Gleeful under gray skies: Brendan Gleeson, Martin McDonagh, and Colin Farrell.
Anyone who caught Berkeley Rep’s recent production of The Pillowman will be familiar with the dark, searching, yet weirdly witty and enthralling world of playwright Martin McDonagh. Strange to think that a London-born Irish writer who’s been so widely toasted as the stage’s unpredictable young turk has always wanted to work in film instead. Tellingly perhaps he’s been nominated for Tonys four times – for The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lonesome West, The Pillowman, and The Lieutenant of Inishmore – but never brought home the coveted door-stopper. Instead he won an Oscar in the Live Action Short Film category in 2005 for his Brendan Gleeson-starring debut short, Six Shooter. The great Gleeson also stars in McDonagh’s first feature, In Bruges, which opens in the Bay Area on Friday, Feb. 8, and won’t disappoint those hungry for yet another dose of the 37-year-old director-writer’s bleak humor and thoughtful digressions.
SFBG: So here you are – your first film and you’ve always wanted to make movies.
Martin McDonagh: Yeah, I did one short film first. It was always kind of a dream that I never thought I’d be able to fulfill as a working-class kid in London, so yeah, I got offered this kind of track with the plays, got some kind of degree of success from them, wrote a couple film scripts and had some people interested.
Blimey, I’m in a lot of movies right now: Colin Farrell.
I mean, I was kind of terrified going into it – not knowing if I’d be able to do it well, or if I’d be sort of breaking down in tears every morning. But, uh, it turned out good. I worked with Brendan Gleeson before, and I met Colin Farrell, and he was really into the script and was, y’know, interested in a new challenge, I guess, because it’s a different character than the ones he’s played before.
SFBG: Different from Alexander the Great.