Gervais Talks Cemetery Junction
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant fans are waiting with anticipation for the first ever movie that the pair have written and directed together, Cemetery Junction.
Now Ricky Gervais has said that it was inspired partly by Bruce Springsteen and calls it his “Saturday Night Fever“. Sound strange? Well, read on…
Speaking to Collider, Gervais revealed that he and co-director Stephen Merchant have drawn upon influences from the US for their plot, although it is set in 1970s Reading.
“One of the lines that inspired us is from Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’, it’s a town full of losers and we’re pulling out of here to win’. It’s like our Saturday Night Fever.”
He added:
“I suppose it’s about class. It’s a romantic drama too, I suppose. It’s sort of a return to what Steve and I do best… the minutia of human behavior. It’s set in the early ’70s and it’s about a group of twenty-somethings that try to escape that stifling small town sort of mentality.”
The film was originally titled The Man from the Pru, a colloquial term, and later an advertising slogan, for agents of the Prudential insurance company. During the writing of the film, the Prudential allowed Gervais and Merchant to use their archives for research. However, after reading the finished script, it’s rumored that the company decided it was not pleased with how they were to be portrayed in the film and decided not to allow their name to be used. The new title comes from the name of a road junction in Reading, Berkshire, where the film takes place.
Cemetery Junction is set in the 1970s in Reading because that’s where Gervais himself grew up. It follows guys in their twenty’s who work as building society clerks. According to Gervais, it is a “coming of age” story for the characters in the plotline. But it’s not all serious stuff; there will be the usual comedy lines that the duo write so well together.
Gervais plays a character called Len Taylor, and Merchant plays ‘Bore’, but both stars have said their roles are relatively small. They have hired lots of young fresh new talent for the movie, as they did with the TV series the Office.
Cemetery Junction opens in the UK on April 7, 2010.
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