a SIFF 2007 interview

Hitting the Right Chords
Learning to Make Beautiful Music with Once

You realize pretty darn quickly how close, and just how ferociously creative, John Carney, Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová are when you sit down to interview them. Walking into their suite at Seattle’s Fairmont Olympic Hotel to speak with them about their new motion picture Once, the latter two were in the midst of a heated discussion, the smiles on their faces belying just how much each felt compelled to let the other know the certainty of their personal opinions.

“You best just get started,” commented writer/director Carney as I got comfortable on the couch just across from the three of them. “Those two can really get going when they put their minds to it.” This produces a quick jovial chuckle from the twosome, the lithe and petite Irglová batting the filmmaker on the shoulder as if she were playfully smacking a beloved older brother up aside the head.

We were here to talk about the trio’s Sundance Award-winning sensation, recently given rapturous reviews by The New York Time, The Wall Street Journal and Rolling Stone (just to name a few) and also recently selected for a one-night-only showing at the Seattle International Film Festival before its regional release June 1. This interview was one I had been looking forward to quite some time, sitting and watching their little independent musical maybe the single best cinematic experience I’ve had all year.

Not a bad for a movie thought up by the director while at a Frames, Hansard’s semi-popular rock band, concert back in 2005. “I kind of just starting talking about it, with Glen, during this big gig they were doing,” said Carney. “It wasn’t really the genesis, but the beginning, because I’d thought I’d really like to do something with Glen.”

Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard in Fox Searchlight's Once.

“We ended up having to put it on hold for ages, but then I came up with this story of a Busker, and that this would be perfect for Glen, because he’s been a Busker and I knew I could ask him for some stories and see what he thought of it all. And, of course, to see if he would write some songs for me, for the movie. But, that day at the concert, that is the day I like to say it all kind of clicked.”

And what did Hansard think of all this at first? “Well, originally John came up to me and asked me for some anecdotal stuff about being a street performer,” stated the songwriter. “And he also asked me to write him some songs. He told me the situation, that it would be him writing and directing and it would be Cillian Murphy playing the part of the Busker, and he needed me to write him some songs.”

“For me, as a guy in a band and as a songwriter this was a great thing to have happen. I think, anybody in an indie rock back the idea of getting your songs out there to a wider audience is a great opportunity, and I was eager to get behind it. I ended up giving John just about everything I had laying around, a few of the songs that I had, and he really liked a few of them and asked me to write him a few more. It was then he told me he was having trouble with the casting.”

And what sort of trouble might that have been? “He was looking for a ‘non-specific Eastern European piano playing 35-year old,’ and it wasn’t going well. But I had worked with Mara and, although she was much younger than the character he had mentioned to me, she is Eastern European, she does play the piano and she does sing. John met her and cast her almost immediately which was just brilliant.”

“So, it was going to be Cillian and Mara then, and I was still writing the songs, and then Cillian pulled out and John was really scratching his head as to what to do. And then, I think he just had the idea to just do it. To do it with no money, to do it really simply, do it really quickly, to knock this film out like a demo almost. If we make our money back, great, and if it flops, so what, it’s not like we lost a ton a money.”

Hansard isn’t joking when he talks about Once being made cheaply. “We made it on a 130,000 Euros, I’m kind of like the king of low budget filmmaking in Dublin in a way,” laughs Carney. “You just get on an energy buzz. It’s hard to put a price on a film. The energy that you are generating and that you’re getting from people is so intense you couldn’t buy that. So, low budget to me is what we needed for staffing.”

As for Irglová, not even 20 it has to be odd to suddenly find herself cast in her first film playing character originally conceived as a woman almost twice her age. “I didn’t really know anything about the film other than it was about a musician and that Glen was writing music for it,” the lovely actress answers effortlessly. “What surprised me the most about John wanting to meet me is that I am not an actress, which it made it even more surprising when he said he wanted to cast me. But, obviously, it was an exciting idea to me. I knew Glen and I knew John’s previous work, so it was exciting to be able to work with two people that you really respect.”

Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard in Fox Searchlight's Once.

“At the same time, I also thought what were the chances of it happening. I thought to myself, I have nothing to lose. I go to Dublin, I play the piano. I sing a couple of songs. If I get it, great, if I don’t, no big deal. But when I did get it, it was really exciting and scary both at the same time because I was just hoping I wasn’t going to let anyone down.”

For Carney, he didn’t look at his actress as being a novice. Instead, he knew he had someone special to inhabit the role, and the best thing to do would be to just let her discover the character almost as if on her own. “I think whatever Glen and Mara did on the screen naturally is what I would have had to work to try and get professional actors to try and do,” explains the director. “Really getting great performances out of non-actors is about making people feel comfortable that they can trust you and they are being trusted.”

“But, I think we are all quite good actors in life. We are good at selling ourselves. You’re good at what you do, getting jobs and convincing people you are a good writer, you sell yourself well. Now, if you were to read your own daily dialogue, you’d probably say to yourself, ‘Fuck, did I say that shit?’ [The lines] weren’t that convincing on the page, but you breathe life into them which is why they work.”

“It’s the same thing with non-actors. It’s really about getting human beings to be relaxed so they are not nervous standing in front of this big camera in front of their face and this huge boom mic hovering above their heads and all these people huddling around them. It’s about getting them relaxed, getting them to remember they are good at what they do as a person.”

The filmmaker fumbles around with his guitar a little bit, both Irglová and Hansard listening intently to what he is saying. “It’s actually harder to get actors to be like human beings,” Carney continues, “because they are so used to being made-up and being taught to fake everything. While I love good acting with real actors I also love the challenge of working with non-actors. I like working with non-actors I find it a bit liberating.”

Still, for being so new to the craft both of the principals share a chemistry in Once that’s heartbreaking palpable, not exactly something easy to come by even for the most accomplished for professional actors. “Well, we’d been working together [Mara and I] pretty solidly off and on for two or three years, and we knew each other even before that,” comments Hansard. “We were touring the Czech Republic together, touring Europe together, touring the United States together. So, we kind of knew each other quite well in a working way, and so getting involved in this as mates kind of just felt so comfortable. Had it been another girl, I think I would have been a little less comfortable in my skin onscreen.”

“What’s happening on screen, I think, is there is a lot of blurring going on. We’re in character, we’re out of character. We’re in character, we’re out of character. I think what makes the tension and the relationship so interesting is that it is me and Mara just being me and Mara. Whenever the music is playing, we’re really just being ourselves, and then when it stops [the movie] is dialogue driven, but it is still basically just the two of us relating to one another using John’s lines.”

“The fact it was [Glen] made the challenge of acting just that more comfortable,” adds Irglová. “I just feel when you have friendship with somebody you have a certain kind of intimacy. When there is silence, it is not an uncomfortable silence. When you talk, it flows easily and doesn’t appear in any way stiff. Even if one of us would forget the line, we would almost both just flow into something else and the other one would react to that, and that was kind of easy to do because we both know one another so well we just knew how to respond.”

“It was almost motivating because it felt like such an intimate project to be doing. If this were just a job or a big film with strangers all around it would feel nothing like that. It was great. Really great.”

Thinking of all the film’s numerous and sumptuous layers, I can’t help but tell Carney how much his picture reminded me of David Lean’s 1945 classic Brief Encounter, a comparison which immediately brings a smile to the director’s face. “That used to be one of my favorite films,” he responds. “I could tell you ever line of that film, every frame of it, but it was not consciously an influence here.”

“It’s amazing, though, that as you get a bit older how your influences become less direct. When you’re young, you want to parody everything, play homage to everything, you’re very eager to show how smart you are. When you get a bit older you just want to be yourself now. You’re just not interested in other people saying that [scenes] are like a Truffaut moment. When it does happen, it feels great, especially when you didn’t mean it to.”

“I never sat down and said this was going to be like a David Lean movie. Never thought about it. So, I’m flattered, really flattered, I’m glad you think that.”

All this talk of Lean, Truffaut and their ilk leads us to a conversation of our own personal influences. “For me, it is the classic movies I was brought up on more so than modern films I think,” says Carney. “The French New Wave, John Cassavettes, [Ingmar] Bergman, so many other things; there are just so many.”

“You know what I would really like to do next,” exclaims the filmmaker almost jumping up from his seat, the guitar slipping from his lap to the floor, “I’d love to make a horror film or a really good thriller. They are the ones you really get to flex your muscles as a movie director, where you get to use the camera and the music and the editing all to create fear or emotion or tension. I’d love to be able to create tension on a wall, you know what I mean? If you deconstruct it to that level, say I’m going to show you a white screen and with nothing else but pictures I’m going to freak the fuckin’ shit out of you, that’s really incredible.”

“That’s what makes films like The Blair Witch Project so brilliantly conceived, so wonderful. But, I’d be a bit more traditional I think; I’d be more like the classic horror films or like the Hitchcock horror films, films that make you have a physical and emotional reaction and response. I’d like to try and make one of those kinds of films.”

“For me,” breaks in Irglová, “it’s all so subjective. In both film and music, it all depends on what is happening inside of you, what is that you feel. Every person is going to perceive both music and film differently depending on what they’ve been through and how much they can connect with different issues presented by the art.”

“But, you also go through different issues and different experiences throughout different periods of your entire life. At certain times, a different film you may feel very connected with and you want to watch it over and over again because it soothes or comforts you. The same with music, you listen to it and then you become very intimate with it for a period of time. You can listen to the lyrics over and over because they put you at ease, but years later maybe you’ll never listen to that particular record or see that particular film ever again.”

All this talk of lyrics and music gets me thinking again about the magnificent songs Hansard composed for the film, specifically the timeless and haunting Falling Slowly. Part of me suddenly can’t help but wonder where inspiration for a song this timeless comes from. “I don’t wanna blow it for you,” chuckles the emphatic singer, “because if I give you my version of it than it might not mean as much for you. Know what I mean?”

“Basically, it’s just the idea that sometimes you get into these black moods and there is no way out of them. They’re basically moods that ‘take me and erase me’ and I find myself in these places where ‘I just can’t come back.’ No matter what kind of help or prodding, you just go into some of these dark spots. And then the line ‘you have suffered enough, and warred with yourself, it’s time that you won’ I’m just trying to say it’s time to stand up and take control.”

“I guess, what the song is really about then, is if you can make yourself better, you can take of yourself, give yourself some self-medicine, then your relationship has a chance. It’s not about the two of you sometimes. It’s sometimes about just you, and then it is only from there that the two of you can come back together.”

It’s at this point I’m getting the signal to wrap things up, but the conversation can’t conclude without talking a bit about the film’s critical success and about the team winning the coveted Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. “It’s like a dream,” exclaims Irglová. “You almost can’t believe it.”

“It’s very strange being in America,” interjects Carney, “while everything is happening here. I keep getting phone calls from Dublin saying, ‘Dude! What the fuck! Yeah!!!’ And I’m like shrugging my shoulders and saying, yeah, you know, we’re just doing the gig. I don’t think we’ve had the time to sit back and reflect because we’ve been working so hard.”

“I mean, who’d have thought two years ago when Glen and I were sitting in a café in Dublin and I was trying to convince him to do the movie, there would now be The New York Times and The L.A. Times and The Wall Street Journal and it would be like rave, rave, rave. It would just be mad! But now that has actually happened, you kind of think, uh, whatever. I don’t know. Maybe when I get back to Dublin I’ll have some perspective on all of this.”

“It think it really important that when anything good happens in your life to open a bottle of champagne,” adds Hansard. “And the reason I say that, is because it is a symbol, it’s really, really good to celebrate the good things that happen. Because, what’s really happening to all of s right now, even with all this success, we’re still working. So, the ship ahs come in, in a way, but we’re actually too busy to see it because we’re still digging the coal so it will keep going.”

“I really need to take a piss right now,” exclaims the director causing the room to erupt in laughter, “it’s kind of like that. I’ve really needed to do that for the last ten minutes but I keep thinking, how am I going to time it? When am I going to do that, because I don’t want to leave this interview because I’m really enjoying it. It’s been great fun. But, I also know, if I don’t go on the break, I’ll be sitting here all afternoon needing to take a piss.”

“It’s kind of like that. People keep wondering why we’re not texting and why we’re not calling and why we’re not celebrating. But they have no idea how busy this is and how busy we are. And it’s fucking brilliant, and it makes us feel if the film does well, we’ve really worked for it”

“It will probably hit us in another week when we finally get home,” says Hansard as he tries to stop laughing. “It will be like, ‘Fuck! That was amazing!’ But, until then, right now it does feel one step removed. But then that’s why you open the bottle of champagne. It’s happening right this minute for once, all the reviews were yesterday, our ship is coming in right now. And it is important that we celebrate that right now because, if we don’t, then all this is just another day at work.”