00:00I enjoy it, but I won't, I don't think I'll be doing it again in the next one.
00:03Do you have friends that feel, end of question, do you have friends?
00:07I'll have to work with some actresses at some point. He's my acting god.
00:11Mate, I have wanted to meet you for so many years, since I was at university and someone was like,
00:16you've got to watch him, Bruges. And you sit there and you're like, this is the most glorious swearing I've
00:22ever heard.
00:23It's the most beautiful, almost absurd, complicated view of male friendship I've ever seen.
00:29And then seeing your kind of career onward, we do see some of these things re-emerge,
00:34but never in the same way. And it makes me wonder...
00:37Oh good, good. I thought you were going to go...
00:39You keep doing the same old shit.
00:41I thought you'd change it out.
00:43How deep is this well then? Are you surprised yourself when you're writing a script and you think,
00:49oh, this is like, I'm kind of delving into some of the same areas, but I found a new way
00:54to do it.
00:55Is it method or madness? I don't understand.
00:57It's... I don't think it's method, because that would make it sound too controlling.
01:04But definitely, after a few pages, you kind of know, hang on, this is two blokes being cranky with each
01:10other
01:10in a really weird place that they shouldn't necessarily be in.
01:14But then you go, okay, I'm enjoying it, but we're going to take it to...
01:20And that was part of it. It's like, you can pull in an imbruge sort of audience, but sort of
01:27start to subvert it and take them to a darker place or a more political place, maybe, than they would
01:35have been expecting.
01:36So that's... When you sort of look at it that way, it kind of adds to being able to sort
01:42of twist the plot a little bit, you know, to have an audience think it's going to be one thing
01:48and then turn it on its head.
01:49It's interesting, because it never feels derivative, I guess. There's always the threat when you have very successful movies, very
01:56popular movies, and it is of a style and of a voice that people respect and enjoy.
02:04There's always that worry of kind of going over old ground, or am I just playing the hits, but...
02:08Yeah. I mean, I never feel that way and never worry about that, because I know there's going to be
02:13a freshness to it each time.
02:17And then, like, one's two Irish guys, one's American, and that gives you a whole different dimension as well.
02:23Yeah.
02:26But I enjoy it, but I won't... I don't think I'll be doing it again in the next one.
02:30I'll have to... I'll have to... I'll have to work with some actresses at some point, you know.
02:35See, I'm almost... I'm almost disappointed, a bit heartbroken at that, but...
02:39It'll still be good.
02:40That'll be a really good dynamic as well.
02:42It'll still be good, yeah.
02:42I did wonder, like, do you... Do you have friends that feel... End of question. Do you have friends?
02:47Do you have friends who feel like you... They have been in some way your kind of muse over the
02:53years?
02:54Because you've broke the subject of male friendship, and the things that sometimes go unsaid, and the way in which
03:02we try and express ourselves when we're in difficult situations.
03:07Do you think you dig from yourself, or from people you've known throughout your life?
03:12Ooh, good one. I think I dig from what I hope a friendship should be. I think a lot of
03:20my male friendships are, you know, have a sensitivity, and we can, you know, talk about anything, I think.
03:26But not to the degree that the boys in most of these films can.
03:32But maybe that's because we're not killers, and we don't need to go that horrifically deep.
03:37But we do go deep.
03:40But, I mean, one of the things I do like about all of these films, and this one especially, is
03:46to be able to show male sensitivity and male friendship in a non-Hollywood sort of way.
03:52In a non... I know a few people have called this a buddy movie, but that would reduce it to
03:57something that I don't think is quite accurate enough, I guess.
04:01Because they go to, you know, sad, dark places in this that, as I say, a lot of male friendships
04:11in films don't go to.
04:12I think part of the strength is, because of the types of characters they have, you are never quite sure,
04:18you're never fully, completely sure what their intentions are up until a certain point, which really helps, like, pulls you
04:24along the movie.
04:25Yeah.
04:26I did wonder what Sam and John brought to this. They're very different types of actors. One, very, like, instinctual.
04:36Sam being famous for being a great kind of playmate, as well as, in my opinion, one of the best
04:41actors living today.
04:42Yeah.
04:42So how did they push and develop their own characters, push themselves in this movie, and how different did they
04:47end up to what it was on the page?
04:51Well, strangely, they didn't know each other too well before making this. They had, like, one scene, I think, in
04:57Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but they didn't spend too much time together on that.
05:01But they had a total sort of love and respect for each other as actors.
05:08When I mentioned to Sam, who'd already been cast, because I wrote it for Sam, that I was thinking about
05:13John for it.
05:16He was like, you've got to go for John. He's my acting god. I've always wanted to do something proper
05:22with him.
05:23Similarly, you know, John had the same feelings about Sam because he's so good.
05:27So you're starting off from a place of everything that you want their scenes together to be, which is, you
05:35know, they've been together for ages.
05:37There's love. There's respect. There's, whatever, bickering and all that stuff, but that's almost to high, to, the bickering can't
05:47even cover up how much affection they have for each other.
05:50So, but how much it changed from the page, it's sort of hard to say at this stage, but I
05:58definitely wanted this to be my most sort of improvisational feeling film.
06:01And they definitely sort of riffed on the characters or on the dialogue more than I've let other actors ever
06:12do in the past, you know, because I wanted a freshness to this that didn't need to be circumscribed by
06:19sticking too, too heavily to the dialogue, I guess.
06:25Well, I think that comes across in certain scenes like the facial expressions when they're sat together on that hill,
06:29which you're like, is it one too many facial expressions? No, it's the perfect amount of facial expressions.
06:33Yeah, go even longer for the next one.
06:34Exactly. And the best, the biggest compliment I can give is that not only is it one of my favourite
06:38movies of the year, but I didn't miss Colin and Brendan, which I didn't think I'd say.
06:43Good, good. I'll tell them.
06:45But I do want to see, I do want to see more of them at some point in the future.
06:48Okay, maybe we'll do another one.
06:49Yeah. Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Privilege.
06:52I loved it so much. Thank you.
06:53I loved it.
