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It was a thrill just to be part of Yesterday
When director Danny Boyle was spotted dining with screenwriter Richard Curtis in our Suffolk seaside village pub, we knew something was up. So, there was little local surprise at the announcement that a film written by Curtis was soon to be directed by Boyle and shot on location in Suffolk.
Chatter about the project could be heard in the local Pilates class and at the pub. After all, Curtis has said, “I write about what I know. Most of my films are set on the street where I live — or lived.”
We wondered out loud whether any of us locals might have even inspired the story. Could they be planning an east coast love affair between a tractor boy and an organic gardener? One that might end with a showdown atop the Southwold Lighthouse, perhaps?
Curtis and his partner, Emma Freud, have been here longer than most of us and, while this is a place for them to relax with their four children, they are fully engaged in village life, entering produce for the horticultural show, where Emma’s cakes are legendary.
A few weeks later I caught up with Curtis at the Ink Festival, an East Anglian writers’ event, for which we’d both written plays. He told me a little more about the film he was planning to shoot. Yesterday, he said, would tell the story of Jack, a young songwriter who wakes from a coma to discover he’s the only person in the world who remembers the Beatles and goes on to become a huge star playing their hits. Curtis said the story was partly drawn from the unlikely rise to global fame of his friend and fellow Suffolk resident Ed Sheeran, who duly appears in the film as a superstar taking the role of Jack’s mentor.
“It’s a little part of England that you wouldn’t expect a massive pop star like Ed to come from,” Curtis says.
Does a Boyle-Curtis partnership seem unlikely on paper? Not at all, he says: “We are a perfect match. We were born within two weeks of each other — and Trainspotting was the nasty answer to Four Weddings and a Funeral.”
A month after the pub summit came more excitement. The Freud-Curtis household has always been community-minded, so the obvious next step was to involve the locals in the film. My friends and other neighbours received an email. “Although being an extra on a movie can be a pretty uninspiring experience, if by any chance you want to have a go ...”
So, the young — and young at heart — filled out the application form, from 80-year-old accountant Tony to Marie and Hannah from the co-op, who announced they’d ticked the “no objection to nudity” clause. I signed up, and some weeks later found myself in the small town of Halesworth on a wet Wednesday. I couldn’t find a door saying Artistes, just one saying Crowd. The instruction was not to wear bright colours, as we were “background.” As a compromise I chose a subtle but distinctive blouse. But before I had time to touch up my lipstick and mascara, a dozen of us were marched to the White Hart pub and my fellow extra — sparkling Iris Houseago — and I were tucked away at a table in the corner.
By then Lily James had sat down at the next table. She plays schoolteacher Ellie, who has come to watch Jack (Himesh Patel), her childhood friend and a struggling singer-songwriter, performing in the pub. Iris and I have been briefed to ignore the whole performance and chat to each other throughout. I asked Lily, “So, we’re the old biddies who aren’t listening?” She said, “Yes — except you’re certainly not old biddies.” I love her!
They needed six takes to nail the scene, but there was a good-humoured atmosphere on set — both Curtis and Boyle were charming and keen to keep us all happy. During the shoot last summer, which took place along the east coast from Gorleston down to Clacton, Boyle insisted that local traders stay open for business. While the crew moved rigs, Boyle talked to passersby and posed for selfies.
And it seems he is as taken with this part of Britain every bit as much as we are. At the Tribeca Film Festival in New York earlier this year, he told the audience how he was drawn to these “amazing” seaside towns that were a “bit forgotten” — such as Gorleston, where Boyle directed the action on the rooftop of the Pier Hotel as Patel performed a punk-rock version of Help! to 6,000 extras on the beach below.
One of them was me. Displaying my versatility, I’d switched from “woman in pub” to “journalist.”
It was a very hot day, so I wore a simple cotton shift and a panama hat. Miri, from wardrobe, checked my outfit and told me firmly, “You’ll have to change. You don’t look anything like a journalist.”
“But I am a journalist!” I cried. A long day in full sun and among huge crowds was made wonderfully upbeat by Boyle’s chats through his megaphone.
“Watching Danny direct is a master class,” says Curtis.
Neither of them has disappeared to Hollywood but actively chosen to stay in the U.K., making “home” movies. Curtis tells me: “I did write a movie set in Boston, but I had no references.”
Famously self-deprecating, he adds, “I went to see a screening of Love Actually at midnight in New York. I thought it would be lovely to take the family and hear the audience laughing. There were seven people in the cinema — our family and two people sleeping.”
Today, he does most of his creative work in Walberswick, in a little room facing out toward the creek and the sea. “I have a fear of the blank page,” he confides, “so I leave myself notes for the morning. After writing, I wander around, making a cup of tea, and that’s when the best ideas come. Now, people instantly go on to emails or social media and the creative momentum is gone.”
Fortunately, wife Emma is a supportive but fierce script editor: “I dread the note CDB — ‘could do better,’” he laughs. “I want my jokes to be only as good as those we tell our friends, but I know I’m getting less good at jokes. I have a theory that most creatives do their best work between 23 and 27. When you’re young, it’s the first time you’ve written that thought. Now I’m worried I’m repeating myself.”
But did I make the final cut, I ask Emma. She says she’ll ask Richard. Days go by. Then an email: “Jan, you are in shot!”