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It's statistically unlikely you will see a more charming film this year than "Once." The tale of two musicians who fall in love for a week and make beautiful harmonies together was made on a 140,000-euro budget funded mostly by the Irish Film Board.
Its writer-director is John Carney, an established director in his home country, who was also a member of the band The Frames in its fledgling stage. "Once" stars Glen Hansard of The Frames and Czech-born classically trained pianist Marketa Irglova, 18 years Hansard's junior. They collaborated on the recent album "The Swell Season.
" Most of those songs are heard in "Once," which Fox Searchlight Pictures picked up at the Sundance Film Festival in January, after its rapturous reception there.
-- START REST --> In the midst of a three-week promotional tour -- Hansard notes, wryly, that it took them three weeks to make the film as well -- the gang is traveling by motorcoach, along with Carney's girlfriend, actress Marcella Plunkett, a tour manager and a driver. We talked on a bench in Seneca Park in downtown Chicago, across the street from the Museum of Contemporary Art. Irglova was fighting a sore throat and didn't say much; Carney and Hansard, being Irish, picked up the slack.
Carney: Em. Well. I don't want to appear like an eccentric, but I don't like to fly when I can avoid it.
Especially in America nowadays it just adds to your tension level. The whole security thing. And I don't like to fly.
Hansard: Amazing time. Amazing response. By Day Three we thought: We could sell this film.
We were supposed to fly out on a Friday. Then that last Thursday night at Sundance in Park City, Utah we were at the party for the Joe Strummer documentary, and by then people were coming up and saying, "Wow. You're the 'Once' people.
Congratulations." One guy comes up to me, one of the judges, a Spanish guy, and says that he really liked our film. "Oh, thanks a million, man, can't believe the response it's getting," I tell him, and joking, I say, "So should we change our flights back?
" The awards weren't until Saturday. And he was like, "I can't say, but there's two films getting a lot of attention. And yours is one of them.
" ("Once" ultimately won the audience award at Sundance.) Carney: "Once" opened in Ireland March 26 and it was a surprise, actually. Irish people don't tend to go to their own films very much.
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Over there, the publicity pegged it as "the indie hit," that sort of thing. Here they're selling it as a date movie, but not in a soppy way, I think, though the trailer has a slightly sentimental feel to it. Fox Searchlight came up with two tag lines for this film, and I really wanted to go with one of them, which was: "Every relationship has its own soundtrack.
" Perfect, really clever. And the other one was: "How often do you find the right person?" But it works.
You look at this country, you look at how it operates, and you look at how fame's measured in ink -- how many billboards, how many interviews, the big push, you know. I mean, no one can avoid something like "Spider-Man 3" or "Shrek." And to think our film's coming out in this same time frame and make this tiny, tiny ripple.
And then it's gonna disappear. And that's fine. Hopefully once you've made a good film, in 10 years' time it'll still be a good film.
Tribune: One thing really hacks me off about "Once." What is it doing with an R rating? Carney: So that means, what?
No one under 15? Tribune: No, in theory it means no one under 17 without a parent or adult guardian, as the Motion Picture Association of America puts it. Carney: Really?
Seventeen? Well, Americans have that the wrong way around, the idea that sex and language are worse than violence. I'd much prefer my kids to be watching, you know, cursing on screen than someone held captive and tortured.
Tribune: So what happens after the tour? Irglova: I go back to the Czech Republic and do my final exams. And after that I move to Ireland.
And I don't have any further plans. Tribune: The exams are for? Carney: Yeah, she's young.
(Irglova was 17 when she filmed "Once" and turned 19 recently.) Hansard: Me, I'm going to visit my ma for two weeks in June, and then play some summer festivals, and then to Australia for a bit with The Frames , and then back to America in September for another month of touring. Carney: And I'm going to have a really nice long break when I get back.
Then I think I'm going to try and make a film like "Once" in Hollywood. Hansard: Every single interview we do, he gives a different answer. Carney: Yeah.
It changes. But I think I'm going to make this film I wrote before we did "Once," a romantic comedy about two brothers who fall in love with the same girl, an actress. It's a romantic black comedy.
I've sent it to a few people. ..
. I think you could actually make a really good romantic comedy in a gritty, funny, hand-held style. And this sounds very vain in a way, but you could try to do what we did with the musical form in "Once" but as a romantic comedy.
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