Richard Curtis: If Making ‘Love Actually’ Wasn’t a ‘Catastrophe,’ ‘That Christmas’ Couldn’t Have Been Made
Richard Curtis may be a rom-com staple auteur, but that doesn’t mean the writer/director thinks all his films belong on the nice list. Curtis, who makes his animated film debut with “That Christmas,” told IndieWire that another of his anthology Christmas films actually set the stage for his Netflix children’s feature: “Love Actually.”
While Curtis co-adapted “That Christmas” with Peter Souter from his own bestselling book series, it’s Simon Otto (“How to Train Your Dragon”) who directs (“I’m very much not number one here”); for “Love Actually,” Curtis pulled double duty back in 2003. Both films center on an ensemble cast with holiday-centric stories intersecting between characters. As Curtis told IndieWire, it was the “catastrophe” of editing “Love Actually” that helped bring “That Christmas” to the screen.
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“The strange thing about ‘Love Actually’ is, when we finished the movie, it was a catastrophe,” Curtis said of putting together multiple character arcs and storylines. “It took six months to re-edit it and learn all these lessons about how to do a multi-thread story.”
Curtis, who has voiced his own criticisms of the beloved holiday film for years, continued, “When I wrote ‘Love Actually,’ and we had the read-through, and it sounded great, I thought you would probably do A, B, C, D, E, F, G. But actually when you’re doing multi-story, the danger is you don’t commit to any of the stories and the audience never feels engaged, so you kind of end up doing A, B, C, C, A, so you get into the story and then you introduce a surprise and then you end one story earlier than the others.”
He continued, “So I learned a lot about the complexity of multi-story construction in trying to save ‘Love Actually’ in how bad it was in the assembly. I did have a bit of wisdom when we were doing [‘That Christmas’] to say, ‘Just when you start getting interested in [character] Danny, you leave him. Don’t do that. Stay with him for a little bit longer, and then when we go to the twins, stay on them.’ All of that, I think I had learned a few lessons.”
The Netflix film “That Christmas” stars “Succession” alum Brian Cox as Santa. “Love Actually” actor Bill Nighy reunites with Curtis for a cameo role; the cast includes Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittaker, and Rhys Darby.
“The adapting of it was sort of pain-free,” Curtis said of combining his trio of books, “That Christmas,” “Snow Day,” and “The Empty Stocking,” into one feature. “Look, writing is always hard. I’ve adapted some books and the problem is always what to leave out, or when you feel like you’re cutting through some key blood vessels, and you’re sewing things up again. Whereas these stories were kind of simple, it was really more about adding stuff. I was allowed to make up all of that. I was able to kind of write the sequel to each of the books in the movie, rather which often happens which is me feeling like I’m destroying someone else’s book when you’re adapting it for TV or film.”
Curtis originally created the “That Christmas” universe for his four children. Although it was never his plan to bring the books to the screen, his love for the original “Charlie Brown” Christmas led him to venture into the world of animated film.
“I thought it would be lovely to write a children’s book. I wrote the first one just because the story came to me. I think maybe because my brother just had twins and I started thinking about them. And then once I had written the one, I had two more ideas and I really loved the illustrator,” Curtis said. “I felt, writing those books, how Bernie Tobin must feel. He sends off some pretty random lyrics to Elton John and then suddenly he gets back this amazing work of art. And it was a friend of mine who suggested, why don’t we try animating them? And he suggested animating one, but then we went around to a couple of people, and Locksmith, who we ended up with, said, ‘Let’s just put them all together and make a multi-story film.’ And that sounded fun to me.”
He continued, “I loved the idea of doing a realistic animated film. Not that I wouldn’t love to have an imagination about talking animals and alternative universes, but that isn’t where I’m at. It seemed adorable to have a go at that in this way. My favorite animated film of all time is the original ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ one. I love that.”
Animation proved to be almost a better working pace for Curtis, who credited the medium with expanding what is possible in the realm of children’s films.
“There are some moments, particularly with the kids’ faces, that say more in five seconds than an actor could ever do,” Curtis said. “I just watch it, and the sisters will hug, and you’ll see anger replaced by fear, replaced by calm, replaced by excitement. It all happens so fast. I think one of the things I really loved about this was the opportunity to make a movie with lots of child actors. That is tough in real life. It is frightening for kids on a big set with 60 people. But in this case, you’ve got such beautiful performances because these kids were able to come in five times, 10 times.”
Curtis added of the overlapping production tasks, “This is what was so gripping about doing animation: It was like the same jobs, but all on top of each other. In live-action, you write, you cast, you shoot, and you edit. But this, you do all of those, all together. It’s like a lasagna or moussaka. You can cast two years into the project. You can suddenly write and do a whole other scene. It was like the same experience in a completely different order and allowing all sorts of new treats. I loved that.”
So when was “That Christmas” considered ready to be wrapped up and put under the tree?
“It’s really until you run out of time or money,” Curtis said. “Towards the end, I would say, ‘Well these are the nine things I would like to try.’ And they would say, ‘Three of them you can, because we’re still in line drawing. Two of them, it’s really going to cost us because we’re already in animation. And four of them, forget it because those scenes are finished.’ You do have to be aware of the timeline, but the timeline for this movie was long. I was really closely involved in the movie for five years. There was probably six months without Netflix, and then the whole thing was with Netflix.”
Curtis also credited his new partnership with Netflix for being so collaborative.
“I found them to be very good producers and executive producers. There was one thing in the film which was quite a big shift towards the end, and it was them just repeatedly saying, ‘I think there’s something wrong at the start of the movie. We’re worried about people engaging,'” Curtis said. “It used to start very quietly introducing everyone in the village and then we decided we do have Santa arrive, going right to the middle like a James Bond film, and then go back. Netflix was a great partner.”
He added, “I found it quite glamorous because I watch a lot of Netflix and when I switch on the TV, I can say, ‘Oh, that’s my team.'”
Curtis is busy writing another book that’s “mainly words rather than mainly pictures” but not quite YA (“It’s certainly not very sophisticated, but that just may be the best I can do.”), but he is still open to a “That Christmas” film franchise.
“It’s definitely a fun thought that if I wrote a fourth book [in the series], it would be in this [film] version of the village,” Curtis said. “I have fallen in love with this little [fictional] village by the sea.” He added, “I am quite an old bloke now. At least I understand it, and if I have an idea, I think I would really know what it could do.”
“That Christmas” premieres December 4 on Netflix. Read the IndieWire review here.
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