00:26This is Tim Wasper from Fast Track on CERC TV.
00:29I'm here in Austin, Texas for Fantastic Facts.
00:32Obviously, Chinese, Irish, Kung Fu, buddy comedy, all that kind of stuff.
00:38It's true?
00:40Yeah.
00:40Okay.
00:41Could you first talk about sort of looking at that or looking, obviously, at the story
00:46and seeing how the tone had to work and how you would integrate your different actors
00:51to be able to make it work?
00:53Yeah, it was true.
00:54I mean, I think you could be intimidated initially by the tonal mixture of the film.
01:00But then I was looking, so you kind of base it on references and you look back to different
01:04movies, Mr. Vampire and Encounters of the Spooky Kind and kind of one of my big holy Bibles
01:09as a movie in general is Big Trouble in Little China and how well and how deftly that balances
01:13different comedic tones and horror tones.
01:17And I just like the idea of Danny and Frank coming into the situation and immediately acknowledging
01:21almost how ridiculous it all is.
01:26And you needed a binding factor to make the horror elements work, the kind of the more
01:31serious elements work and the comedic elements to work.
01:33And I wanted that to be the relationship between the two boys and have it be a very unironic
01:38man love.
01:41Like two boys are genuinely in love with each other and they're their brothers, you know,
01:44and have that be kind of the binding element that roots all the tones around it and have
01:49that be the kind of the center that makes it all work.
01:51500 quid.
01:52No way.
01:53Too much.
01:54That's too much.
01:55Feel free to call someone else.
01:56But we are the only service in the city open on the weekends.
02:00But I'm sure you can wait till Monday.
02:06Different characters have to play different sort of tones.
02:09I mean, obviously.
02:10I want to shout out the challenge.
02:13Something that actually scared me a little bit was going in, obviously looking at the
02:17script, there were a lot of different tones.
02:20Like some scenes were in a full on goofy world and then other scenes were crying.
02:24So balancing that and action and horror just as an actor, it was a bit daunting.
02:31It was like, oh, what if I hit the tone wrong or something?
02:34But then about two days in, I found the perfect solution, which was I just looked at my director
02:39and I was in really good hands then.
02:41So that challenge of going from your really goofy laughs to your super cool action, to
02:48your more grounded, more about relationships and some things are sad even.
02:54So balancing those and actually landing the moments, like making the audience feel the
02:58emotions, that was a, that was a challenge and I was in really good hands there.
03:02Okay.
03:03Okay.
03:03I will pay.
03:04Happy days.
03:05Oh, total hottest.
03:07Knowing here, they come from outside.
03:10You found them, stop them.
03:12Then you get paid.
03:17I'll give an example of the exact moment I'm describing where as an actor, I'm like daunted
03:21by, by something.
03:22There was a scene.
03:23It was really funny.
03:25Do we care about spoilers here?
03:27No.
03:29That's cool.
03:30That's cool.
03:31Okay.
03:33There was a scene where we were, we were in the car and my best friend has turned into
03:39a job to hold up, but we can, we can hold it.
03:43But anyway, I'll tell the story after release, we can show it.
03:47And I was reading the script.
03:48I was, I was looking at the tone.
03:51I was like, well, my best friend has just turned into right before I was very emotional
03:55in the last scene.
03:56And there was a, there was a joke in the script.
03:58And I was like, I don't see how to crack a joke when, when I'm on the verge of tears
04:05in the car driving.
04:06Right.
04:07And I, and I brought that up to Virgil and I said, oh, I don't quite know how to land
04:09that moment because it seems so conflicting.
04:12And he gave me a brilliant piece of direction that just unlocked it immediately.
04:17And it, and it, and it read and it made sense in my head.
04:19I think he just looked at me and he said, oh, Iron Man.
04:22And I was like, oh, Tony Stark.
04:24That's exactly what he would do in that moment.
04:26So yeah, just moments like these where, where the tone has to be so carefully managed and
04:32the audience has to, has to be led to these moments with, with such a craft in there.
04:37So that's what I meant when I said I was in good hands.
04:49Fall them, stop them.
04:51Maybe you'll get paid.
04:53Maybe.
04:56Because the film had been set up in other countries prior and the film coming back and rewriting
05:01it for Dublin was kind of a homecoming for the film.
05:04So once each of the characters got their Irish voice, that's actually when they started to
05:08speak properly.
05:09So in a weird way, when I was writing the characters, I wasn't writing them as like Asian Irish or
05:15anything.
05:15They were just, they were the characters.
05:18And I kind of wrote it really from that perspective.
05:22And like, as Fergal was saying, we spoke about it a lot was like, it was the heart of the
05:25film was the thing that was, that's the foundation.
05:28It was the thing that was most important for us.
05:30And that was the thing that we spoke about the most, particularly at the beginning.
05:33And that was kind of what bonded us.
05:35And, you know, Fergal boarded the project.
05:37It was, you know, on the basis that that was the prism that we were looking at the film
05:40through.
05:41And then everything else we figured would, was really kind of, would work because I
05:46think if you're grounded on authentic in what you're doing, that's what audiences want to
05:49see.
05:50And certainly that's what we felt the characters, you know, that's how they wanted to speak.
05:53So I really wrote them like, as if there were people that I knew growing up, you know,
05:59or maybe we'll get paid.
06:08Well, I have always been drawn to comedy and I haven't really played the straight character
06:15before.
06:15So it was really fun.
06:17It was a bit challenging because I feel like in my day to day or just whenever I'm acting,
06:23I'm always doing some crazy shit.
06:25So I really had to be mindful of like, you know, being still in my body and being able
06:32to still find the comedic elements of that stillness, I think.
06:37And it was lots of fun, but yeah, I was like, I wish I could be goofing off like these
06:43guys.
06:44But yeah, no, it was, it was awesome.
06:47She has an idea of what she wants in the world and she thinks what she's doing is right.
06:52And it was so easy to do that.
06:53Like, even if she is the in this film, she doesn't think she is.
06:58Yeah.
06:59So it's quite simple.
07:22It's quite simple.
