The director

Though he made his name with much admired plays such as The Weir and This Lime Tree Bower, writer/director Conor Mc Pherson has also made a successful transition to a career in film. Having penned the screenplay for the playful and amusing I Went Down, Mc Pherson made his directorial debut with the complex Saltwater two years ago.

His latest work, though, is a considerably more straightforward affair. The Actors is a full-on farcical comedy, written and directed by the Dublin born playwright from an original story by Neil Jordan.

It features a superbly sullen turn from comedian Dylan Moran, as a thoroughly crap actor playing a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it supporting role in a godawful version of Richard III. When the leading man – an ageing ham performed with relish by the ever reliable Michael Caine – suggests that Moran pretends to be a debt collector in order to intercept some money, the scam soon goes horribly wrong. Cue ridiculous disguises, inept criminality and cartoonish capering.

Like I Went Down, The Actors is that rarest of beasts in Irish cinema – an actual genre film. However, its author refuses to be hemmed in, as Moviehouse discovered when we caught up with him recently.

TB: Do you intend going back to writing and directing for theatre, or is film more satisfying?

CM: Well, I just enjoy switching between the two. In a way I’m sort of taking a break from writing plays at the moment. I’ve done an awful lot in a short period and I just need to get some distance from that and figure out what I want to do next.

TB: Has your reputation as a theatre wunderkind put extra pressure on you?

CM: Yeah, though I suppose it’s a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good that people are interested in what you’re doing, but at the same time, then you have to deliver. If I’d never written plays and I was just doing films, the films would then be looked at on their own merits. Because I come from theatre, it’s almost difficult for people to accept me as a film director.

TB: Your films do retain a good deal of theatricality – for example, The Actors is a film in five acts, and it’s very theatrical in its delivery...

CM: Because of the kind of film it is, it has to be very over-the-top, and a lot of theatre writing is very over-the-top . You have to give actors a lot of momentum in their speech, so they can lift off. So when you’re writing speech for plays, it needs to be quite muscular and full-on. And it sort of is like that within the film as well.

TB: It’s the kind of farcical comedy that rarely gets made outside France: was it difficult territory to venture into?

CM: The hardest thing was having to communicate what I wanted to the actors, cause it’s not very real. It’s kind of crazy and totally unbelievable. It’s just one of those things that you have to ask the actor to go along with, because you’re asking the audience to go along with it. So the actors had to give it a hundred and ten per cent, but in a really mad way.

TB: After you made Saltwater, you were quoted as saying ‘This is not a good film. In fact, when I look at it, I wonder what the fuck I was thinking’. Did you mean that or was it just one of those director’s moments?

CM: I’m proud of that film, and anyone’s first film is a learning process after all. I was at a thing in the IFC recently celebrating the Irish Film Board, and of the 76 films that have been made in the last ten years, using Irish Film Board money – and most of these films were made by first-time directors, remember – only seven of those directors have gone on to make another film. So a lot of people find their first film very difficult. But I did love making Saltwater. It’s definitely a strange film, but there are good things in it. But I felt I was on much surer ground with The Actors. I was a lot more definite about how I wanted the film to look and how I wanted it to feel, and I knew how to achieve that better. Whereas with Saltwater, very often I was trying to do things but they’d turn out quite differently. The thing took on a life of its own, in a way.

TB: Was it intimidating working with Sir Michael Caine?

CM: Yes, definitely. He was really really intimidating, and it wasn’t his fault either. It was because of my preconceptions of him – he was actually, in person, very easy to work with. He’s very professional, he just wants to get the job done, he really wants you to direct him, he wants you to tell him what to do. So I had to be very careful, and very precise, and make sure that he wasn’ t confused about anything I wanted.

TB: Dylan Moran’s character is very much in keeping with the ‘miserable cunt’ persona he essays in Black Books. Did you write the screenplay with him in mind?

CM: No, I hadn’t a clue who I wanted to play it, but I was being pushed very hard to cast American actors, and then when Dylan was suggested to me, at first I wasn’t sure why, because I presumed I was looking for someone who was technically a very good actor to play all the different parts required. Actually, the opposite was true. I’d never met him before, but he just seemed to me to be like the character. And then all the other stuff, the mad stuff, worked because he was enthusiastic. Like, the accents didn’t have to be good, they just had to be mad in order to be funny. As well as that, Dylan is incredibly good at improvs, and he was always coming up with ideas. He’s a really bright guy. So as soon as I saw him, then, I knew I had to cast him.

TB: Did you have fun directing Caine in the hammy Nazi version of Richard III within the movie?

CM: Yeah. There’s always something so full-on about productions like that: you think to yourself ‘whose idea is this?’ It’s not that a Nazi version of Richard III is a bad idea, but you really have to go all the way with it. It struck me that it was visually interesting and it gave the actors something to work with, because I didn’t want to be directing a proper version of Richard III. Not yet, anyway.