Ballroom dancing's for poofs! 
Although he started out as an actor, Peter Chesholm didn't get his name in lights until he ventured behind the camera. As a director he has an obvious penchant for comedy, having worked with the likes of Lee Evans in Funny Bones, Warren Beatty in Town & Country and John Cusack in Serendipity. Now he's pairing Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez in Shall We Dance?, an unconventional romance based on the acclaimed Japanese film by Masayuki Suo.
You didn't want to do this movie, initially, did you?
No, I passed. I lied and said I'd read the script when I hadn't. I think it's because I didn't want to remake such a perfect original - I really loved the Japanese movie. And I didn't want to go back to that Blackpool thing. There are three movies that I call my Blackpool movies, the last of which was Funny Bones. It felt like old territory to me and so I lied, and then they sent me the script again a year later, and this time they lied to me. They said to me that there had been substantial rewrites and there had been no rewrites whatsoever.
And you told them it was a much better script?
It's true! I said it was much, much better!
The Japanese original deals chiefly with the cultural taboo of ballroom dancing. Obviously that doesn't translate to the American setting...
I think the thing I saw in Audrey Wells' script was the fact that it could translate to America and that it was the same story through a different filter. The Japanese movie relied on that taboo about ballroom dancing per se. If there was to be a taboo in the American story, it was that if you're living the American dream there's a kind of shame involved in raising your hand and saying, "Actually, this is not enough. I'm not happy." Or to put it another way, it's possible to have everything and be lacking something.
Is that why you made a sudden switch from acting to directing - were you dissatisfied?
Yeah, you know the depressing thought at 30 - and I think it happens to a lot of people - is that you find you're not happy with your career and you have to go back to 'go' and start again. You punish yourself with the thought, "I made the wrong decision." But then what I realised gradually is that I could bring all of me to it, so at the age of 30 I just stopped very, very abruptly and it was fine and I haven't doubted it since.
Growing up in Blackpool, did you get bitten by the ballroom bug?
I'm a closet dancer. Being brought up in Blackpool, we were sent to ballroom dance class at the age of 12. It was how you got to snog your first girlfriend! I mean that's how you got to meet girls. We were sent to Lytham Baths just up the road - posh - but it was part of our culture. And what about the TV programme Come Dancing? It was huge. My dad used to do impersonations of those dancers, doing this impossible kind of quickstep. Yeah, it was just part of the culture in Blackpool.
Why do you think men are generally so reticent when it comes to ballroom dancing?
Because it's for poofs! It's true. I mean it's not regarded as a particularly masculine sport.
How pivotal for the story was that late night tango between Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez?
Well, we didn't want a movie that was story, story, then dance, or people bursting into song because they've run out of means to express themselves, you know? That particular dance sequence, the late night tango, does more than five pages of dialogue, and what would be pretty boring dialogue, like "I now feel I can trust men again and I haven't felt the blood flow through my veins like this for 25 years". You know, I'd much rather see it in the language of a sexy dance. It's the sex scene in the movie, is what it is.
Richard Gere was pretty concerned that he wouldn't get the job after you saw him taking his first lesson...
Yeah, we videotaped that first rehearsal so he could remember what it was like to be dreadful.
What do you make of his dancing ability now?
He's a great dancer. Really. He did three hours every day for four months. We'd wrap at nine and I'd say, "Goodnight Richard, sleep well." But oh no, he'd go off for another two hours to dance and dance and dance. And when I saw him do the competition scene I never ever imagined in my wildest dreams that a non-dancer of an actor playing the lead could be that good. Spectacular.
