Martin McDonagh has every reason to be a pretentious jerk (he's got two Olivier awards, four Tony nominations, and a 2006 Oscar for Best Live Action Short on his mantle) but he is disarmingly pleasant instead. The 30-something Irishman was lounging in a corner suite at Manhattan's Regency Hotel when he spoke to HuffPost about the release of the dark comedy "In Bruges," his feature length debut.
The film, which McDonagh wrote and directed, stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hit men who botch a job and are exiled to the picturesque Belgian city by their mobster boss (a scary Ralph Fiennes). (Reviews and a trailer at the bottom).
Dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans, McDonagh has close-cropped silver hair, an easy grin rarely displayed in photos, and a tendency to pause while searching for the right word. The pauses, however, can probably be chalked up to exhaustion, as the writer-director arrived in New York after opening Sundance with his film and hitting Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco and Chicago for press. "With a play I normally do two interviews," he says. "It's hard to get your head around all the TV stuff."
McDonagh, who'd been wanting to do a film, conceived "In Bruges" after a weekend visit to the city four years ago.
"I was there for a couple of days, and in the middle of the second day I was bored out of my head and I just wanted to get drunk or get laid. Both sides of my brain were arguing, the culture loving geek and the drunken slut, and then they started becoming characters." In the film Gleeson plays the character who loves the attractions, while Farrell is bored to bits. Bruges stars as itself. (All are in the photo)
"I started writing as soon as I got back home," says McDonagh. "It was nice because it was a fresh idea. It was organic from Bruges. Every day was kind of joyous in some ways, because you're getting back to characters you're interested in or like and you just want to hear what they have to say."
And every word of the nonstop dialogue in the film is from McDonagh's script, which he copies from conversations in his head.
"When it's going good it's kind of like you're trying to copy down the conversation of two strangers. And you're trying to get them to wait, because you can't keep up. I write longhand, in pencil. When it's good, it's that way. But no, I never really bounce ideas of anyone, I never really talk to anyone or tell anyone what it's about until it's finished," he says.
"We had three weeks rehearsal ahead of the shoot, which is quite unusual. We didn't change a line... I'm kind of arrogant enough as a writer to know if it's good or if it's bad and then to stick to the lines."
After an expression of disbelief, McDonaugh copped to a single word that he did not write. "There is one swear word in the film that's Colin's."
And while McDonagh has plenty of writing experience from his time in the theater (The Pillowman," "The Lieutenant of Inishmore") he is new to directing and remained self-effacing about his ability to story board.
"That was a whole new thing for me to sit down and practice," he says. "To draw. I drew them all myself. I've got them all at home. They're really bad. Just big potato heads."
Drawing skills aside, McDonagh seems to have lucked into a fairly blessed existence. Asked if there were any surprises in pulling off his first feature, he could only say: "I thought it would be like, way less fun, way more kind of gut-wrenchingly, agonizingly tough, I guess, way more nerve racking. And more of a war. There were certainly little wars, but I thought it would be like that every day. But it was a really happy vibe on the set."
"It sounds like a cliché but everyone was just like a nice little family working on it. That was the biggest surprise, that it wasn't as terrifying as I thought it was going to be. I used to just think I'd do one film, quit, go back to theater, hang out, travel. But now, the overall experience was kind of joyous, so I might do it again."
And speaking of a blessed existence, McDonagh now plans to take a few years off.
"First up is travel and not doing anything for awhile, the next year or two I think. I've never really had any kind of career goal. The word career is kind of offensive to me. So, I just want to travel and grow up and learn and see what kind of writer I've become. I've got two film scripts that are ready to go but I don't think I want to do anything with them for at least two years."
So where to?
"Loads and loads of places, but I haven't booked anywhere yet. Australia and New Zealand. I'm taking my mum down there. And I want to go to Argentina and Chile and all of South America and Asia and everywhere really. They'll be some kind of lazing on beaches too, cause I can write that way. I don't need to be in a kind of hovel like a freezing cold poet to write. I can do it anywhere. I like trains. I like just getting trains to crazy places so I might do a bit of that, too."
So he is brilliant, kind to his mother, mellow and disarmingly attractive in person. Does he have groupies?
He laughs. "I wish! No director groupies at all, unfortunately. Hanging around Colin and Ralph steal my thunder."
Rated R and running 101 minutes, "In Bruges" has received a range of fair to fantastic reviews. From The Hollywood Reporter ("Chock full of wonderful lines delivered by a splendid cast "), USA Today ("sharply written, superbly acted"), the New York Times ("amusing"), Rolling Stone ("haunting and hypnotic"), Entertainment Weekly ("The roles are big, broad, violent, and strategically funny"), and the Boston Herald's rave ("a dead-of-winter miracle").