Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, co-stars in In Bruges, talk to Róisín Ingleabout rehab, rede and bringing Flann O'Brien to the screen
Somewhere in the Shelbourne Hotel, in Dublin, an American movie-industry woman is talking about how much she misses her pet chihuahua in Los Angeles. You nibble on a complimentary croissant, with blueberries on the side, and listen to pooch-related chat until summoned upstairs to a sunlit room where a strict 20 minutes has been allocated for you to interview Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.
The Dubliners star in Martin McDonagh's feature-length debut, the blood-splattered, comically tragic In Bruges, which has the tag line "Shoot first, sightsee later". I'm told there'll be a knock on the door when there's two minutes to go. The conveyor-belt set-up could make for a stilted conversation, but it never comes to that with these two. Gearing up for the world premiere and the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, Farrell and Gleeson are on a roll. They bounce off each other like rubber bullets, holding forth on everything from the "unique brilliance" of McDonagh's script to drugs in Ireland to the nature of remorse and redemption - themes explored in the movie. It's not as though they finish each other's sentences, but there is understanding and empathy between them. And apart from Farrell giving out about the limited nature of Belgian cuisine - "it's chocolate, basically" - workwise the two lads seem to have had a blast in Bruges.
"It was easy. The first day of rehearsals was like when they open the gates for the bucking bronco; we just sat around a table and went at the work," says Gleeson of collaborating with his younger colleague. Farrell repays the compliment. "Ah, it wasn't even like work, it was that easy," he says.
Physically, the actors couldn't be more different: Farrell puffing away on a cigarette, bristling with energy, politely asking if you mind him smoking, getting up to shake hands - he's wearing fingerless gloves - running fidgety fingers through his hair; Gleeson sitting, dressed in black, a more solid, steadying, relaxed presence. In this grand room, as in the movie, they complement each other.
This is Farrell's most significant film role since Alexanderand Miami Vice, neither of which critics considered his finest moment. For Gleeson, it's a continuation of his professional journey with McDonagh - he starred in the playwright's Oscar-winning short, Six Shooter. This is the first time Gleeson and Farrell have worked together, and their screen rapport calls to mind some of the most sublime cinematic double acts. Laurel and Hardy. Lemmon and Matthau. Adam and Paul. In a piece of inspired casting, they are hit men forced by their boss to spend three days in the otherworldly medieval Belgian city of the title, a place dismissed early on by Farrell's character, Ray, as "a shithole". This hasn't stopped the good burghers of Bruges from creating a new tourist map based on highlights from the film, with little guns used to indicate where scenes were shot.
Gleeson's character, Ken, finds the city's art and architecture, and its network of canals, soothing. Despite their differences - trainee hit man Ray is a childlike, loveable assassin prone to issuing gratuitous insults, Ken a more laid-back veteran of violence - the pair of them make a good fit.
Both men had suggestions for McDonagh when they read the script. Farrell thought he should cast an unknown for the part of Ken, worried that if he took the role, the film would be overshadowed by the public's preconceptions about him. He doesn't elaborate but it sounds as though he was worried his tabloid image would get in the way of the film. "Martin thought this was hogwash," admits the actor.
And Gleeson initially wanted the part of the younger man. "I started to say, ah, change him to a middle-aged, unattractive person, it will work just as well. I could do the character of Ken falling off a log but Martin made me see I was underestimating Ken and when I looked at him again I saw what he meant."
"It was a good thing he didn't heed either of our suggestions," says Farrell. "The whole thing came together so easily. There have been times when I've worked on films where you make a concerted effort to sit down with the other actors and go for dinner and get to know each other, seeing what you have in common, but all that wasn't necessary. It was just really, really easy from the get-go."
Gleeson, an ex-teacher who came to acting in his mid-30s, agrees.
"It was exhilarating," he says. "There were so many barriers that didn't need to be negotiated, we just went at the work in a way that was positive and exciting. It was one of the best times I ever remember in my career."
Having worked with McDonagh before on Six Shooter, he is full of admiration for the underlying message of much of the writer's work; that however inhumane their behaviour, people are never black or white, bad or good. "In all the plays Martin has written, with all that savagery in the characters, there is always a humanity there, there is always something to engage with," says Gleeson. "That's a challenge and a very fine line for an actor."
In Brugesis laugh-out-loud funny in parts. Farrell's wide-eyed Dublinisms - "all the old buildings, and that" is his take on the medieval architecture; "yez are like elephants" he explains to a family of overweight American tourists intent on climbing a clock tower - work beautifully despite being so far out of context.
Yet even with all the laughs, the story is as dark as you'd expect from McDonagh. Farrell's character is unable to escape the guilt of botching his first job when he accidentally killed a child, an event which led to him being ordered from London to "f**kin' Bruges".
The movie explores the capacity for people to take responsibility for their actions and the capacity for people to change. Farrell has clearly given this a lot of thought. "Remorse and acting on remorse are two things that, if they were more prevalent, would make the world a better place," he says. "I am not excusing any behaviour or any crimes, but to realise your own wrongdoing, whatever it may be - whether it's an unkind word or the crimes that these lads commit - to come to realise your part in something and then doing something about it, well there's incredible redemption in that alone, there really is. And you don't need the church for that and you don't need anyone else to tell you . . . There's incredible relief that comes with that. We all bear scars in our lives and there are certain things we never completely get over . . . But it's not about getting over them. You adopt them and you adapt them and they become part of who you are and you try not to let them drag you down."
During one tense moment in the movie there's coke and pills and hash and prostitutes as Ray tries to obliterate his guilt and Ken wrestles with an order to kill that has come from his boss, played by Ralph Fiennes as you've never seen him before. Farrell's own personal demons led him to rehab last year and the tabloid image of him now is of the reformed bad-boy who, having realised the error of his hell-raising ways, is a doting father of a four-year-old boy. Doubtless the reality is more complicated and when asked whether the drug scenes were especially challenging given his own experience, he is understandably guarded.
"I found a lot of what Ray was going through hard," he says. "You are basically manipulating your own humanity. In a way you are modulating the experiences you have had, mixing them all together into an emotional Rubik's Cube to fit the character. Even with what my character has done, you can't say he's a bad man. He knows he has done something very wrong, he just doesn't know if he can ever allow that to be part of his past. He doesn't know if he is bold enough and strong enough and potentially good enough to get over it."
At this point Gleeson, who seems protective of his young colleague just as in the film Ken tries to stop Ray from killing himself, says he found it difficult to watch the younger man's character trying to escape his problems through drugs. "You see it everywhere, you see it out there," he says, pointing out the window.
Farrell has no time for the Government's latest anti-drugs strategy in the wake of a spate of cocaine-related deaths, a statistic-heavy radio warning with the catchy slogan "the party's over".
"I love this f**kin' thing of authorities saying 'get off drugs' as if you are going to do something because the Government tells you. By nature you are going to go against what your Government tells you," he says. "People give out about the level of crime in this country. There are 15,000 heroin addicts here. They are sick people, not necessarily bad people, sick people who have to commit on average two crimes a day to keep their habit going. When I think of the resources . . . How many beds are available? Maybe 45? It's a f**kin' disgrace."
"Less ads, more action," agrees Gleeson. And Farrell is exercised now. "Yeah, more activity on the streets, in schools. You go in and talk to people face to f**kin' face, you don't put a voice on the radio and wash your hands and say we have done our best. How much do those ads cost? I mean if you really do care, if you are really trying to protect people, you have to provide the resources."
Gleeson still has a vivid memory of being in school when an ex-addict came in to talk about his experience. "There was no scare mongering, he just told us the way it was and I still remember it. It had such an effect," he says.
"You have to take it out of the realm of statistics," adds Farrell. "You have to put a human face on it, tell real stories using personal experiences. When I went away [to rehab] because I was in a spot of trouble, the main counsellor had years of experience of drug abuse. He came from a very personal place and had experienced certain things - both emotionally and psychologically - that I had experienced myself. It was very easy to connect with him. A doctor does not need to have had cancer to treat a cancer patient, but addiction has specific problems and attractions. The danger of what can happen needs to be brought home by people who have travelled the road before."
The two-minute knock on the door arrives. Our time's almost up. We get a quick sum-up. Gleeson has just completed a television biopic of Churchill, and Farrell will next be seen in Pride and Glorywith Ed Norton. After we meet it's confirmed that he has been cast in the late Heath Ledger's role in The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassuswith Johnny Depp and Jude Law. His inclusion seems apt.
There's just time to ask Gleeson about his screen adaptation of Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds, which he says he's "trying" to get into production. "You are not trying, you are doing it," says Farrell.
"It's taken a long time to get to where I am happy with it, to where it's a proper film script and not just an adaptation," says Gleeson.
"He's even got numbers on the pages," says Farrell.
"It's really exciting," says Gleeson, smiling over at Farrell.
"Cillian Murphy, Gabriel Byrne, Eamon Morrissey and Colin . . . some of the coolest people in the country are involved. We just have to make sure we do it properly. Every so often I get really shaky ankles and then the thought of the performances makes me go on. I really think it will happen this year."
In Bruges opens in cinemas countrywide on March 14th