- Seeing as how love is quite a big subject.
And I often think about serial killers.
There've only been about eight of them.
And yet, there are about 100 movies about them.
And yet, every day a million people are in love,
so I can't believe that romantic films
won't, sort of, stay at the core of cinema,
in one way or another.
(cheerful music)
- I do solemnly declare.
- [Priest] That I know not of any lawful impediment.
- That I know not of any lawful impediment.
- Why I, Lydia.
- [Groom] Why I, Bernard.
- "Four Weddings," which is thought of as a romantic comedy,
I didn't see as that.
I thought of it as a semi-autobiographical film
about love and friendship.
I wasn't really aware that there was genre or a rule book.
Then I became more aware, with "Notting Hill,"
that that was what I was up to.
Every Thursday, I used to go and have dinner
with my friends, Piers and Paula.
And I just thought, if I turned up at Piers and Paula's,
if Madonna was my date, how would they react?
Helen Fielding, who then wrote Bridget Jones,
obsessive Madonna fan.
She would scream a lot and lose her cool.
And neither Piers, nor Paula,
would have any idea who she was.
And that exact scene actually happens in "Notting Hill".
- Last film you did, what'd you get paid?
- 15 million dollars.
- Right.
- The curious thing about "Notting Hll" is that,
even though Hugh had been the star,
Hugh Grant had been the star of "Four Weddings,"
I didn't want Hugh Grant.
I very specifically didn't want him.
Because I thought it would so fantastic
to have a complete unknown,
which would really have made the movie
be like a perfect mirror to the story itself.
But we auditioned about 10 people,
and I thought, oh god,
I'll never find anyone who's any good.
We might as well cast Hugh.
I'm quite embarrassed by "I'm just a girl,
"standing in front of a boy,"
because I clearly thought it was a good line.
Because in the next scene,
one of the characters says to Hugh Grant,
"what did she say?"
And he says, "oh, she's just--"
- A girl, standing in front of a boy,
asking him to love her.
- So I obviously thought, I better repeat it,
like it was going back to the chorus,
or the hook, in a song.
(upbeat music)
Well, the terrifying thing
about being involved in "Bridget Jones"
was actually Helen Fielding,
because she was my best friend; it was her book.
And I'd actually read "Bridget" seven times
before it came out
because she gave it to me with every extra 50 pages.
We cast Renee, and we made the film.
And then we had trouble editing the film.
And Helen was full of, "that's not quite like Bridget.
"This isn't quite right."
And then you realize the big revelation to making movies,
that there comes a point where you've gotta stop thinking
about your source, as it were,
stop thinking about the script you've written,
or the book that the script you've written is based on,
and say our Bridget is Renee.
And the moment that we accepted that,
and all the wonderful qualities
that she brought to the film,
some of which might not be the exact representation
of the book,
but was a fully-fledged, fabulous human.
You then edit the movie towards what you've got,
and that means that, in some ways, it's better for that,
because you've got an embodiment
of a special, cinematic Bridget,
rather than an attempt to just reproduce
what was in the book.
♪ I'll take you down ♪
♪ Where no one's ever gone ♪ - Yeah.
- I mean, "Love Actually" was partly inspired by the fact
that I had done these three romantic comedies before,
and I, in fact, didn't want to write another one.
The plot in that movie, of Hugh and Martine,
was a whole film I thought of doing.
And the plot of Colin Firth's story
was a whole film that I had intended to write.
So, what I was trying to do was,
it was push the romantic comedy genre
as far as it could possibly go.
And just take the three best scenes of 10 different films
and shove them all together.
The big inspiration was "Nashville," a Robert Altman movie,
and "Short Cuts," a Robert Altman Movie.
Which are very standards to be aiming for,
because these are two of my favorite movies of all time.
These movies with a lot of plots are tough to do.
"Love Actually," in its first edit,
was the third worst film of all time.
I mean it was really the worst example I can remember
of something which had worked brilliantly in a read-though,
not working well.
So it was like playing three-dimensional chess,
because any scene could go after any other scene,
from any other point, in any of the other stories.
So, that was very, very hard work.
I was a new director.
And if it had been a movie in which there was a cast
who would've had 10 weeks to get used to me,
maybe they would've got used to me.
But we only had one week per plot.
So I felt I was auditioning for the actors
every single week.
What I realized was quite how unfair I'd been
on the directors that I'd worked with beforehand.
Because there's this terrible contradiction in movies,
that a writer's got two years to fix absolutely everything,
and then the director's got one day in which to shoot it.
And suddenly I understood why sometimes the directors
had rushed through things I thought was important
or been happy when they got it.
Because I was always saying, oh, let's have another go,
let's try it another way.
- I'd only give one piece of advice to anyone marrying:
try and marry someone kind.
- The original inspiration for "About Time"
is the scene that most people talk to me about,
which is the scene on a beach,
when the leading character travels back
to just spend an afternoon with his dad who's just died.
And, almost for the first time in the movies,
the idea I had was based on a visual thing.
And I remember starting now, at last, as a writer,
to start to sort of think, well,
what really matters about that scene
isn't so much all the words that they're saying,
but where they're standing, that it's a lonely street.
So I think, at last, by "About Time"
I was gaining a bit of visual confidence.
And I hired the cameraman from my favorite visual movie,
called "Like Crazy," that Drake Doremus made.
And I started to think,
if you want to fall in love with a character,
then the words can do two-thirds of it,
but if you can shoot it well,
then maybe that's gonna be the thing
which, as it were, goes into your heart
without knowing how it got there.
♪ Oh, I believe in yesterday ♪
- Oh my, when did you write that?
- I didn't write it; Paul McCartney wrote it, the Beatles.
- Who?
- I mean I've been obsessed by the Beatles
for the whole of my life.
That's the real inspiration.
But then, of course, the inspiration
that the Beatles gave me
was that a lot of their stuff was about love.
We got permission, fabulously,
to use, I think, 18 Beatles' songs,
and they didn't say which.
It was a wonderful thing to write,
because I'd be typing along and think,
okay, he's having a crisis.
And then I'd go through the Beatles catalog
and think, well, "Help" is clearly,
if he's gonna sing any song now, it should be "Help."
It was a wonderful thing 'cause they've got such a range
that, as I told this tale,
there was always a perfect Beatles' song to go in.
I think that the curve of my career
is to realize that love doesn't end at the first kiss
or as you walk down the aisle in wedding.
That's where some of my movies did end.
When I went to "Love Actually,"
which had brothers and sisters, and fathers and sons,
and married couples.
And then, "About Time" was a romantic comedy for half of it
and then a film about death and family and marriage.
And that "Yesterday" is a movie
about love of music and love.
I think I've learned that love's a big subject
that the traditional shape of a rom-com
doesn't quite cover.