Richard Curtis and The Boat That Rocked

Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner’s latest smash hit films include the British film ‘The Boat That Rocked’, a film based around the true story of ‘Pirate Radio’, a radio station in the 1960’s who broadcasted their music from a boat in the middle of the North Sea.

    Screen writer of ‘The Boat That Rocked’ Richard Curtis first came up with the idea of writing the film when reminiscing about how he and his friends would listen to rock deejays who would broadcast just outside the U.K. territorial waters in the late 1960’s. The government would try their hardest to supress these illegal transmissions. Curtis’ enthusiasm for 60’s music was obvious throughout his film ‘Love Actually’, therefor it was only right to him that he made a film of these infamous deejays and made the music they broadcasted the soundtrack.

    Curtis found inspiration for the script in films ‘M*A*S*H’ and ‘Animal House’, hoping to capture the same essence as these landmark films. ‘M*A*S*H’, with its informality and ‘Animal House’ for its mad, irreverant jokes gave inspiration for Curtis’ portrail of the friendship and non-conformity that Curtis assumed happened in the station. After finishing the screen play Curtis took his script to Working Title Films, the production company of which he has worked with many times with scripts like ‘Notting Hill’ and ‘Love Actually’.