It takes a certain cheek to start an elegant British rom-com with “f***, f***, f***, f***, f***ity f***, bugger”. Thirty years ago that sort of profanity was best saved for the X-rated. It also takes a certain Shakespearean confidence to explicitly tell potential viewers that, alongside summery love, they will be viewing scenes of death and mourning. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, we’re reminded with the title Four Weddings and a Funeral — life is tragicomic, after all.
Clearly, these risks paid off. Richard Curtis’s third film (and first hit), about Charles, a posh, charming Brit who falls for Carrie, an unattainable American, at one of the many weddings he attends with his oddball group of friends, earned nearly $250 million in revenue worldwide.
Oscar nominations for best film and best original screenplay followed — an especially tricky feat for comedies to achieve. A cover of the Troggs’ song Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Wet, which featured on the soundtrack, topped the charts for 15 weeks. The production company Working Title took off, going on to make the Bridget Jones franchise, About a Boy and Hot Fuzz. Hugh Grant went from relative obscurity to floppy-haired superstardom, playing the lead in two further Curtis rom-coms, Notting Hill and Love Actually. And for all of Curtis’s talent, in this film he gave us one of the best/worst lines in cinema, “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed,” declared by a drenched Carrie in the final scene.
Four Weddings and a Funeral landed in UK cinemas on May 13, 1994. In celebration of its 30th anniversary, the creators and stars reflect on the making of the film and discuss its legacy.
Richard Curtis, writer
I wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral when I was 34. I’d been to about 50 weddings in two years. There was an incident at one of them that was very like the opening of the movie. I met a woman, we had a dance and she said: “Where are you staying? Oh great. I’m staying there too.” But I said I had to play a game of Boggle with some friends and I never saw her again. Often films are wish fulfillment. I worked very hard on it — we did 17 drafts.
The director, Mike Newell, took the casting unbelievably seriously. I argued hard against Hugh Grant. I had in my mind a less glamorous person because I’m a very unglamorous person. So I was thinking Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, John Gordon Sinclair. I argued for Alan Rickman. But we interviewed about 70 other people and it turned out that the combination you need of charm and wit to make it funny was very hard to find. And Hugh had it instantly. He gives the impression of being feckless and that he can’t act, but he worked so hard on every line.
I try to convince myself that Anthony Minghella wrote [Andie MacDowell’s] line “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed” because he gave me some notes at one point. But I think I have to take credit for a thing that didn’t work. The line “father, son and holy goat” was one Michael Sheen made up when he was auditioning for Rowan Atkinson’s part, and I just stole it from him.
The last time I saw it I thought: I can’t watch it again. All I can think of is how it was raining and the sun was meant to be shining, or Andie was meant to be in a marquee, but we ran out of time so did a reshoot in an underground car park.
I wasn’t aware when I was writing Notting Hill that Four Weddings was looming very large. But on the other hand I do remember once watching Notting Hill and thinking, oh f***, it’s the same film. So obviously it did leave a mark.
I was hanging around in my agent’s office, nosing around the scripts on his secretary’s desk. She pointed to one and said: “That’s really funny.” She was right.
The script was not necessarily going to endear the audience to us. Who are these snotty young folk climbing into their tail suits once every three weeks?
It was a very cheap movie. I think it was less than $4 million. We only had 32 days to make it. There are five huge public occasions in the movie, plus everything else. We had to move very quickly — there wasn’t time to have second thoughts.
Oscar nominations for best film and best original screenplay followed — an especially tricky feat for comedies to achieve.
I remember in one of the church scenes going out into the churchyard in an absolute paddy at something or other and kicking a gravestone very hard indeed and having to limp for the rest of the day. Comedy is really hard. But you know it’s working when people laugh or have a bounce in their step when they play the scene.
Andie MacDowell was a tremendous piece of ill fortune that turned into good fortune because she was a very late recasting. The person who was going to play the part [Jeanne Tripplehorn] had a terrible personal tragedy and Andie was available, was in London and she liked it.
We opened in America first. That was the best decision anybody ever made. Russell Schwartz, the business guru of Working Title in the US, said if it clicks in America it will surely have them come running in the UK, and he was right.
Sometimes if the crew have had a good time they’ll give you the clapperboard of the last shot. I have it in my office right now. I’m living in a house that Four Weddings was very influential in buying. I made films in Hollywood [including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire] that I wouldn’t have made if I hadn’t made Four Weddings. It was an enormous door that opened.
Duncan Kenworthy, producer and co-founder of DNA Films
It was my first time producing a film. I’d worked on a lot of television and was head of international production for Jim Henson [the creator of the Muppets]. The actors came to audition at the Henson workshop, with Muppets hanging on the walls around them.
Hugh Grant brought a recording of his best man speech at his brother’s wedding, which meant he really wanted the job. And it was quite funny, so he was definitely on the list.
We didn’t have enough money to make this film, really. But I said to Richard and Mike: “If we are going to do it, then let’s shake hands like the Three Musketeers and walk into it with our eyes open.” I spent a lot of time checking the weather. A lot of it was outdoors because it’s cheaper.
We were the opening-night film at Sundance Film Festival and the first review in Variety magazine was absolutely the making of it. Everybody doubled the number of weeks they were booking the film for.
We wrote “wedding attire” on the UK premiere invitation. I would say 10 percent came in wedding dresses. And then, of course, there was Liz Hurley’s dress, which was not a wedding dress — almost not a dress at all. That worked so well for us too because she was on the front page of newspapers for a week.
Tim Bevan, executive producer and co-founder of Working Title Films
No big movie stars, a small British movie — going into it, everyone asked: “Are we going to lose our $5 million?” Then it did $50 million at the box office in the UK and $250 million around the world. So it blew the lid off what was possible with an English-language non-American film. It was a summer movie that absolutely connected. Thirty years on we’re still in development meetings talking about how you replicate that.
It was a very cheap movie.
Today there would be greater diversity in the cast for sure and you’d have to wave the woke machine over some of the dialogue to see whether you could get away with it. You probably couldn’t make the first Bridget Jones today, but I think you could make Four Weddings, funnily enough.
Andie MacDowell, Carrie
I had a really good friend in Montana and I let her read it. She was very disturbed by all the “f***s”. I remember Rowan brought it up early on and said he was concerned. I don’t think anybody realized how charming Hugh Grant could make that word sound. I remember meeting Hugh for the first time and telling him, “This is going to be easy,” because he’s adorable and charming.
The one concern I had was: why didn’t my character, Carrie, fall in love with [Grant’s character] Charles? Why would she choose to marry somebody else? I was concerned about it because we didn’t really analyze her in any way or understand how miserable she probably was. I tried my best to make her likable. I worked really hard to look devastated and vulnerable in that scene where I show up at Charles’s wedding. But there wasn’t a lot of in-depth character.
I had just played a woman who couldn’t have an orgasm [in Sex, Lies, and Videotape], so to play Carrie, a woman who had 32 sex partners and was proud of it, was the opposite.
I don’t talk to my children about work — that’s a decision I made a long time ago. It’s fascinating that both of them ended up going into the business [one of MacDowell’s daughters, Margaret Qualley, is an actress and the other, Rainey Qualley, is an actress and singer]. It wasn’t anything I cultivated. I’m sure they saw Four Weddings with friends at some point, but I don’t know. My greatest pride and dignity comes from being in this movie.
Anna Chancellor, Henrietta “Duckface”
I was working with the actor Michael Maloney and he said: “Have you auditioned for this new film about toffs? They might really like you … I think it’s about f***ing in the back of horse boxes.” I got a recall and had no idea what to wear, but I had a dodgy boyfriend who had bought me a really expensive pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes. They never forgot the shoes. It ignited the imagination of Mike Newell.
I’d had a kid when I was young at drama school and it hadn’t looked very promising for me. It was my first film; I was a rookie. It was quite unbelievable — you’d be having breakfast with Rowan Atkinson.
I don’t think it was that difficult to get into character, unfortunately. It’s in my nature to quite enjoy the funny loose cannon. I maybe had the edge when I was playing the bitch. If you can get the edge on a specific type, that means you’re typecast, but it also means you have a career and a job.
She was meant to be called F***face, which makes more sense doesn’t it? I don’t think Duckface is a phrase. But they had too many f***s.
Two days ago a guy told me he and his wife based his wedding on the film. Another time a guy said to me: “You really do look like a duck. Doesn’t everyone say that to you?” I was, like, “No!” The funny, weird twist is I really love ducks and I had a duck as a pet, Daphne, that I rescued from the neighbor’s garden.
My husband calls me Duckface. My darling daughter, who sadly died last year, called me Ducky. I had a gold necklace that said “Ducky”. I’m realizing Duckface is basically my name.
When we were filming Four Weddings my daughter had a piano concert and Andie MacDowell came to that with me. We’re still friends. I also played Miss Bingley in Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. Both he and Hugh Grant are such heartthrobs. I was the one representing the side of the nation that would never get them. It was fun fancying them and being rejected.
Simon Callow, Gareth
When I was sent the script and told they wanted me to play Gareth, I said: “I bet I’m the funeral. I’m bound to die in this.” And so indeed I was. I die in most things. The appetite of the British public for my death is limitless.
“Have you auditioned for this new film about toffs?”
It’s a fascinating idea to follow a group of people who go to weddings a lot and never manage to get hitched themselves. But the thing that is brilliantly daring is the funeral. It’s Shakespearean. In the sense that Gareth believes in cakes and ales, he is like Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. He wages war on every kind of puritanism and narrowness of spirit. Also, a minute or so before he dies, he says, “I was adored once,” quoting Belch’s friend Andrew Aguecheek. As I look back over my career, Gareth is one of the parts that I’ve really nailed.
There was no money at all. All of us, with the exception of Andie, had to be picked up every morning in a van. You might have to be in the van from 4am as it drove all the way around London picking up the rest of the cast. And then once you were on the set, you would stay there until everybody was finished. So we spent a lot of time together. Charlotte Coleman [who plays Charles’s housemate Scarlett] would lead group Dolly Parton sing-alongs, which I unfortunately, never having really acquainted myself with Parton’s oeuvre, was unable to join in with. Charlotte [who died in 2001] had the potential to be one of the absolute great comedy actors in the realm of Goldie Hawn. I remember above all sitting outside Andie’s caravan drinking bottles of white wine and laughing inordinately.
John Hannah [who plays Gareth’s other half, Matthew] was just such an adorable acting partner — charming, wry and funny. People were still a little bit awkward about representing gay things on the screen. After it opened, Ian McKellen dropped me a note and said: “This has done more for gay liberation than Philadelphia.” Aids is the background to this film. The idea of finding your partner is of course at the heart of romantic comedies, but this time there was a little bit of urgency behind it. The wonderful thing about it is I don’t die from Aids: I die from Scottish dancing.
When the film became very successful my agent said: “Get over to Hollywood immediately.” I was chauffeured to meet these people and they were infinitely courteous and I could just see them thinking: “But what parts do we have for fat, bearded, kilted men?” And so it led to nothing at all. The only thing I got in career progression terms was that I was asked to voice the ancient green grasshopper in James and the Giant Peach and to play the villain in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. I preferred playing the grasshopper.
David Haig, Bernard
Every wedding reception entails 150 guests, so even if you weren’t textually in the scene, you could be in the background sitting in a chair. We spent a long time chatting, even in scenes we weren’t in. There was a lot of waiting on wooden pews in churches.
Sophie [Thompson, who plays Bernard’s new wife, Lydia] and I had to recreate an acoustic equivalent of our sex scene for about three hours, standing up on opposite sides of the studio, each with our own microphone. That’s my prime memory. I’ve done Guys and Dolls with her since and we’ve kept up with each other, though she’s always disappointed with the amount of times I text her. But we got on incredibly well.
The film occasionally surfaces on telly — I’ll be surfing channels and suddenly find myself in a church somewhere and one of the weddings is going on. Usually I then watch it, not necessarily until the end. I just relive it.
Blanca Schofield is the U.K.-based assistant editor of Culture & Books at The Times and The Sunday Times of London