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Screen: The wedding belle: In our second exclusive extract from My First Movie , director P.J. Hogan tells Stephen Lowenstein how his family inspired Muriel's Wedding. The real problem was getting Abba onto the soundtrack

Lowenstein, Stephen

2000

Overview

That came later. I didn't pursue [Abba] for their permission until we had the money. Then they said no. And we found out that Abba had never licensed their music to anyone else. We sent them a screenplay with a letter begging them to read it. We got a message from their assistant saying: 'They won't read it, and even if they did, it would still be \"No\".' So Lynda House (producer) asked the assistant to read it, and she did, and she loved it. So she said: 'Look, I don't know if I can promise you anything because they have never said yes, but I'll tell you what to do. Keep up the flattering letters.' So I did, and she got them to read the screenplay. They liked it. But they still said no. We just kept at them. I would send them a letter once a week. And I was shameless. I compared them to the Beatles. I think I called them good looking. Finally I said to Lynda: 'I can't replace them. I'm going to fly to Sweden and hang out on their doorstep till they say yes to me.' Lynda said: 'Before we do that, let's warn them that you are coming so that they're there.' She sent them a photocopy of my air ticket and they said yes. I had to have Abba. What would the film have been without Abba? It's [Muriel]'s music! We cast for a very long time. We started looking very early, before pre-production. We all knew it was going to be hard to cast Muriel. I think I saw every young actress in Australia. Toni Collette had had a lot of difficulty getting work because she didn't look like everybody else. When she came in I thought she's really good but I wasn't sure she was right. And I went on looking for Muriel for another month. I think I needed to see all these other people to prove that it was her. Toni desperately wanted the role and I was asking a great deal. I wanted an actress who was ready to gain weight because I knew there was going to be a scene where she was dressed in a white satin pant suit and you couldn't fake her thighs. And Toni was willing to do it. She said: 'I'll be paid to gain weight for this. That will make it a pleasure.' But I don't think she found it a pleasure in the end. I always say that with Muriel I became a director whose next film was anticipated rather than feared. It changed everything. And the moment it changed was the night it screened at Cannes. It just went through the roof. The audience were screaming and clapping, it got a 15-minute standing ovation. Toni Collette was with me; and she had lost all the weight she'd put on for the film. Her dream, she told me, was that she would appear at Cannes, thin. I went on stage first and then Toni came on. And for a moment you could tell the audience didn't know who she was. And then when they recognised her, the applause just went on and on.

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited
• Subject: Campion, Jane / Collette, Toni / Lowenstein, Stephen / Moorhouse, Jocelyn