Shot in under three weeks for around €100,000, the film tells the story of a Dublin busker (Hansard) who meets and strikes up a musical friendship with a Czech Big Issue seller (Marketa Iglova).
“Toronto turned it down, Edinburgh turned it down, Telluride turned it down,” says director John Carney of the previously lukewarm industry response to it. “Thank God, really. Sundance has been amazing for us. The younger side of the industry, the agents and some of the acquisition people, they’re responding to it. And then the major guys, who are just in town for a couple of nights – nice suits, you can tell immediately they’re successful film producers – are coming up to us and saying the film is brilliant.”
The morning after the night before found Glen Hansard at the Denver Marriott where he told the Chicago Tribune: “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I rang my mother at home this morning, just wondering if everything was OK. I had one of those strange nights when you’re not really sure what’s up, you feel like something’s vaguely wrong. And she says to me: ‘You know what it is, Glen? Everything’s going your way, and you’re just feeling guilty about it.”
It nearly didn’t happen at all for Hansard, with Bachelor’s Walk man Carney developing Once with Red Eye and Wind That Shakes The Barley man Cillian Murphy in mind.
The reviews couldn’t be any more rave with the Chicago Tribune saying, “It may well be the best music film of any stripe since Stop Making Sense.”
Irish audiences can have a look-see next month when Once screens as part of the Jameson Dublin Film Festival, an extensive preview of which will be in the next issue of Hotpress.