Martin McDonagh and Colin Farrell on In Bruges

All Credit To: Times Online
By: Ed Caesar
Date: 6 April 2008

Ed Caesar: Colin, In Bruges has one marathon chase scene. How did your lungs get through it? You’ve smoked four cigarettes since we’ve sat down.

Colin Farrell: I was dying after the first take. It’s shameful. I’m black on the inside.

Martin McDonagh: I think we ended up using the first take.

CF: Well, thanks for making me do the second one, you bastard.

EC: This is the first time you two have worked together. When and where did you meet?

MM: One very drunken evening in the Covent Garden Hotel in about 2004. The only thing I can remember is us saying we should work with each other.

CF: Yes, well, I was an awful liar back then... I was still drinking. We met again at a hotel in New York after I read the script for In Bruges. Martin was in town with a play. I thought it was brilliant and wanted to be part of it. But I told him that if he could get away with casting an unknown for the part of Ray, he should do it.

EC: Were you playing hard to get?

CF: Not at all, man. I’ve never been good at that. I’ve always been a pretty easy meal. I honestly thought it was an opportunity to find someone out there who was raw and had very little experience, but who would tear the arse out of the film. I thought it would be amazing if Martin could do for someone what Joel Schumacher did for me with Tigerland. I loved the script so much that I wanted people just to be able to go in and enjoy it as royally as they could, without any preconceptions about what I’d bring.

EC: Were you aware of Martin’s theatre work?

CF: No. I’d read The Pillowman, but that was about it. I’d seen Six Shooter, and I was aware of the reputation that he came with.

EC: Martin, I’ve heard about your weekend away in Bruges, how these two characters came into your head - one saying “Stay and look at the architecture” and the other saying “This is boring, let’s get drunk and find women” - and how those characters became Ken and Ray. But a film banker I met at Sundance told me that if the funding situation had been different, in Italy or Austria or wherever, then the film might well have been In Turin, or In Vienna. Is there any truth in that?

MM: No truth in that whatsoever. If I hadn’t been able to shoot in Bruges, I would have scrapped the whole thing. Every single location that was written into the script had an effect on what was happening in each scene. Every bench had to be that bench, at that canal, by that statue. It had to be Bruges.

EC: Brendan Gleeson, who plays Ken, says you’re a genius, because you won an Oscar for Six Shooter without having the first idea what you were doing as a director. How has your education progressed since then?

MM: With the short, I didn’t take control over many of the aspects of film-making that I should have done. I didn’t get involved with the director of photography, or the costume designers, or the production people ... All of those things I really needed to do. If your name is on it as the writer/director, you need to make sure it’s your statement. So I didn’t learn as much as I should have done. I was terrified going into the feature. What made a difference was the three-week rehearsal period. That felt more like what I was used to: analysing a script, people talking about character and getting at the truth of something.

EC: Did the script change much during that rehearsal period?

CF: Not a word.

EC: That’s unusual. Scripts normally change dramatically during a rehearsal period.

MM: That’s a description of a shit script, although it’s probably arrogant to say that.

CF: No, I agree. Martin has a singularity of vision and an ability to realise that vision. He’ll sit on stuff until it’s ready. I know you sat on The Pillowman until you thought it was ready ...

MM: Ten years.

CF: There you go. He’ll only present it when it’s finished. MM: Once it is finished, you’ve got to be open to what the actors are going to bring to it. That’s different to being amenable to changing lines on a whim. There’s a reason it was written that way. You can’t write by committee.

EC: Did you, at any point, think about turning over your script to another director?

MM: I was always going to direct this one. There was another film script I had given over to someone else to direct, so I could learn by being on set and watching what they did.

CF: Really?

MM: Yeah, but it fell through, and the wheels were already in motion with In Bruges. I thought it would be a chicken-hearted thing to back out of directing In Bruges.

EC: Colin, describe Martin’s manifold failings as a director ...

MM: I should leave the room.

CF: The glorious thing was, he wasn’t set in his ways. It was lovely to be around. He came to it from a completely fresh perspective. Did he have technique? I don’t know. I don’t think he had anything as boring as technique. But he wasn’t flying by the seat of his pants, anyway. He had a definite idea of how he wanted the film to look. From my point of view, I know it was only a f***ing short, but I was still working with an Oscar-winning director.

EC: I saw the poster, which makes the film out to be a jaunty caper. That is dramatically different from what the film is actually like. Did you have to fight hard against producers and money men to get the film you wanted, rather than the film they wanted?

MM: Yes, I did have to fight about lots of different things. I imagine that’s how it always is, but I don’t know, because this was my first film. There was plenty of fighting, but, actually, I’ve got to put my hands up and say that I approved the poster and the trailer, which shows the film as more of a comedy than it turns out to be. For me, even the setup of the first 20 minutes is a caper – it’s a fun movie, then we get taken to darker places. In that context, I don’t mind that the poster might draw more of an audience looking for a fun time.

CF: People talk about the trailer being misleading, but I don’t think it was. You can talk about the lie of omission if you like, but I don’t know how you would take the more dramatic elements and more painful elements of the script, then put them in a trailer. It would be so jarring.

EC: When the film was played at Sundance, there was a muted reaction. Were you surprised?

MM: I felt there was a backlash from the PC brigade a little bit.

EC: Isn’t your film deliberately offensive, though?

MM: I wouldn’t say it is deliberately offensive or affronting. I was trying to write a character, in Ray, who had no self-censorship, who was unaware of what could be offensive. It’s freeing to write a character like that. I think maybe to play one, too ...

CF: Absolutely.

MM: But I hope there’s nothing about the sensibility of the film that is offensive. Yes, there are things Ray says that could be construed as racist, or homophobic, or antidwarf, but he’s also a killer, and I don’t subscribe to those beliefs either. The film is trying to deal with what happens when someone is shooting off 100 bullets a second. Is it cool? Is it fun? I hope nobody will be offended by it.

EC: Colin, when you read the script for the first time, there are a lot of memorably shocking lines – about dwarves, or mentally ill people, for instance. As an actor, did you worry about having to say those things?

CF: No, I thought it would be an incredible opportunity to say the lines. I knew I could blame Martin, anyway. I could say the line, then go: “Don’t shoot the messenger.” I actually saw an incredible amount of love in the script. I saw a powerful sense of the quest for redemption and the path towards redemption being to recognise past transgressions committed. The racist elements, the bigoted elements, were part of my character, because he had the most unPC lines, but that’s because he’s not enlightened or worldly. He has an amazing purity to him, an amazing ability not to censor himself, and I just f***ing loved him. I loved that there was that juxtaposition between what he does for a living and who he could actually be.

EC: Redemption is one of a number of Catholic themes in the film… MM: Yeah, I guess so. I was brought up Catholic, and my themes are certainly running through the film. Image-wise, I’m not sure. Bruges is full of churches, isn’t it? I think the film does have a Catholic sensibility, but I’m not sure a Protestant wouldn’t see the same themes – guilt, and sin, and redemption.

EC: There is a purgatorial aspect to Ray and Ken’s stay in Bruges. Was Waiting for Godot an influence?

MM: Not specifically, although The Dumb Waiter was, and Godot was an influence on Pinter, so . . .

EC: And I’ve heard you talk about Don’t Look Now being an influence...

MM: It wasn’t a big influence on the film, but it was an influence on the idea of trying to capture a town as a character on film, and we reference it in the film. The Wild Bunch was helpful, because I wanted to watch a violent film to see how they did it – especially one that wants to show how awful and disgusting violence is. Peckinpah was a great one for that. Even then, I don’t think they’ve left their mark on the film.

CF: I don’t think it was derivative at all.

EC: When you read the script, Colin, did it feel like a playwright’s script or a film script?

CF: I’ve got no idea what a playwright’s script would feel like – I haven’t read many. I know Martin was wary of it not being a couple of talking heads, and wanted it as cinematic as possible. Certainly, the town did us a big favour there – it was the biggest movie set ever. I was aware of an amazing use of language, and there did seem to be a sense that it could have been put on the stage. If theatre works, it’s because the language works, because you’re limited in terms of what you can physically put on a stage.

EC: Do you wish you’d read a few more scripts like this earlier in your career?

CF: It would be a waste of my f***ing time wishing for things in the past. It would be nice, though, to read a few more things like this in the future. It sets the bar fairly high.

EC: Martin, is there any sense of extra gratification for you, having left school at 16, and being an autodidact, to have had this incredible run in British theatre, then the Oscar, then a critical success for your first feature film?

MM: No, I got over all that a long time ago.

EC: Are the people of Bruges happy with your film, after you lined their streets with corpses?

MM: Yeah, apparently. I was a little bit worried that they would take what Colin’s character says about Bruges [that it’s a “shithole”] as what I, or the film, was saying. But we screened it for the local tourist board, and they loved it. It was a relief. They were so open with us that I wouldn’t like to feel we’d stabbed them in the back.

EC: Both your films are drenched in blood. Is the theme going to continue in future screenplays?

MM: Well, I don’t think of this one as being particularly drenched in blood. There are two or three specifically bloody moments, but most of the film isn’t like that. The things that are violent should stay with you.

CF: There is no random violence in the film. You see the consequences of violence. Everyone pays a price.

EC: Okay, well the film is drenched in red, at least ...

MM: Yeah, that’s true. The restaurant scene is all red, and the design is deep red. I like that. Mean Streets was quite like that, and all of the Powell and Pressburger films in the 1940s had that. It’s a great colour.

EC: Your next thing, I heard, might be a play?

MM: Possibly. I’m going to take a big break. The next thing I write will probably be a play, but I’ve got another film bubbling away in my head, too. I’ve got two film scripts ready to go, so if I’m going to do another one – another film – it will be that. But I don’t think I’m going to do another film for at least two years.

CF: C***. That’s me out of work. . . The script that you were going to give to the director before – is that something you’d like to direct if it came around again?

MM: Yeah. I’ll show it to you, actually. I don’t think it’s as good as In Bruges, but there’s something weirdly cool and strange about it.

CF: I might know a good actor for you . . .