WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1280 - Kenneth Branagh

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Kenneth Branagh had a lot on his mind when making the movie Belfast, a film based on his own childhood. He thought mostly about loss. Loss of family, loss of where you come from, loss of innocence. As Kenneth tells Marc, he's been thinking about loss a lot lately and figuring out how to strike a balance between heartbreaking and heartwarming. Marc and Kenneth also talk about the importance of visiting the graves of people you admire, what discovering Shakespeare did for Kenneth at a young age, why he might be ready to play King Lear, and why he worries about something actors call The Bleed. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too.

Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing.

With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast. Welcome to it.

It's quite a ride today. I gotta be honest with you. I gotta be honest with you. How are you? Are you okay? Really, buckle up, because this episode, it was surprising to me. It was surprising. It's Kenneth Branagh, alright? He's on the show, okay? He wrote and directed this new movie, Belfast, which is a semi autobiographical coming of age movie about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Did you know that? I didn't know that. I have to be honest with you. I had prejudged Mr. Branagh not knowing anything over my life. Mr. Branagh, not knowing anything over my life. I'm not talking about today. I'm not talking about when I talk to him. I'm talking about my life. Over my life, I decided at some point, probably very near the start of once we started to know about Kenneth Branagh, that he was sort of a highfalutin dude, like maybe a snobby kind of earnest. I don't know what I thought, but it had something to do with shakespeare it had something to do with you know his his seeming demeanor and maybe as a younger man he was different but i had no idea he was this irish

kid from from the from the you know the bad part of town it wasn't really the bad part of town just a poor neighbor but i had no idea about any of that stuff but that that wasn't what shifted things i mean what shifted things was was just like he got here we had a few exchanges but i just didn't know anything about him really and we got into it and it was a a an exchange of ideas and feelings and we moved through things and there was moments during this show where he was acting stuff out and i was watching him act it out and it was almost shakespearean we talked about you know whether or not he should do lear yeah i'm advising kenneth brenna on on whether he should do lear i don't know what what do i know if he's going to take my advice but what do i know

in general and i didn't make him do shakespeare but i felt the shakes i i felt the bard's presence and i'm not a shakespeare guy but it was the general pace excitement i mean i thought i was on a ride with this dude and i didn't expect that at all you know sometimes i i get in my seat and i and and people sit across from me. I have no idea what's going to happen. I just found this one kind of electric. Yeah. I had no experience of him talking to anybody. I didn't watch anything. Didn't know anything.

Just saw the few movies I've seen. Knew what he looked like. Had a sense. Just I watched Belfast, which you can see now. And I wrote it out. I wrote it out with this guy and again not unlike when uh sir ian mckellen did shakespeare to my face because i was being like you know uh i was i was like no i don't know is shakespeare that good you should go listen to that

ian mckellen did shakespeare sir ian mckellen did shakespeare to my face a kind of off the is Shakespeare that good you should go listen to that Ian McKellen did Shakespeare sorry McKellen did Shakespeare to my face a kind of off the beaten path Shakespeare the Sir Thomas Sir Thomas More a monologue from that about immigrants to my face and I got it it it sunk in he delivered it I understood it and I knew why it was amazing. I think I've always known why it's amazing. But not unlike lyrics to music or rap lyrics or lyrics in general, I have a hard time listening to them all.

After a certain point, it's like I can't follow. I can't follow. I can listen to plain talk, but sort of anything with a groove with pentameter with a lot of adjectives like i sort of get lost a plus b equals c i can get that arc but with shakespeare and some rap tunes i'm like wow man i can't follow it i'm tired my brain hurts i don't know. I enjoy the music, though. I enjoy the actor. I like watching the actor talk. I like hearing the beats. But again, I had a fairly

in-depth conversation about Shakespeare with one of the great Shakespearean actors of all time. And I felt understood and I felt like he understood me. And I had some reasonable things to say, being the dolt that I am when it comes to Shakespeare. I don't know if it's some ADHD. I don't know what it is. But I have a hard time with scripts. In terms of like, where is this guy going? What's the stage direction? Where are we now?

What happened in between this? I just can't hold it in my head. I can't see it in the same way I can see it when it's described in a book. It's really an obstacle for me and my excuse for not being able to lock in with Shakespeare. The stage direction problem. That's my issue right there. I get lost because of the stage direction. Breakneck pace coming at you. Kenneth Branagh on a manic tear. And the emotions when he talked about his father. Like he was acting it out right here. Like a Shakespearean man. And he did some stuff, I believe.

I think he did some stuff i believe i think he did some stuff from from lear gave him some advice about you know whether he should wait to do lear i'm the guy to ask if any of you shakespearean actors are wondering how long to wait to do lear kenneth branagh asked me so maybe you should ax me too. Ax me anything about Shakespeare. And I'll bullshit right through it. I do understand the scope. It's all in there.

I know it's all in there. It's like Visions of Joanna by Bob Dylan. Everything's in there. He didn't need to do any more after that. And you can parse it all you want. It's all right, Ma. I'm only bleeding. It's all in there.

It's all in there. Shakespeare did a lot. Dylan did a lot. I don't know why I'm comparing the two all of a sudden out of nowhere. I'm just saying. There are some things that contain it all. And that thing will evolve with you. As you get older. Any of the great art.

Will grow with you. As your eyes get old. You will see it in new ways. It's part of life. As your eyes get old. The light will shine through the art. That has carried you through your entire life. It will always be there for you. It evolve with you it will reveal itself as you get older it will

reveal itself in new ways that bring a new way to look at things as you as you start to shuffle off this mortal coil art will be there for you the music you love the movies you love the theater you love the poems you love the literature you love the paintings as you shuffle off this mortal coil art will be there for you and you should keep it with you stay connected to it it's brain blood it's brain food i've said it before art should punch you in the brain and it should stay punched that's the beautiful trauma of art is how it impacts you and also again to say thank you to all the people that came to see me at town hall last saturday i appreciate your support i appreciate you coming out it was great to see me at town hall last Saturday. I appreciate your support. I appreciate you coming out.

It was great to see everybody. It was a special show in that it'll never happen again. Not unlike many of my shows. Stuff happened there that will never happen again. Big chunks of stuff. I like that. That's the only thing that makes it worthwhile for me. Is when a big chunk of stuff happens.

I don't know where it came from. I don't know why it happened. I don't know who delivered it to my brain, but I like to think that if my brain is punch drunk from art, that maybe sometimes I stutter out some pretty good shit that I have no control over. It's the gift. It's the portal being opened. It's the keeping an open mind and keeping a little fire in there. I got fire because I'm unresolved. I'm an unresolved person. I don't know what's going to give me closure or peace or stop me from doing dumb shit. But I talked to Kenneth Branagh about life and we're going to talk about it.

You're going to hear it. And we're going to talk about the new film, Belfast, that he wrote and directed. And it's a beautiful movie. Belfast is now playing in theaters. It's kind of beautifully constructed. Anyway, we'll talk about it. All right. Strap in.

This is me and Kenneth Bradford. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means.

I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance.

Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your life. Pull it in like you're in show business. You can move it to your... This is brilliant. I just like it. No, I'm loving it.

I'm loving the multi-dimensional movement possibilities of this. It's making me very excited. But it's unusually weighted, I would say. How's that? I've got to tighten it up. It's fine with me. No, are you loving it? Yeah, yeah.

Don't they have this kind of stuff at the BBC? Not not really not really bbc you bring your own in come on so but you don't live here at all do you i don't live here though you don't have a place here or nothing no no no i have one um uh sort of more or less two-year period uh about a decade ago i lived down in manhattan, and that was my extended period. I loved it. I must say I absolutely loved it. Yeah? Yeah, I did. What year was that?

We came at the beginning of 2009. We were making Thor for Marvel. Oh, so that wasn't long ago. No, no, no. Yeah, yeah. But we really liked it. My wife really liked it. Thor with Taika?

No, no, no. I directed the first one so you directed the first yeah absolutely oh was there is there resentment against taika deep-seated resentment i didn't get there's now 15 of the thors aren't there there's like i don't know thor 22 now not my world man i haven't seen any of them well it's listen it's all ahead of you you've got exciting exciting, exciting things to come. I mean, that's the box set of all box sets, the MCU. Oh, yeah. I think I'll do it as I'm going out. When I'm bedridden with whatever gets me, I'll go, maybe it's time. But then what if you want to go back and see things again?

I know. Don't leave it too late, my friend. You're right. There's Easter eggs in there that you're going to really enjoy. I've spoken out publicly against it. Have you? You're manning the barricades against the MCU. Yes, I've been verbal against the consolidation of the entertainment.

Why are we all being infantilized? You know what I'm talking about. You'll see. You'll put this beautiful movie about your childhood out there, and people are going to be like, no superheroes. Well, actually, there is a little Thor comic in there. I know, yeah. Which I did read

way back in Belfast, but you'd never been persuaded that there is a sort of greater depth or there's a sort of greater range of things that you might like might be found in there as well.

Yeah, I guess so. I guess so, but like I, and I'm sure I would enjoy some of them, but you know, I'd rather not. Yeah.

I mean, there's just, and I was in the Joker. I have one scene in the Joker with Robert De Niro, but that's DC. So mean, there's just, and I was in the Joker. I have one scene in the Joker with Robert De Niro, but that's DC. Oh, so that's proper work. Kind of. It's a rationalization.

But I mean, I wasn't going to, when Todd Phillips called me and said, do you want to do a scene with De Niro? I'm like, you know what? I'm not a comic book guy. Who did he say his name was again? Bob who? What would I have seen him in he's a famous guy so i've got my two lines of robert de niro and uh you know and i had to take the hit from the

marvel people like you know being a hypocrite i'll take it well yeah exactly well i did a film with robert de niro years ago and john cleese was in it frankenstein oh yeah yeah john cleese insisted on calling him a robert dennero for the whole of the show he played the monster right he did he did it was a good it was a good monster yeah i thought he was a human monster yeah yeah he brought a humanity to it i think he did yeah and how did you find how did you find to working with him he's a nice guy he's a quiet guy you know he's a quiet guy seems like the kind of guy that's probably got a group of friends where he cuts loose around but

it's not going to be you yeah well that's yeah that's interesting did you and yeah that people i mean are you like that out and out in the world i mean i know you have your personality they might say but do you is there a little group you go well this is the real me this is the only me i think like i'm pretty uh i'm pretty relatively transparent in all of my endeavors and to better for better, for worse. You know, if you are who you are, wherever you are, then people, when they go, like when they feel like they know you, they kind of do. Yeah. But then what about when you want to get away and just sort of is there a sort of secret bit of yourself? I mean, I admire and like comedians enormously because I think it's it's I know you do many more things than this.

But yeah, but comedy, you you know it's such a sort of dangerous thing and I've always always I catch them in repose comedians and people who are very funny basically and I see the thousand yard stare just the sort of then the eyelids go they just go to a very secret place

then the sadness comes well I'd be tempted to say the sadness or the doubt but sometimes it's just like a preoccupation. Sometimes maybe it's just thinking I want to think about the next funny thing. I don't know. Yeah, well, sure, sure. It's like they're like, all right, I did my hustle. I've made my money for tonight.

Now I can crawl back into my hole. I've asked you a question about that because what do you do? Maybe it's an obvious question. about that because the what do you do maybe it's an obvious question but when it has gone well not well but particularly when it's not gone well do you how long do you obsess or analyze a little a lot not at all because you're gonna do it again yeah now well i mean that's changed over the years i think i was fueled by the uh the the constant self-flagellation for like i wouldn't i wouldn't know if it went well oh really okay sure just looking for stuff oh yeah yeah you know like now like as you i think as you get more professional in whatever you do

you can sort of you know take it apart how you're going to take it apart right so like you know if it didn't work out for the entire show you got to figure out well that couldn't be my fault yeah yeah exactly yeah always the right answer i think always the right answer yeah this whole idea that there are no bad audiences that can go fuck itself i don't know i don't know who made that up but you've been on stage enough to know like this one's bad oh god yeah when they just aren't they did that you really want you think why don't why you spent your money doing this because really there must have been but there must have been better better reasons to do this and i think theater has got to be the hard i mean look but comedy well i know when they're they're bad and i know when they're just not they don't have the energy

you can't bring them all together what are you going to do so as time goes on you realize the professional liabilities that you know you may not be responsible for and you don't take it as personally do you get out quickly if you know it's like going badly do you go right i'm cutting 20 minutes no you kind of got to do your job don't you i'm one of these people that like if it's going bad i might just lean into it and sit up there for a while yeah yeah because like i don't want if if they're if they can leave saying i tried yes yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like do you fess them out with it do you say you do you do does the story become why it's not working kind of sure i'm not afraid to do that some of the old

jewish guys would say that's unprofessional. You should just take the hit, suck it up and do your best. I just remember one time I did that in front of Freddie Roman, you know, sort of a kind of one of the mid-level Borscht Belt guys. He's like, you never bring you don't draw attention to the bombing. And I'm like, really? I was saving face. I don't know. Who are you? who are you like yeah dude and do you when you when that goes well when the attention to the bombing gets some good material do you say right i'm gonna take those three lines i'm putting those in the back pocket and i'll have that sure i think over escape hatch stuff with repetition you know like you you kind of develop lines that i mean i don't use any you know hack lines but like there's one i'm using right now because like i'm fluctuating i'm doing this new hour hour and a half and but there's one chunk of it that's fairly you know political and a little in your face and a little you know intense and then i at towards the end of it i go look if you don't like this tone it's a character i'm working on it's uh it's called me half the time

so i think i could use that anytime no this is good this is good you never did stand up uh no no and i uh well i've always been fascinated by i always like to go and i was uh for me it's it's it's very very scary i get vicarious thrills and chills and spills you friends with any uh yes and i uh my admiration for the ones who the ones particularly in any gig but the ones who hold the big gig and the big audiences, that seems to me terrifying. You're talking earlier on about, you know, theater being tough. But, of course, if you're in a play and it's not going well, you can just doggedly get to the end and you can live with their indifference. But just that aching, aching, you know, tumbleweed of, fuck, it's not, it isn't, they're not laughing.

That's, you know, that's when i want to run for the hills and when they stay yeah you know whether it's through belligerence or just no i'm doing the material regardless well yeah it's pretty exciting you know but that moment is terrifying it's just so sweaty you're up there with them yeah that moment when you're dying you're like i'm really alone oh yeah yeah it's kind of a freeing horrible moment when you're tanking and you just delivered something that should have gotten a laugh and there's nothing. It's not just silence. There's a suction to it. There's a vacuum to it.

Yeah. And you're just sort of like, they're just waiting. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm supposed to do something. Now, that moment, it's sort of like, what a horribly beautiful loneliness this is. And I'm right here in front of everybody. I like that beautiful loneliness thing because there's also the, the it's a rhythmic thing as well isn't it when you haven't when somehow it's gone off it got missed it got missed and yeah and getting them back lassoing them back you're

gonna have to start all over again and you're already feeling discomfort boredom sure tip 10 teensy bit of aggression sure i'll go a full aggression sometimes yeah i just start like you know like uh i think it's gotten a little tempered over time and I don't think they take it as seriously, but I'll tell them to go fuck themselves. Let's, you know, let's do like, what's the matter with you? But usually it's just sort of like, I kind of get off on the idea that I think there's something to be said when you have a certain amount of self-belief that if they're not with you, it's like, and you know, it's not your fault.

Just keep going, man. Yes. You know, usually you're going to get like a handful of them yeah yeah yeah and then i about that yeah and then i'll just go like it's interesting that four of you left out of that out of 200 and i just i want you all to know that those people are right they're they're correct in this situation so don't look at them judgmentally look inside i like the keep going. I think that is such a simple but necessary. One foot in front of the other. Yeah, it makes you want to cry, man.

Yeah. It's just like. You mean in general or in comedy? In general. In comedy, in sport, I love it. It's effort. It's just that always makes me cry. Yeah.

It's just effort when it's just inglorious and no one else. They won't know until 30 years from now when they're running the video with the sappy music and everything. So, you know, he was great. And this was a wonderful moment in his life. You know, the one we didn't pay any attention to at all that broke him spiritually. Just that grit of people getting on with it. I love that.

Carl needs to do a bit about the introduction montage to the old Wide World of Sports show. You know, the victories, it was like the victories and the defeat. It was like, I don't know if it was Cosell, but it was at the beginning of the Wide World of Sports, which was a show, like a sports highlight show back in the day.

And they'd show guys winning, but there was this one shot of this guy doing a Nordic jump, the skis, and he just has the worst wipeout in the world. And he's sort of like, I'm sure this guy's happy this is on every week. It's like, Hans, Hans, you're on again. It's your bit.

Come and see. You know the bit when you break your face? Yeah. It's so funny. So comedy aside, well, I don't know. This movie's, I want to talk about Shakespeare though for a minute

because it was interesting. Like I watched the movie. I enjoyed the movie, the Belfast movie. Thank you. It was very good, the black and white thing. That's not always a surefire thing, but I thought you had a nice tone to it. I don't know what you shot it on or how that worked, but...

We shot it digitally. I mean, we used old-fashioned lenses. We actually used the anamorphic lenses that we used on our Shakespeare film of Hamlet years ago. That was the big one for you. Yes, it was. It was. And actually, those lenses were used in Lawrence of Arabia, you know, 35 years. David Leans lenses? Yeah. You got

a Leans guy to get you the lenses? I got the Leans lens. I got the lens lens. You try saying that. We made it into a speech exercise. Leans lenses. But yeah, the Shakespeare thing, like, and I, what's interesting about watching this movie Belfast and knowing it's about you and that you made it, it's sort of like at the end of it when you leave to london as a kid there's part of me it's like then what happened yeah like that kid doesn't look like he's gonna learn shakespeare bet he doesn't yeah yeah but my parents i'd know i mean we didn't have i guess you i don't know if he's we made well i guess we do make a point of it in the in the thing there weren't any books in the house you know now this is not too stupid people remotely but they just they got all you know sort of all culture came in uh orally and all they read

newspapers uh but um or we went to the library i remember the first book i ever bought i bought a book in woolworths yeah reading which is where i moved to about 40 miles outside london right uh 25 pence or five shillings um so quite a bit of my um pocket money bringing it back and my father being really shocked he said well what do you want to buy that for what are you going to do with it you read it now yeah yeah right now what are we doing yeah exactly now what we do with it i said well we keep it on the show so they got libraries for that why would you why would we pay taxes for you to go and borrow them a library you can take them back and you won't get you know get stuck on. Where are we going to put them? Well, maybe we can get a bookcase.

It was like a mystery, five-person mystery, the Lone Pine Adventures. It was like just a gang, you know. Like a Hardy Boys kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. A kid's book. Exactly. Well, that's interesting.

It seems like, you know, taxes seems to play a very heavy and important part in your childhood. There's not a scene in this fucking movie where taxes aren't involved. Well, the arrival, the arrival of the brown envelope was a scary thing. You know, my father worked in the building trade and there was something in Ireland at that time called a lump, which was a sort of system for, in theory, helping the difficult to account for, you know, groups of lads all over the country doing building projects and stuff. And it wasn't easy pre-digital age. Some international as well, right? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the idea was that people paid their taxes appropriately, but in practice, you know, it was a little more fluid than that. Right. And he got caught out a

couple of times with, you know, the contention that he had not been, you know, entirely accurate with the way he'd filed things. Anyway, they got him. They got him. And this thing, you know, made for quite the household issue. Yeah. Because it seemed like, you know, he was never done paying with taxes. But it was all very interesting to me in that, you know, I'm an American and, you know, I'm not dumb. But, you know, historical stuff, I don't know. You know, I'm not dumb but you know historical stuff i don't know

you know i don't i don't know how the trouble started i don't know what that looked like you know i i love ireland i never shut up about moving there i don't know why i don't i don't know why i think they're going to embrace the aggravated jew but but there's part of me that thinks it's such a beautiful country but i know nothing of the history what is it then that attracts you is it that it's green is that they have lovely music is that it's a small island is it the storytellers what is it i just like the weight of it i'm not sure you know there there's a greenness to it but there's also an integrity to the people and there there's something that is so symbiotic between the people and the land and what my my notion of of the uh poetry and history of the place you know

these are these are heavy cats. Yeah, yeah. You know, but they've kind of got a fairly good disposition around it. Yeah, yeah. Now, what do you feel about the thing in Ireland that always strikes me is that I'm with you on all those things and I find it beautiful, but also it's a small island and there are, you know,

great cities, Dublin, Belfast, to name but two, but they can kill you with kindness. You know, it can be very, it's something we say in the film about, you know, as she says, we know everybody in every house and every street, you know, whether we like it or not. I like it. Some people do, some people don't. As an aggravated Jew, do you like being in a world where sort of everybody

knows your business, as it were? Oh, I don't know. Like, I don't know if I was there long enough for that. So, like, these are reasons why I haven't moved there. Very good reasons, I think. You know, I talked to Flanagan over at Largo. He runs a club here. And he's Irish.

And, like, he's like, don't, don't, don't buy a house there. He's like, you know, he said that, what's his name? Riley, John C. Riley bought a place there down by Cork. And he's still a Yank man. Yeah. He's like, I'm Irish. I'm like, no, you're not. Yeah.

Well, there's something. The Americans particularly respond to their Irish heritage, though, don't they? I guess so. Seems deep seated. Yeah. You know what? What I did notice about Ireland is I spent a lot of years when I started out doing comedy in Boston.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the Boston Irish used to scare the shit out of me. Really? Yeah, because they're hardened you know mean people they the people the irish that came to america and cut their path here that's rough stuff man they're tough guys yeah they're tough guys and then you go to ireland and you see guys that look exactly like them like oh god i'm in trouble hey how you know like what the hell's going on here oh this is what they're really like how this is the indigenous Irish attitude. And were they like times 10 Boston Irish or were they divided by 10? Who was the toughest, the real McCoy or the ones who'd come over?

No, the real McCoy, they're in their environment. Their burden is their history. Yeah. Whereas like, right, I think that in america the burden was like you know fuck with us yeah yeah you know you know we we came here and you shit on us and now this is our turn yeah yeah so you're like all right all right man okay i'm good you know if you're irish would you would you give yourself a new name defense i can just flip a letter my my last name is maron so if i just throw the o and the a you know switch them switch them up? Moran. America or Moran.

Moran. Moran. Yeah, it's Irish, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, very. In the movie, like this is really your life. Well, it's lots of incidents from my early experience, yeah, and it was basically around going back to visit this time where violence erupted. It came to our street.

It came to many streets. What year is that? That was 1969, August of 1969. That's when it all started? Well, it all started in our street. The civil rights movement that had been part of what was sort of, you know, going around the world, actually riots in Paris in 68 over here, Summer of Love and everything, a lot of social political movement, a lot of drugs, et cetera, et cetera etc and a sense of uh kind of cultural shifts

and everything was bursting out into the street violence was on the streets and it came to our it came to us in in august of 1969 in north belfast right and this you know the film is about the story of what happened from the moment we realized that was going to be a big deep divisive unsettled time to the moment when we decided do you do you uh move do you change or perish oh in terms of once the the catholic purge happened well after that it wasn't just a catholic purge although that effectively completely reordered our street and how you know how we live so that all that stuff that happened on your street, the barricade. Yeah, new lines drawn out of what were civil rights issues that became moved into new allegiances inside historically existing organizations. And it was that the period that we experienced was more of a, at least to the nine-year-old boy that I try and see the picture through the eyes of, was more of sort of wild wild west scenario kind of free for all where at the beginning of that period some of the people who look to fill

like miniature power vacuums yeah just in in the local streets sure suddenly you know tin pot hitlers as it might be yeah who basically who weren't necessarily anything to do with political organizations and who sometimes had you know grouses or you know kind of grudges against people who um were already there there was a moment before in a way that the struggle became absolutely defined politically it became much more opportunistic um in terms of um local uh yeah yeah opportunities power plays and uh and yeah and there was and for a while of course there's a big question mark about are these people coming back the catholic displacement was the biggest displacement of people in europe in a single city since the second world war and that was 1969

1970 like that's one of those things historically you know where we talk about things being not that long ago yeah uh whether it's you know the holocaust the armenian genocide slavery what you know voting rights in ireland mean, the idea that they're pushing Catholics out in 1970. I mean, and also it's relevant. That's the other thing that really dawned on me is that when you're really talking about domestic terrorism, which is something we're dealing with here in a profound way, that some of these issues resonate. Yeah. Basically, the polarizing element of the decision, the invitation, this idea that if you're not with us, you're against us.

It's now time to join a tribe. You may have informally been a part of it. I would call us nominally Protestant, and I'd say the Catholics on our street were nominally Catholic in as much as it provided a sort of structural identity, but it didn't stop any of the kind of normal interplay there were some things that we were you know fascinated by on the other side but we basically got on we basically got on and then a line was drawn that says well you're not allowed to get on you're not allowed to get on we'll make it very difficult for you

to get on you'll have to be uh an outspoken independent if you want to do that and then but still while we were there it was still people the the battle lines hadn't quite been drawn and i think that's part of what underpins the movie is that my parents were trying to understand and analyze whether um this was this was one of the few times when you could get out basically and also like it was the idea that like you know how do you know when to leave yeah yeah i mean you know there's a lot of people that said, like, you know, sometimes I ask it. Yeah. You know, like, you know, like when you think about the Germany. Yes. It's like some people like it'll be OK. This Hitler's not terrible. So but but what happened in the film was really that, you know, that your father's or the character of the father, you know, is in this, you know, this situation where he, you know, he, you know, reacts to violence and does what he has to do. And then the threat of it is going to hang over him. Sure. And also there's an economic opportunity, which might be the tipping point. The real

tipping point for us was something that really happened, which was I got involved sort of ad hoc, as I recall, as I remember anyway anyway it was literally being dragged into a crowd and then carried along by a crowd to what turned out to be the looting of a shop so it's a supermarket very near us and that happened and that happened for sure that happened and when the crazy thing that happened was having gone in there and feeling i what do you do i felt like i had to do something and if people around are grabbing things they knew what they were doing i had not been in a looting before so right and you were like nine i was nine so i'm trying to work out what do you do i felt like i had to do something you know people around are grabbing things they knew what they were doing i had not been in a looting before so right and you were like nine i was nine so i'm trying to work out what do you do so i you know some bit of me was mentally going oh this is

where the young buck the young person of the tribe goes out and brings back an antelope or something much meat for winter right and instead i i said i could get a family pack of washing powder because i thought well that seems sensible i couldn't even be a proper sort of looter yeah i didn't I didn't go for what I get like half a dozen bars of chocolate you know yeah but I bring that back and I swear to god I couldn't even get the door open she saw my mother just told me she knew what she knew what was happening yeah she came after me she came after me she caught me up the street and just dragged me straight back and we went back into that supermarket that was the tipping point tipping point because after that she realized that she just she just got caught up in the madness that this whatever this adrenalized furious mob activity uh was was doing to us all suddenly she was back in a place where we were i

mean guns were being fired you know the stones glass right it was dangerous and um and she was out of control we were out of control and that i think for her was the was the the tipping point because if it could happen then it could happen again she's just about to be pregnant with my sister or she just was little did we know and so uh that the volatility basically that volatility and your dad had the the offer for the job yes he had the offer for a job no nobody really wanted to go we had that we had the big extended family we had we had the the sort of it takes a village to raise a child idea we lived it whether we liked it or not around the block like your grandfather was there yeah and everybody but we knew everybody we knew everybody

in the street you just you just did you just did and and the thing that i remember so clearly about that time was that i i you couldn't get lost we were going to football matches i played football for the school you'd go to the other side ofast. You're coming back on a bus on your own. You know, there was no school runs. There was no being, you know, we were walking to school when we were five years old through the park, you know, and on our own, and this was completely normal, you know, because if anything had happened to you, like 50 people would go,

would shout, and your mom would know about it in like, you know, in 30 seconds. And that was pre-digital, pre-phones and stuff. I thought you captured that really well. I think the neighborhood element and also the tone of the beginning of the strain, the family strain. Then the music was really nice. A lot of sort of Irish pop songs. Yeah, yeah, Mr. Van Morrison.

Sure, a little bit. You got to do that, right? Yeah, he's a Belfastfast boy he calls himself a corner boy you know he grew up on the street and he when i was uh at this age we all i knew was there was a guy called van morrison who was one of ours who just had a hit with a hit it was like a like a two-year chart success with astral weeks you know was which he'd written that's great 25 26 great it's a great album. Yeah, it is, with Belfast characters in it also. So he had taken to the world characters like Madam George from the streets of Belfast.

Yeah, amazing. Swim, Slow, Slider, I love that one, that last one. It's just sad. I don't even know why it's sad. I don't even know what's going on in the song, but it's sad. Well, he always went his own way. He always goes his own way. I remember at like 13, 14, 15, hearing uh rave on john dunn i couldn't

believe it so rave said we were doing the metaphysical poets at school i didn't even know what metaphysical meant but sure we had to study them and john dunn was one of them and i knew that he had nothing to do with rock music or pop music yeah and here was van morrison in this kind of meditative introverted uh reverie this incantation of an elizabethan poet yeah from the guy from down our way um who who who was sort of was was was in the well within his own slipstream in his own celtic kind of twilight um and i i i was very drawn to the uh just the you know individual artistic journey i wouldn't have known to put it in those terms then but just this is a guy who always followed his own nose right and also like he's

like you know he's obviously getting something out of this thing i have to do and he has to do it we see was here about we were premiered the film at belfast last week and he was there and he was talking about touring he's saying i don't enjoy i don't enjoy performing at all he said but i have to do it i have to do it yeah i mean and he said it like it was no spin he was talking about touring. He said, no, I don't enjoy performing at all. He said, but I have to do it. I have to do it. I mean, and he said it like there was no spin. He was not being charming or listen to the quirky facts of my life. It was just had to be done. And you'll know if you've seen him.

Often people say, Christ, I went to see Van. And he literally never turned and faced us the whole of the show. He was just he turned away and he was in his own in his own you know relationship to the music he's still a weirdo yeah well he's still you know he's an individual he's highly individual and uh uh you know and and he's also experimented with all those kind of musical personalities as well do you did you know what a great muso you are and and do you do you um do you find you that that your musical personality has changed? In terms of what I like? Yeah, in terms of what you like, but also how you like to play and what you like to play.

Do you make yourself do that? Do you make yourself take those turns? For me, it's just like I'm no great player, but I think that if I can do it honestly, and that evolves, a certain confidence and what I get out of it and different tones and things. But with music that I listen to, there's still like the music's a magic thing because, you know, you have a lifetime relationship with it. And I think, I guess I'm imagining not unlike Shakespeare that, you know, whenever you approach these things that you love, either whether it be music or those plays, you know, as you

age, they evolve with you. Yes. So that is sort of the, that I think is the true essence of genius is that, you know as you age they evolve with you yes so that this sort of the the that i think is the true essence of of genius is that you know you can approach something that you're familiar with at different points in your life and find something totally different in them so do you find them with music that it's actually quite it's sort of it's a narrow field but you go deeper and deeper and deeper as i do like with van morrison like you know i went through a period for i'm not a huge van morrison fan because like he Morrison fan because he's kind of a lot to

deal with. But certainly Astral Weeks and some of the them stuff. I listen to that. I listened to Astral Weeks a lot. Not really that long ago when I sort of realized, well, this is the one. Yeah. How interesting. But I thought that in the film, like when you decided to do it in black and white and you kind of fade into the black and white from the beginning from modern Belfast

and then you pull out into modern Belfast. But in these memories, there's even a moment where it seems poignant and obviously intentional. And from your point of view as the child in the theater where you do sort of a fairly unusual close-up for the film of the actors yeah yeah like the i'm like i get it this is where he kind of realizes this is a thing well what i'll tell you what i realized was was how amazing i mean we

watched films uh big widescreen saturated technicolor films which would blue my mind with all the color yeah but that felt like going to the moon. When I first- The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang scene is very funny. Yeah. Well, it made a big difference to us. Sure. But when we went to see a live theater, in this case, the piece in the film is from Charles

Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Yeah. And I just couldn't believe that they were really on the stage. We could see, you could reach out and touch them. Right. So suddenly that was the beginning of going, well well if they're there and we're all in belfast but they're at the other side of this foot like yeah a little slow penny dropping maybe i could do that because i know i can't be in chitty chitty bang bang i know we can't go to

america i know you can't make films because i've been looking around the back of the telly to try and find where the little people live and they're not there and you prove that wrong exactly exactly so so it was like well there must be i guess these guys turn up don't they they arrive they've come to the same building as i have there was this slow dawning well that that's what's gettable that's what's maybe achievable not consciously then but it's a human undertaking yeah it's a human undertaking as opposed to flying to the moon which would be making films sure so but i thought, you know, all in all, that, you know, the moments you chose and the narrative you chose in the arc,

how long did you sort of like have to piece together the script to decide which of these, because it is a series of scenes that, you know, they seem, they're all continuous, but they almost seem unto themselves until you kind of go. Yeah. One thing that I absolutely told myself I would do is to follow my instinct about it.

So, you know, I've been involved with a lot of films, a lot of script development, where there's so much talk about conventional or unconventional structure. Yeah. A lot of story arcs and narratives and acts, three acts, five acts, whatever it is. Right, right. And, you know, you develop it trying to sort of deconstruct those things or you know perfect them yeah in this case i knew it was a memory piece i knew i wanted to go through with incidents so i did a sort of low-tech version of just endless cards with specific incidents right and i and i played around with where they might go and what might put it together an original draft of the of the screenplay had the

older buddy yeah he had him looking back it was a bit more like the structure of a film like cinema paradiso where at the beginning an older character finds out somebody was very important to him has passed away and he goes back to that town and revisits it and we go with him and we go into the past with him i tried that it didn't work for me in a way in a way i was kind of anti-structure i was anti-formality i was anti for me it was going to be something that just just had to satisfy me in some way and in a way back to the irishness we were talking about if it was uh whatever you know quasi poetic or whatever you might just call it if it was just if it was faintly stream of consciousness yeah that was going to be okay with me too if it was impressionistic if it was about waiting outside that girl's house or if it was about you know

food some scenes that got dropped from the movie the half things we had to eat yeah but um it was about it was about yeah the the memory and this thing that i read a line that the psychiatrist wrote about you know the facts of our lives the facts of our lives are less important than how we remember them so i felt coming into this you know i the facts of our lives are less important than how we remember them. So I felt coming into this, you know, I'm going to worry less about facts or structure, but I'm going to write down what I remember. I'm going to see if any of it goes together, if any of it falls together. And the modern structure that I tried to impose on it fell apart when it became clear that it was about understanding as a now 60-year-old guy,

an incident that happened when I was nine that I began to understand without being sort of tragic about it or sort of martyrish, had dominated the rest of my life. A relationship to a place where I felt so secure and leaving it, turning into something else across decades and decades. Amazing journeys. I don't know how i would have arrived at shakespeare if i had stayed there i don't know maybe i would have done in a different or better

or whatever way but although those journeys and those adventures i relish i felt that in a place that is so sort of dominated by a sense of your relationship to home ireland ireland has the relationship to home as a kind of building block of the DNA. And yet at the same time, nearly everybody from there ruptures it by leaving. Sure. And, you know, going all points north, south, east and west. And I'm one of those people. But the call of home in the Irish culture is so strong and so striking that in a way it took me until we went back to Belf you know the end of last week first night at the belfast film festival 1400 people watching this film together who all knew the story that i felt

like i had landed back where i knew i was yeah without getting all sentimental and and you know because i still sound different and i still been away and all the rest of it i still don't live there so how can i be saying this but they still still, they probably own you. They do own, they own this film now as well. Yeah. And it does own you. What's your relationship to home like that? Do you feel, do you feel? Well, I don't know that I have that same type of thing.

You know, because when I was a kid in New Jersey, my family was from Jersey. But I remember my grandmother. I remember that house. I remember feeling, you know, that community and all the relatives were around. And my family, my mom and dad moved to Alaska because my dad was in the service from New Jersey. So all of a sudden we're separated. We're in the ice cold. And then we moved to New Mexico. So there was, I don't know if there was a longing, but they always, I always stayed connected to Jersey and to that. But then my home became New Mexico. But I was talking to somebody else about it. Bill Pullman was here. You know, even the air in the place where you grew up like you know when you go back there it's integral to to your development yeah yeah you know the sense of the the ground you're walking walking on the tone the feel the smell of the the air i mean it's just very odd thing and what would what would like what would be the words that come to mind if you had three words that came to mind about the the new jersey mexico or new jersey

and new mexico i'd love to hear the difference well i think like the the words that come to mind for me about new jersey is is just you know my grandmother and uh you know like uh uh melon balls yeah and uh humidity yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and what about new mexico well new mexico well that was different just a you know a big sky. Just a big sky and a feeling of, I wouldn't say spiritual space, but an expanse that allowed my brain to feel sort of free. new mexico a little bit of work there a few times and i was very very i loved being there and big sky is exactly what i carry away from that and this feeling all i'm saying is that you you the power of environment oh yeah on the spirit you know is is tangible and there is a spectacular extreme example of a kind of expansion yeah i felt different things when i was down there i loved exploring there i loved it and i did some

pilgrimages down there up to taos new mexico dh lawrence uh uh sort of migrated there as if he did this sort of global search for a for a for an ideal community and then dennis hopper yeah exactly well everybody was looking but so that particular part of the world has something special but its space is unique i went to i went to Hopper's grave the last time I was there. I found it. It's in this strange little Mexican cemetery that looks like a parking lot. Interesting, yeah. And it's like one of these kind of like, you know, kind of very, like almost like rough kind of grave.

Yes, yeah, yeah. And people travel there to leave things. Yeah. But it's like a traditional kind of Mexicanican wooden cross no frills just there you had you got to look it up to find i went twice yeah i understand that and then people and it's like right it's off the beaten path and outside of taos and like and i just spent a few days in taos i was in a profound amount of uh grief and i was just like trying to you know know, kind of figure out how to ground myself. And I just went on hikes every day and it was stunning up there.

And I didn't spend much time there. I used to ski there when I was a kid. I went there to sit under the same tree as I saw D.H. Lawrence sit under when he was composing his book Mornings in New Mexico. Yeah. Mornings in Mexico. Yeah. And so there's a famous, he was outside a cabin that Mabel Dodge Lewin had provided for him. She was part of that Georgia O'Keeffe. Yeah. The mornings in Mexico. Yeah. And so there's a famous, he was outside a cabin that Mabel Dodge-Lewin

had provided for him. She was part of that Georgia O'Keeffe artistic community. With Stieglitz in them? Yeah. And that ritual of going to places like that,

that little while ago. It's so funny, you go for D.H. Lawrence, I go for Hopper. Well, they're the same, two mavericks. Sure, sure.

Two real mavericks and two controversialists. I mean, Lawrence was there partly because nobody else would have him. You know, he'd been chased out of Britain. He'd been accused of pornography with the Rainbow and Lady Chatterley's Lover later on became a great cause, Celebra. No, he was a restless guy, like I imagine Hopper was. Oh, my God. So talk about itchy feet.

He was a restless guy, like I imagine Hopper was. Oh, my God. So talk about itchy feet. So, I mean, you can do a world odyssey following Lawrence and trying to work out what he was trying to find in the countries that he went to to settle this unquiet heart. What did he find? Well, there he found sort of, you know, artistic companionship. He had a sort of patron. I think he was always looking for somebody to say Bert. Everybody called him Bert.

He's David Herbert Lawrence. Sure class guy, but very sort of ethereal, very poetic. And I guess he he wanted somebody who would let him get on with the work that he was doing, that he knew he was doing under the almost certain threat of early death because he was he was thin and tubercular and uh and he lived with that that kind of thing so to to i i felt going to taos that i i just i was in that world of it it reflects back on you your own searches for for peace of mind and here was somebody trying to find it for a minute in a beautiful picture it looked like he'd found it under this tree so i went to try to the source i wanted to go to the source of that and see if i felt different now i had a beautiful experience i don't know if i got any quieter in my own mind but it was a a beautiful thing to do i did it recently in england with the grave of thomas hardy the great novelist thomas hardy and again like you say you go to these you go to these

churchyards and i don't know maybe the universe works it out in both cases nobody was around i just i know you roll up in in a weird way you have your profound moment with d.h lawrence or thomas hardy and and it's uh i don't know it's it's very helpful in some weird way oh yeah i i mean i went to lowell to see the grave of jack kerouac yeah you know and then yeah for whatever that was worth but yeah there's a lot i would think i think so i i do think so but you. But you're taking your relationship to Kerouac there, aren't you? Sure. But this is a romantic idea, right?

It's a romantic idea to go and to have it. Because I've been in those situations where you're like, I want to feel this thing. Yes. Yeah, yeah. But ultimately, what you feel, if you let that feeling kind of play itself out, is loss. Yes, I would agree. And I would agree but but also processing that is good but you are also honoring you yes of course honoring this passion but you're not right but you're not going to be you're not going to become them no you're not going to become but there's part of you it's sort of like this will feed me i think

it does and i think you kind of kiss the hem of their spiritual garment okay and you say thank you i say you i think you think you are saying thank you. This movie is about sort of in a way honoring my parents, but without sort of self-righteousness or sort of po-facedness. I wanted to say to them and I wanted to say to the nine-year-old me, well done. Thank you very much. Very imperfect, but this simple phrase always rings with me. Very imperfect. But, you know, this simple phrase always rings with me.

You know, when you're in trouble or you're finding life difficult, you look at somebody who's annoying the bejesus out of you. You say, when you find a way of saying you are doing your best and so is everybody else. That's what you somehow have got to have in your mind. I wanted to go back and find out and understand that I was doing my best. My parents were doing the best because I think there's basically an enormous amount of guilt about having left you know what there's a scene in the film where the kid is crying on the sofa i don't want to leave belfast he didn't want to go for me that was also i don't want to go i don't want to grow up i don't want to accept exactly what you were just talking there which is the sort of center of this film loss how do we deal with how do we deal loss of identity loss of family loss of nation and then critically awfully loss of loved ones you know yeah you know how and he you know this this was the beginning of

wrenching us into this you know moment this crossover the moment if you like when you know that santa isn't real if christmas and santa is in your life um and so this idea that the grandparents just weren't weren't going to be around you know that as a way of organizing the human condition i wanted already to go god please there has to be another way of doing this doesn't there or can you please give me it can be in any avenue it could be religious it could be you give me an epiphany give me a vision sure tell me that i'll see him again sometimes yeah yeah or there'll be a place or that we can talk or or tell me how to understand what'll seem like trite remarks for a long time about but they'll be in

your heart you'll carry them with you everywhere i remember a friend of mine put his arms around me the morning after my father died and i was in a state of course and he said i was 46 or something you know and my mother had died two years previously and i remember my one of my dearest friends who'd driven me faster than any car he drove me and my wife when they got the call we'd just been at the hospital we just got back to the house and and the hospital rang and they said your father is very ill would you care to re-attend what a phrase that was yes you care to re-attend christ we know so i meet i got the phone to my sister. I said, I think he's going. He's good. We've got to get there now.

This friend drove me. I swear to God, we leapt over. I mean, we nearly died getting there. But we got there, and we got there. And he was there, and we were able to let him go. And I said, you can go, Dad. I love you very much. And you heard that death rattle.

And it was an amazing thing to see. The next morning, I'm still trying to process it. My sister got just too late my brother's just flying in from australia that day that's going to be a horrendous thing to be uh you know on at you know outside that fucking you know yeah a rival's hall but this friend put his arms around me and he said you know it's all right and i remember screening it's not fucking all right. And I went outside and I just howled and howled and howled. I didn't know what to do with my body. I'd lent down and I knelt and I couldn't even literally put myself in a physical position that dealt with what this thing was that was being dragged out of me, which is just the impossibility of accepting that um it was going to happen i had

been in complete denial about it through the whole he had lung cancer in the end and and i just as far as i was concerned it could always be solved it could be solved it because we get the thing we get the new medication we did the thing we get whatever whatever and just the beginning of that was back in belfast was somehow that was the beginning of uh you know going wide at the beginning it's like films like frankenstein and stuff where a man is trying to create something in order to defeat death it's films like hamlet where it's all about what the fuck does this mean yeah um and and and you know the the some somehow i wanted to go back and sort of look at the moment where the the kid was sort of going well well, here we go. Here we go.

Let's go human. Let's go human. I've done nine years. I've been fine. I'm all settled. I thought it was fine. Yeah. And no, it isn't going to be.

So let's get ready to cope with all the all the, you know, salt and pepper and seasoning. But, you know, it was fascinating. That was an amazing journey that you just described to me but like in the film you know after he has that fit that when he does have whatever that nine-year-old version of understanding and acceptance of the change you know it's earned and and there is a tangible uh sense that he understands his parents fear after that thing that happened in the street yeah that like that you know no matter how much he loved his parents' fear after that thing that happened in the street. Yeah. That, like, that, you know, no matter how much he loved his grandparents

or anything else, he could feel the danger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that thing, that was what was so true of times like that. It was true in the Westerns I saw, but it really was true on the streets there and in those societies.

If somebody said, you know, they're coming for you, don't you? They're going to come. There's no question. That's not like a, that isn't like a line from a movie. That's horrible, awful, in the middle of the night, you know, even knock. There's a litany, 3,700 dead in those 30 years of trouble. sort of uh your sensitivity and and and your uh you know disquiet spiritually like i always sense that about you when i watch you i'm like you know i there was an earnestness

to the trajectory of your career there was an ambition to it but there was always the concern to me is like i don't know if this guy's ever going to find it yeah yeah well i think um my mother said you know you could never sit still that's what she said right never sit still and i think that the that's hard emotionally and spiritually isn't it yeah psychologically yeah i think but i think there's something to what you say about a sort of um something uh you know of again without sort of sort of aggrandizing yourself because a trillion trillion people do it in different ways yeah being a seeker a seeker of so you know you're and i you don't know what it is yeah exactly yeah you know i suppose you know i meditate and i i've

read every self-help book you know under god's heaven you know yeah so you yeah all right i don't know i mean there's something to seeking, there's one thing about seeking. Like, there's a lot of ways to do it. Yeah, yeah. But if you've got that existential itch where you're like, how is this not enough? Well, it's not about being enough. I think it's about how do you, I think you do this very well because you kind of live in the process. You live in sometimes the rage.

You live in the. Well, I think what it is for me it's like how do i feel like in you know okay with myself yes right yes yeah yeah yes and where where more often than not you can take breaths or moments or minutes or hours where nothing's going on but nothing you know where there is a kind of positive middle of your experience i know i tried to admit it i was doing meditation for a while i can quiet it down but to what end you know i don't somebody it's not like okay now i'm going to start my day i'm going to meditate for 15 minutes and then i start my day and how is that helping me well i think it allows other things to come

in i mean do you know i guess it's a kind of it's a mental tidy. It's a kind of, you know, somebody described it to me, interestingly, as, uh, do you ever been on a retreat? I said, no, I haven't. He said, how do you fancy going on a retreat twice a day? You know, that's what meditation is. You just go and stop for a bit. Is it working for you like that? Well, I think you give the mind a rest. You know, you go and sleep at night. How long have you been doing it? I've been doing it 20 years. Like TM or just, you know, another thing? Another thing with a mantra. Okay. And, you know, it's half an hour each day.

I would say that it's essential to me. I don't know that it works for me all the time. I think that there's no bad meditations, however. Yeah. I think that sometimes the best ones are the ones where that racing mind has been talking the whole time. But you do slow it down. I do, yeah. And for me, it's helpful. For me, it's helpful.

Like, I do that with guitar. But, like, it strikes me. Yeah, you're in the zone with guitar. A go to another place that nothing else is you know you're you're you're you're you're in flow as it were exactly but like i mean it has to be something i mean when you do leave belfast right so what is is england as scary as your family was afraid of were you treated like you know like these irish mutts were you like when how did you lose the accent does it come back when you go to ireland no it doesn't i think that the uh too young yeah well too young and also to to i kind of i feel as though somehow that that i've never

been one of those actors i know a lot who who are who uh as soon as you're in another place you start being the other carry you know you pick it up you start sounding like where you are and i felt as though i had to sort of find a new person that wasn't um that wasn't because i felt so bereft from the attachment and the the security of being in the extended family yeah uh that the once we as a family we went in on ourselves we were i think quiet protected we wanted to keep our head down. We were living in a place that had a lot of families with sons in the army. A lot of them who were over where we'd just come from. A lot of them who were, you know, under the cosh in terms of the violence.

A lot of people who died. So we wanted to be quiet, really. At least I did, you know. And I think it was super tough for my mother. She got very bad post-natal depression after she had my sister. There was a lot of family dramas and you know my brother had a lot of you know kind of as she said about my brother who's a wonderful guy she said he rolled around the playground by which it meant you know he's in a fight every day yeah um but he found his way um but we just quietened down

it became i became solitary and i started to say less and then when i started to ultimately across two or three years i just wanted to fit in so you start sounding a little bit english and then a lot english and then you you you know you just get on with that and you've you've acquired what you think is in relative terms an authentic sort of position and you maintain it when all the family come over good sound in english now so well i'm here now you know i'm here now i'm trying to fit in. And I'm whatever, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old and everything. And when does the acting start?

Well, the acting starts at about 16, I guess. I knew we had three. I went to the careers interview at school. I was at a comprehensive school, which is a public school for you guys. And they said three careers available to you here in reading uh insurance uh british rail or the army uh what do you fancy i said well i'd like to be an actor and they handed me a piece of paper and it was just one one side of a4 and the opening sentence was a an empty theater is a lonely place you no

longer hear the sound of applause it was basically 80 of the profession are out of work at any one time. Is it really what you want to do? They haven't prepared? They haven't prepared. Clearly back then in 1977 they were saying, Jesus, don't send any more to the circus. We don't need any more of that. But I was loving school plays and amateur dramatics and beginning to realize that there were places that you could go to learn to do this thing. And, of course, I ran to it because plays were families.

Plays were groups of people where, and I felt happy in those groups, those larger extended groups. But it seems like for a guy like you giving this quest of whatever it is, that to not only have that family thing but to to have a full character especially something like shakespeare where all the answers are given to you yeah yeah yeah yeah that that like you know and to immerse yourself in that you know must have been you know almost like uh transform transformative you're right about this you know there was something about filling filling what would have been a life where you plugged into every dimension of your family and it would be utterly immersive. And I basically had gone into myself to the point where in my adolescence, my parents regularly sat me down with my brother and said, why don't you ever bring any friends around? Do you have any friends?

You know, they were really worried about me. And I didn't see it that way. I saw it as kind of protecting myself. And I didn't see it that way. I saw it as kind of protecting myself. But yes, when I became interested in acting, the focus, even I, when I look back at it now, it was an unbelievable focus. A local AmGram guy gave me a box of copies of a magazine called Plays and Players. I read them encyclopedically. And for probably a good 20 years in this business i could have told you

who played the third butler in the fourth episode of cold it's on television i could have said you know i could have you know told you who was in every production of the national theater in england through the 1960s when john lennon's play was on there in his own right 1966 a triple bill that lawrence olivier presented and they all showed up at the Old Vic. And then Anthony Hopkins' first thing, Anthony Hopkins understudying Laurence Olivier going on. Did you see them live, all those guys? No, I didn't. But I was told about the night when Anthony Hopkins was announced,

and they said, ladies and gentlemen, remember, Laurence Olivier was a god, a legend. He ran the National Theater in England. He was about to play in a play called The Dance of Death by Strindberg, dark psychological Swedish drama. And man comes on, worst job in the world, ladies and gentlemen. I'm afraid that due to the indisposition

of Sir Lawrence Olivier, goes the crowd. The part of Edgar in tonight's performance of The Dance of Death will be played by Anthony Hopkins. Oh, who the fuck is Anthony Hopkins? Who the hell is he? So I had found my outlet. i had found my outlet i had found my outlet and shakespeare and your people yeah and well and shakespeare was it because for me

it was a detective hunt i didn't understand it we'd never heard of it i didn't know how to say it and yet in the irish bit of me that loves language it got the hairs on the back of my neck going so i i you know i i got my sherlock holmes coat on as it were and i said to the school with a clarity and a determination i'd never done before listen i'll do extra work but will you let me off on wednesdays please so i can see two matinees i can see albert finney playing macbeth in the afternoon wednesday at the national theater and if i queue up i can get the student standby and the student standby seats are actually in the front two rows so i would be able to see mr finney very very close up i could see the whites of his eyes and this is shakespeare of course sir so that would be mind broadening

wouldn't yeah well all right okay but you are gonna have to do the extra essays so i was like um i was so uh focused i saw king richard recently the movie with will smith about the the the williams sisters which is a wonderful film and he's they are all brilliant and it will is fantastic that determination to you know go from humble beginnings to um you know a long way down the track was for me something that started but had with it what i loved about it was that i had absolutely no expectations it didn't matter to me it was never there was no there was no oh gotta win an oscar oh gotta win a sure laurence olivia oh i gotta play this part whatever it's just i want to be in this world i want to be in i want to be doing

shakespeare i don't i don't care if i'm watching it and there's a great book called hamlet's dresser about a a guy who taught shakespeare to octogenarians in in new york it's a beautiful uh book and his childhood has him staying overnight and sleeping and being summer camp at the Shakespeare Theatre in Connecticut and for me that would have been fine too just watching just watching would have been fine so I just knew that I in a way I died and gone to heaven um when I found this guy's work and when I found the theatre film was still like there was still a trip to the moon like for somebody like you it's like it's like there's a whole universe. Yeah. It's almost, it seems unending.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm spinning on my own particular rock in space through that universe. But also it addresses all of the questions that anybody has about life over and over again. It does. It doesn't answer them except that you go through experiences. It just asks really better questions. See, this is the older you after coming through it.

Yeah, I looked at all of it. I've done it all. No answers. No, really good, really good questions. So that's why I'm meditating and I'm sitting under a tree where D.H. Lawrence was because Shakespeare just didn't deliver it. In case I missed something. something well do you know what well of course for me the profound experience of doing hamlet was to if you look at his the most famous speech in western literature perhaps to be or not to be that is the question a man apparently considering suicide what is why

is life worth living and he lays out the reasons why perhaps with all the whips and scorns of outrageous fortune it is not uh so he asks the question to be or not to be what should we do by the end of the play um when he knows he's going to die um and uh and and horatio says you don't have to take part in this rigged duel by the way um you know we can get you out of it you don't have to die we know they're gonna it's it's a it's a fixed fight you will die um and he and and and hamlet says uh not a wit we defy augury there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow if it be now it is not to come if it be not to come it will be now if it be not now yet it will come let be yeah so the big answer is leave it alone yeah leave it alone to be or not to be you know what don't don't overthink it it's all rigged don't it's all it's a fixed fight life life is a fixed fight the promoters are the only ones who are going to walk away from this with any cash.

Yeah, that's amazing. Well, I think that movie, well, I mean, look, it just seems like, I talked to Benedict Cumberbatch yesterday. You know that guy? I do, yeah. He's a wonderful actor. Yeah, but do you look at him like the young gun? Here he comes. Listen, I'm too long of a tooth now.

I can genuinely say, good on him. Yeah, sure. Good on him. Well, that's good. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm too long of a tooth now. I can genuinely say, good on him. Yeah. Good on him. Well, that's good. Yeah, yeah. Well, he didn't go to the same school. He went to the other school, right? He went to public school.

He went to Harrow. Yeah, to Harrow. To the Winston Churchill School. And then he went to Lambda. Lambda, right. Lambda, not Radha, yeah. And you're in the other one. I'm in the other one, yeah.

Right. Yeah. But by the time you get there, you're already obsessed with Shakespeare. Yes. You're already doing it. Yeah. You're already engaged in an almost sort of an obsessive endeavor. Yes. They must have been like they must have been open arms. Like, you know, well, he's got a 16 year old. He's like losing his mind over Shakespeare.

How often does that happen in the 70s? Well, you know, one of the things that really drove me that the Belfast movie is also partly about is that I wanted to understand and I wanted to bring back. I wanted to bring back the Shakespeare to my mom and dad to that house that didn't have any books in. And I wanted because I knew they could perfectly well understand and experience it and have a view on it. But I just didn't want all the things that get in the way between them working class people and so-called elitist or high art. I think that's what that movie did right cam right was it henry the fifth well henry the fifth was the beginning that was i think where where the story had such a sort of uh to go back to story structure it had the kind of sure

you know great sports movie arc you know um and uh because i have a hard time with it with shakespeare i can't i can't wrap my head around it you know sometimes it's like the the pursuit of literal understanding uh is is is sometimes a waste of time when when intuitive experiential response to it is fine you know do you like classical music yeah kind of i don't know anything about it and i don't know anything about it either you know i made one opera film and that's really the only opera i know and when they asked me to do it i just listened to it obsessively obsessively obsessed so i could probably talk to you about the magic flute but nothing else about mozart sometimes i feel bad because people i know love it and say my god you're missing something but it just it doesn't i don't find my way into that means of expression and that's okay but sometimes i am just overwhelmed

by something sublime that i can't explain uh in in a piece that i might hear and that's fine too so we can't all like everything you know sure i know but like you but yeah i guess i always think but this is my issue this is my relative to your particular uh kind of disc discontent or discomfort or or feeling of uh incompletion or whatever the fuck it is it's like i always I always feel like, you know, I'm missing something. You know, there's got to be a depth here. Like, no, if I don't get it,

like if I see something that's complicated or it seems like, whether it's classical music, I know classical music, I'm missing something because I don't know anything about the context of it. I don't know anything about the composer. It's like, sounds pretty. Well, give me an example of what in another field that you're very familiar with or that rocks your... Well, like I'm watching the film. I'm watching it's like, sounds pretty. Well, give me an example of what in another field that you're very familiar with

or that rocks your... Well, like I'm watching the film. I'm watching a film that Benedict's in. The, you know, the new one, the Jane Campion movie. Yeah, yeah.

And it's like, at the beginning, I'm like, all right, so this is paced in a very, you know, poetic way, you know, and then I watch the whole story and it's provocative

and it's sparse, but it's clearly a piece of art and it's clearly poetry and I understand the feelings it's giving me. But when I see something like that, I always assume someone knows what's going on. But what for you in it, like in music or some other area of your life to go, oh, no, this is everything I'm understanding. And I'm the one who's getting I'm the one who's getting I'm having.

Are you looking for from that experience or from Shakespeare, an epiphanous moment, if that's a word, where it all comes together as a blind thing? You're lost, you're transported. Well, that's the problem with me is I think I expect that from everything. Like, I used to do a joke about that. Like, every book I have is a self-help book. But they're not self-help books. Any book to me is a self-help book. I'm reading a Led Zeppelin biography, and I'm like, I have to see myself in here.

There's going to be some sort of wisdom that's going to make my life better. So I'm sort of half looking for that type of catharsis from anything. But as I get older and I get more intellectually confident, I can have my own opinions. And I argued with Cumberbatch yesterday about his character. I said, because what happens to that character? And I'm like, he said that guy was about to change. I'm like, how do you know what happens to that character and i'm like uh he did he said that guy was about to change i'm like how do you know that he played the guy and we we argued about it and uh but you know i i had confidence to do that i imagine it's going to sound pretty dumb because he's like he knew what was going on no i i i would say that that's a you know if i want to

be grand about it you say that's a function of art isn't it so right if you you might have brackets quote missed something but the resultant questions are maybe you know quite elevating and interesting and engaging speaking yeah that's the thing that you got to let to happen yeah it's like yeah it's my own insecurity like i didn't get it but i did get it yeah yeah you got it you got it because you got the you. This is something I was talking about with my parents all the time. They always thought there was something that they had to get. And that's always been a part of what's driven me is this high art, low art thing, you know, and not, you know, being from a working class background. background but people assuming if they heard about who i was at some point when the shakespeare thing had kicked in they assumed that i was from uh as it were an ivy league university sure and and steeped in all this stuff when i'd come from the entirely the opposite direction but i wished

without diminishing or diluting to make my now specialist subject the interpretation of this stuff available to all right i believed that this was a good thing and there's always been but there's a tension both ways sometimes at the higher end of that uh you know an elite group don't want that to be the case and at the other end of it i kind of um you know my my parents would sometimes feel as though they were ill-equipped or you know that kind of stuff's too highfalutin for us or too fancy or whatever but like you they come and see they came over we had an amazing trip to see hamlet in america they ended up going to the white house because i was involved with the kennedy center honors and we got to we got to go in and i was part of a tribute to

jack lemon who was president uh it was the clintons yeah and um and uh as we were going in you'll appreciate this having seen this film as we were going in my mother turned to me and said my god this is a long way from york street which is where yeah we've grown up but that that night we had a premiere of the film jack lemon was there charlton heston tony bennett came i remember alan aldo i mean amazing sort of group of of people and my father and a ton of drama students as well had come and my father in the end it's like two o'clock in the morning he's talking to them about what hamlet means you know know, he now has an opinion about it. You know, basic things like, you know, you look at a play like Hamlet.

Man is visited by ghost of his father, says I was murdered. You need to revenge me. It was your uncle. Why does he not do it? You know, and like the basic question you have to answer in the middle of the play. Okay, so he's now spent three acts proving that he did kill him. So now he knows he comes upon him praying. The villain, the murderer of his father is in front of him. He's got his back to him. He's praying. Now I did kill him so now he knows he comes upon him praying the the villain the

murderer of his father's in front of him he's got his back to him he's praying yeah now i could kill him why doesn't he kill him this is the question you have to ask my father had you know was was sat was sat there talking to 20 year olds who were equally passionate back about you know that question in hamlet but you might say it's a question about you know um you were talking earlier on about what people don't know when to leave. And sometimes, you know, obviously murder is an incredible thing to even consider. And even if it might be a sort of righteous act, you might say in this drama, it's still very difficult for human beings to come to that conclusion. Steel first steel inserted into flesh is not an easy thing to do.

And so play. Sorry. Nobody could be. Nobody could be. It could be. I think the musical version, steal into flesh, not a cool thing. You just said it with the same kind of delivery. It had a little iambic-ness to it.

Iambic improv. Well, that's amazing. Yeah, man. I mean, I don't know. Do you still enjoy doing Shakespeare? I do. What I don't enjoy is the, again, the slightly rarefied thing that can continue to go with it. I still feel it needs to be shaken up.

But they've been trying to do that forever in every different way. Exactly. So maybe I should just get over that. And sometimes, and I kind of resist, and I know I disappoint people who expect me to be some sort of guru about that and lavishing in my guruness or whatever. I'm just a guy who practiced a lot. You play the guitar. I do a lot of Shakespeare practice. Does that make me an expert on Shakespeare?

In my view, no. Does it make me an enthusiast? Most certainly, yeah. But as an artist, as an actor, because of, I think, what I'm identifying as this, well, we talked about it. I mean, do you, like when you do it, even if you do a monologue, even though you do know it, do you feel it? Yeah. What you said earlier on is exactly right. You get older. I mean, a play that I went to see, we did it at school when I was 16 years old, and it was one of the first Shakespeare's I went to see, King Lear.

And in the program I opened it, and in this kind of blasted font, like it was like Mount Rushmore writing, was a phrase from the play, when we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools. Now that hit me between the eyes. Don't know why. Why should that mean anything to me? I'm 16 years old, but I don't know why it hit me but it did so now i'm 60 years old and when i read that when i read that line when i feel that line yeah does something very different to me so now i'm arriving if i'm allowed if the universe sort of sets it before me in some way i'm arriving at the point where i would like to do i would like to play that part i would like to experience that i would like to embody those lines yeah because from another line of shakespeare jay queez and as you like it um he talks about to someone who suggests he's become something something of a curmudgeon yeah he says

yes i have bought my experience and you know and he's paid a mighty price for it so i would say yes i have bought my experience and now i can probably you know go for that for that king lear you have to and find the way to inhabit it but but it's i always challenge it with you know the why why are you doing something why you do now sometimes it's good enough that you're an artist this is you practice this is what you do you offer it up and you're a vessel anyway listen it's for other people to consider king leo some will be coming to it for the first time sure in that sense you're doing a good deed in a naughty world and for other people they can go oh it's my 50th no he's rather interesting in the third act but in the second act it's rather boring yeah and then he goes for the full despair in the fourth

act which is always a mistake should be fifth act last those guys exactly they're ruining it for everybody exactly so so but i kind of now i'm rather gingerly around i was talking the other day about a friend a great friend of mine brian blessed an actor who's been in a number of my films he's a dear friend i see him every week i meditate with him every week we walk the dogs for a long time he doesn't like walking so much these days not as uh ready to do all that but we talk all the time he's a big big boxing fan and a great aficionado of acting, big sports guy. And he talks about boxing and seven fights, seven great fights that you've got in you, seven fights when it can all come together.

And he feels the same way about acting, that they're like in between those ones where you give everything, you just are spent where it's all gone. In between those, you'll duck and dive and you'll box clever and you'll find a way to survive. You get through it, you might enjoy some, you might land a few to survive get through it you might enjoy something might land a few punches but basically you've got to get ready for the seven that you're capable of and so you know i feel that for me that's been a sort of useful metaphor and i'm kind of cagely walking around king lear and and the immersion into that because now i know what it costs and my wife would tell you um about what i would call the

bleed yeah the bleed is the way in which even with the most sensible or i leave it at work kind of attitude to artistry the bleed into your own life is so taxing um and i'm the i'm the least kind of oh you know i became so dark because i was playing the dark part but it happens it just happens you it's like practice you practice a guitar you get better in the guitar if you practice playing a dark part because you you do it a lot that's my it goes in yeah yeah i mean that's my my my recent comedy i my new hour i ran it up in you're gonna like this i ran it in portland oregon i did the hour 15 minutes and a guy a friend of the my opening act, he comes up to me and goes, God, that was great. I'm sad.

I'm like, I did it. Yeah. So you did the sad. And if it was brilliant, then you're going to be taking some of the sad home with you, aren't you? And you're going to possibly. Or are you getting the sad out? I had to wrestle with it. I don't want it.

Why is it like that? Because I'm not registering it quite like that i can't see myself clearly this is the way i'm looking at the world am i sad i'm not like debilitated least you know i mean i'm trying to you know to to process things that are dark and heavy but i mean i feel like that's kind of my job sure i'm not a song and dance man no we're trying to do the big work and it's yin and yang isn't it you know you need to the you know the old uh calling gilbraith thing of just or gibran of of of your joys and your sorrows this film is the balance yeah the film balances it well well this film is is uh somebody said to me uh heartbreaking and heartwarming right but definitely heartbreaking yeah and so and you kind of get away from, you kind of get away from that.

But heartbreaking in a way that everybody can relate to. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Having to move, having to confront crisis, having to change, people passing. Mm-hmm. You know, this is not unnecessarily heartbreaking, and it's heartbreaking in a lot of ways from the nine-year-old's perspective. So you do know that that kid's going to be okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah. So it's all tempered with that. And I think because so much of it was shot from his point of view, that innocence is fully felt. And so whatever heartbreak or darkness there is there, it's really kind of held up by the spirit of that kid. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it makes it kind of a beautiful thing.

It's sort of like when you were talking about the way you pieced it together. There is a feeling of a Truffaut movie in there a bit, isn't there? Well, trying to find these snapshots of vulnerability and also these moments where you literally see the kid's face light up and understand that some other significant piece of human understanding he has now signed up for. So I felt watching the kid that you were watching, almost watching the beginning of bruises appear, you know, which is the...

Yeah, but we all knew he was going to end up, you know, doing Henry. Doing Henry the 50th. But everyone in the room is like, this guy's going to be all right. He's going to be one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of our time. But, like, when you put, like, Judi Dench in there, do you feel like that's your family? Yes. This was a huge, huge part of it that if you wanted to talk about family family then you needed to have people in there with whom you had yeah and you know not just judy almost everybody on that street i've worked with before

we gave like 12 kids from the royal academy of dramatic art where i'm now president their first job that's family to me because i'm very involved with that yeah and i when i look at them i see myself back at that time and yes so so there was another it was an utter artistic family all of the crew you know half of them we'd worked with before harris and belucos our cinematographer is a you know it's a great great friend and and so that had to go into this film that the creative family had to bleed into the real family. All right. So in closing, when are you going to do Lear? Are you going to wait 10 years? I don't know.

I don't know. What's your advice? Did you see Olivier's? I did see that, yes. And he did it early, and then he did it maybe too late, I think. Uh-huh. And the thing is, it's not a very rewarding part, many actors say, because he's an, he's a, some would say, well, he's an egotistical idiot in the first act and he learns understanding and insight only when it's too late.

And when he has been diabolically, uh, you know, cruel to his children who in turn are ungrateful. So it's a, somebody described it, somebody like John Dryden described it as, you know, uh, his least good play, his greatest piece of work. Because dramatically, it isn't nearly as thrilling as Macbeth, which got a real thriller plot. You don't have the nice jealousy, revenge, jealousy plot of Othello. You don't have the revenge drama of Hamlet. You've got a silly old man who decides, you know what?

I'm going to leave the job. I'm going to leave the job. But you know what? Here's all you got to do. All you got to do. You just got to stay with me. All you got to do, you just got to tell me how to leave the job. I'm going to leave the job. But you know what, here's all you've got to do. All you've got to do, you've just got to stay with me. All you've got to do, you've just got to tell me how much you love me. And do it publicly.

No, tell me how much you fucking love me. I'm serious. I'm serious. You're not getting the fucking kingdom until, no, I'm really serious. Tell everybody how much you fucking love me. Well, then fuck you. Well, fuck you. well fuck you fuck off then fuck right off um and and and you think really that's it mature king you were going to give up

and that's it and that's it and in a minute you silly fuck the entire nation is going to crumble because what happens in the drawing rooms of the rich and famous unfortunately waves itself out it's going to involve that by the end of this play, the power structure in this country is going to change. You're going to ruin the lives of so many people because you're an irrational, immature asshole. Yeah. You know, and then you're saying to the audience, you've got to feel sorry for this guy, haven't you? Well, not so easily. You know, so that's the guy.

That's our hero. That's our hero. That's our hero. And then finally, and then and then and then in the fourth act with with with Gloucester, you know, having Gloucester's lost his eyes, Lear's lost his mind and his daughter and his home and his clothes. That's when he gets to say, when we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools. That we have come to this great stage of fools. Well, it seems like the challenge then that you may be up to is the challenge of creating an empathetic leer, right? Enough. Enough. Without, I think you're exactly right. You're exactly right.

It's finding the way to have the audience have, yes, some empathy, understanding, not necessarily sympathy, and not to do love me, love me acting up acting up front right but to just find a way to because it's not so unreasonable but in a sense to do it like olivier did like the second one was cheating because he was old as fuck yeah yeah this is key i think this is key i think you need a vigorous guy right leah there's so much of a a kind of uh sort of sense of him as you know captain of industry still got it right sure still get it out i'll mend that yeah exactly exactly so you know yeah because the ridiculous thing he says you still got to call me king by the way i mean i'm splitting up the company uh but you just you got to call me king and i'll do and you know i'm not i'm not going to do mondays not on mondays no i'll, no. I'll come in second half of Tuesday, work all the way through to Thursday lunchtime, and then, you know, I'm gone.

In those hours, I will do it. And, yeah, you can all do, you know, I'm going to be involved, you know. But I'm still king. But I'm still king. And that's, of course, when, you know, the kids go, well, that's lovely, Dad. No. Yeah. No, or at least as soon as as soon as it's

signed as soon as it's signed i think it's good you gotta do it now next couple years i'm feeling that you should do it when he also has the rage when he i don't think i think that for some reason i feel that uh you you always have access to that yeah but. But rage and sort of danger, I suppose. The thing that, of course, he is so outraged by is the ingratitude that thou shouldst know how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child. I gave you all. To which they reply, yeah, and in good time you gave it yeah right right arsehole yeah you know oh yeah oh man man what a what a guy what a guy what a guy what a guy but of course he's I mean he's a sort of bastion of male insecurity right ego and you know maybe it is

the time to do it because you know uh well we'll see we'll see well yeah swirling around well I mean the thing is it's like you know it's time those see we'll see well yeah swirling around well i mean the thing is it's like you know it's time those guys take a hit well yeah no this one the price he pays for personal knowledge and self-awareness is so titanic you know that's ultimately what is tragic uh and then and then of course just the again back to the basics having done all that the one thing that he understood was that the girl who refused to say how much she loved him in public is the one who's most like him as stubborn as him that's why she couldn't do it and he she's the one he loses at the at the at the most heartbreaking

moment so back to yeah yeah you know and then shakespeare does this thing about loss, just says one word five times about will she come back? Never, never, never, never, never. It's as if it's like a rivet going into a piece of wood you know this sort of this clanging clanging bell of certainty and uh depth that's what i felt when i was nine years old leaving belfast that's what i felt the morning after my dad passed away is just the running up against the brick wall of never never never never never fuck yeah yes yeah you gotta gotta do the leer i think maybe you just did it maybe that's all we need well i'm glad we uh we we we took this journey it was very uh very nice talking to you yeah great talking to you. Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.

That's it, huh? Fire. That's a D word. Fire. I'm using it. Belfast, the new film is now playing in theaters. Here's some dirty licks. so so Thank you. boomer thieves monkey mafonda

cat angels everywhere Cat Angels everywhere. It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice. Yes,

we deliver those. Goal tenders, no, but chicken tenders, yes, because those are groceries and we deliver those too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol,

and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Discover the timeless elegance of Cozy, where furniture meets innovation.

Designed in Canada, the sofa collections are not just elegant, they're modular, designed to adapt and evolve with your life. Reconfigure them anytime for a fresh look or a new space. Experience the Cozy difference with furniture that grows with you, delivered to your door quickly and for free. Assembly is a breeze, setting you up for years of comfort and style. Don't break the bank. Cozy's Direct2 model ensures that quality and value go hand in hand. Transform your living space today with Cozy. Visit cozy.ca, that's C-O-Z-E-Y, and start customizing your furniture.