A surprising arthouse hit

Films like Once aren’t meant to be successful. It was shot in Dublin in 17 days on a budget of BD57,000; its two leads have next to no acting experience.

There isn’t even that much dialogue. Designed as an ‘arthouse musical’ or a ‘visual album’, the story is told in a folk-tinged rock soundtrack.

What little plot there is focuses on the unlikely relationship between a busker and a Czech immigrant single mother. We never find out either of their names.

But somehow Once’s innocence made it the surprise indie hit of the summer in US cinemas, catching the attention of Steven Spielberg, Bob Dylan and John Travolta.

The winner of this year’s World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, it has outlasted Spider-Man 3 and Shrek the Third in the top 30 US box office list and has taken $7 million at the box office.

The Hollywood Reporter raved that Once has ‘more magical moments in its 88-minute running time than most summer blockbusters can muster in two-and-a-half hours’.

The Boston Globe said the film ‘reinvents the movie musical as a genre of rock ‘n’ roll realism’. And Spielberg told USA Today: “A little movie called Once gave me enough inspiration to last the rest of the year.”

When I meet the two leads and the director in a Dublin arthouse cinema, they seem bemused by the fuss. They are a bohemian group of mates who got lucky. The busker is played by Glen Hansard, 37, frontman of Irish rock group the Frames.

The original idea was for the film to be sold on DVD to fans at gigs. Hansard has appeared on screen once before: he played Outspan, the woolly-hatted guitarist with long, orange hair in Alan Parker’s 1991 musical The Commitments. Marketa Irglova (‘Mar’), 19, is, however, a complete unknown, a musical prodigy who had to get permission for time off school back home in the Czech Republic for the Dublin shoot (she was 17).

Director John Carney, 35, was a bassist with the Frames in the early 1990s, which is how he met Hansard. Until recently he was best known in Ireland as the co-writer and co-director of the most successful series in Irish television history, Bachelors Walk. Now, however, he is fielding calls from John Travolta’s agent and turning down offers to shoot in LA and New York.

“It is weird. I’ve gone through a love/hate relationship with it. It was a laugh ... and then I lost the run of myself for a while,” he says. “People have phoned me and said, “That’s it. You’re in the club.

“But Spielberg is just one man who happened to like my film. To go over to LA now and set up shop ... that’s not for me. I don’t think I would be great at fighting the Hollywood system.”

Instead he is filming Zonad, a ‘very silly comedy’, outside Dublin with his brother Kieran. It is a Mel Brooks spoof about a prison escapee who persuades an entire Irish village that he is a visitor from outer space.

This seems strangely apt: Carney is a Catweazle-type with a reddish, wispy beard and an unwashed smell. When we meet he has only had two hours’ sleep.

The outline for Once took him five minutes to write, he says, ‘and it never changed’. He had the idea in a cafe in 2004, missing his girlfriend who had taken an acting job in London: “I was sitting there thinking, “Where has the Dublin I knew gone?”

The city has shed a lot of its greatness. It has lost its soul. I was seeing all these new immigrants in Dublin and identifying with them. I decided I wanted one character who was a Dubliner and one who was not.”

Nostalgia for Ireland has helped Once’s American success, but its independence has also been key, says Hansard: “There was nobody telling us what to do. John managed to make a really “clean” film. I think people are happy to see a simple story that doesn’t have to prove anything. They just watch us hanging out.”

It helps that everyone loves a Romeo and Juliet tale: “Everybody has been in love or is in love. And we have all been through this relationship: something that didn’t come true, a beautiful connection that didn’t last.”

The money came mostly from the Irish Film Board and the greatest expense was £2,500 spent on the hire of a crane for a final sweeping shot. Most of the cast and crew were friends and family. There is a party scene where Hansard’s mother sings; Irglova made all the party food. Carney asked his girlfriend, actress Marcella Plunkett, 27, if he could use home videos from their life together to illustrate the busker’s absent lover.

American audiences seem spellbound by the homespun quality of the film.

“I think what they respond to is that they are watching an uplifting film which is actually really depressing,” says Carney.

“Americans like optimism and Once walks a tightrope: you feel uplifted at the end even if you’re crying.”

But the film bombed in Ireland. According to Hansard: ‘People would say, “Yeah. Saw your film. Whatever”.’

A large part of the film’s success rests on the haunting soundtrack, which Hansard and Irglova wrote together. There is now talk of a Best Song Oscar nomination for the first track, Falling Slowly.

They are heading back to the US for a longer tour. Having toured in obscurity as a duo in the Czech Republic for years, the two are glad of a new audience, but wary of overexposure. Hansard was reluctant to join the project initially after his experience on The Commitments: “It was a month out of my life – but I got called Outspan for years. I didn’t want to take any credit for it because to me it was not a creative thing.”

At least the buzz around Once feels deserved because he wrote the music: “My first reaction was to reject it while at the same time embracing it, surfing it, digging it. Mar was, like, “This is what you’ve always wanted. If you’re going to flirt with fame, don’t be surprised if it turns around and wants you.”

In July they played 12 sold-out dates in the US on a two-week seven-city tour, culminating in an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Playing to packed venues was a shock as they didn’t think anyone would have seen the film. Instead they got mobbed.

Hansard and Irglova seem brooding and intense. Hansard is jetlagged from a flight back from Australia, where the Frames have been supporting Bob Dylan (Dylan requested them after watching Once). Irglova is hanging out in Dublin waiting for the second leg of their US tour to start.

Incredibly, their involvement in the film was almost accidental. A Dublin busker himself since the age of 13, Hansard was supposed to be helping his mate John Carney out, contributing ideas and writing songs for the film – until the original lead, Cillian Murphy (Girl with a Pearl Earring) pulled out a month before shooting.

Carney had already cast Irglova on the strength of her musical virtuosity after Hansard introduced them. With Murphy gone, it made sense that Hansard might as well play the busker himself.

Hansard and Irglova met six years ago when she was 13 and he 31. She is from Valmez, a Czech town. The Frames were performing at a festival there. Irglova’s father Marek was one of the organisers: he invited the band to stay at his house.

Marketa, a brilliant singer and pianist since the age of seven, prepared for their arrival by learning every word of the Frames’ albums. The band was so impressed they invited her up on stage to perform a number. Hansard quickly discovered that Mar’s voice fitted beautifully with his: “Mar bullied her way into my creative life. She would ask, “Why are you writing that if it didn’t happen to you?” I found a companion in music.’”

Marketa and Glen are now an item. Hansard is a little coy about it: ‘We are together and it’s lovely. It’s just really nice. We’ve been seeing a lot of each other.’

Irglova is more savvy. Their friendship was always viewed as ‘a bit disturbing’, she admits, ‘because of my age. People saw more in it than there was. I was just travelling and making music with someone I respected. I’ve always had feelings for Glen but it was never allowed ... In the back of my head I always fantasised – I thought, maybe when I’m older. Then when I had almost given up on it, we were thrust together.’

“They had a great rapport,” Carney says. “I never knew whether they were going out or not. I certainly did not pose the question.”

This seems typical of Carney, as is his response to the prospect of winning an Oscar. “It’s just an award, it’s not important. Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar, that’s how I look at it. Although it would be a fun night if Glen got Best Song.”

In the end Carney puts Once’s success down to not really trying hard. “It’s a nice addition to the world,” he shrugs, “as opposed to a piece of rubbish.”