The
stars of the film Music and Lyrics, Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore,
tell Kavita Kapoor about bad acting and the experience of
being a super furry animal.
“You are required to act badly” says
Hugh Grant of his '80s music video which amusingly opens
Music and Lyrics. Drew Barrymore concurs with her romantic
co-star: “These are music videos not great art.”.
It may well be that Grant took his greatest inspiration from
bands like Wham and Duran Duran as he explains, “Wonderful
musicians though George Michael etc were, the acting was
not marvellous.“
Grant says he “had to perform twice, once in the modern
day in tight trousers, high heels and just a backing track” and
says it was brilliant since: “I had no dance in me.” He
concedes that for his performance in the '80s the make-up
team failed miserably. “These very expensive hair and
make-up people managed to reduce my age from 46 to 45. You
have these 20-somethings and a tragic middle-aged man with
too much rouge and too much lifting tape.” That in
itself is very funny to watch.
What is interesting is how completely at odds both actors
are musically and that's as their characters in film and
indeed in real life. Barrymore freely admits that she was
out clubbing frantically in 1987 and would have loved the
kind of music that the film pokes fun at, though, having
dated a musician wasn't helpful. She points out that her
character isn't in that world and that experience just doesn't
apply to her. In complete contrast Grant claims he experienced
the '80s watching Newsnight, living in his brother's house
with a wall-to-wall deluge of Dire Straits for company.
In fact Drew and Hugh's relationship
to music is summed up when they share there favourite gig
going experiences. Grant recalls that as a teenager, to
keep up with other teenagers he went to a Soft Machine
concert which he describes as “a
horrible experience”, full of misery and pain and boredom
and claims he was embarrassed for the audience and the performers.
While he prods Barrymore to tell her dancing as a squirrel
story.
“That's so funny,” she remembers in response, “I
was going to go there. I was at this Flaming Lips concert
in Australia and I actually got to dance dressed up as a
large furry animal on stage. We got passed a bottle of alcohol
and we were all in these dilapidated furry, full animal suits
having to dance up and down.” Meanwhile, Grant pipes
up with: “There you have the quintessential Drew experience
in a nutshell with the emphasis on nut.”
However, if Grant's relationship to music is so lousy how
did he deal with the live piano playing on set and stage?
“I couldn't play so I just had to
learn it,” he
says. Interestingly Grant's teacher at the Lattimer was Mrs
Lloyd Webber (Andrew Lloyd Webber's mum) but that experience
only lasted a week. However, it seems that the terror of
humiliation kept Grant learning a little longer, up to the
point he couldn't stop playing. “I drove everyone on
set round the bend by playing the piece over and over again,” he
recalls. “And by that time the computer trickery had
convinced me that I had a lovely voice as well”. Grant
ended up actually enjoying the musical part of the film even
though it had been the part he had dreaded more than anything
else.
Music aside, for a romantic comedy like this one chemistry
is essential. So for two actors who had never worked together
in a film did they have any idea if the chemistry was working
while there were on set ?
“Chemistry is a weird one, you have no idea, it is
total luck really. Sometimes you think you have marvellous
chemistry and when the film comes out there is zip. And conversely
there are times like this film when you absolutely loathe
your co-star and it comes out and it's all great,” says
Grant cheekily.
It is very clear that Grant doesn't
loathe Barrymore off-set. What makes their real-life relationship
work, and therefore their performance on film gel, is the
comic interaction. Barrymore confirms this:“As you
can see, I simply loved working with Hubert cause he makes
me laugh all the time, For me, the best kind of chemistry
is when someone makes me laugh.”
Grant goes on to add that, “Mark Lawrence writes the
best banter, the best repartee, of anyone writing nowadays.
In a way it is a dying art, it was quite prevalent in the
old days pre sexual revolution.”. Grant feels strongly
that this verbal foreplay in the romantic comedy might have
died out, but Mark has found a modern version of it.
For her part, Barrymore has kissed
everyone from ET to Hugh Grant but still maintains that
the whole process is very awkward. “I always get nervous before a kissing scene
, I brush my teeth really clean. Just as you get comfortable,
they shout cut and ask you to adjust your head to the left.” So,
how does Grant feel about having kissed the girl that kissed
ET? He adjusts his mocking tone ever so slightly and says: “It's
very, very exciting, now that I know that.”
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