Why Director Richard Curtis Would Write His Rom-Com Classic ‘Notting Hill’ Differently Today
Richard Curtis, the British filmmaker behind Love Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral, was recently honored with a Governor’s Award, a prestigious trophy awarded by the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences. But as Curtis recounted on this week’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, the night came with a sizable dose of humility. “My son described it as the Oscar for someone who’s never made a movie good enough to win an Oscar,” he said, laughing.
Hugh Grant, who has acted in a number of Curtis' films, delivered a speech in the director’s honor at the ceremony, which Curtis described as “seven minutes of hardcore hostility.”
“I thought there’d be some concession to the occasion, but no,” Curtis continued. “It’s just every swear word a British person can get away with.”
Among Grant’s roles in Curtis' films is the male lead in the 1997 classic Notting Hill— a whirlwind romance between a bumbling bookstore owner (Grant) and a famous American actress (Julia Roberts) in London for a film shoot.
But that plot might play out a little differently today, Curtis said, sharing his evolving perspective on his older films: “There are things I would write differently now...one or two things that are off-color,” he said. This concession comes after a scolding from his daughter, the writer and activist, Scarlett Curtis, who last October critiqued ”the ways your film[s] in particular treated women and people of color,” at a literary festival in the United Kingdom.
Citing Notting Hill as a particular example, Curtis argued that you can’t expect films of that era “to be, you know, up to scratch in terms of things like diversity and some of the jokes.”
“Certainly she comes hard at me for lots of stuff in Love, Actually. And I think she’s right," Curtis said of his daughter.
“I support Scarlett completely,” he continued, showing that his appreciation for family transcends his films—even when that family grills you in public. It’s just the sort of scene that might play out in one of his films, after all.
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