Deadline: 25th February 2017

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Hello everyone, it’s once again time to announce the director that will be covered for Director’s Chair and, seeing how it is February, I wanted to cover a director most famous for directing romance films for Valentine’s Day and I can think of no better choice than Richard Curtis.

Now this is going to be one of the rare times that I will allow films that a director has written, but not directed, be included in Director’s Chair as the films that he wrote are as much his voice as the films he directed.

For those of you who only know Curtis from his romance films, it’s important to go back and look at the work he did before going back into romance, when he was an acclaimed writer of satire for TV, particularly through his work with Rowan Atkinson and Not The Nine O’Clock News. The two worked together numerous times after Not The Nine O’Clock News, their most long lasting work together being with the character of Mr Bean and, probably their magnum opus together, Blackadder, the fourth series of which I say is the best individual comedy series ever made, with the final episode of the series being one of the best episodes of TV I’ve seen.

Curtis later continued his satire running, being one of the writers on the first series of Spitting Image, before having another big TV success with The Vicar of Dibley. Alongside his writing work, Curtis is known for his charity work, creating Comic Relief alongside Lenny Henry and helped organise the Live 8 concerts in 2006.

In the world of film, Curtis had his first big success with Four Weddings and a Funeral, albeit as a writer not director. He achieved further success with Bean, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’ Diary before taking the director’s chair with Love Actually, later following it up with The Boat That Rocked (aka Pirate Radio) and About Time. Recently, Curtis has gone more into drama than romance, writing the adaptation of War Horse for Spielberg and adapting Andy Mulligan’s book Trash, about street teenagers in Rio De Jeneiro with Trash. His most recent work was back on TV, adapting Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot with Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench in 2015.

Now, as stated before, since the films he’s written are as much a part of Curtis as the films he’s directed, those films are being included for this look at Curtis. As a reminder, the films that you can cover are:

• The Tall Man
• Four Weddings and a Funeral
• Bean
• Notting Hill
• Bridget Jones’ Diary
• Love Actually
• Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
• The Boat That Rocked
• War Horse
• About Time
• Trash

I look forward to reading your posts on the films of Richard Curtis.