Tomb With A View

It’s just another bright wintry day at historic Pinewood Studios. The commotion behind those trees is Russell Crowe leading a charge in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. And somewhere down the end of David Lean Drive, in a network of vast studios, Ricky Gervais is presiding over Cemetery Junction, his second feature film as director.

Or he will be later on.
It’s not ten yet and as several bemused crew members point out, writer-director Ricky shows up at ten and leaves before six, like he’s still working in an office, not The Office.
It’s only later when he wanders over to entertain me with his camp pantomime genie routine between takes that I start to see the rationale behind the union friendly hours.
“Ooh, coffee’s not up to much today,” he lisps and flaps. “You must be thinking I could be over the way drinking the stuff they keep for Russell Crowe. Bet that puts hairs on your chest.”
And on he goes. Don’t get me wrong; these mini-routines are wonderful. But it must be exhausting when you’re Ricky Gervais.
In addition to stadium-selling stand up performances, the hit TV shows, the Hollywood breaks, the best-selling books, the record breaking podcasts, the spanking new HBO animation series, there is, before me, considerable evidence to suggest that Mr. Gervais is always, always on.
“I am available at a competitive flat rate,” he suggests.
Thus Cemetery Junction, his follow up to last year’s underappreciated The Invention of Lying, is one of those rare shoots that has played host to a different journalist everyday; the producers and publicity agents have nothing to lose by sending reporters to this set.
Today I may not see enough scenes to gauge whether the new film will be funny, but I do know that making the thing was downright hilarious.
“They’ve even got an application on the iPod for doing interviews now,” he says, nudging his mate and collaborator, Stephen Merchant before the pair launch into what could be one of their podcasts. “Amazing, innit?”
While Mr. Gervais has plenty of big screen credits to his name, Cemetery Junction is the first film to bear the legend ‘From the team that brought you The Office and Extras’. It’s been a long time coming.
“After the second episode of The Office went out we got an offer to do a film,” Gervais tells me. “And we took their business card and said ‘when we’re ready’. We could have knocked out six British movies by now but we would have seen them on the side of buses and watched them go straight to DVD. It’s just not worth it.”
Not short on invites from his coterie of Hollywood admirers, Gervais has, of late, kept to bigger trailers alongside attested A-list fan Ben Stiller in the Night at the Museum series, playing Tea Leone’s love interest in the criminally overlooked Ghost Town, and as the co-writer and director of The Invention of Lying, a Gervais original that attracted such highly regarded folks as Edward Norton, Rob Lowe, Jennifer Garner and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
One wonders why he’s swapped all that for a lot in Pinewood having held out against the British film industry for so long.
“Because there’s something lacking in British cinema,” he says. “Half our cast comes from Jane Eyre and the other half comes from Eastenders or some other show where they get to say ‘you fucking slag’ over and over. I just keep thinking where are the James Deans? Where are the Steve McQueens? Where are all the cool guys? It’s that old thing. Americans aren’t embarrassed about wanting to be president but we are.”
So you want to reinvent British cinema and let the people follow?
“Exactly,” he says. “We’ve tried to make it cinematic. We’re using wide lenses to get away from that kitchen sink England even though there are a lot of kitchen sinks and drawn curtains. I remember all those British films that were hour-and-a-half versions of telly with a slightly bigger budget and a couple of dolly shots. It’s not that.”
“It’s not like On the Buses film,” adds Stephen Merchant helpfully.
Messrs. Merchant and Gervais have been finding entertaining things to do together since 1997, when Ricky, then ‘head of Speech’ at London radio station hired him as an assistant “because it was the first CV anybody handed me.”
Cemetery Junction represents a big screen adaptation of the schtick they’ve tried and tested across The Office, Extras and the podcasts. Mr. Merchant insists that like their TV shows the new film is basically about a bunch of people stuck in a rut.
“I mean everything we do is basically like The Apartment,” says Merchant. “So it’s the usual. Bit of comedy. Bit of romance. The Apartment is a film that gives you a happy ending without compromising everything that went before so that’s what we’re always going for.”
“I think of no matter what I’m writing I think about The Apartment,” adds his colleague. “It’s a proper grown up film, innit? It’s got grown up ideas. The fact they never kiss is brilliant. You know they’re soul mates. A kiss would have been a lazy thing to put in that film.”
To that end, Cemetery Junction is what our American chums like to call a ‘dramedy’. A coming of age tale set in 1972, the film is split between three young friends growing up in Berkshire. Dishy hellraiser Bruce (Tom Hughes) is looking for trouble. Charming hero Freddie (Christian Cooke) is looking past the dirt under his dad’s fingernails and covetously toward the swish life of an insurance salesman under Ralph Fiennes. Perennial bumbler Muff (Jack Doolan) is just looking for anybody.
“See?” says Gervais. “It’s The Office with a ‘live fast, die young’ factor. I suppose it’s about escaping a small town mentality and your roots. When I was 18 every intention was met with ‘what do you want to do that for?’ It’s quite sweet in a way. And I play Freddie’s dad, not Freddie because he’s a young kid and that would be the worst casting in the world.”
“Ricky just doesn’t have the range as an actor,” offers Merchant.
Walking around the sets – each loving recreations of period right down to the tins of Bass – and watching them shoot Steve Speir’s local bobby in dramatic standoff with young Mr. Hughes, it becomes quite clear that Cemetery Junction is a straight up, properly nostalgic affair. Where has the satire gone?
“We didn’t have satire in the seventies,” says Gervais. “They were simpler times when Robert de Niro always seemed to be working in butcher shops. It’s different from anything we’ve done before because we’ve lost that level of irony. It’s not funny because they’re saying the wrong things. It’s not funny because they’re stupid. They do stupid things – getting in fights and chasing girls – but we’re not having a laugh at them. Most of our stuff is about getting stuck in a situation but that’s not so tragic when you’re 23 and not 33. When you watched Saturday Night Fever you didn’t think ‘Oh, he works in a paint shop’ He’s going nowhere. No. You think ‘Fuck me, he’s the coolest man I’ve ever cast my eyes on.’”
On such a good natured set do they ever get to make time for ‘creative differences’?
“Unfortunately not,” says Merchant.
Gervais thinks for minute. “Only if it gets around to a quarter to six and Steve wants to do two takes. It’s not on, is it? That’s home time.”