The New Yorker Radio Hour - Martin McDonagh Talks with Patrick Radden Keefe

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

Martin McDonagh burst onto the London theatre scene as a young playwright in the nineteen-nineties. At one point, he had four plays running simultaneously on stages across London. But McDonagh also aspired to work in movies, and he eventually shifted his focus to directing films such as “In Bruges” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” “When you sit down to write something, how do you know if it’s a movie or a play?” the staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe asked McDonagh at The New Yorker Festival. “If it has four characters, and it’s set indoors, it’s a play,” McDonagh replied—“if it doesn’t have any donkeys or dogs.” McDonagh’s new film, “The Banshees of Inisherin,” starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, is his first feature set in Ireland, and it prominently features a donkey. “Banshees” traces the story of a friendship breaking apart in the beautiful, remote hills of the country’s west. “I just wanted this [movie] to be sort of plotless in a way,” McDonagh said. “Just to have the unravelling of this breakup be what the whole story was about.” The film is now nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.  This segment originally aired on October 21, 2022. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The Banshees of Inicheren, a bittersweet ode to the demise of an old friendship, is a major player at the Academy Awards this year. It's earned a total of nine nominations, including Best Actor, Best Picture, and Best Director for Martin McDunna. McDunna, who also wrote the film, has been consistently making original and thoughtful movies, like In Bruges, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. which have managed to connect with big audiences without ever sacrificing his unique voice and perspective on the world.

The Banshees of Inneshaeran is set in 1923, and it takes place in the remote hills of a fictional island west of Ireland. It's a showcase for its lead actors, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason. It's also a master class in screenwriting. Now, I'm sitting here next year, and if you're going back inside, I'm following you inside, and if you're going home, I'm following you there too. Now, if I've done something to you, just tell me what I've done to you. And if I've said something to you, maybe I said something when I was drunk and I've forgotten it.

But I don't think I said something when I was drunk and I've forgotten it. But if I did, then tell me what it was. And I'll say sorry for that too, Colin. With all my heart, I'll say sorry. Just stop running away from me like some fool of a moody school child. But you didn't say anything to me. And you didn't do anything to me. Well, that's what I was thinking, like.

I just don't like you no more. You do like me. I don't. You like me yesterday? Oh, did I, yeah? I thought you did. Martin McDonough spoke to New Yorker staff writer Patrick Raddenkeef at the New Yorker Festival last year.

It's kind of a breakup movie. That's all it is for me. I mean, that's definitely the starting point of it to be as truthful to the sadness, I suppose, of a horrible breakup. where you can kind of understand both sides in it. I think that was the balance that I think you're naturally on Colin Farrell's side, definitely to begin with, and even in the script writing stage.

But the trick, not the trick, but the thing to get right was to see as much of the story from Brendan Gleason's point of view to. And was that what it was from the original conception then? Yeah. There was an earlier version of it just a few years before where, It didn't quite, it went to a plotty kind of stupid, shitty place. No, really. But I just wanted this to be sort of plotless in a way,

just to have the unraveling of this breakup be what the whole story was about. Did you write the, having worked with these two actors before in Bruges, I mean, a very, very different movie, and yet one in which their dynamic is everything in the way that it is here. Did you write this one with them in mind? Oh, yeah, very much so. We've sort of been wanting to get together in the 14, 14 years since we made that. It hasn't quite happened.

Obviously, I worked with Colin again for seven psychopaths, but I'd stayed friends with both of them. We always see each other if we're in each other's countries, and they've remained great friends. So we always hoped that something like this would come about. I've been very lazy about it And I'm You got around to it When you got around to it You got around to it

Yeah The fear was Because you know We all loved in Bruges And we love how much people Love Imbruch But when you get in the team back together You don't want to

Fuck up That love You know You don't want to Do something that's lesser You know You can do something I hope we've done something

That's stranger But definitely It's something that isn't Not as good Yeah. And there's also, I mean, there's an aspect, it seemed to me, there's a kind of fable quality to the story. And I want to talk about Ireland. So, I mean, because you're a Londoner, but grew up with Irish parents and spent time in Ireland during the summers when you're growing up. And your parents live there now, right? Not far from where the film was made. And so much of your work has taken place in Ireland. And yet in the plays, I think there's sometimes also this, like, slightly fable kind of fairy tale quality. And I guess I just wondered, is the place where these stories tick, is it a real place? Or is it a kind of Ireland of the Mind?

I wonder about your relationship to... I think it's a sort of theatrical Irish place. You know, this island doesn't actually exist. But obviously, the Civil War was a real thing and did... It is a very interesting part of the backdrop. So that takes away a little bit from the fable quality. But I think if you set anything 100 years ago and lean into mysticism and banshees and folklore and all that stuff,

it's going to have some semblance of that kind of thing. And do you ever feel, I mean, I hope you'll take this question in the right way because I'm a New Yorker who wrote a book about Ireland myself. But do you ever feel like there's a trespass or there's a license that you're taking? Is that something you're totally untroubled by? or is it something that you're kind of mindful of at all? I'm in untroubled by it until the Irish reviews come in. Then things get troubling.

But no, I mean, it's like more than just some holidays as a kid. It's like we grew up in London. All of the families around us were Irish. And so you'd hear Irish music blaring from each sides of our little area where we grew up. Mom and dad were very proud to be Irish. you know, encourage it in us almost too much. But we'd go for Christmases. Our grandparents were still alive in Sligo at that time.

So as a child, it felt like we were half the year there and half the year in London. Obviously, La accent is very London, but London Irish is probably a good way to describe me. I don't have a British passport, which is probably a good move these days. I've only had an Irish one. But I've also always sort of been anti-national,

and anti-patriotic and all those things. So the whole Irish-English thing, I kind of find a bit boring these things. Yeah. That makes one of us. I read somewhere that the, that you first, that it was kind of a breakthrough for you as a writer

with plays initially that you thought about the way in which your father and your uncle maybe spoke. that there was a sort of idiom that you stumbled upon. And in the way that, you know, I mean, I would imagine in the way that for Mammett or Pinter, they kind of discovered a register in an idiom that that unlocked something. Exactly. In fact, Pinter and Mammett were sort of the two big influences and sort of too much of an influence,

in fact, because all of the stuff I was attempting to right then was sort of English or American-based and very much sort of rip-offs of, you know, the birthday party or American Buffalo to a degree. And it was only once I, but I knew I wanted. to have dialogue be more theatrical than it is in real life. And I thought those were the best two people around who were doing that. But it was when I tried to do that in a West of Ireland context, that things did open up and allowed the dialogue and the characters even to be a bit more poetic and heightened

than the everyday London kind of stuff that I was trying to do. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. I wanted to ask you, because you've had this fascinating career where you started with plays and then moved into film and have continued to do both. But I went back and I started reading these interviews that you did early in your career, 25 years ago. You suddenly burst onto the scene, this young guy in his 20s.

You'd written seven plays in less than a year and just came out of nowhere. And there were these amazing interviews where you would talk to people who were clearly filled with a kind of wonder and envy and they would say like, you know, you're the first person since Shakespeare to have four shows simultaneously in London. Like, how do you do it? And your reaction was always,

eh, theater's fine. What I really want to do is get into movies. And you could feel they were so kind of crestfallen. I feel terrible because I know Fentine O'Toole, but I have to quote you this. This is you and Fenton O'Toole in 1998 for Bomb Magazine. You said,

I would be unhappy if I wrote 90 good plays and didn't make a good film. But if I made one good film, if I made one brilliant film, one really, really good film, I'd be happy. One would be enough. And then you say, like, clearly you're kind of,

you're kind of, no, what I love is that, as Fenton, who's there, and he's, like, he's celebrating your, your, you know, budding career as a playwright. Clearly, there was something going on on his face because you then say, you really love theater, maybe, to him.

And Fenton says, I do. Oh, sweet Finton. And his love of theatre. Here's exactly, right? So here's what I wondered, is I wonder a couple of things. I mean, one is when you sit down to write something, how do you know if it's a movie or a play? If it's got four characters and it's inside, it's a plate.

And if it doesn't have any donkeys or dogs, cats, it could go away. manage. Yeah, yeah. And you said to The Guardian recently that you may want to devote the remainder of your career, chiefly to films. Well, it's something, weirdly, it kind of, it's, I don't know if it's just because Brendan Gleason's character is on my mind, but definitely during COVID, one does, you know, think of time passing and how much time you've got left. and I've sort of discovered as years gone by

that it takes as much time or longer to do a play to get it on you know off West End in London to West End to off Broadway to hear that will be like four four years or so whereas you know we've made this last year and it's out now so to take care of a play

from start to finish does you know take a similar round of time I do feel like you know the plays that we got good like 25 years ago, you can't see them. They're all gone forever. And there's a sadness to that, I feel. And as the years go, I always, as much as I used to slide plays off, I do love them if they're done my way.

No, if they're done in a certain way, you know, Pinter's way or early mammoth way or whatever. But now I'm not going to swear off plays because if I get a good play idea, I'll jump into it. But if I'm seriously thinking about if you, you know, you've got 20 years, 30 years left, you know, a film every couple of years is going to last more than I play well. How do you decide on the setting of your movies and how do you do the research? Well, for this one, certainly, my parents lived just across the bay from the Aran Islands. And that whole area of the West, Connemara, up through Sligo and Mayo, and all the way down to Cork and Kerry, the whole West is, I sound like the Irish tourist board now too.

But it is the most beautiful part of the country, I think. And I always wanted to set something there and capture the beauty of it with three billboards. Also it was to try and capture almost an old. American small town with like a street that's kind of both sides close together and you know one horse sort of town so location is

always and obviously Bruges was a character I do like the locations to be characters in the movies as much as possible when you watch the film for the first time did you find it sadder or more hopeful than you originally

anticipated I think I was always trying to make it as sad as possible once it's finished I don't think I've got enough distance to know where it lies right now maybe I'll ask people afterwards who actually show our hands who is going to be sad or hopeful who think it's a sad film oh shit

mission accomplished any hope out there Oh, wow. Okay. So that's... I guess it's a sad film. We're definitely not going to win the Oscar. Thank you so much, Martin, for coming.

Thank you to all of you. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Good night. Staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe with Martin McDonough at last year's New Yorker Festival. The Banshees of Innesharan has been nominated for nine Academy Awards,

including best original screenplay and best director for Martin McDonough. That's it for this episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour. Thank you for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part

by the Cherina Endowment Fund.