T H E A - Z O F C O M E D Y B Is for... British comedy and the Boat that rocked... ... starring Nick Frost, out of the Wright/Pegg comfort zone and into Richard Curtis' sure-to-be hit comedy. WORDS MATT MUELLER “I don’t like watching comedy,” Even Frost admits it’s as soft-centred and declares Nick Frost. “I know that gooey as Curtis’ previous labours. “What makes me sound like a miserable old else do you expect from bastard but I just don’t.” a Richard Curtis film? This is the most Filling, as he does, the second slot in uncynical, nicest piece of cinema that the comedy A-Z, it’s only natural to you’ll probably see this year. It’s lovely. question the burly funnyman on his own And I managed to watch it without just particular heroes of British comedy during thinking, ‘Oh fuck, I look fat.’” his youth in Essex. “The thing is,” Frost Curtis, an admirer of Hot Fuzz and Shaun continues, “I was a very different person as Of The Dead, wrote the part of cretinous a kid. I only watched slasher pics. When DJ Dave for Frost. “I was tremendously mum and dad were in the pub, they’d let touched,” the actor enthuses. “He’s British me go and hire Halloween or Friday The comedy’s headmaster! And he wrote in a 13th. The first time I remember laughing love scene with Gemma Arterton. Thank like an idiot was The Young Ones. So that you very much, Richard Curtis! We can’t and Blackadder, I guess.” really mention Quantum Of Solace in my And now? “I try not to watch any comedy. house now as a result.” It’s like a busman’s holiday for me because The trailer certainly depicts Dave as a I see the mistakes and I break it down. corpulent love god… “Well, that’s one way I don’t enjoy it and nor does my wife. I’m of putting it – some seedy perv preying more of a documentary person.” on 20-year-old women. When I knew that This is promptly followed by a Jim Royle was gonna happen, I was leaving open moment, as Frost emits a whiffy belch in men’s magazines with Gemma in them the Soho hotel we’re ensconced in, then and [feigns nonchalance], ‘Oh, Gemma pounds his fist firmly on his chest. “Pardon Arterton! Sleeping with her…’ I wouldn’t me… Fuck me, I had falafel at lunchtime class myself as a sychophant but I wanted and they’re awful for me!” to be near Richard, I wanted him to like Set to provide a more nourishing boost me. He’s like the anti-Woody Allen, you to the 36-year-old actor, without any know? He’s never not cheery.” accompanying heartburn, is Richard Dave – “cruel, smarmy, a bit of a prick, Curtis’ latest breach of the Brit-com but for all his faults quite fragile” – will be frontlines, The Boat That Rocked. Forever Frost’s most high-profile foray beyond the uncool and scorned by the edgier stratas blithering bumble-dorks (Mike Watt, Ed, of the UK’s congested comedy scene PC Danny Butterman) that have been his (of which Frost is a bona fide member, contribution to the inspired laugh-trifecta although he doesn’t do sneering), Curtis with Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Before cranks out cuddly films Boat, he’d had a cameo with cracker casts that in Penelope, and popped suck in money like banks ‘ RICHARD up as a gay-hating in the bail-out era. factory worker in Kinky Delivering a nostalgic CURTIS IS Boots (good) and wink to a ’60s pirate a fey, gay hairdresser radio station operating LIKE THE ANTI- in Wild Child (a little from the North Sea and WOODY ALLEN. embarrassing, truth be starring Philip Seymour told). He also fronted Hoffman, Bill Nighy HE’S NEVER BBC3’s blink-and-you- and Kenneth Branagh, missed-it sketch show Rocked is no exception. NOT CHEERY’ Man Stroke Woman >> 86 TOTAL FILM.COM TFM153.feat_BtoE 86 16/2/09 6:04:4 pm TFM153.feat_BtoE 87 16/2/09 6:04:8 pm Setting sail: (below) Frost’s DJ Dave gets jiggy with Talulah Riley’s Marianne in The Boat That Rocked; (bottom) Dave with fellow Boat DJ The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman). and BBC2’s sci-fi spoof-com Hyperdrive, write, ever since returning to the UK after picking up a stranded alien in Area 51 that which was canned after just two seasons two years spent on an Israeli kibbutz he and Pegg cooked up on the Shaun set. for failing to be very funny and for (a drastic life-jump taken in his late teens Injecting sci-fi flavourings into a road- criminally neglecting to deploy Frost’s to nip a burgeoning drug problem in the trip buddy-com template, Frost holed up in roly-poly anarchy to useful comic effect. bud) and penning a novel about his a hotel for four weeks and emerged with a After that perturbing detour, it’s no exploits “on an ironing board because I 180-page draft that he and Pegg have spent surprise he tells his wife, “Film, that’s didn’t own a table… I’ve always wanted to the last two years culling. They just finished what I do now”. It’s also telling that, as be a kind of angsty novelist, living in a the final tweaks “this morning”, says Frost, much as he’s basking in the ego-stroking filthy garrat in St Petersburg, eating watery and Paul is due to kick off next month in attention being lavished on him by potato soup – it appeals to me somehow.” New Mexico with Superbad’s Greg Mottola the likes of Richard Curtis and Steven He and Pegg hatched a few stillborn at the helm and a shake-up of their tried- Spielberg, who’s cast him and Pegg as sitcoms in the early days of their best- and-tested formula: this time, Pegg will the Thompson Twins in Tintin, Frost’s friendship, as Spaced achieved lift-off and play an unconfident introvert to Frost’s over-arching ambition is to make the most Frost wrote and presented survival-spoof obnoxious loudmouth. “We didn’t want to pivotal relationship in his life 100 per Danger! 50,000 Volts! for Channel Five. keep it as Simon’s characters are the bosses cent monogamous. “What Simon and Although he’s always and mine are the semi- I eventually want and what we’re working chucked a few good jokes retarded village idiots. towards is to just do our own stuff that into the pot, Shaun and ‘ SIMON AND I I don’t want people to we write,” confesses Frost. “That’s quite Fuzz were the Wright- get bored of us. I’m important for us, ’cos, you know, I loved and-Pegg show (as will WANTED PAUL hoping people will like doing The Boat That Rocked but at the be World’s End, the final the chemistry between end of the day it’s not mine. And Simon chapter in the Cornetto TO BE A LO-FI me and Simon.” and I are both, although we’d be loathe to trilogy). Frost, however, INDIE WITH AN As for Paul, the admit it, massive control freaks.” seized the lead on the grumpy ET the duo Frost doesn’t mind saying other people’s upcoming Paul – a AMAZING CG pick up in a rented RV lines but he’d prefer to say his own. And, throwaway brainwave after a sour Comic-Con in fact, all he’s ever really wanted to do is about two comic geeks CHARACTER’ visit (at which Stephen 88 TOTAL FILM.COM TFM153.feat_BtoE 88 16/2/09 6:04:10 pm C Is for... comedian comedy Comedic sub-genre in which giggle-flick frontliners are the draw. Not plot, not subtext, but the guy up front. Thus, Yes Man appears cut to fit Jim Carrey’s act-on-impulse persona. We court such comedies to see stars work their schtick, be said star Ferrell or Stiller, Williams or Martin. Resolutely conventional plotting gives room for the lead to flex their funny bones. LOL SEE ALSO Caper, cross-dressing, CARREY’S MADCAP Carry On… MASKED MONSIEUR IN THE MASK. King refuses to read their script), Frost calls him “a classic 1950s grey” and leaps up to retrieve his iPhone to show Total Film the f ... first image of a squat, ash-coloured alien D Is or with enormous black eyes sitting in the draG passenger seat of a car. “He’s been on earth One of the funniest flicks ever for 60 years and just wants to get home, so fired up, 50-years fresh this year, he’s taken on the mantle of being a moody set the standard for cross-dressing fucker. The point of it is we wanted to make comedy: the zinger-licious Some essentially a lo-fi indie film, a Little Miss Like It Hot, with Jack Lemmon and Sunshine but with an amazing CGI character Tony Curtis tottering away from in it. I don’t think we’ve seen that before.” mob gunfire and admiring Marilyn But first comes Tintin… Monroe’s wibbly-wobbly walk Frost is shortly heading off to LA for LOL (“like jello on springs…”). Drag the shoot and confesses to being deeply antecedents included Sylvia nervy. Never mind that he and Pegg have Scarlett as well as Chaplin and been assigned a movement coach from “Well, Laurel cross-dressed.