Make An Argument
Why Pirate Radio would make a great television show
By Eric Hughes
December 8, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I’d mailed one in about two weeks ago, but through various circumstances it didn’t go. At the time, I’d taken it as a sign from the BOP gods that I’d be offered a chance to work out my column’s flaws. And then I proceeded to do nothing with it.
You see, the idea behind my Make an Argument of two weeks ago was in analyzing Horrible Bosses in an unexpected way. That might sound well and good, but the result wasn’t as pretty as I pictured it being. I’m actually very happy that only me and David Mumpower have ever read it.
I decided to squander that idea for a new one. And that leads me to Pirate Radio, which I’ll be taking the liberty of discussing this week. If you haven’t seen it, Pirate Radio is a delight of a film. It stars my guy Philip Seymour Hoffman as that same drunken professor-y type mentor we all had in college, only this one’s really into rock music and, well, commandeers a boat’s worth of fools off the coast of England to make a living off of saying whatever he wants to say, and spinning whatever he wants to spin, on radio.
I hadn’t been privy to it beforehand, but apparently back in the ’60s, in England, anyway, despite the proliferation and widespread success of a little thing called rock music, it was frowned upon by the government to clog up the public air with The Who, The Rolling Stones and the rest of it. (Despite rock music’s enormous popularity among everybody and their mom.) So, to combat that problem legally, disc jockeys took their squatty selves to the high seas, and beamed backed their messages to Englanders on land.
Pirate Radio is an eclectic mess of fun. Bill Nighy is Hoffman’s peculiar, partially flamboyant (but totally heterosexual) boss and ship showrunner, Nick Frost is a gnarly radio personality who’ll get naked for really anyone at anytime and Kenneth Branagh proves he makes an exquisite villain; he’s the asshole government head who’s seeking to shut down Nighy’s station with whatever he and his team can throw at it.
So, a flock of quirk - among them: love struck Simon (Chris O’Dowd - the love interest in Bridesmaids); young boy Carl, aboard to learn something and maybe lose his virginity; big mum Charlotte (Emma Thompson), bringing the feist and the sass - mixed with big politics attempting to sink it. And the soundtrack, of course, is the tunes we know and love from the ‘60s.
I didn’t love this movie, but I certainly liked it a lot. It was far funnier than anticipated and had me genuinely laughing way more than other comedies I’ve seen recently. Yet as I watched the thing, I couldn’t help but be confused at how the film seemed to introduce new plot without it realizing much significance. (Or, if it did, its practicality could have developed another way.)
As much as I like her - and it runs deep, friends - Emma Thompson is in the movie all of five minutes and could have been done away with altogether, Chris O’Dowd gets married to January Jones out of nowhere and then she packs up and goes as quickly as she arrived, we never quite understand the friction between The Count (Hoffman) and DJ Gavin Kavanagh (Rhys Ifans), outside of Gavin’s obnoxiousness and them both being big personalities, and so on. There seemed to be a lot that needn’t be there at all, thereby clunking the movie with periods of slowness. (And we in the States had 20 minutes cut from the official version.)
With that said, an issue like this one would assist the argument that Pirate Radio would make an excellent television series. I happen to be on the side that firmly believes that.
On a television series, of course, these story sidetracks could be explored and given room to breathe. Emma Thompson could spend more time on the ship, she could interact with more men, we could follow her back on land, and the rest of it. It seems silly that she was even there at all, if only to slip who her son’s (Carl) father might be.
This isn’t limited to guests to the ship. DJ “Smooth” Bob Silver is such a recluse that he shows up to the table at some meal and literally no one there - a dozen people, maybe - knows who he is. (This is after years of broadcasting.) He reveals he’s, well, a host on the radio, and it clicks for everybody: He’s “Smooth” Bob Silver! He operates the graveyard shift!
Gosh, he’s just an oddball, with his full wig of hair and lazy attitude. We get him a few times more, namely at the end, while he’s desperately salvaging his records, but on the whole I wanted more. He was a character.
And I can say that about nearly everyone on the ship. They’re real people - sometimes a one-off joke, like the token lesbian who’s allowed to roll with the guys because she’s a lesbian -- but mostly fun, party hardy boys who would probably make good drinking buddies.
Kenneth Branagh was threatening, but he and Twatt (his henchman) rarely felt like the real-life sinister force they were supposed to represent. It was partly the film’s style - better make them bumbling, because everyone else is bumbling! - and partly because they’d be a buzz kill if they lingered on the screen too long.
But if not them, what else could bring the ship down? What about some natural chaos on the open sea? What about a mutiny, or at least more infighting? What about a pirate attack for god’s sakes? Threats wouldn’t seem so limiting in a 13- or 22-episode season.
And that’s the thing, really. I felt many times while watching the movie that the world within Pirate Radio was much bigger than we saw in Pirate Radio. I don’t look back on it scornfully - the end product
is fine as is - but there’s a bit of a seed planted that I know can be explored.
If only somebody could get Philip Seymour Hoffman to do television…