Writer David Templeton takes interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation. This is not a review; rather, it's a freewheeling, tangential discussion of life, alternative ideas and popular culture.

As the credits to Pirate Radio roll climactically up the screen and soul singer Loraine Ellison sings majestically through the 1966 classic "Stay With Me (Baby)," author Deborah Grabien closes her eyes, bobs her head to the music and exclaims, "I'll say one thing about this movie! After Woodstock, this thing easily has the best movie soundtrack of all time!"

Amen to that.

Pirate Radio, the unassuming sentimento-comedy about ocean-dwelling rebel disc jockeys playing illegal rock music off the coast of the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s, almost always has a tune playing in the background, a spirit-raising panoply of music, starting with such well-known early-rock earworms as the Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night" and "Sunny Afternoon," Martha Reeves and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Streets," the Troggs' "With a Girl Like You," Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale," and the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't it Be Nice," with plenty of obscure stuff from way back on the record shelf—"Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)" by John Fred and His Playboy Band, "Yesterday Man" by Chris Andrews, "I've Been a Bad, Bad Boy" by Paul Jones and "98.6" by the Bystanders.

"It was like living through 1966 all over again," says Grabien (who, for the record, was 13 in 1966), pushing through the "exit" door and pausing in front of the Pirate Radio poster displayed on the wall. "There was only one really bad anachronism in the film, musically," she remarks, as she examines the poster depicting Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Bill Nighy all walking the plank, "and that anachronism was the Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again,' the song they played when the boat was sinking. That was the final track of Who's Next, which some people say is the greatest Who album, and I'm one of them. Beginning with 'Baba O'Reilly' and then serving up one delicious slice of perfection after another, it's a great, great album. But it wasn't released until 1971, so it wasn't really appropriate to the timing of the film. But it sounded great, and it kind of worked with the scene--so I guess I have to forgive them."

Grabien (www.deborahgrabien.com), whose mind is a vast rock 'n' roll encyclopedia of musical facts and trivia, is the author of several books of fantasy and crime fiction, some with rock-tinged themes. Her popular book series, the Kinkaid Chronicles--Rock and Roll Never Forgets, While My Guitar Gently Sleeps--features aging, multiple sclerosis-afflicted rocker JP Kinkaid, guitarist for a legendary band Blacklight, discovering he has a knack for solving murders, which seem to keep happening all around him. Grabien, herself a guitarist, and also battling MS ("Write what you know, right?" she says), has just completed a third book in the series, which owes one small tip-of-the-drumstick to Pirate Radio star Nighy.

"The character of Mac is totally based on Bill Nighy," she says, tapping his plank-walking image as she says his name. "I thank him in the acknowledgements of the second Kinkaid chronicle. He sent me a really amazing note. I've loved him since I saw Still Crazy, still one of my favorite movies of all time--but of course, no one has ever heard of it. He played an aging rock singer in that, and then, thankfully, he played another old rock 'n' roll star, Billy Mack, coming back from the brink in the movie Love, Actually. But it's just Bill Nighy himself that inspires me. He's just a delight to watch, and as bad as I feel some days, with this stupid MS, I wasn't about to let anything stop me from coming today, just so I could spend two hours with Bill."

A few minutes later, we've ordered a couple of coffees at a nearby coffee shop, where Grabien remarks that as much as she enjoyed Pirate Radio, the script, by Love, Actually writer/director Richard Curtis, fabricated a number of storylines, where the actual history of British pirate radio is full of much better stories than the ones that take place on Radio Rock, the fictionally named ship from which Hoffman and company broadcast.

"There were so many real things that really happened around pirate radio," Grabien says, "that it was a little strange they decided to fabricate so much stuff. Radio Caroline, that was the original pirate radio station, and obviously the station that Radio Rock is based on. It was, in fact, anchored off the coast, just into international waters, and it did use the waters, for a long time, to get around the laws against rock 'n' roll in the UK. It took the UK a long time to get its act together in regards to letting people listen to the music they loved."

One of the more dramatic moments of the film comes when Radio Rock springs a leak, and the rock-hating government official played by Kenneth Branagh decides not to send rescue boats.

"One of the Radio Caroline boats was actually sunk, but I think that wasn't until the 1980s," Grabien remarks. "But I do believe that the crew was saved by fans who came out in boats to pull them from the water, just like in the movie."

That ship, for those taking notes, was the M.V. Mi Amigo, a radio boat that sank during a storm in 1980. The details can be found on Radio Caroline's Internet-streaming Web site. Yes, the station that inspired Radio Rock is still on the air--though not on the water at the moment. It broadcasts from a land-based studio in England, where rock radio was legalized long ago.

"In the movie," says Grabien, "Philip Seymour Hoffman says that rock is worth dying for, which makes me wonder which musicians I'd take a bullet for. Elton John, probably not. The Rolling Stones, I think I might die for happily. But the better question is, is rock 'n' roll worth living for? To that I'd say, hell yeah.

"Believe me," Grabien laughs, "some days are really rough, and some times I can't barely think of a reason to get out of bed, but rock 'n' roll--there's always a great tune or a great album to listen to again. And there's great new music coming along, too. So I'd say that rock 'n' roll is worth living for. Rock truly gives me something to live for every single day."

Share your pirate radio memories with David at talkpix@earthlink.net.

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