would say that's a reason to have carried it on. I am re watching Friends. I don't really know why. I think I was just like, I need to watch something completely comforting and completely bland. I've had a lot on this winter and I was just like, what can I watch that will be restful for the eyes? And what I have felt re watching Friends is like I could stare at each object for hours. It's like I could identify each of these objects if someone held up, like if there was a game where it's like, here's a photograph.

[Caroline]

Where does it be in my friends universe? Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Just like here's any object from the Friends universe. Where does it sit? I will be able to tell you. And it's like the boys apartment is so believably horrible.

[Caroline]

It's. The more you look at that boy apartment, the horribleness of it is so.

[Ella Risbridger]

Pictures on the walls.

[Caroline]

It's so just like when they buy junk, junk that boys find in the world and bring home and nothing of it makes sense.

[Ella Risbridger]

When they buy the cabinet, the thing that's too big. And then the solution is just like.

[Caroline]

Oh, and Joey makes it.

[Ella Risbridger]

When Joey makes the cabinet and it's like. And now it is too big.

[Caroline]

So we keep it forever until it's stolen. What a twist. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

For anyone who's not seen Friends, but.

[Caroline]

Those that, that show it really, like, if you put it next to sitcoms at the time, it feels a lot better than them. It helped. They hold. It holds up better. The jokes are better, the relationships are better. Because it feels like it's coming from a Nora Ephron Richard Curtis moment.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's true. And it actually, despite being Friends, is really driven by romance.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

I mean, you know, you've got obviously Ross and Rachel as your kind of ongoing thing, but then like, even the small relationships, I. Morn. Chandler and Cathy.

[Caroline]

Chandler and Cathy. Think about them all the time.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yeah, always the Velveteen Rabbit.

[Caroline]

Oh, my God, the Velvet. Yeah. We can't. This isn't the Friends episode.

[Ella Risbridger]

I know, I know, but that also very courtesy.

[Caroline]

Yeah, but. But having. It's so interesting to me that if you're going to make a movie or a TV show or whatever, that is primarily about relationships and romances and. And that those things again, all communicated through dialogue. The importance of having spaces that reflect those characters is so primary, you know, and like. And what's interesting is, is that like, people. I think I mentioned this on a previous episode, but Nancy Meyer gave an interview recently where the interviewer was told in advance that she was not. That he was not allowed to ask her about her interiors. And then he quite shittily said to her, I was told I couldn't ask you about your interiors. Now, I don't care about your interiors. But why don't you care? Well, why do you care so much? They don't ask you. And then she said something quite brusque, and, you know, she's like, you know, listen, I have created some of the highest grossing films of the years that I have made them. Like, I am a respected director and filmmaker, and I feel like people want to pigeonhole me as a woman who has a certain gift for throw pillows.

[Ella Risbridger]

Totally. Well, I was asking, like, on the way here, I asked you, and I sent some texts to some men, but they didn't reply. I guess they were doing other things very brutal, being like, who are the boys? Directors. By which I don't necessarily mean men, but I mean, the directors respected by film. Boys.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

What are their interiors like? What are their houses like? Are there any men who are building interiors? Like, are there any. Not men, but are there. Are there any other genres in which someone has, like, a consistent interior from film to film, a consistent kind of aesthetic, I guess.

[Caroline]

Well, I would say. I mean, just like, I watched them recently. Like, people talk about, for example, Francis Ford Coppola, like, oh, the director. And like, you know, the way, like, men talk really embarrassingly about.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's humbling.

[Caroline]

It's humbling.

[Ella Risbridger]

I find it.

[Caroline]

But they talk about, like, oh, direction, and they love talking about the camera. But the fact that, like, an important part of the Godfather movies is, like, in that first movie, you see that sort of stately old where they. Where that family lives, and it's the mob house. And we know you have to know every inch of the mob house to know where the center of power sits. And it's all sleek and it feels traditional and old and fancy. And then in the second movie, it's all about, like, the next generation. It's all tacky and cheap and thin, you know, because they're a ton of new money trying to break into Vegas or whatever. And that's. Those are all important interiors things. But you don't get, like, Coppola being asked about throw pillows. But Nancy Myers is.

[Ella Risbridger]

I guess the question is, are there any directors who keep a consistent. Basically, what I'm trying to pin down is, is the interior aesthetic. So the Curtis aesthetic, the Nora Ephron aesthetic, the Nancy Myers aesthetic. Is that specific to the genre of relationship comedy?

[Caroline]

I want to talk about Bridget Jones.

[Ella Risbridger]

I always want to talk about Bridget Jones. I would talk about Bridget Jones every day for the rest of my life.

[Caroline]

Every day. So fun watching them all again for this. But the. Obviously, there's a new one coming out Something I find fascinating is that, like, again, Richard Curtis, Helen Fielding, best friends and that we get. You know, Renee Zellweger as Bred Jones, is a sort of a avatar for Helen Fielding in one way, but also the Notting Hill character, who is the sister, the kind of cookie sister, is also a representation of Helen Fielding. And I love the idea that the real Helen Fielding is somewhere between those two things.

[Ella Risbridger]

That's so nice. I mean. Yeah. I guess if we and everyone we know keep on making art, at some point there will be like, so many fictional versions of us drifting around.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

That's someone I know. It's nice. I think that's one reason why I love thinking about that kind of.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Collective and the work they produced is because it's like we came to London to be like that.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And we're trying. And like, obviously we're not making the biggest selling movies of our generation.

[Caroline]

Yeah. But we are writing books and doing.

[Ella Risbridger]

A podcast and doing a podcast. And it's this idea that they kind of taught us how to. How to kind of navigate that sense of. You will have fictional selves floating out, round out there, and some of them you'll have written yourself and some will be written by your friends and sometimes you won't even know it's you.

[Caroline]

But I think it's more interesting to think of Richard Curtis as not a sole genius working in isolation.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes.

[Caroline]

Which of course he is. Is a genius, whatever, blah, blah. But it's more interesting to think about all these people down to, like, you know, Tim Bevan and Eric Fowlner, who are still the most important people in British filmmaking and who. Who run Working Title together and are still carrying on that sort of courtesy sensibility into everything that they do. And Hugh Grant and Helen Fielding and all these other people who are just. Right.

[Ella Risbridger]

I mean, I think this is why I wanted. I was so excited by the idea of doing Richard Curtis the Christmas special, because it's not just Richard Curtis, it's. It's about the relationships. He makes films about relationships based on a network of relationships.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And it's all about, like, how do we live with people, how do we. How do we love people? How do we do the best we can with what we've got? Which is like, I'm sorry to like, bang that drum again, but I feel like, how can we do the best for each other is really like at the heart of everything I've ever made. And really everything I ever think about.

[Caroline]

To go back to Bridget Jones for a second, something I am always fascinated by. And what everybody connected with that movie always talks about is about how it was the movie that taught them that you could you find the movie in the edit, which is insane because it seems like such a linear, beautiful thing and it feels so planned. And Richard Curtis, during his BFI screenwriting lecture, says that they had that first cut of the movie and it was a mess. And part of the reason that they thought it was a mess was because ultimately Bridget is a good looking girl with a cool job and fun friends and like. And the feeling that, you know you're supposed to be following her journey is kind of. It's sort of hard to, you know, I guess unrealistic. Maybe not even unrealistic, but just like, why would you care so much about a hero? And also he's like. And two guys want to shag her. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

She does have a cool job and great friends.

[Caroline]

Yeah. And she's pretty and she's got her own cool flat. And two guys want to shag her, crucially. But then he said the way that they fixed it was, you know that scene, the opening scene of her in her pajamas. Right after is that moment where it's like Mark D'Arcy is rude about her at the turkey curry buffet.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes.

[Caroline]

Drinks like a fish.

[Ella Risbridger]

Devastating.

[Caroline]

Drinks like a fish. Smokes like a chimney. Dresses like her mother. Yummy. Turkey curry. When she has to just keep going. Yum. After he says that if someone said.

[Ella Risbridger]

That about me, I would die.

[Caroline]

Die. And then it cuts straight to her alone in her flat in her pajamas. Yeah. And she's like, there. That was it. That was the moment. The moment I decided that I'm gonna like, change my life. And then, then I was going to keep a diary. And we get the whole segment of her in her pajamas lip syncing to All By Myself Again, another great Richard Curtis pop music moment. And that moment of her in the pajamas feeling sorry for herself and drinking vodka and lip syncing was supposed to come after she finds Lara on the rooftop. Lara in the bathroom. The stick insect. American. Originally, it was shot as, like her. Daniel Cleaver is a cheating fucking asshole. And now she's her low point.

[Ella Risbridger]

But instead her low point comes at the start because someone. And also it's not like someone she even knows. It's like, oh, this is what people who don't really know me think of me.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's so powerful. And start her on that low point.

[Ella Risbridger]

And it's so much worse than discovering that your boyfriend has an American stick Insect.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Because, you know, boyfriend cheating on you. Fine. Realizing that there's, like, casual acquaintances dislike you and are happy to say mean things about you behind your back.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's everyone's worst fear.

[Caroline]

Oh, God. Everyone's worst fear. And especially when you think about that, you know, Bridget Jones is starting as this newspaper column and then becoming a novel. And Helen Fielding very cleverly being like, well, I have this character. Everyone loves her. And now I'm just gonna use the plot of Pride and Prejudice to my own heart's content. And that moment at the turkey curry buffet being an exact replicant of the moment at some ball beginning of Pride and prejudice, where Mr. Darcy is mean about Lizzie. And in the Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie brushes it off, but in Bridget Jones Diary, it is the inciting incident that makes her change the rest of her life. Or try to change it by keeping a diary.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yeah. I mean, does she change her life?

[Caroline]

No, but we have the whole concept of the thing.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes, true. I'm trying to think, though. She kind of. What is interesting to go back to the. She's a pretty girl with a cool job and cool friends.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And two guys want to shag her, and he lives in a nice house. Is that what it actually ends up being, is she's really pleased about all of that. You know, it becomes a movie about, like, seeing what you have and being.

[Caroline]

Kind of, oh, my God, you're so nice.

[Ella Risbridger]

Oh, it's so nice being like. It is so nice.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And again, very Richard Curtis.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Very Richard Curtis. Is to be grateful for what you have.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

You know, that is to be grateful for the people around you. I mean, look at Notting Hill. One of those things is like, you know, the flatmate who.

[Caroline]

Spike.

[Ella Risbridger]

I would say he's probably the worst. One of the worst fictional flatmates.

[Caroline]

I hate him so much.

[Ella Risbridger]

Everything about him.

[Caroline]

He was such a sensation when he came out.

[Ella Risbridger]

I really believe it.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

I believe in him as the flatmate.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

But he's grateful for him in the end, you know, And I think that's. Is that true of most Richard Curtis films?

[Caroline]

I think there are very few true.

[Ella Risbridger]

Villains in the sense of, like, I'm surrounded by oddballs. I am one man trying to do my best, but for some reason, I am in. Do you know what it is? Oh, my God.

[Caroline]

What?

[Ella Risbridger]

It starts every premise from, like, someone at school who doesn't understand why they're with the losers who aren't being picked for pe who's like. I mean, like, he's always kind of like, oh, I'm here with my cookie sister and my failed chef friend. And, like. And it's like. But I'm. I'm trying so hard. Like, it's like. Especially when it's Hugh Grant and you can see that he knows. He's like, I am handsome, I think, and I should be doing better than this, actually.

[Caroline]

That's so true. It's like, why am I with all these losers? And then it's the realization of I love my losers.

[Ella Risbridger]

Exactly. There's always like, a prickly moment of just being like, oh, I kind of like, yeah, why am I not being picked for PE and then realizing, like, it's because I'm also a mega dork and I love my other dorks. And that's cool that you're right.

[Caroline]

That is the trajectory of every character in a. I think it's very sweet.

[Ella Risbridger]

But the moral of the story is almost always, I belong here with the freaks. And that's nice. About a boy. Again, that's another thing that makes it the Richard Curtis movie is because at the end, he's just like, here I am with this guy who I once volunteered with at Amnesty International, and this child who is here always now. And this child's weird girlfriend who's two years older than her. Yeah, two years older than him. And her boyfriend, I think. But like. Like, it's all about being surrounded by loving the dorks you find yourself surrounded by.

[Caroline]

Yes. Yeah. Every movie is that. You're so right.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's about accepting where you are. Which is why Yesterday is a classic Richard Curtis movie, even though it's not very good. Because, sorry for spoilers for anyone who was still planning on seeing the hot new movie Yesterday by Richard Curtis, ultimately he ends by being like, I was better where I was like. He ends up. He ends up as a teacher.

[Caroline]

Yes. Releasing all the Beatles music for free.

[Ella Risbridger]

Releasing the Beatles music for free. Something which truly just to pause on yesterday, if you have seen it, my major question is if tomorrow Ed Sheeran went on stage at Wembley and said, actually, I've lied to you all. I didn't write all these songs. A band from another universe called the Ladybirds wrote all of my songs, and from now on, I will be releasing them all for free. I would say everyone's reaction would be like, ed Sheeran needs a little lie down.

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

The reaction would not be, you lied to me and betrayed me, Ed Shearer.

[Caroline]

We would act like, you know, Brian Wilson in the Beach Boys. They'd be like, oh, you've Gone completely mad. Oh, you created some great art and now you've gone completely mad. Great.

[Ella Risbridger]

What we would not do is, if we were Lily James, be like, how could you lie to me and not tell me you had stolen these songs from another dimension? I would say that's the weak point for me in yesterday. One of the weak points.

[Caroline]

But another weak point of yesterday is that it sort of really presupposes that not only are the Beatles the greatest thing that ever happened musically ever to modern society, which I guess some people could argue if they wanted to. I'm not interested in that argument. But it also sort of puts forward the theory that the second greatest musical accomplishment of the last century is Ed Sheeran. It goes, number one, Beatles number two. Ed Sheeran.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yeah. And nobody in the world disputes it.

[Caroline]

No. And no one in the world. Yeah. There's a whole moment that I guess was supposed to be a joke, but does not feel like a joke.

[Ella Risbridger]

Are you gonna say about Mozart and Salieri.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

I'm so glad we came to that. I was about to bring it up. Yes. Where Ed Sheeran says that he is the Salieri to. What's his name in the film?

[Caroline]

Jack.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes, Jack Malick.

[Caroline]

Yes, Jack Malick.

[Ella Risbridger]

Ed Sheeran playing Ed Sheeran. By the way, Ed Sheeran is the Salieri to Jack Sally's Mozart. And that, to me, is an interesting thing to say about yourself in a film. The weirdest thing about Jack Malik. I would continue to be the Mozart of our time. Me, Ed Sheeran, the Mozart.

[Caroline]

And listen, I think people are too hard on Ed Sheeran as a. In general. But the thing about when a cameo appearance from a famous person in a movie where they play themselves as famous people, it should be short. And then you just keep getting more scenes with Ed Sheer in it, and they think, oh, he's a real character in this. He's like the third most appearing character.

[Ella Risbridger]

I don't think she does a bad job.

[Caroline]

I think he does a fine job. But it's unclear as to whether it's a parody or sincere.

[Ella Risbridger]

But the point is in that film, to bring us back to my central thesis before we got onto everything wrong with yesterday. It's about learning to love where you are and not trying to be. Not trying to be somebody else, you know? And the same is true in About Time.

[Caroline]

Yes. Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

Sorry for spoilers. He ceases to travel through time.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Not even for a treat.

[Caroline]

Not even for a treat.

[Ella Risbridger]

That's made very clear, actually, that not even for a treat will he go back and do it.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And, you know, Bridget Jones. To Bridget just as she is. To Bridget just as she is.

[Caroline]

Oh, it's too much that.

[Ella Risbridger]

But, you know, this is like the ongoing thing of the. Richard Curtis's, like.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

If Hugh Grant's fight is between being the eccentric and the cad, Richard Curtis's fight is like, I'm a megadork, but I could try and be cool, I suppose. And that's the thing he's juggling, is being, like, a cool person, you know, trying to be somebody you're not. This is real.

[Caroline]

What do you think of that? That same thing about the ending of Notting Hill, which is very famous and rightly so, I think, because it all. It has this thing. Have you watched it for this? Rewatch it for the thing? I rewatched it the other day. And, you know, it's the. The constant back and forth throughout the whole movie of, like, Anna Scott and Will. I think it's Will, Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. Let's save ourselves confusion. They're back and forth and. And they're definitely attracted to each other, but she is kind of always running out on him because she gets, you know, something to do with her fame gets in the way. And then at the end, she confronts him and is asking for one more chance, and he says no, because ultimately, I live in Notting Hill and you live in Beverly Hills, and it's just never gonna work. And if you were to, you know, run out again, I would never recover. Because we see him. There's so much mourning and grief in Notting Hill about lost love. And we see a lot of it also.

[Ella Risbridger]

You must remember that in Notting Hill, he's just started with. He bought this house with his wife.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

He's already. He's living in. Like. He's a ghost. He's living in a mausoleum of being like. And, like, every day he walks around that house with Spike, he must be thinking, like, and this is where we thought our baby's room would be. And this is where we were gonna knock through the kitchen and we would have painted it.

[Caroline]

And he's living completely on the edges of the domestic life of his friends.

[Ella Risbridger]

Yes. He's living on the edges of his. Both, like, the domestic lives of his friends and the ghosts of his own failed domestic life. And to have your heart broken in.

[Caroline]

That scenario, like, twice, because they have. They have a moment or a short thing, and then she disappears. And then they have a longer thing where he takes her to the dinner party. And I want to talk about the dinner party in a minute. The brownie. The Brownie. And then there's kind of an implied three or four days they spend together or something. And then she. Alec Baldwin shows up, basically, and we see him mourn her twice in that movie. And one time, it's like a whole year passes and he's walking through Nottingham Market and the seasons change and Bill Withers is playing. And then eventually, when she comes back for a third time and says, please, like, I really mean it this time, he's like, I can't do it. Like, I just can't. And you really believe the pain in that. And then she says. She's like, okay, good. Good call. Good call. And she goes, the fame is not really real, you know? And I find that so. So moving. That thing of, like, fame as this kind of created lens that isn't actually real and doesn't fit on top of people. It's just a way we see them. And then that. The whole moment of, you know, just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.

[Ella Risbridger]

That's too much.

[Caroline]

It's too much. Why is it too much?

[Ella Risbridger]

Why is it too much? Is because it's the central question at the heart of, like, every single mostly romantic balls or every other relationship.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Is that ultimately, every time you ask somebody to, like, be your friend or to go on a date with you or to marry you or to have a baby with you, or simply to, like, maybe we should get a coffee sometime.

[Caroline]

Just. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

You know what I mean? Like, every single one of those interactions, whether that's, like, you're trying to transition a work friend into being, like, a solo private friend.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Whether you're trying to be, like. Whether you're trying to, like, propose to someone.

[Caroline]

I'm just a girl standing in front of a publishing worker asking her to love her.

[Ella Risbridger]

That's what it is. Every time you say to someone, you take that little risk, what you're really saying is, like, do you think that you could love me? Like, I kind of think that I could love you. Do you think that we could do that? And so to a greater or lesser extent, we're all having that exact moment disguised in a million ways.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Like, all the time.

[Caroline]

That's so good. Yeah. And then when he goes to the restaurant and he's just saying to all his friends, and they're like, right. And you said no. And he's like, oh, God, it's so pleasurable. It's so good.

[Ella Risbridger]

And I think that's interesting as well, isn't it? Because there's something of the wish fulfillment there in that. You will say to someone, I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her. I'm just a girl standing in front of a mutual friend asking if they want to get coffee, do you love me? And then they'll say like, no, and you'll be crushed. But then they'll be like, and I was an idiot. Can you believe I said no when actually I could love you loads.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

That's such a wishful film on thing. More than if, more than if he'd said yes.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Because if someone's like, yeah, sure, that's okay, fine, yeah. But if someone says no and then is like, I've made the greatest mistake of my life, I will.

[Caroline]

That movie is perfect. It's so perfect. Horse and hound. Any horses in this one, but any hounds. So good. Can we talk about that brownie scene?

[Ella Risbridger]

I think so. I think that we actually must because I think it is a real. I think it may be the key Richard Curtis moment.

[Caroline]

Go on.

[Ella Risbridger]

Well, it has every element.

[Caroline]

Shall I describe it? And then you can describe the scene.

[Ella Risbridger]

And then I will annotate.

[Caroline]

Okay. The scene is, is that he has taken Anna Scott, the most famous woman in the world, played by Julia Roberts, around his friend's house. This is the moment where Richard Curtis was writing up to when he conceived this idea. And they've all kind of settled into the idea that a famous woman is there and there is a final brownie left on the table and they've all had a great time and they, they say that the last brownie has to go to the biggest sad act at the table. And they go around with all of their things and Bella talks about how she got into an accident and now she has his wheelchair bound. And the other friend talks about how he's sort of shit is his job and nobody likes him and nobody wants to get off with him and, and failing restaurant. Failing restaurant. And the sister is like, I've got weird sticky out eyes and I'm attracted to cruel men. Which I love.

[Ella Risbridger]

What a perfect line. Like, yeah, the two things wrong with my life. I've got weird sticky out eyes and I'm only attracted to very cruel men.

[Caroline]

And then, and then Julia Roberts character Ernest Scott talks about how she's like.

[Ella Risbridger]

Don'T I get a go? Or whatever.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And that was kind of like, like, no, you are a movie star.

[Caroline]

Yes. And she says, you know, I've had, I've been on a diet. For 20 years, I've had, you know, a series of cruel relationships, one of which hit me. I have had two painful operations to look this way. And this is, like, cute Julia Roberts thing where they're like. Everyone goes, oh. And then she points at her nose and taps it. And then she points at her chin and taps it with this very, like, mischievous look on her face. And. And then she says. And one day, you know, I'm basically. And one day I'm gonna get old and no one's gonna want to look at me anymore. And somebody will come up to me and say, you used to be famous. And they all pause and they, like, take a minute to hold space.

[Ella Risbridger]

They're like. She's like, nice try, gorgeous. Nice try, gorgeous. Nice try, gorgeous. And who do they give the brownie to?

[Caroline]

Oh, I can't remember who gets it in the end. It might be Hugh Grant's character.

[Ella Risbridger]

No, it isn't. I think it might be the finance guy.

[Caroline]

Okay.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's someone else anyway. And it's just, like, nice, dry, gorgeous. And I love this scene for many reasons. One, the room they're in is perfect, but not too perfect. I believe it's slightly too empty. That is my overall impression. When I remember the scene, I think of it being a room that is, like, not perfectly finished. It's beautiful, but it's not perfectly finished. I think maybe, like, you know, I'm looking at. Thinking there could be one more painting. You could have a footstool. But the room feels quite real to me in terms of like, people have bought a nice house and they haven't. It's not, like, finished finished. They'll keep adding stuff to it over the years.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Two. Group of freaks.

[Caroline]

Group of freaks.

[Ella Risbridger]

Look at these megadorks. It's so funny to be like, we're going to give the brownie to the biggest sad act at the table. Now, let's all go around and detail why we're sad acts. Language. Very funny.

[Caroline]

To be talking about sad act is so funny.

[Ella Risbridger]

So funny.

[Caroline]

I think we should adopt you. Sad act.

[Ella Risbridger]

We would use it with too much viciousness.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

We can't give ourselves.

[Caroline]

We can't be trusted with it.

[Ella Risbridger]

We can't be trusted with it. No, you need to be. But. So it's like the friendship thing of Megador. The sense that they're all being so blatantly honest with each other. Because this is the thing about the megadorks. They all love each other, so.

[Caroline]

And they know each other forever.

[Ella Risbridger]

I think that's why the I've got weird sticky out eyes and I am only attracted to very cruel men is so funny. Because it's just like to have a group of friends to whom you can say that and then all be like, yeah. Because no one rushes to be like, no, your eyes are beautiful. Because she does have funny, sticky eyes.

[Caroline]

I know.

[Ella Risbridger]

And it's like, no one's like, no. God, your eyes are so good. And you could be attracted to different men. They're all just like, yeah. Oh, big time. That is. That is your flaw. And something about having friends to whom you can be like, these are my flaws. And they'll be like, yeah, yeah. No changes. They don't seek to counteract anyone's sadness.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

They just hold space for it. I don't want to. You know, this is not a crossover episode with any Holden holding claws, but they hold space for each other to be like, they're having a nice time. And as part of that nice time, they're just like, oh, God, isn't life horrible? And I. I personally love the scene because I am a big proponent of just like life is going to be consistently pretty horrible in many ways, and it's also going to be consistently fantastic. And the trick to being alive is to hold those two things. Much like Hugh Grant holding his blowjob in one hand and his charm in the other. You must hold the horrible and the nice and you must juggle them. And that is, I think, perfectly represented in the scene. Also, they don't patronize her.

[Caroline]

Yes, that's true.

[Ella Risbridger]

They speak. They treat her as if she too is a megador, which of course, she is. Because all, Almost all famous people.

[Caroline]

Because the fame isn't real.

[Ella Risbridger]

Fame isn't real. Most people who've become famous by doing one thing really well either started off as dogs or have got weird. Because fame makes people weird.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

[Ella Risbridger]

And so the only place for a megastar to find a home is among the megadorks.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And that is why that is the most Richard Curtis film. That is the Richard Curtis moment.

[Caroline]

It is the. Yeah, it is the. Yeah, it's the Rosetta stone by which you decode all other works.

[Ella Risbridger]

You could take that and you could unpick. I think you could use that scene to unpick basically every other element.

[Caroline]

Well, everyone's got Richard. That's what's, again, what makes it so beloved. I think, like, it used to be that the Royal Family were responsible for tourism in the uk, and now I think it is. Is more Richard Curtis than any member of the royal family could hope to be. Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

I mean, it's the thing, like, we came to London to try and be in a Richard Curtis film. I read an interview. I cannot remember where or with whom. But the gist is the people who live in the Muse House from Love actually, where he holds up the signs.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

Are losing their minds because people every day from, like, mid November are out there kissing on the step and, like, holding up signs and proposing to each other, which to me is deranged. Because, like, that's not a happy relationship.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

One of the things about love actually, to me is that the relationships are not happy.

[Caroline]

Most of them aren't. That's actually something that Hugh Grant hacked off. Hugh has said about it, is that he sees love actually as being a film about pain. About every character who's in love is in deep pain. Because that. It's like the little boy who's in love, he's in deepest pain. The Andrew Lincoln's character. Deep pain. Like, everyone is pain, pain, pain, pain. And he was like. And I think. And then he said. And the best thing about British humor is that it's all about finding subtle ways to deal with pain.

[Ella Risbridger]

Well, again, it's the thing I say, like, life is full of joy. Life is full of horror. They often at the exact same time. But, like, the thing about love actually is. I don't know if you've ever seen the deleted scenes and the director's cut of love.

[Caroline]

Actually, I have love.

[Ella Risbridger]

But, you know, like the head teacher. Yes, the head teacher with her, like, wife who has cancer or similar. And it's like how the stern head teacher who features in the film, not really at all. Her whole storyline is removed. But her whole storyline is that while she's stern at school, she's tenderly like, yeah.

[Caroline]

Nursing a day.

[Ella Risbridger]

Nursing a dying partner at home. And it's like, wow, it would be. I wonder why that got cut. And I wonder how people would feel about the film if it had it in it, because I think it would change the tone of the film quite significant.

[Caroline]

Love actually functions as well as it does because it is like a milk tray. Like, it's like this double layered chocolate box where you just take your favorite bits and then you swap out the bits from the under layer and then you cover it up. It's like, oh, this bit. I like this bit. Then not this bit.

[Ella Risbridger]

And people like, as you yourself know, people love to rank their relationships on love, actually.

[Caroline]

Yes.

[Ella Risbridger]

Including on this very podcast. But people love to do that and they love to hate certain bits. And I'm interested. I want. I would like to know why people still get off on hating love actually as much as they do. Like, I. The algorithm randomly gave me a Vogue article from someone being like, I watch love, actually, for the first time in 2024, and here's what I thought.

[Caroline]

And it's like, okay, that is so boring to me. If you traffic in that kind of stuff, you are boring to me. I'm so sorry.

[Ella Risbridger]

But I do think that there's. People love to hate love, actually. And I think it's interesting to try and dig down into why. Because obviously, because it's unrealistic. Oh, it's.

[Caroline]

It's problematic.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's problematic. And I think. I think quite consciously coming into this podcast, I knew that I didn't really want to talk about whether Richard Curtis was problematic or not.

[Caroline]

Yeah, that's not interesting to me, as, again, I keep saying it is not.

[Ella Risbridger]

Interesting to me, but I think it's also not interesting to me because it fails to engage with it on its own terms. Yeah, I don't think most Richard Curtis movies are a political project in that way. And actually, no, everything's a political project.

[Caroline]

But.

[Ella Risbridger]

But what's Richard Curtis selling in his later movies? It's nostalgia. It's a sense of, like, Britain, wasn't it great in the past? The boat that rocked yesterday. About time. Like, even. Even like the modern day in Richard Curtis's later movies is still kind of out of time. But I. I guess it's the fact that so many people have engaged with Richard Curtis on a political level to explain why he's problematic. Yeah, it's like, I have nothing to add to that conversation.

[Caroline]

Do you know what irritates me about that as well is that, like, trying to engage with Richard Curtis's supposed problematicness and. And analyzing his politics through his rom coms. When you could analyze Richard Curtis's politics through his politics very easily. Like, he's a man who's raised millions and millions of pounds through his charity. That is about, like, ending sort of, you know, like. Like homelessness and income inequality throughout the world. Like, he has done a lot. It feels really weird to me to be like, I don't know about this Richard Curtis character. His characters are a little bit stalky, where it's like, I think, you know what, I'm balanced with the millions raised.

[Ella Risbridger]

It's also interesting, isn't it? Because it's like, it's not actually about what he's done. It's about what he's saying. And it's like, I don't think he's saying anything. Like, I think he's saying lots. But I think trying to guess the political persuasions of characters who. If I had to guess the political persuasions of Woolwich Curtis characters, it's that they're kind of like, oh, gosh, wow. Yeah. I mean, it's Britta Jones in Britta Jones too.

[Caroline]

I was Bridget Jones and she's like, well, she's at the law Dinner, at.

[Ella Risbridger]

The Law Society dinner in her yellow dress, which. Funny. My sister and I used to get so cross with her for choosing a yellow dress.

[Caroline]

Really?

[Ella Risbridger]

I think we had seen the movie so many times, it was one of the very few DVDs. It was just like, come on. If you don't know the occasion, why would you wear Buttercup yellow?

[Caroline]

That's very true.

[Ella Risbridger]

Always wear black.

[Caroline]

Yes. Yeah, that's a good idea.

[Ella Risbridger]

If you don't know the occasion, if.

[Caroline]

You'Re insecure, if you know the occasion.

[Ella Risbridger]

Never go for Buttercup yellow. And her friends are dreadful for not saying to her, skin tight Buttercup yellow is a real vibe. And you have to know, like, can you think of a single occasion where you would wear skin tight Buttercup yellow if it wasn't your own party?

[Caroline]

Maybe if I was convinced that my boyfriend was going to propose to me after six weeks. But go on.

[Ella Risbridger]

The politics of the scene are Bridget Jones decides that the Law Society dinner is the place to.

[Caroline]

Well, no. So she tries to ingrace herself into her conversation. Because I want to.

[Ella Risbridger]

Hugo was just saying he's totally against charitable giving.

[Caroline]

Exactly. And then she sort of laughs and she's like, you don't think that. And they're like, yes. And then it's like the person that you see homeless outside ended up there because of their, you know, their own decisions. And then she kind of gives a very Bridget rant about, like. Like, no, no. You sound like a bunch of old home counties balding Tories. And everyone just looks up and she realizes she is surrounded by home counties.

[Ella Risbridger]

Balding, upper class home county story. Because she's constantly being undercut by herself and undercut by everyone around her. And I think that's the political persuasion of most characters in Richard Curtis is people being like, I don't know. I kind of try and do the right thing. I don't really, like. Of course I read the news and.

[Caroline]

Being terrible about Chechnya.

[Ella Risbridger]

Right. I just, like. I think one of the most endearing things about Richard Curtis characters is that they're people who are just like, yeah, I know about current affairs. And then just, like, frantically trying to remember. Like, this is obviously not in any Richard Curtis film, but if it were me, it would be trying to, like, frantically visualize, like. I definitely clicked on a Guardian link. It was about something else. But did I see anything as I zoomed through?

[Caroline]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Like, as I zoomed through to, like, cultural lifestyle, what was on the front page and trying to be like. And, you know, they've all got opinions, but their opinions are not. They're not, like, as everyone is kind of expected to be today.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Politically savvy. They're not, like, particularly well informed. I don't know. It kind of makes me nostalgic for a time where people got their news from a paper and didn't and weren't like. And I get. I have a broad range of inputs and I've thought carefully to synthesize my own opinion on, like, a complex political topic. And instead we're just like, gosh, that bit. Read it in the paper.

[Caroline]

That bit where she's having dinner with Daniel Cleaver and she tries out her. Isn't it terrible about Judge? No. And he also couldn't give a fuck. Judge.

[Ella Risbridger]

I've not seen Bridget Jones 3, have you?

[Caroline]

I have. I really liked it. I think it's better than the second one, actually.

[Ella Risbridger]

Oh, nice. Maybe I'll see it.

[Caroline]

Yeah. What I like about it is that, like, she's in her 40s and she's good at her job. Because if you're in your 40s, you should probably be good at your job by now.

[Ella Risbridger]

But the thing is, I kind of don't really regard anything after Bridget Jones one as canon in the same way. To me, Bridget Jones 1, the film is a perfect. And standalone.

[Caroline]

Yeah, it's a Christmas film. You know, this is a Christmas film. This is something that Richard Curtis says, actually. Cause he was interviewed about why he so frequently. You know, obviously he always shoots in London and he often has a Christmas scene, whether or not it's a Christmas film, such as British Jones. And he said, well, because if you don't have a ton of money, London at Christmas, it's lights, it's water and it's darkness. And that's just always beautiful. Because he's right. He's like, yeah, you've got. You've got the Thames right there.

[Ella Risbridger]

He's so right.

[Caroline]

He's so right.

[Ella Risbridger]

He's so correct. And this sense of like. Yeah. And also, it's this thing of like dogs come together. Christmas, a real time for like.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

Either you to be alone, the only misfit in your family, or to by the end have surrounded yourself with your misfits so that you will make a happy little family.

[Caroline]

Yeah. Found family. Big thing for Aldrich.

[Ella Risbridger]

Also nuclear family of which you are the founder. Like.

[Caroline]

Yeah. So many of Richard Curtis movies are like the best thing to happen to a man at the end of a film and you know, at the end of his twenties is that he should be surrounded and covered in babies. And there's very few men, directors who are like, the best thing for a man is to be covered in babies.

[Ella Risbridger]

The man needs the wife with the long hair to hand him the hands of like a little boy and little girl. And then it's just like. And then you will understand peace. It's like that bit when they're in the square garden in Notting Hill at the end, it's just like. And they're on the bench and she's pregnant and so nice.

[Caroline]

Yeah. So to finish us off, I was watching Richard Curtis accept his sort of lifetime achievement award at the Governor's Ball and he gave a very beautiful speech that we both watched about how all the things that he thinks are important about filmmaking. And he talks about like how, you know, he be. Begs people to have an impact producer, which is basically, if you have a movie that has a theme or a message in it to show those. To get an impact producer, to show those to the right people. And it's a very beautiful long speech. And then he talks that thing that he, that you saw in the BFI lecture of how he always rankles if people say that his movies are unrealistic. When he thinks that falling in love is the most commonplace and everyday thing in the world and it is completely realistic. And then he says, and I've. Oh. He's like, oh. And you can't. He basically says, and you can't have a Richard Curtis movie without a big pop song to play us out. And so I'll borrow the words from David Bowie and Queen here. And then he unfurls the lyrics. It's under pressure. And he says, because love's such an old fashioned word and love dares us to find the people at the edge of the night and love dares us us to find a new way of caring about ourselves. This is our last chance. This is our last dance.

[Ella Risbridger]

Are you openly beeping? Yeah.

[Caroline]

Richard Curtis can't get through it. And I can't get through it either. I just think it's so, like, I. I know that, you know, people are like, oh, it's outdated, or it's simplistic, or it's, you know, very white, or it's this or it's that. But I just do think that, like, I'm so glad that these sentimental films are made by somebody who's genuinely empathetic about the human condition and cries at David Bowie lyrics, you know, I think so.

[Ella Risbridger]

And I think all those things can be true. Like, it can be elitist in some ways, and it's obviously very white and obviously very London centric, et cetera, et cetera. All those things can be true. But ultimately, Richard Curtis believes that love is the most important thing in the world.

[Caroline]

Yeah.

[Ella Risbridger]

And when you watch a Richard Curtis film, you know that he thinks that's true. And whatever missteps he makes or whatever things like wherever he falls down, you cannot fall him on his heart. And you know what? He's in the heart with all the pain and all the joy. And that ultimately, is all you can ask of someone making art, is that they really believe what they're saying. And what they believe is like, love is important and love is possible. And love is everywhere, especially at Heathrow Web.

[Caroline]

Happy Christmas, everybody.

[Ella Risbridger]

Happy Christmas. See you next year.

[Caroline]

Bye.

[Podcast Advertiser]

You can trust podcasts to deliver results for your business. 80% of podcast listeners say they'll consider a brand recommendation by their favorite host. Even more impressive, 88% have taken action because of a podcast ad. If you're looking to connect with highly engaged audiences, now's the time to dive in. Download podcast Pulse 2024 for all the latest insights and see how podcast ads can drive real results for.