AVC: Did it take a long time to come up with useable footage?
GH: Yeah, on the street, we had tons of takes. If a plane goes over, we had to stop. Because we were shooting without permits, when a cop went by, we had to stop. And we also had to deal with people walking past and looking straight into the lens, which totally kills the mystery of making a movie. And I live in Dublin, and I have a lot of friends, plus I was a busker there for, like, 10 years of my life, so I knew a lot of the people on the street, and they would just come up and talk to me right in the middle of a song. Or people who were fans of the band might come along—it'd be like Jeff Tweedy busking in Chicago. You're gonna get a lot of people who're like "Hey, Jeff!", or they taking out their camera-phones and pointing them at him or whatever. So we had a lot of that, which meant we ended up having to shoot one scene—you remember the scene where the two characters meet for the first time? It's supposed to be an evening scene, but we had to shoot it at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning, because it was the only time the street quieted down enough for us to get through it.
AVC: Was there a lot of improv involved because you didn't have control of the set?
GH: It was mostly improv. John wrote a really good script, but we all improvised, including John. I think what makes improv possible is when the director is willing to improv, and he was. That's what made it work for me and Mar. I mean, we were just hanging out. We were basically just three mates making a movie in our bedroom—it was a very, very, very simple process. The one thing that we did do was, before we shot Once, we sat down and watched a bunch of films, and we got really excited about cinema. We went down with a bunch of Handycams, a very basic crew, everyone working for nothing and shooting with no permits. And we actually managed to make a film. And that was the idea: "Let's make a film somehow, let's do it." There was no great planning put into it. There was no great "We're going to shoot this scene, this scene, and this scene today." We just sort of went out each day and said, "What have we got?" "Well, we've got this, so let's go get that." And we went with that. Instead of having location scouting and all, we'd just hop on a bus and start filming there. It was all really enjoyable. It's funny, recently, we were in New York, and we saw a film shoot going on. There were a trucks parked everywhere, and we saw a bunch of cranes, and all these people there to just get one scene, an exterior of a building, looking in a window. And I thought "Fucking hell, the amount of work that takes." Then I remembered how we shot Once, and I thought "That is the only way to make a film."
AVC: You were in one film previously—1991's The Commitments—and you said afterwards that you had no interest in being in another film. What changed your mind?
GH: I've got to tell you, I wasn't into it—it's not that I didn't enjoy it, I loved it. What I didn't enjoy was what happened afterwards. I didn't enjoy the "being a celebrity for a week" bit. That was the bit that pissed me off. But making the film, I really enjoyed. I just didn't realize, being a young person, that if you sign up to make a film, a certain portion of your soul is forever gone. [Laughs.] From there on, you are that character to everybody you'll ever meet again. And, basically, "Quit your fucking complaining. That's what you signed up for." When I look back on my Commitments experience, I just think "Shit!"
Whereas with this, I wrote songs, I was making the film with my friends, I can stand beside this and say "Yeah, that was me." I'd have no problem with it. And plus, we didn't think it was going to come out. We shot it in such a way, with such a budget that there was no way this film was going to be big. We all hoped it would be a success, but on the level it was made: a couple of handicaps and a bit of a script. Very low-key. We really had no marketing plan. We thought we could sell the film to people who liked my band. We were going to go around the country, get one 35mm print made, and we were going to travel around Ireland, having John introduce the film. Mar and I'd play a couple of songs afterward, and then we were going to sell DVDs. That was the plan. And we did it, and at one of those screenings, a guy from Sundance was there. John had already sent the film to Sundance. He already sent it to Toronto and Tribeca and Edinburgh and all these places, and it got refused, officially. And then this guy came into one of the screenings and told us "Hey, I'm here as a tourist, I saw that your film was playing, so I bought a ticket, I saw your film, and I loved it. I would love to recommend it to Sundance." We didn't tell him that we had already been refused, we just handed him a DVD and told him "Yeah, here, take it." Two weeks later, we got the call saying "You've been officially selected for the Sundance Film Festival." It was a miracle.
AVC: Did it bother you at all when the film really took off, and you had to deal with sudden celebrity again?
GH: Not at all. This time, I'm much older, I'm ready for it. This time, I'm able to deal with it. I'm like "Bring it on." People see this film and they sort of go, "Okay, who is that guy, Glen Hansard, and what does he do?" And if they Google me, and they come up with The Frames, and then they buy a Frames record, then I'm over the moon. I don't feel that any aspect of my life has been threatened or that my privacy has been threatened. Because I'm an older man, I've got roots, and I can say "Fuck you all, get outta me face." The idea of celebrity is not interesting at all to me, but now I can handle it.
AVC: So is this the beginning of an ongoing film career for you?
GH: No, it was a one-shot. I mean, if Jim Jarmusch called up tomorrow and said "Hey, I have a cameo role for you in my next film," I'd be on the next plane. But overall, I'm not an actor, and I'll never call myself an actor. I've never thought of it as part of my life. I'll always be a singer, in my eyes. Still, if Werner Herzog called and said "Do you wanna be in me film?" then of course I'd do it.
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