My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 15 - 'YESTERDAY' WITH DANNY BOYLE & RICHARD CURTIS

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

Robbie sits down with the writer/director duo of ‘YESTERDAY', Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis, to discuss the film, the relationship between the two of them, their favorite moments in the movie, what *could've* been, and at the very end of the show, after the outro - SPOILERS are discussed.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. I have on today's show, for the 4th of July week show, two Brits, Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis, the writer and director of the new film, Yesterday, that I spoke about a few months back. This movie that I absolutely adored and just loved every second of it. I actually got a chance to sit down with Danny Boyle, one of the most legendary directors of all time, and Richard Curtis, one of my favorite romantic comedy writers and one of my favorite writers in all of Hollywood. They came into the Barstool office. It was an absolutely surreal chat. Richard Curtis actually came in and right away said, my son is a huge stoolie. So shout out to Richard Curtis's son if you're listening to this.

It was awesome, though. It was one of those surreal, like, I wasn't even nervous for this interview because they felt so above my echelon, above my status of who I should be able to interview and who I should have access to. It didn't even register in my brain how mind-blowing it really was to sit down with these two legends, but they were so cool. They were so nice. Danny Boyle, actually, before we even start this interview, you know, one of the most legendary directors of all time. He did Slumdog Millionaire, which is one of my favorite movies ever. He did 28 Days Later. He did 127 Hours. He did train spotting too. Danny Boyle is, like I said, legitimately one of the greatest directors in the history of Hollywood, in the

history of moviemaking. Danny Boyle is one of the best at his craft. Before this interview, he sat down, he looked me up and down and he said, son, are you in a band? And I was like, am I really going to have to explain pop punk to fucking Danny Boyle right now? But I said, yeah, I am. And he said, yeah, I am. And he said, yeah, I know your type. You look like you're in a band. Do you have any good music recommendations for me? An old guy, he said.

And I was like, ah, shit, man. I got to think of some good music recommendations for Danny Boyle on the spot. So I actually recommended him Lucas Nelson and The Promise of the Real. I said, check out their new album. And I threw my boys in Greta Van Fleet a shout. So if Danny Boyle includes tracks by either of those two artists in any of his future films, I should be seeing some commission for that at the very least. We do talk pretty much exclusively yesterday. I brought up some other movies to them, you know, in passing comments, but it is pretty

much just about the film yesterday. We try our best to not spoil the movie. If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out. If you're a fan of Danny Boyle, of Richard Curtis, of the Beatles, of romantic comedies, of just movies, you're going to like this one. I promise you. At the end of this interview, it's going to cap off with I Want You, She's So Heavy, it's my favorite Beatles song, and after that song finishes, part of my interview

that did not previously air in this episode will air. At that point, I hope that if you have not seen the film, you will have turned the podcast off. I had to ask these two about one specific, very spoilery scene in the movie. So I did that and I cut it from the interview and I put it at the very, very, very end of this podcast. So again, again, if you have not seen yesterday, you want to go unspoiled for yesterday, which is how you should go. Turn this podcast off before the conclusion of I Want You, She's So Heavy. You got some time. It's an awesome track. It's Paul McCartney's masterpiece of bass playing, really.

But yeah, that's about it for me. As always, give us a rating and review on iTunes if you haven't already. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast on whatever platform you're listening to us on, and have a good Fourth of July, folks. Have a good, safe Fourth of July. I will be headed out to Las Vegas, Nevada to finally bring you that tour of Dana White's office that we discussed months ago on My Mom's Basement. Now, let's get into my chat with Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis about their new film, Yesterday. Welcome back to the show now. I am joined by two very, very special guests, two people that I've wanted to talk to for months because I saw the trailer for Yesterday months ago, guys, and I said that is one of the greatest concepts I've ever heard of. I'm a massive Beatles fan. I'm a mega Beatles fan. So I am joined now by Danny Boyle and Richard Curtis, the writer and the director of Yesterday. Guys, how are you?

Very well. Very glad to be here. Very glad to hear your introduction there as well. You like the concept. That's a start. I love the concept. I like the Beatles. Yes.

And that's where I want to start. So, Richard, when did you come up with this concept? I didn't. I didn't. No. someone rang me up and said really what about this film I think he really had a script he gave me a one line description a very unsuccessful

singer songwriter who wakes up one day to find he's the only person in the world to remember the Beatles and I said stop right there that's a whole film I want to write and I'd rather just start from the beginning so I started from that amazing beginning and I too am a very dedicated Beatles fan and took it on from there and then wrote a relatively poor script which has been salvaged by Danny Boyle's directing skills so there was a script

in existence yeah already and you said let's's scrap it, let's start fresh. Well, I mean, I just didn't read it. I wrote my own version first, just to be careful that I didn't take stuff from what this excellent man called Jack Barth had written. That's very interesting. And when you start writing this, obviously in your mind, you know that a major motion picture to get made, you the Beatles permission you need that the movie doesn't work without the songs right so when you're writing it in the back of your mind you're like what if they just say no well this is all I know I think I I think that I mean I have forgotten the history here but I think there was a checking point I think I'd written about 20 pages uh I'm in a sort of treatment and I sent it to a friend of mine who works at Apple and said what do we think

and I think we got a message back saying do continue because you know it's not a bad idea for a Beatles film it's not like a serial killer likes the Beatles no you're definitely celebrating the legacy

it was on the cards but sometimes in life you do have to, I mean, you know, most films don't get made. Yeah. So sometimes you have to take that gamble in life. And so I took the gamble and it paid off. And how did you guys get linked up? Because I heard an interesting story that you told Danny that you had just maybe called Richard and he was working on this or he had just finished it? No, we'd been in touch. We did a bit of the 2012 opening ceremony Olympic Games in London together. I had a bit with Rowan Atkinson playing Mr. Bean-ish type moment.

And Richard was a huge help on that because he said, oh, if you're working with Rowan Atkinson, you'll need my help. Yeah, he's not going to smile during the process. So we all got on very well doing that. And so we were just exchanging pleasantries about, you know, in the way you do in emails, saying, oh, Richard, you know, don't forget me if you've ever got anything, if you're looking for a director. And what do you know, the next moment this script arrived,

and not just any script, this amazing script about this concept. Which I just was like astonished. And I was trying to remember what it was. The first moment you read a script, and that's why Richard hasn't read that other script. The first moment you engage with a script, you never forget. Yeah. Because it's the closest you ever get to what an audience will feel when they see the movie. Because you don't know what's coming next.

You don't know what's coming next. I read it. It was very pleasant, very funny. You know, beginning of this pretty useless singer-songwriter from Suffolk who wasn't very successful. And only his friends turned up to his concerts. And so likable. And likable. The main character, Jack, is so incredibly likable. Unlikable. The main character, Jack, is so incredibly likable.

Almost in like – this is maybe a strange comparison to make, but I got Rocky vibes from him. Rocky for me is the ultimate underdog, right? And I was watching yesterday. I saw the movie, I want to say about a month and a half ago now. And it is honestly maybe my favorite movie of the year, genuinely. I love the movie and the entire movie. It was like an emotional experience from the whole time i mean listen i cry at everything boys literally you'd be hard to press to find a

movie that hasn't made me cry i've never got through racing in the street by bruce springsteen without crying um about time a movie that just wrecked me emotionally this movie the exact same thing so how do you go about this concept and making that main character so likable because there are easy ways where it could flip i feel and he's given everything and and you can get greedy or yeah the advantages he's given by being the only person who knows the beatle song correct so how did you how did you find the the interesting balance and i think it works with hamesh as well. I think Himesh, yeah. It's written in a very warm, humane way.

Yes. Not missing out, you know, his faults and his problems, but it's written with humanity. And then you get an actor who's of a kind of very different generation to us, so he has a modernity about him that we lack, obviously. You know, he's a 27-year-old guy. So he knows what it is to be out there. He's an actor.

So he knows what it is to struggle. Every actor struggles. Until the tiny percentage of them don't. But he's one of the, you know, they struggle. So they understand that struggle you're talking about as well. So he identifies with that, really. And then he took on the moral complexity of the fact that he's becoming a success yeah and nobody will believe that he hasn't written them

he tries to explain you know he tries to do the decent thing but nobody's listening yes he's actually just about to explain it to lily james yes just about to come clean when ed sheeran rings and says you're a superstar that always happened in always happen in life? Yeah, of course. But you know, charm is a very, very magical thing in the cinema. You know, every time I cast one of the romantic leads, that's the quality I'm looking for. And I remember the days we were casting it, we thought, oh, perhaps it's not charming.

Because funnily enough, get people to read lines that are meant to be subtly charming, and they haven't got it. And they're ghastly. And we just got really lucky with somebody who's delightful and a lovely mixture between sort of radiance and melancholy. The entire cast, I felt, was very like you said. It's a very grounded movie for such a crazy concept. It's a very human movie. And the movie revolves around these human interactions, the love story with Lily and the relationship with his parents that he had and the relationship with his friend that's his roadie.

You've got these masterpieces which are like the Sistine Chapel, these works of art which are songs. So you want the comedy is setting that against the normality of life in a small town. He comes from a county called Suffolk, which is sort of like a very, very quiet backwater, really. And he's got very ordinary, decent parents. So there's a great scene where he tries to play to them, let it be, as being the first human beings to hear it. And they can't get it at all. They can't focus. No, because their phone's going the doorbell

and they've got to pour a beer for a mate and it's kind of like, and they keep getting the title wrong. It's so great, yeah. You know, and they say, oh, don't play that bit again. I've heard that bit. And it's that tragedy, you know.

We've all had that of trying to explain to our parents, you know, the magic of a song. I remember trying to get my dad to listen to Led Zeppelin, you know, and he was just baffled. And it didn't stop me keep trying to get him to get Led Zeppelin like I got Led Zeppelin. Yeah. So when you're writing that, like even that scene, I loved because even in watching the trailer, I thought, would the Beatles music work today? If the Beatles, if all of their music came out today and if they were the Beatles, I would like to imagine, yes,

I would like to imagine Beatlemania would happen all over again. We became increasingly convinced of that. I mean, it was interesting, even though you know and love them. It is a really sort of good theoretical question. And our feeling now is that they'd smash it, to be honest.

It'd be timeless. Yeah, I think just like Taylor Swift has got a new album and she's releasing, you know, a song every two weeks and you think, well, if the Beatles did that, it'd be four years of releases every two weeks and the variety in their music, do you know what I mean? All the way from Hell to Skelter to And I Love Her. It'd be nuts.

So how did you go about choosing the songs that you actually wanted to include in the movie? Because there's so many that I'm sure you guys have already heard, oh my God, how did you not put this one in the movie? Yes. Like you're never going to satisfy everybody. No, and not even satisfy ourselves because I think if we picked our top 20,

you'd always have 10 less famous tracks. But we wanted the joke of it just is sort of to do with fame. So he has a songwriting competition with Ed Sheeran at one point. And then you think, well, what are the most extraordinary opening chords of any Beatles song?

So Ed plays his rather weak song, Penguins. Which, good on him for being a good sport throughout the whole movie so he takes every l you could take yeah ed ed takes he plays that and then he sits down our hero sits down and starts to play the long and winding road and you know ed's beaten within about four bars and it's so beautiful a moment because in the theater it got a big laugh when i was in the screener as soon as he opens with those piano notes the theater left knowing what he's about to play knowing we're all in on this joke that ed sheeran isn't basically

yeah and it wouldn't have been that if it had been not a second time of course it was honestly i was gonna bring that up i have it written down because it's one of my favorite moments in the entire movie like that song choice was so perfect for that moment and then there's so many too because yeah we always knew that help yes you know because he would need help and so we tended to pick from the top layer and you know at one point in the movie ed takes him to moscow and he plays a gig there now he goes to moscow because the beatles wrote back in the ussr if they'd written a song about stockholm um they would have gone to stockholm so you you know, it was a bit of gorgeous maths. When you're writing, how do you solve the puzzle that is this concept? Because it's a very easy

concept to think of. I think every musician in the world has thought, what if I wrote the Beatles music? You know, what if I wrote these songs? What if they never existed? What if they were my music? But how do you solve it? Because it's so so tricky and i'm sure everyone that watched the trailer agrees they go how does that movie end so how did you did you did you write like a thousand possibilities for the way this could end and you picked the one that you liked the most my favorite quote of danny's is he says there are only two things that matter in the in a movie the beginning and the end and the beginning not so much. So you do, you know, you work hard, and there's a scene which we're sort of, in a way, keeping secret, which happens just before the end of the movie,

and that's the way you always construct it. You create a big old problem, and then you find a dramatic way of turning, you know, turning the wheel. If it's a thriller, they find out who the guy who did the murder is and then they chase him and kill him uh you know so i i view movies come together slowly i've never written a movie from beginning to end you sort of think well that's where i'm going and this is a scene i really need and particularly this film which intertwines this kind of professional story about a man who becomes the biggest pop star in the world and then this romantic story

which is a quite sort of simple love story between a guy who's working too hard and focusing on the wrong things when he should be um trying to win the love of lily james so when when you're going about it that way especially then there is so much more to this movie than the trailer even shows there's so much more to the concept there's so much more to this movie than the trailer even shows. There's so much more to the concept. There's so much more to everything. Are you afraid when you're making the movie? I guess not when you're making the movie. That's all you're focused on.

But afterwards, when the marketing starts, that the trailer is going to give too much of the movie away? Oh, my God. That chestnut. Yeah. That was an issue for you guys? Well, it is, except that you'd be putting your finger in a dike full of holes. Because trailers are so important to get people interested in the movie,

and you've only got 90 minutes or 100 minutes of material. What are they going to put in the trailer? Other than as much as they can, really. Occasionally, you ask for something not to go in a trailer. You make a specific request for a scene, but you can't deny the marketing people the opportunity to sell the movie. The only comfort is that I do believe

that people, when you go into, because I do get this, when I go into cinema, I have amnesia. Once the film begins, I'm not thinking, I know the trailer, I know the trailer, I know the trailer. You sort of like, it goes out the back. I think at the forefront of your mind goes the story. I know the trailer. You sort of like, it goes out the back. I think at the forefront of your mind goes the story.

This is the people. This is the world. And you start to concentrate on that. And so, you can remember the trailer later, but you don't, you aren't kind of, just because you've seen a shot before doesn't mean you're not shocked by it in context. You live it in a more real-time experience rather than in the super compressed version of the trailer. Yeah, I mean, there is a tremendous joy sometimes. The first time we screened it, I think in the States. How long ago is this now?

Oh, probably about four or five months or something like that. And to sit down with an audience and for them not to know what was going to happen, for them not to know that Ed Sheeran's in it, playing Ed Sheeran, for them not to know that Ed Sheeran's in it playing Ed Sheeran for them not to know that Kate McKinnon is about to pop up

as the world's worst music agent and then for them to not know how it ends that was delicious and you realise that you do have

a lot of loss of innocence when you're seeing you know when you do see a film but I hope that everyone who's listening to this programme will forget everything except the name of

the movie, go and see it and then have that experience People still laugh at the concept, when the Beatles do disappear in the movie people still laugh even though they've seen the trailer and know about the publicity saying the Beatles have disappeared when they actually do disappear in front of him, literally,

like there's nothing on Google, people roar laughing. And you can sense the pleasure they enjoy in the concept even though they're aware of it at some level of their consciousness already. Yeah, it's so much fun. Like the movie throughout is just a fun movie the entire time. It feels like a summer movie. You know what I mean? It feels like you're going to go in, you're going to listen to great music.

And another thing is H himesh nails every song um to a point where the beatles are such a great band because a band like led zeppelin whenever someone tries to cover a led zeppelin song people go oh you can't cover led zeppelin you can never do that the beatles everyone wants to cover and everyone always wants to hear as many covers as possible so even the original soundtrack for this i've been you know wanting to listen to every day since i've seen the movie we are so excited by the way um it entered the british itunes chart at a number 161 and then and i said to uh i said to i told him and him texting me back saying the great ish so man and then i what did i i text him back um goodbye yellow brick back road we're trying to think of of names of of not particularly impressive things and this morning i mean this is breaking news danny shot up to number

151 excellent so i would be i would be stunned if it wasn't top five if not number one by the time honestly when the movie comes out here talking with one when the movie comes out here i think it's going to take people by storm uh the ed sheeran role that we've touched on a little bit here originally not for ed sheeran originally for chris martin indeed heard there was a little little conflict there but you get over that why was it so important to you guys to have someone playing themselves like a real life rock star was it because the concept is so crazy that you want it to feel like our world yeah i i think that's it i mean one of the first thing that uh danny said to me almost about the film was i've really got to understand suffolk i've got to know

which is where it's set and i do think that thing if you're going to go really high uh realism i remember loving that in et et was really just a movie about one family chaos at breakfast and everything like that and that's what made it so true when et arrived i think that's one of the things you can do with high fantasy and concept is take it right down and i remember thinking a lot if we don't get chris we don't get ed you know can we just get a good actor and then you think no because then it won't be the real world and suddenly you have to you know imagine benedict cumberbatch having lots of of hits as horrible a thought as that may be and weirdly i mean just between us the the movie's sort of based on ed

not only because he came from suffolk but also ed's journey has been from um you know little local boy playing at the switch agricultural fair to massive superstar and now marrying a girl he was at school with which is the sort of romantic plot of the movie. Do you come home and find love? Is that where you belong? And how did you feel balancing the love story and the superstardom story? Was that an issue that you ran into on set, or was it just something that you had to make sure? No, I thought they were beautifully intertwined.

They kind of think of it, it's like a double helix. They bend around each other, and they're inseparable in a way. They both come out of this, and it's part of Richard's work really as a writer. This bedding of love as something that you will always need and depend on. And you

may deny it at times. So the love is a double header. It's for the love of the Beatles music which is obviously because of that saying. And then it's this love story between Jack and, and his manager come school friend, come long-term companion Ellie. And he doesn't really,

he's so bewitched by his destination, which he imagines is pop stardom via the Beatles that he really doesn't see what's in front of him, which is that his true destination is as richard just said about ed sheeran is to return home yeah and marry the girl you know that he's always been best friends with really so it always felt very kind of bonded together it was never a question let's up this and let's decrease this you know it was it's not that kind of film that does happen in films where you think oh there's too much of this in it not enough of that it always felt fairly well balanced really so here's a question that i've been

wondering since i saw it for the writer richard because there's a scene where he plays wonderwall at talent show yes and lily james watches him play in the movie and then afterwards when oasis also gets wiped out with everyone yes in your, what does she remember from that talent show? Does she remember Jack playing a solo, you know, his own song called Wonderwall? Ooh, wow. I think you might have caught me out. I thought you were going to ask me how, to what extent, are you going to go out of your way to avoid Noel Gallagher?

His son used to go to my son's school and i was scared enough than before i'd wiped out his entire oeuvre um i would be terrified of him uh yeah let's just assume isn't there a i was gonna say there's a george harrison song called wonderwall but that's no good either the truth is of course that you never see her remember it because you see her recall it at the beginning when the world does remember the Beatles and therefore Oasis and Wonderwall but by the time you see it again only Jack

recalls it so you dodge the problem so that's the solution I just thought it was fascinating like what would she remember if she thought back to that talent show would she think man that was a really like what a great song he played? Exactly. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And the other thing was Come Together has a Coca-Cola reference in it. And I was like, Jack might have to replace the lyrics in Come Together because they talk about Coca-Cola. Yeah, they do. The more the movie festered with me, the more I was thinking about it. He's very bad at remembering the lyrics. Yes. I had such fun.

There's a sort of joke in the movie that he can't remember the words of Eleanor Rigby. And I set myself the task. I remember wandering around our house and outside our house in the garden thinking, can I remember the words of Eleanor Rigby? And I did. I got them 100% right. And then I went back and checked them on Google Lyrics. And I got them 100% right, and then I went back and checked them on Google Lyrics, and I'd got them 100% wrong.

I mean, you know, and I think the truth is that he would have obviously just forgotten. She would have thought he was playing a Prince song. Oh, yeah. So there you go. Yeah. So before we get into – I want to touch on at the very end of this interview just one scene in particular that we'll keep under locks. We'll tell people spoilers coming up.

But before I get to that, do you have a favorite scene in the movie, each of you? Because I'm sure you've gone through how many drafts of this, so many, and then you have to watch together all these screenings. Is there one scene that still sticks out to you and you go, man, I love watching that? Well, I'm going to say one because you know i was so thrilled by how danny's made the movie and and one of the alternative universes in my mind is if i directed it and i think god because there's a scene where he finds out that the beatles don't exist and i know my version which is shot of him mesh looking at computer shot of computer um you know that's it and yet it's a cavalcade of slow motion and it's kind of a wonderful montage yeah shooting things through

you know a record cabinet and everything like that so that's the thing which just makes me i think oh i made such a good decision to go for a proper director. Do you have a favorite? I think the scene where Lily confesses her love for him at Liverpool, at the train station before he has to leave to go back to America, is a wonderful piece of writing and a wonderful piece of acting by her. And it's that weight of love, which he just can't cope with at that moment. That's a good way of putting it it feels like a weight in the movie yes it's like oh my god this main character that again is so likable he's fucking rocky likable yeah has the world in front of him

but it's like back home he still got back home yeah absolutely so that's a wonderful that's a wonderful scene for me so funny that isn't it you, I picked a scene that's super directed and you've picked a scene that's pretty simple. That's super written, yeah. Man, you guys should work together one day. You guys got good chemistry. Well, I'm actually, I'm, yeah, I am working on the sequel to 127 Hours now

at the moment where he gets his legs stuck in a grid. You could do the 127 hours and 28 days later cinematic universe. You could just do length of time cinematic universe. So the zombies are coming. Someone gets stuck and zombies are coming. The zombies are coming, but he's got his hand stuck in a rock. That'd be great. We could put those two together.

Listen, I would love some story credit on that one if you could give it to me because, wow. Do you know if Paul Orringo has seen the film? I know Paul hasn't because his daughters are friends of ours and they keep trying to organize a family outing and Paul's not been free. I wrote to him to ask if we could call the film Yesterday. I thought that was respectful. He wrote back saying my original title for the movie was yesterday was Scrambled Eggs.

He came downstairs and sang it to Jane Asher. We should have some scrambled eggs. So he said, if the movie turns out badly, maybe Scrambled Eggs would be a better title. But, yeah, you've heard from a couple of them, haven't you, Danny? We sent the finished film to

everyone, and we got a lovely message back from Ringo and Barbara. Nice. And another one back from Olivia, George's widow, which were very touching. Really nice. Of course, yeah. I mean, who else would you want to impress more than that family? Yeah.

Guys, thank you so much for doing the podcast, and thank you so much for making the movie. Legitimately, it's a movie that I promise that I'll be going back to for years to come. So it was one of my favorites this year, one of my favorites I've seen in a long time, and I can't wait to re-watch it. Oh, fantastic. You're the

nicest person I've ever met. It's freakish. At this late in my life to meet you.