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The New Yorker Radio Hour
Martin McDonagh Talks with Patrick Radden Keefe
00:14:50
Martin McDonagh burst onto the London theatre scene as a young playwright in the nineteen-nineties. At one point, he had four plays running simultaneously on stages across London. But McDonagh also aspired to work in movies, and he eventually shifted his focus to directing films such as “In Bruges” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” “When you sit down to write something, how do you know if it’s a movie or a play?” the staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe asked McDonagh at The New Yorker Festival. “If it has four characters, and it’s set indoors, it’s a play,” McDonagh replied—“if it doesn’t have any donkeys or dogs.” McDonagh’s new film, “The Banshees of Inisherin,” starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, is his first feature set in Ireland, and it prominently features a donkey. “Banshees” traces the story of a friendship breaking apart in the beautiful, remote hills of the country’s west. “I just wanted this [movie] to be sort of plotless in a way,” McDonagh said. “...
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- [00:01]
Patrick Radden Keefe
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The Banshees of Inisherin, a bittersweet ode to the demise of an old friendship, is a major player at the Academy Awards this year. It's earned a total of nine nominations, including best actor, Best picture, and best director for Martin McDonagh. McDonagh, who also wrote the film, has been consistently making original and thoughtful movies like In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which have managed to connect with big audiences without ever sacrificing his unique voice and perspective on the world. The Banshees of Inisherren is set in 1923, and it takes place in the remote hills of a fictional island west of Ireland. It's a showcase for its lead actors, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. It's also a masterclass in screenwriting.
- [00:54]
Colin Farrell (as character in The Banshees of Inisherin)
Now I'm sitting here next to you, and if you're going back inside, I'm following you inside. And if you're going home, I'm following you there, too. Now if I've done something to you, just tell me what I've done to you. And if I said something to you, maybe I said something when I was drunk and I've forgotten it, but I don't think I said something when I was drunk and I've forgotten it. But if I did, then tell me what it was and I'll say sorry for that, too. Colin, with all my heart, I'll say sorry. Just stop running away from me like some fool of a moody school child. But you didn't say anything to me. You didn't do anything to me. Well, that's what I was thinking. Like, I just don't like you no more. You do like me. I don't. You liked me yesterday. Oh, did I? Yeah, I thought you did.
- [01:58]
Patrick Radden Keefe
Martin McDonough spoke to New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe at the New Yorker Festival last year.
- [02:05]
Interviewer/Host
It's kind of a breakup movie, so that's.
- [02:08]
Martin McDonagh
That's all it is for me. I mean, that was definitely the starting point of it, to be as truthful to the sadness, I suppose, of a horrible breakup where you can kind of understand both sides in it. I think that was the balance that I think you're naturally on Colin Farrell's side, definitely, to begin with and even in the script writing stage. But the trick, not the trick, but the thing to get right was to see as much of the story from Brendan Gleeson's point of view, too.
- [02:40]
Interviewer/Host
Did you? And was that what it was from the original conception then. Yeah.
- [02:45]
Martin McDonagh
There was an earlier version of it just a few years before, where it didn't quite. It went to a plotty kind of stupid, shitty place. No, really. But I just wanted this to be sort of plotless in a way, just to have the unraveling of this breakup be what the whole story was about.
- [03:08]
Interviewer/Host
Did you write the. Having worked with these two actors before in. In Bruges. I mean, a very, very different movie, and yet one in which their dynamic is everything in the way that it is here. Did you write this one with them in mind?
- [03:21]
Martin McDonagh
Oh, yeah, very much so. We've sort of been wanting to get together in the 14. 14 years since we made that hasn't quite happened, obviously. I work with Colin again for seven Psychopaths, but I'd stayed friends with both of them. We always see each other if we're in each other's countries and they. Great friends. So we always hoped that something like this would come about. I've been very lazy about it and I'm.
- [03:50]
Interviewer/Host
When you got around to it, you got around to it.
- [03:51]
Martin McDonagh
Yeah. The fear was because, you know, we all loved In Bruges and we love how much people love in Bruges, but when you're getting the team back together, you don't want to fuck up that. That love, you know, you don't want to do something that's lesser. You know, you can do something. I hope we've done something that's stranger, but definite something that isn't not as good.
- [04:15]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah. And there's also. I mean, there's an aspect. It seemed to me, there's a kind of fable quality to the story. And I want to talk about Ireland, so, I mean. Cause you're a Londoner, but grew up with Irish parents and spent time in Ireland during the summers when you were growing up.
- [04:36]
Martin McDonagh
Yeah.
- [04:36]
Interviewer/Host
And your parents live there now. Right. Not far from where the film was made. And so much of your work has taken place in Ireland. And yet in the plays, I think there's sometimes also this, like, slightly fable kind of fairytale quality. And I guess I just wondered, is the place where these stories tick, is it a real place or is it a kind of Ireland of the mind? I wonder about your relationship to.
- [04:59]
Martin McDonagh
I think it's a sort of theatrical Irish place. You know, this island doesn't actually exist, but obviously the Civil War was a real thing and did. It is a very interesting part of the backdrop. So that takes away a little bit from the fable quality. But I think if you set anything 100 years ago and lean into mysticism and banshees and folklore and all that stuff. It's going to have some semblance of that kind of thing.
- [05:27]
Interviewer/Host
And do you ever feel, I mean, I hope you'll take this question in the right way because I'm a New Yorker who wrote a book about Ireland myself, but do you ever feel. Do you ever feel like there's a trespass or there's a license that you're taking? Is that something you're totally untroubled by or is it something that you're kind of mindful of at all?
- [05:46]
Martin McDonagh
I mean, untroubled by it until the Irish reviews come in, then things get troubling. But no, I mean, it's like more than just some holidays as a kid. It's like we grew up in London. All of the families around us were Irish. And so you'd hear Irish music blaring from each sides of our little area where we grew up. Mom and dad were very proud to be Irish and, you know, encourage it in us almost too much. But we'd go for Christmases. Our grandparents were still alive in Sligo at that time. So as a child it felt like we were half the year there and half the year in London. Obviously my accent is very London, but London Irish is probably a good way to describe me. I don't have a. A British passport, which is probably a good move these days. I've only had an Irish one, but I've always also always sort of been anti nationalist and anti patriotic and all those things. So the whole Irish English thing I kind of find a bit boring these days.
- [06:53]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, that makes one of us. I read somewhere that you first that it was kind of a breakthrough for you as a writer with plays initially that you kind. That you thought about the way in which your father and I think your uncle maybe spoke, that there was a sort of idiom that you stumbled upon and in the way that, you know, I mean, I would imagine in the way that for Mamet or Pinter they kind of discovered a register and an idiom that. That unlocked something.
- [07:24]
Martin McDonagh
Exactly. In fact, Pinter and Mamet were sort of the two big influences and so too much of an influence in fact, because all of the stuff I was att attempting to write then was sort of English or American based and very much sort of rip offs of, you know, the Birthday party or American Buffalo to a degree. And it was only once I. But I knew I wanted to have dialogue be more theatrical than it is in real life. And I thought those were the best two people around who were doing that. But it was when I tried to do that in a West of Ireland context that things did open up and allowed the. The dialogue and the characters even to be a bit more poetic and heightened than the everyday London kind of stuff that I was trying to do.
- [08:11]
Patrick Radden Keefe
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come.
- [08:28]
Interviewer/Host
I wanted to ask you because you've had this fascinating career where you started with plays and then moved into film and have continued to do both. But I went back and I started reading these interviews that you did early in your career. 25 years ago. You suddenly burst onto the scene, this young guy in his 20s. You'd written seven plays in less than a year and just came out of nowhere. And there were these amazing interviews where you would talk to people who were clearly filled with a kind of wonder and envy, and they would say, like, you know, you're the first person since Shakespeare to have four shows simultaneously in London. Like, how do you do it? And your reaction was always, eh, theater's fine. What I really want to do is get into movies. And you could feel they were so kind of crestfallen. I feel terrible because I know Fintan o', Toole, but I have to quote you this. This is you and Fintan O' Toole in 1998 for Bomb magazine. You said, I would be unhappy If I wrote 90 good plays and didn't make a good film. But if I made one good film, if I made one brilliant film, one really, really good film, I'd be happy. One would be enough. And then you say, like, clearly you're.
- [09:38]
Martin McDonagh
What an arrogant little dick I love.
- [09:40]
Interviewer/Host
No, what I love is that Finton who's there, and he's like, he's celebrating your budding career as a playwright. Clearly there was something going on in his face. Because you then say you really love theater, maybe to him. And Vinton says, I do.
- [09:58]
Martin McDonagh
Oh, sweet Fintech.
- [10:00]
Interviewer/Host
So here's what I.
- [10:01]
Martin McDonagh
And his love of theatre.
- [10:02]
Interviewer/Host
Here's exactly right. So here's what I wondered is. I wonder a couple of things. I mean, one is, when you sit down to write something, how do you know if it's a movie or a play?
- [10:16]
Martin McDonagh
If it's got four characters and it's set inside, it's a play. And if it doesn't have any donkeys or dogs. Cats.
- [10:26]
Interviewer/Host
Yeah, yeah, The. And you. You said to the Guardian recently that you may want to devote the remainder of your career chiefly to films.
- [10:39]
Martin McDonagh
Well, it's something weirdly it kind of. It's. I don't know if it's just because Brendan Gleason's character is on my mind, but definitely during COVID one does think of time passing and how much time you've got left. And I've sort of discovered as years gone by that it takes as much time or longer to do a play. To get it on off West End in London to West End to Off Broadway to here, that will be like four years or so. Whereas we made this last year and it's out now. So to take care of a play from start to finish does take a similar amount of time. I do feel like, you know, the plays that we got good, like, 25 years ago, you can't see them. They're all gone, you know, forever. And there's a sadness to that, I feel. And as. As the years go, I always. As much as I used to slide plays off, I did do love them if they're done my way. No, if they're done in a certain way, you know, Pinter's way or early Mamet's way or whatever. But now I'm not going to swear off plays because if I get a good play idea, I'll jump into it. But if I'm seriously thinking about if you, you know, you've got 20 years, 30 years left, you know, a film every couple of years is going to last more than a play.
- [12:05]
Interviewer/Host
Well, how do you decide on the setting of your movies and how do you do the research?
- [12:13]
Martin McDonagh
Well, for this one, certainly. My parents live just across the bay from the Aran Islands and that whole area of the West Connemara, up through Sligo and Mayo and all the way down to Cork and Kerry. The whole west is. I sound like the Irish Tourist Board now, too. But it is the most beautiful part of the country, I think. And I always wanted to set something there and capture the beauty of it. With three billboards also was to, you know, try and capture almost an old American small town with, like, a street that's kind of both sides close together and, you know, one horse sort of town. So location is always. And obviously Bruges was. Bruges was a character. I do like the locations to be characters in the movies as much as possible.
- [13:13]
Interviewer/Host
When you watched the film for the first time, did you find it sadder or more hopeful than you originally anticipated?
- [13:22]
Martin McDonagh
I think I was always trying to make it as sad as possible. Once it's finished, I don't think I've got enough distance to know where it lies right now maybe I'll ask people afterwards who actually show of hands who is going to be sad or hopeful who think it's a sad film.
- [13:44]
Interviewer/Host
Oh, mission accomplished.
- [13:47]
Martin McDonagh
Any, any hope out there? Oh, wow. Okay. So that's, I guess it's a sad film. Yeah, we're definitely not going to win the Oscar.
- [14:01]
Interviewer/Host
Thank you so much, Martin, for coming. Thank you to all of you. New Yorker festival tonight.
- [14:07]
Martin McDonagh
Thank you.
- [14:12]
Patrick Radden Keefe
Staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe with Martin McDonough at last year's New Yorker Festival. The banshees of Inisharan has been nominated for nine academy awards including best original screenplay and best director for Martin McDonagh. That's it for this episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thank you for listening. See you next time.
- [14:34]
Interviewer/Host
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a.
- [14:36]
Patrick Radden Keefe
Co production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported.
- [14:42]
Interviewer/Host
In part by the Tsarina Endowment Fund.