“Bridget Jones’s Diary,” “Love Really,” and “Notting Hill” could also be mainstays of the romantic comedy style, however their screenwriter, Richard Curtis, says they haven’t totally withstood the check of time.
Throughout an look on the Instances and Sunday Instances Cheltenham Literature Pageant — which ran from Oct. 5 by way of Oct. 15 — Curtis sat down with activist and author Scarlett Curtis for an interview.
Scarlett Curtis is Richard Curtis’ daughter and, in her interview, prompted her father to reply the elevated criticism his movies have not too long ago obtained. Particularly, she requested Richard Curtis to mirror on how breakout movies like “Love Really, “Bridget Jones,” and “Notting Hill” handled girls and other people of colour on the time.
“I believe as a result of I got here from a really un-diverse college and a bunch of college pals,” Curtis replied in an audio recording of the occasion shared by the competition with TODAY.com. “(With) ‘Notting Hill,’ I believe that I held on to the range difficulty, to the sensation that I wouldn’t know easy methods to write these components. And I believe I used to be simply type of silly and incorrect about that.”
The 1999 romantic comedy options an all-white predominant solid and, as Scarlett famous, is ready in London’s Notting Hill district. The placement was the sight of numerous civil rights-motivated riots that happened in 1958. It was additionally a neighborhood that drew in Caribbean immigrants earlier than it skilled gentrification, in keeping with Historical past Workshop Journal.
“I really feel as if me, my casting director, my producers simply didn’t give it some thought. Simply didn’t look outwards sufficient,” Richard Curtis stated of his negligence of alluding to such historical past or tradition within the movie.
The author went on to lament his portrayal of girls and his movie characters’ unfavorable commentary on their our bodies. On the time of their theatrical debuts, the feminine protagonists in his movies “Love Really” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” had been topic to Richard Curtis’ commentary on physique dimension and office harassment from their bosses.
“I keep in mind how shocked I used to be like 5 years in the past when Scarlett stated to me, ‘You’ll be able to by no means use the phrase fats once more,’” Richard Curtis stated, recalling a earlier dialog together with his daughter.
In “Love Really,” the character Natalie (performed by Martine McCutcheon) is criticized within the movie by characters for her “large” “tree trunk thighs.” She’s additionally depicted as a younger, junior member of the Prime Minister’s family workers and is in the end kissed non-consensually by the President of the USA and later (seemingly consensually) by the British Prime minister (Hugh Grant.)
Actor Renée Zellweger’s “Bridget Jones’s Diary” persistently made headlines for the load she placed on for the titular character’s movie and its reboots. Throughout an look on TODAY, Zellweger touched on the “lengthy conversations” about Bridget’s weight the film’s producers had when it got here to producing the franchise’s 2016 installment of the movie, “Bridget Jones’s Child.”
“And wow, you had been proper,” Richard Curtis went on to say of his daughter’s conclusion he might now not use “fats” as a phrase. “I believe I used to be behind, you already know, behind the curve, and people jokes aren’t any longer humorous, so I don’t really feel I used to be malicious on the time, however I believe I used to be unobservant and never as, you already know, as intelligent as I ought to have been.”