Richard Curtis talks about creating popular film weddings

NEW YORK, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- British filmmaker Richard Curtis says the downside to being famous for your cinematic weddings is having to top yourself with each new big-screen romance.

Among his hits are the contemporary classics "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Love Actually."

"And I wrote a situational comedy called 'The Vicar of Dibley' and there were lots of weddings in that, too," the writer-director said recently while in New York promoting his latest love story, "About Time."

"In this case, I wanted a full-stop on the romantic comedy. There was going to be a wedding and then I've got a family drama in the second half of the movie," Curtis said. "I just wanted to do one [wedding] where I didn't have to write an funny lines, so that was the reason I did the rainstorm and the big songs. There weren't any big jokes to do with priests. We just had to deal with rain, which is a very English experience."

"About Time" follows a young man, played by Domhnall Gleeson, who has the ability to travel back in time and correct small mistakes in his own past. Although his wedding to the woman of his dreams, played by Rachel McAdams, takes place in an outside tent during a horrendous storm, he doesn't consider changing it because it is still the best day of his life.

"It's interesting because if you watch 'The Walking Dead,' David Morrissey, who plays the governor in that, is one of my best friends and his wedding was just unbelievably wet," Curtis said. "You couldn't hear any of the speeches that were made. Everybody who turned up at the wedding -- which was at the end of a pier -- was obliterated with rain. It was meant to be the most romantic wedding of all time on a pier in the middle of an English sea and yet we all think back on that as the best wedding we ever went to. So, I think that's one of the experiences of life -- that bad things can actually turn out to be great."

Co-starring Bill Nighy, Tom Hollander, Richard Griffiths and Lindsay Duncan, the film is available now on DVD and Blu-ray.