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Transcript

Once · The Next Reel Film Podcast

• 0:01
  Pete Wright: I'm Pete Wright.
• 0:02
  Andy Nelson: And I'm Andy Nelson.
• 0:04
  Pete Wright: Welcome to the next reel. When the movie ends
• 0:06
  Andy Nelson: Our conversation begins.
• 0:09
  Pete Wright: Once is over.
• 0:11
  Hanky Panky? It won't be for Hanky Panky. When's the last time you heard Hanky Panky in a movie? It couldn't be often enough, I'm telling you.
• 0:25
  Andy Nelson: It would probably have been Madonna singing her Hanky Panky song in Dick Tracy.
• 0:32
  Pete Wright: Yeah. From Dick Tracy to this and then never again. And never again. Yeah. Hi.
• 0:38
  How are you? We're on a new series. It's my series. It's my series, my series all alone. You picked this.
• 0:45
  We were talking about John This is
• 0:46
  Andy Nelson: the John Carney's Streetwise musicals series, and we were talking about once, begin again, and sing street. Yeah. Why this series? What's your draw to Carney and these musicals of his?
• 1:03
  Pete Wright: I'm fascinated by movies that treat music as the actual drama. Right? Music making as the actual drama. You know, we we did the the movies of star is born, stars is born, stars stars is born. It's not a decoration in these movies, but it's the thing itself.
• 1:26
  And I think John Carney's first three movies I I'll say first three because I haven't seen Fiona and Son. Flora. Flora. Right. Flora.
• 1:33
  Well, Fiona's Flora's friend.
• 1:35
  Andy Nelson: Her her sister, she doesn't like to talk about.
• 1:38
  Pete Wright: Yeah. She's hardly in the movie. You won't even recognize her. Anyway, John Carney's his first three movies that we are gonna be talking about, I think he really celebrates the act of watching people create together and finds that inherently compelling. And I like the ride that I get to take with him.
• 1:56
  You know, in this movie in particular, the incredible standout scene for me is the hesitant first attempt at at at making music together, and we'll talk about that. I think this movie really capitalizes on that in an intimate and and beautiful way. And it's also low budget, you know, a lot of handhelds. It's putting musicians on stages or on screen as actors in some cases for the first time and getting to then see him refine his conceit, to refine this this concept and skill over the course of these the following two movies, I think will be really fun.
• 2:39
  Andy Nelson: I agree. And I'm looking forward to the discussion and and just the idea of this as a musical. Right? Like, this type of story fitting into the musical genre because it's a little different in that it's actually people just performing music as opposed to we're just gonna be singing all the time. And sometimes it's a song in front of people.
• 3:04
  Sometimes we're just singing our emotions and everything, and and there's a lot of that that you can still read in this, the way that songs play into what they're actually, you know, what they're actually feeling and saying. But how in so many ways, it's it's a story of buskers and, you know, wanting to actually turn into a musical career. So I think that's what's interesting about it. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to the series and and what John John Carney brings to it.
• 3:35
  Pete Wright: You had seen all of these. Right? I had seen these three films. Yes. Okay.
• 3:40
  And you like them generally. Right? I don't have to be, like, I'm not holding out for a surprise.
• 3:44
  Andy Nelson: No. I generally like them.
• 3:46
  Pete Wright: Okay.
• 3:47
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. We'll talk about it each as we go. Like, I think I don't think I saw any of these in the theater. So that's an interesting element to it that I I think we can include as part of the conversation as we go.
• 4:01
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Sure. Where would you, where would you like to start?
• 4:05
  Andy Nelson: Should we start with our initial thoughts?
• 4:07
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Let's do that. I think maybe we've already had them. The the initial thoughts are, I think this movie is slower than I remembered in terms of its actual story, and that is okay with me. I I remember much more.
• 4:20
  I my my memory of it is, you know, there's much more sort of narrative in it than there is. It's a very simple story. And I think for the simple story that it is, it's our twenty six minute runtime is kind of perfect. I like these characters very much. Part of the reason I like them is because they look a little bit uncomfortable on camera, and I like the fact that I get to watch them gain confidence along with them.
• 4:50
  That's sort of the headcanon I'm I'm playing with to to the point where, we get to see their studio experience and that that level of sort of excitement and long nights and all of that. I feel like I'm right there with them. It is partly that, you know, jiggly monkey shaky cam that we get with the handheld. It invites me into the scene. I think this movie captures that level of intimacy and brings me right along in a great way.
• 5:15
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. I really feel very much the same as you do when I revisited this. I I before I started it, I watched one of the behind the scenes on the Blu ray that was about making a musical like this.
• 5:31
  Pete Wright: It's much more dynamic watching the behind the scenes stuff.
• 5:34
  Andy Nelson: Well, one of the comments that Glenn Hanford said is that he seemed to remember that the movie was 60% music. And I was like, interesting. Interesting. And then when it started, I'm like, wow. He really was right.
• 5:50
  Like, they're just always singing. There's always another song to sing. And it's not, as I said earlier, it's not a musical where I'm singing about the journey that I'm on, and we're watching a montage as we go across the fields in the fjords. No. We're not doing that here.
• 6:05
  This is just like, I'm gonna sing a song, and now we're gonna see her sing a song. And there's a lot of that. And it's there is a very, a a very sweet story at the heart of it. This journey between guy and girl that we have very conveniently not named, although inconvenient when it comes to a point at the end where he has to he's talking to her mother, and he calls he he says, is herself home? I was like Yeah.
• 6:34
  No. That's not true. That's a reach when you're going so far as to not name your characters and you have to say something like that. No.
• 6:41
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I don't care for it.
• 6:42
  Andy Nelson: But but otherwise, I'm like, I know you're Irish, but I
• 6:46
  Pete Wright: think you could use I think there are some names. Yeah. I could get.
• 6:51
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. But I I liked the simplicity of the story. And, yeah. I think it was a bit of a surprise though as I rewatched this going, wow. There is it was a lot simpler than I remember.
• 7:07
  A lot simpler. Yeah.
• 7:10
  Pete Wright: But but it was it was a charmer. And I think where you know, once I get my head back in the frame that I think the movie would like to invite me into, which is very much about the the conceit that we're gonna be a part of creating music. And it starts on the street, and it goes to the studio, and it leads through potential and potential opportunity, I find that experience electrifying. That the experience, the scenes where we get to see them creating music, for me personally, is electrifying. And I recognize I am I may be an island and that others may find this movie boring, but I love the experiences that I've had in studios making recording music.
• 8:00
  And this movie takes me back there to that that point of camaraderie and cooperation and collaboration. And I think this movie, because both of these people do this professionally, it was easy, I think, for them to to give me that sort of naturalistic emotion. They had done it before. They were doing it. John Carney was the bass player for the band that is in this movie ten years or fifteen years prior.
• 8:32
  Like, they all knew each other and their experience of making music together, and I think you could feel that on screen.
• 8:37
  Andy Nelson: I think that's a great point. The fact that and and John Carney talked about this. The fact that he initially was trying to find actors to play the roles, actors who could hopefully sing. And in the end, he realized what he needed to do is go with singers who could, you know, hopefully act a little bit. And that's that's where he went, and he ended up casting, as you said, these people.
• 9:04
  Well, I think Glenn is who he had, Glenn Hanford is who he had worked with. And Glenn had known Marquetta Urglova from, from some other musical stuff that they had been involved in together and recommended her. My understanding is she was cast in the film at a point when John Carney, whose previous film had starred Killian Murphy Yes. And Killian Murphy was attached to this. And when he told Killian Murphy that he was gonna bring Marquetta on to play the part of girl, you know, it sounds like Killian Murphy was like, I don't know if I feel comfortable performing opposite somebody who's never acted before and ended up pulling out of the film.
• 9:53
  They lost some of their funding. And then he realized that at that point, he's just like, Glenn is who I really need to go with. I need to go with someone who has the voice.
• 10:02
  Pete Wright: And who had written the songs.
• 10:04
  Andy Nelson: And who had written the songs. Exactly.
• 10:05
  Pete Wright: Glenn had been hired to write the songs. So Yeah. It just made sense. At that time, the film was originally called busker, which I think is cute.
• 10:15
  Andy Nelson: Which is just for people who aren't familiar with buskers, street performers, street singers and stuff. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Which we see him doing quite
• 10:22
  Pete Wright: a bit. He was doing most of the film. The with the other interesting thing, because these guys knew each other, Carney and Hansard, because they were in the band together, the frames in the early nineties. Hansard you know, I was watching a Sam Jones interview with Hansard who says, you know, this was very close to my story. Right?
• 10:39
  My mom and I went to the bank to get the cash to record my demo in the studio that this movie is filmed in. Like, we that's the same studio. And he said I I told him, I said, I'm not gonna do it. It's too close to my story, and I'm a basket case. I'm a terrible actor.
• 10:58
  He says, no. You're not a terrible actor. He says, okay. But if I'm a bad actor, you have to tell me. Like, tell don't let me embarrass myself.
• 11:06
  He said, I can't I can't ruin your reputation. I don't wanna ruin the frame's reputation. And so you you have to you have to tell me. And I think it worked out really, really well. I think Glenn Hanford is a is a fine actor here.
• 11:19
  He's also a fine actor in the commitments, which is stunningly a movie we haven't talked about on this show. And he plays, you know, one of the musicians in the band, and he's great. He has not done very much stuff because he's primarily a musician, but he's just damn delightful as the singer songwriter busker character. I think he really plays it. Interestingly, the the girl storyline does not come from his life.
• 11:44
  That comes from Carney's life. He he had the experience with with someone that, you know, was married and, you know, had a child and all of those things. And will they, won't they, their way to the end of scene. But, still a a lovely sort of ripped from life little experience.
• 12:03
  Andy Nelson: That's what you need in a story like this. Right? You just need something simple so that you can give these non actors, but musicians, time to perform their music and enough to provide some emotion in the part, but not too much emotion. Like and that's something that, like, at one point, Glenn actually told or said that John told him, he's like, you're you're putting a little too much into it. It needs to be less than that.
• 12:32
  And that helps when it's such a a subtle amount of acting that people need to do. It just gives them this chance to kind of just be themselves. And I think because they had kind of lived in this world so much, I think it came very naturally for them. And it wasn't overwritten. It just it it goes at just the right level to, to give us what we need out of it.
• 12:55
  Pete Wright: I think there are those who might argue it's underwritten. For me, it it feels just about right. I wanna talk about that central scene for for me, which is the the scene in Billy's music shop. Central scene, which is actually, like, ten minutes into the movie.
• 13:10
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Like, so it's really like our that's that's our yeah.
• 13:14
  Pete Wright: It peaks and then it's Early. Slow decline. Yeah. This sequence for me is is one that captures the experience of singing with someone for the first time as authentically as I have ever seen it on screen. The way Hansard talks about it, he says, we're just reliving in that scene exactly the sequence that happened when I introduced Marquetta to this song.
• 13:42
  We were obviously not filming at that point, but it was so easy to jump back to that moment because you just remember as a musician what it feels like how electric it is the first time you introduce a song to somebody, and they're able to read ahead enough to sing with you and and make it sound so alive and discovered. And for me, that was an incredibly powerful, quiet little scene of discovery that I can't like, it it's why I wanted to talk about this movie, was that scene in the music shop. What do you what'd you think of that?
• 14:18
  Andy Nelson: Well, I I I mean, I love it. It's a great scene. I I have a question, though, and I guess this goes to my not understanding, all of this completely. But that song, both Hansard and Orgloba ended up winning a lot of awards for that song. So my understanding was that she co wrote it with him.
• 14:40
  Did she not?
• 14:41
  Pete Wright: I think it goes to it goes back to he had written pretty much what he had written in the music shop, and she came in and added all of her stuff. And that gets a co writer credit.
• 14:54
  Andy Nelson: Oh, I see. So we're we're literally watching essentially kind of the theoretical process of how they co wrote this song together. So he brought he brought the the guitar tune and lyrics, and she came on and brought in all the
• 15:10
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Piano and harmonies and everything else.
• 15:13
  Andy Nelson: I see. Gotcha. Okay. Then that makes sense. I love it.
• 15:16
  It's such a I I rewatched that scene twice because I I just think it plays so well. It's such a perfect song for the way that these two are falling in love, falling for each other in a way that's never gonna be required. Like, it just it plays so perfectly. And it it the way that it builds and it discovers like, we see them kind of discovering the strengths in what each other does and how to work off of that and how to play with that. And I you know, as somebody who's, you know, I mean, I've taken piano lessons, but I've never really
• 15:54
  Pete Wright: You play the piano. I've taken piano lessons. Come on.
• 15:58
  Andy Nelson: Well, but I've never played in anything with other people like you have. Like, you've been in situations where you're with a lot of other music people all doing stuff together. I basically look at notes on a page and try to bang it out correctly. Like, that's that's that's my extent. And so, yeah, it's very different, and it's exciting to see these two people figuring all of that out.
• 16:22
  And I can I can I I can still appreciate that, you know, translating into other spaces, like working on scripts or things like that with other people and ideas and stuff? So it's that idea of that creative ideation that they're enjoying so much right here. And it it comes across so well, and I I love the fact it's such a small moment, but I love the fact that we get one cutaway late in the whole performance to Billy. Just as he's listening and just a little smile on his face.
• 16:50
  Pete Wright: It's like doing a crossword or something.
• 16:52
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. I'm just like, that was, I don't know, it made it even more touching to me that, like, you know, he's he's picking up on it.
• 17:00
  Pete Wright: The the music store is Walton's Music Shop in Dublin. And this one just little note I find really amusing. Apparently, the shop owner first of all, he banned people ever from playing falling slowly on the piano in his stories. Like, I'm so damn sick of that song. But also, he sold that piano four times because it was the piano that was sitting right there where they filmed it.
• 17:25
  People would come in. They're like, oh, that's the piano I want. He would sell it and then order the same piano to replace it, and people would come in and be like, well, that's the piano. I want that piano, and he would sell it. They just kept going in.
• 17:36
  That I I find particularly subversive. I'll say Billy's part. I don't think it was actually Billy. But
• 17:43
  Andy Nelson: If they had just watched the movie, they would realize that it's now in her apartment.
• 17:48
  Pete Wright: Right. Well, that wasn't the same piano. What? It wasn't. She was playing on a grand on a baby grand.
• 17:55
  Andy Nelson: I guess I didn't remember it being a baby grand. For some reason, I thought it was the stand up piano, and the baby grand was at the in the secret room in the studio. But maybe you're right. Maybe it wasn't. There were
• 18:04
  Pete Wright: multiple grands in there. And but Yeah. But there was no way they would have been able to shoot over her because they have some angles Yeah. You're right. Where they're shooting through the
• 18:14
  Andy Nelson: I was so taken by the music. I wasn't looking at the piano.
• 18:16
  Pete Wright: As you should have been. I'm the one who should be scolded here. I clearly, I wasn't invested enough in the moment.
• 18:23
  Andy Nelson: No. Clearly, you were because you knew all of that.
• 18:29
  Pete Wright: Okay. The relationship that these two have, I think, is really pretty special. First of all, let's just say out loud, she was 17 when she was introduced to Carney.
• 18:39
  Andy Nelson: I thought about that a lot as I was watching this. I'm like, wait a minute. So she was 15 when she got pregnant and married? Like or and or 14 because she had the baby when she was 50? Like, I there were some questions.
• 18:55
  Let's just say I had questions about what was going on here.
• 18:58
  Pete Wright: Well, I don't think she was playing 17. Like, she was playing slightly older. Do you you think they said her age in the film as 17?
• 19:07
  Andy Nelson: No. But I definitely noticed she looked really young. Like, she I like, as I looked at her, I'm like, she is a young young woman here. Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:16
  So very young mother, clearly.
• 19:18
  Pete Wright: Very young mother. But I was really moved by just how capable she is as an actor in this thing. I found I believed her. Did it feel like a kind of an early first performance? Yeah.
• 19:35
  But was I was I sold on on who she was? Yeah.
• 19:39
  Andy Nelson: I think that we're probably in the same camp with that. I think that there's there's a innocence to how she plays her character. And I think also it helps that she's just a very straightforward and direct character in general. Like, I think that ended up helping the performance because, you know, when she's just irritated with him, she's just like, f that. I gotta go.
• 20:02
  And she's just out the door. Like, she's just moves on and doesn't linger in anything emotional ever, which I think works quite well. And also, I think I think at some point, he had Carney had recognized that by casting this person who is from the Czech Republic to play the part, it brought something that I think he said, like, we he would never have gotten if he had just cast somebody from Ireland. It creates this sense of another space, you know, in the story. And suddenly, she feels kind of like she's separated anyway, and that he thought it ends up playing well that she actually isn't a local.
• 20:47
  Pete Wright: I think so too. I think we that is that's kind of a major part of our the breakup in the narrative. Like, thank god we go to, as you say, another place. Thank god we meet the the yahoos that come in to learn how to speak English from a soap opera on TV. Like, thank god we have some of that texture because the movie demands some some more texture than we have from just the two of them.
• 21:11
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. It plays nicely. And I think also it gives you these moments that, like, they don't translate any of the Czech. Like, we don't get subtitles of the Czech for any of it. It's just it is what it is.
• 21:25
  If you understand Czech, I guess, then you you get the benefit. But there's a moment when they're they've taken his dad's motorcycle off for a ride, they're out on a hill. And he's kind of doing some, like, how do you say this in Czech?
• 21:40
  Pete Wright: How do
• 21:40
  Andy Nelson: you say ocean? How do you say do you love him in Czech? And when he asked that, do you love him? Her response apparently in unsubtitled Czech is no, I love you. But he doesn't know Czech.
• 21:55
  And so he's just like, he just assumes no. And so he's just like, oh, okay. Without realizing that. And I think that is so clever. But it's also interesting.
• 22:05
  And I don't know. Maybe I'm a little pissed at Carney for not giving us a little clue because we don't get to know what it means either. Like, I only figured it out because I was reading about it online. But I'm like, oh, okay. That's a nice little note that we have in there that that she gives him a clue without actually having to reveal anything.
• 22:25
  Pete Wright: Okay. But but stay with me here, because I think I think you're dancing on one of the great discomforts of the movie that we just mentioned, the fact that she was 17 and he was 37. Yeah. If we knew that she was saying, I love you, it changes the entire texture of their relationship. If he knows that she's saying I love you.
• 22:46
  Right? Then it becomes Lolita.
• 22:48
  Andy Nelson: Well
• 22:49
  Pete Wright: Don't you think?
• 22:50
  Andy Nelson: I I I don't think it's yeah. It's difficult to go that far because, I mean, jeez, she's a mother already. You know, she has a baby at home. She has a she has a toddler.
• 23:00
  Pete Wright: That's point. It's not like
• 23:01
  Andy Nelson: At home.
• 23:01
  Pete Wright: Protecting her from?
• 23:03
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. So she's not still in in middle school or something like that. Right? So but at the same time, yeah, I mean, when you know their ages, the whole thing is is a lot grosser. But I think you're right.
• 23:15
  I don't think we have the movie play the way it does if he knows what she said. Like, I think that it's it's harder for him to probably seriously ask her to be part of the band and all of that, like, because he probably would just wanna be with her, and it's just it it recontextualizes so much of the story. And so I think it really needs to not be something that is verbalized. Yeah. It is
• 23:44
  Pete Wright: interesting, like, when you because we do know their ages and because we do know that they were working together outside of the film, That they were performing together. They were writing together. They were partners, and they continued to do so. What an interesting exploration. My understanding from the Sam Jones video with and they did not talk about this at great detail, is that at some point later, the two of them were in a relationship Yeah.
• 24:16
  That apparently ended. They did date for a short period after this film.
• 24:23
  Andy Nelson: But by 2009, so just a couple years later, he had said they're no longer a couple. He had said it was a very necessary part of our friendship, but I think we both concluded that that wasn't where we what we really wanted to do. So we're not together now. We're just really good friends. So and then I think she's now married somebody in Iceland, and I think she's living in Iceland, a citizen of both The Czech Republic and Iceland now.
• 24:46
  So
• 24:47
  Pete Wright: Well, their contributions to the soundtrack are fantastic. If you're into this sort of singer songwriter vibe, it is great. Carney wrote the score, and this just feels like a collaboration between musicians who want to make a movie. And I I have a lot of respect for that because Carney I I think Carney is a a fantastic and astute director of music and obviously loves music, loves directing videos, loves directing this kind of stuff, and you can see why he is so attentive to letting the music play. But I also think Tim Fleming's photography, the cinematography behind this shooting, this whole thing on traditional video cameras gives it a sense of intimacy that will require a lot more work to make it look great once we're all running eight k systems.
• 25:47
  Andy Nelson: You can still watch the crappy films. They just they it exemplifies the crappiness. Like, same thing in twenty eight days later. It's like, yes. Boy, you've really seen the crappiness.
• 25:56
  Yeah. Yeah. You know, I this they they ended up after the whole drop of Killian Murphy and changing everything around to go super, super independent, which, you know, I think John Carney had ended up saying when he found his producers, like, that's kind of what he wanted to do anyway. He wanted to make something that felt really low, low budget, very authentic. And I think that's I think also made it more comfortable for Glenn and Marquetta anyway to not have these all this giant equipment, giant lighting gear everywhere they were going.
• 26:29
  Oftentimes, when they were out in the streets, they were shooting on long lenses and just let the actors do their thing out in the streets. And people around them had no idea that a movie was even being filmed there. And they were not necessarily shooting with permits. They were just kind of doing a very running gun sort of project. And I think they managed to capture more of that authenticity because of that.
• 26:55
  Like, I think that actually helps when you're working with these actors who or these singers who are, you know, acting here. I think that gives them the space they need to just kind of end up feeling more natural anyway.
• 27:09
  Pete Wright: Yeah. To the point where some of the people who dropped money in the Qatar case were actual People. Bystanders. Right? That scene the scene in the in the store was one of those scenes that was just shot in one take to capture it and get it done, and they had permission from the store owner for the take and then get the hell out, and they did.
• 27:30
  Andy Nelson: Clearly not the the the family standing outside the store who are all just, like, watching, like, the camera. They're going from the camera to Marketa, camera to Marketa. Like, what is going on here, those little girls?
• 27:42
  Pete Wright: Yeah. That's that's one of the perils of shooting unpermitted. You can't close the street.
• 27:47
  Andy Nelson: No. Exactly. Exactly. It all it but it plays fine. And I think that was what was nice to see that all of that just ended up feeling natural.
• 27:56
  I think at one point, they were talking about how they just wanted them to be feeling extra natural in the space. And so they started Marquetta, like, two blocks away or something to have her walking before Glenn would come running up and catch up with her. And they just had they called her on her cell phone. She was like, action. And so she just started, and she's just walking around selling flowers.
• 28:18
  I'm like, it's it's it's clever to kind of give that sense of space to your actors. You know? I I liked that quite a bit. Alright. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.
• 28:30
  Pete Wright: Did anything as you think about John Carney, the director, I I found myself moved by just how how sort of effortless he is at revealing things about our characters in in a really natural sort of incremental way. Right? For a movie that's so simple, we learn about these characters in in a way that is paced sort of perfectly. We learn about his ex and the fact that she left, and we learn about that in one of those great scenes where, in fact, he is singing the plot on the bus. So, like, that's something that's hard to capture if you're not someone who is completely in tune with their instrument, right, to be able to just hang out and sing improvisationally, you know, banging out, chords on the guitar.
• 29:25
  We we get that. We get her husband the the reveal of her husband, the fact that she was married. She we learned that she was a mother before we learned that she's still married. All these little reveals feel so perfectly paced, and I guess I was surprised at how how good Carney seems to be at doing that in a film this early in his career.
• 29:48
  Andy Nelson: Well and I think that goes to just again, I think we're I don't know. We're we're going back and forth on how little is in this film because I think that also attributes to why there's so little in this film. Right? It's allowing these subtle moments to just kind of come very naturally, and and we kind of slowly discover them as things go along and as it slowly unfolds. Like, we start we realize, oh, he has an x.
• 30:13
  These songs are about his x when he sings about being a a Hoover fixer sucker guy, and all of that sort of stuff, which I think is really funny. But having that song, I don't know. The way that he chooses to reveal information to her in that moment by song instead of just kind of having a conversation about it, I think also gives us so much about his character. And then and that's what I I found interesting with Carney is the way that he chose to reveal the character information in such careful ways. Like, I am not somebody who's good at talking about my emotions, but I can sing a little about bit about it and why I'm pissed at her and blah blah blah.
• 30:59
  And the little bits and pieces about, like, he has no idea that she has a kid or lives with her mom. She's like, oh, I'll, you know, walk you over to my place. He walks her up and walk they go in, you know, like, this is my daughter. This is my mother. It's like, oh, like, he lets us just have these moments that come in a very natural way.
• 31:18
  We're like, we don't have the big dramatic moment. Like, I have to tell you something before we go upstairs. I have a child. Like, there's none of that. It just it's just people, and I think that's it's just life.
• 31:30
  I haven't I hadn't seen this film in a long time, probably since about 02/2008. And so I'm curious now having revisited this if I'm if I'll be able to find those same moments when we go to Begin Again and Sing Street. You know?
• 31:46
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I mean, there are I remember principal moments of Begin Again in particular, and context is the fuzzy. That'll be interesting.
• 31:57
  Andy Nelson: Yeah.
• 31:58
  Pete Wright: Yeah. I mean, I just going to his sense of story. Right? I mean, it's all captured in the end. Right?
• 32:05
  This deliberately ambiguous, not ambiguous ending, which is I I mean, I don't know. Do you feel like the ending, the the romantic tension is ambiguous at the end of the film?
• 32:17
  Andy Nelson: I mean, I I think what had to happen happened. Right? She's married. Her husband is returning. Like, it was it sounded like both of their relationships had been over, which is I think why they were both in a space to potentially welcome these moments that the two of them had.
• 32:36
  But we saw he still couldn't let go of Catherine. Like, he is singing a song to a video he edited, a footage of her, like, that they had shot on their cameras. And so he is still stuck on her. She doesn't sound as stuck on her husband. In fact, it sounds like it was a little rough, and he refused to come and stuff like that.
• 32:56
  But after that conversation, he's decided to move up there and to to make good on it. And so, yeah, we we end up in a place where they've both, you know, decided, I'm going back to my previous relationship. This was never really meant to be, but it was perhaps what they both needed to move forward and heal the broken relationships that they had been in. You know?
• 33:22
  Pete Wright: That final move where he goes to the piano store and buys her a piano and has it delivered as he leaves, where we have that crane shot that's close on her in their 2nd Floor window and then pulls out, and we we're looking over the the courtyard. People playing. The sun is out. Very rare in Dublin, I guess. And and meanwhile, he's off getting on the bus and On the plane.
• 33:49
  Heading to London. They both have smiles on their faces. And it feels like that moment we have is a celebration of of what it means for an ambiguous relationship to firmly cement itself in the space of a platonic relationship. Like, they are they are creative a wonderful creative pair, and they had a dalliance with potential romance, and it didn't work. And they can still be good to each other and do things that are loving and kind to each other.
• 34:19
  And I find that as unambiguous as you can get by the end, like the fact that they are gleefully moving apart to other relationships and with no apparent longing for each other. And I think that is one of the coolest things about this movie.
• 34:35
  Andy Nelson: Well, I think it all boils down to one key moment, and it's the, you know, the hanky panky moment where after this hugely successful time in the studio recording a bunch of songs, the engineer ended up falling in love with their music and put in a lot of extra time to to make them sound great and everything. And they're leaving, and the two of them, he's like, hey, do you wanna come back to my place, you know, for for a drink or something? And she's just like, no. It's just gonna turn into hanky panky. We both know it.
• 35:08
  We're both smart adults. It's just like it doesn't have to be hanky panky. She's like, come on. It's very cute. And then but she agrees finally.
• 35:15
  She's like, okay. I'll I'll come over later. Right? And then she never does. We see him waiting at the end of the day.
• 35:23
  She has never come. And I think if there's any ambiguousness, it's just in that day of him waiting, thinking that she really intends to come. And then at the end of the of the day, realizing she never intended to come. She was just getting out of that situation, I guess. Or maybe she did kind of intend to come, but then decided, no, I I can't do this.
• 35:47
  Like, I'm not exactly sure if we know if she was lying or if she thought she would and changed her mind, you know?
• 35:55
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Right. And how did you read it? I well, for for me, I think that that probably the inciting incident of her husband telling her that he's coming home happened off camera and or coming to be with her happened off camera.
• 36:11
  Andy Nelson: It happened while they were at the studio because she tells him that as they're leaving.
• 36:16
  Pete Wright: Oh, that's a good point. And so, you know, to me, I read it as someone who just like, she made the decision to probably for oh, although this was never said, what my sort of narrative brain fills in is that she did it for her for her daughter. Right? Like, she's she's doing this because she has a commitment to this child, and she wants the child to have two parents, and she's she's going through those motions. Because otherwise, she clearly demonstrates she has agency enough to leave her husband in a relationship that isn't working.
• 36:52
  Right? It's not like she she couldn't leave and make it official. She there's something about it that that draws her back in. And if it's not for her her relationship, then who's it for? It's probably her daughter.
• 37:04
  And so I think she just she made the mature decision to to commit to something new. But did she make it there and lie to him, or do you think that
• 37:14
  Andy Nelson: she made it later?
• 37:15
  Pete Wright: Oh, I think she made it later.
• 37:17
  Andy Nelson: Okay. Okay.
• 37:18
  Pete Wright: Yeah.
• 37:19
  Andy Nelson: You're probably right because in the in everything we've seen of her, she's generally just, you know, saying what she feels, and she probably would have just said, no. It's a bad idea. I gotta go.
• 37:30
  Pete Wright: I think so.
• 37:31
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Yeah.
• 37:32
  Pete Wright: You know, I mean, this movie is really acutely aware of economic reality. You know, Guy obviously is a vacuum repairman with his dad who busks on the side with a guitar that has far too many holes in it. I was
• 37:48
  Andy Nelson: gonna ask you about that because it's like, is this how like many guitar players have guitars that are this abused where they've played so much that they've just completely, you know, ended up tearing holes into the the wood underneath where you strum.
• 38:04
  Pete Wright: Painful is is what that is. I don't know. I I mean, I'm not one of those guitar players, but I know they exist. The guitar players who see that kind of road damage as a badge of honor and maybe frugality, but mostly it's just like this I I mean, it it goes back to this this machine kills fascists. Like, we're gonna we're gonna tear up our guitars because it's a sign of of, you know, the road.
• 38:30
  And his, I think, is also a sign of the fact that he's not yet a professional musician, and he can't, you know, he can't afford to keep his equipment in perfect working order all the time, but it's also it's a part of his sound. Like, at this point, it is he's writing his music on this guitar that has a certain tone to it because of its brokenness, and that's special to him.
• 38:57
  Andy Nelson: Well, that's what I was gonna say because I was like, well, I'm sure that changes what you're hearing from the guitar because
• 39:02
  Pete Wright: For sure.
• 39:03
  Andy Nelson: They're supposed to only have one hole in it, not a whole bunch. Well, here's another question. Since we're talking about about the guitar, this was a question that kind of bugged me. But maybe more guitar players do this than they realize. Why are his guitar strings all uncut?
• 39:21
  Like, it's just like he's got the it's like a frayed, you know, beaker head at the end of his guitar with just all of these these things sticking off. It's like, do many people do that?
• 39:32
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's weird. I don't care for it. I I'm a tidy guitar person.
• 39:38
  Like, you my guitar has tidy strings. Some guitarists and and this also goes to whether or not you're tuning and detuning your guitar depending on on songs. Like, you can you can change your guitar to drop detuning. You can change and and you're gonna, like, you're gonna be tuning all around the the fret where you might wanna keep more string. Not that much string.
• 40:01
  That's insanity. Like, had an extra eight inches of string hanging off every fret every pin. The thing that I think is probably going on is he is just kinda run and gun replacing strings because he's battering that guitar every day. And the guitar itself is, as an instrument of wood, is constantly changing and, you know, swelling and drying out and swelling, and it just needs a lot of retuning. And he's not paying attention to the strings hanging off the edge because he's just gonna change him again in a number of days or weeks.
• 40:40
  It doesn't matter. Wow. So it's I mean, that is definitely the behavior of a guy who has who plays a guitar professionally with giant holes in it. It breaks my heart a little bit because I I you know, I've got a a dear friend who's a guitarist, and he has the same Takamini guitar that Hansard plays in this, and and it is in pristine condition because this is a friend of the show, Dodge. It's in pristine condition because Dodge is the the sort of Niles Crane of guitar players.
• 41:09
  Like, it's always perfect. And I just I'm looking at Hansard's guitar, and I'm thinking that guy is he's there's what part of him is damaged to the point that he lets that instrument get to that condition? It's it is a character thing.
• 41:25
  Andy Nelson: Well, that begs an interesting question. Is that a hancered thing? Like, is this just they said, just use your guitar because it has a cool look, or is that a character thing? And they they kind of, like, crafted this way that this character this guitar looks for the character of Guy. That's a
• 41:45
  Pete Wright: really interesting question. It's interesting because oh, man. I wish I I don't know. I'm I'm doing some real time research because I I feel like I need to know. Takamini is such an interesting brand because it's, like, not a brand that you see in movies a lot.
• 42:05
  Right? It Okay. It it's not a common but usually, see, like, Martin Martin guitars everywhere. I actually wonder if we're gonna see Martin guitars in the next two movies. It's like Steinway pianos versus Kurzweil.
• 42:18
  Right? Like, it's it's just an off brand enough. Given the guerrilla style production, it would not surprise me a lick if it if Carney didn't go to Hansard and say, give me your most charismatic guitar for this movie.
• 42:35
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey. I I found this on on his Wikipedia page. In September 2011, he played at Pearl Jam's twentieth anniversary festival, p j twenty, at the Alpine Valley Theater outside of East Troy, Wisconsin.
• 42:49
  Hansard played several guitars, including a very recognizable battered Takamini NP 15 acoustic guitar, even sporting a large hole, which he calls the horse. That's it. It's his. It's his. Interesting.
• 43:04
  Unbelievable. Wow. Okay. Well, he really enjoys playing with that, I guess.
• 43:09
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. You know, I just as an aside a sidebar, you know, I did the the Prince tour twice at at Paisley Park. And Prince has is widely known to have manufactured custom guitars all over the place.
• 43:26
  But his favorite guitar is this battered old warhorse that is in a a special case, and it's an acoustic, and it's, like, yellowed. And, you know, you feel like you could buy it for $60 at a, you know, at a starter store music store. And that was always his favorite favorite guitar to play of all time. And it was again, it was it was just like this. It was like all character, no polish.
• 43:56
  And, you know, I I reckon a lot of musicians have a particular favorite starting instrument that is that gives them a lot of joy. I'll bet this is this is Hansard's.
• 44:09
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Do you think Marchetta's was the little
• 44:12
  Pete Wright: of the The toy piano?
• 44:13
  Andy Nelson: Tiny keyboard in the toy piano?
• 44:14
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Yeah. That was great. Oh, that was so funny. That was really, really fun.
• 44:21
  I also loved Anton, the engineer.
• 44:24
  Andy Nelson: Yeah.
• 44:25
  Pete Wright: That the fact that he you know, that that is also my experience with engineers, like production engineers, is when they really like something, they they say, that was good.
• 44:37
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Alright. Right.
• 44:38
  Pete Wright: Like, they were just very low key, and that was about the the level of enthusiasm you'd get.
• 44:44
  Andy Nelson: I had although I wrote down in my notes, I'm like, I feel like this is kind of a trope. Like, if anything in this movie is the tropiest, it's an engineer when when musicians come in and the engineer I mean, he even says, oh, I've gotta do this thing with these these crazy crowd or whatever These he oddballs. And then as he as he's reading his magazine, he kicks his feet up, and then he and then as they start singing, he kind of looks and listens. It's like, okay, a trope, and then his comments after of like, do you write that? Wow.
• 45:17
  Like, it's so low key. But I'm like, okay. I feel like that happens a lot in these movies with musicians. You know? The other one that came to mind, which was, maybe it's a little different, but it's, oh, brother, where art thou?
• 45:31
  When they're they sing that song and the guy's like, you know, just I don't know. It's it's funny. It it's kind of tropey. It works, though, because it it plays honestly, I guess.
• 45:41
  Pete Wright: I was doing a a photo a studio photo shoot with a musician here in Portland, and we were in the studio, and I was, you know, clicking away. And I really liked working with this musician because I thought his music was gangbusters. And I listened to it all the time on the demos, and I was very excited for him. And I went into this this session with a session engineer, and I expected everybody to be as glowing as I was. And the engineer, it felt like he had had all of his emotion just, like, surgically removed because, you know, I I'm hearing this music that is transcendent, and he's like, okay.
• 46:18
  You wanna do it again? Yeah. Is that good for you? Do you care? I mean, like, because it was just like nothing.
• 46:24
  Andy Nelson: Oh, man.
• 46:25
  Pete Wright: That's funny. It is a trope for a reason, I think, is what I'm saying.
• 46:28
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a it's a good movie. It I think it starts off the series well.
• 46:35
  Lot of good songs, good soundtrack. I really enjoyed it. Any any last things from you about this one?
• 46:41
  Pete Wright: I'm just excited to I'm I'm really excited to watch the next two now that we've watched this one again because I think this has been I've seen the other two more than I had seen once, and I'm I'm interested in in sort of tracing the DNA. My memory of begin again is such that I I don't remember enough of it, but this movie feels really spiritually akin to Sing Street. And I'm I'm excited to see what a mature once looks like in Sing Street clothes.
• 47:12
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. It's interesting. I never saw it begin again until just a few years ago. And so it's it's very new to me. But interestingly, I remember a little about it.
• 47:23
  So I'm curious to check I might out be telling. And see. No. I mean, I really loved it.
• 47:28
  Pete Wright: So It sounds like you hated it. But whatever. Worse thing I've ever seen. Next week.
• 47:32
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. Alright. We'll be right back. But first, our credits.
• 47:48
  Pete Wright: The next reel is a production of True Story FM, engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Dimitrix, Wonderland, Lewis Island, Oriole Novella, and Eli Catlin. Andy usually finds all the stats for the awards and numbers at the numbd-numbers.com, boxofficemojo.com, imdd.com, and wikipedia.org. Find the show at truestory.fm. And if your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show. Sequels and remakes, Andy.
• 48:29
  I haven't seen any sequels and remakes. Have I missed a lot of them?
• 48:33
  Andy Nelson: You maybe have missed the only one, and that is, of course, the stage musical version of this. The New York Theater Workshop is where it first was seen in back in 2011, just a few years after this, and then it ended up going on to Broadway in 2012 and won eight of the 11 Tonys that it was nominated for, including best musical. So I take it you've never seen them that version
• 48:57
  Pete Wright: of this? I have never seen that version of this. I have never listened to the cast recording of this. Wow. It fascinates me.
• 49:05
  Yeah. Me too. Me too. I stand before you surprised.
• 49:09
  Andy Nelson: I mean, you knew it was a musical.
• 49:11
  Pete Wright: I did.
• 49:12
  Andy Nelson: Okay. So it's it's really your fault.
• 49:14
  Pete Wright: Yeah. No. I'm no one else is here. Yeah. How did it do at awards season?
• 49:20
  As good as it did in the at the Tonys?
• 49:22
  Andy Nelson: It actually did really well for itself. 25 wins with 31 other nominations. At the Oscars, you might remember this is one of the sweetest moments at the Oscars. It won best original song for falling slowly. Glenn and Marquetta came out and performed it.
• 49:37
  It was the year that Jon Stewart was hosting. And after they won, Glenn got to speak, and then they they started playing the music, and Marquetta didn't get to say anything, and they just walked off. And then John Stewart, at his next moment, actually came out and said, you know what? We need to give her a chance to say something. And and so they brought he brought them out, and she got to actually say something, which was really sweet.
• 49:58
  And I thought that was a nice gesture. And interestingly, she was the youngest, and I think still is, the youngest person to win an Oscar in a nonacting category.
• 50:09
  Pete Wright: 19. Because by then, what would she have been? 21?
• 50:13
  Andy Nelson: It would have been the 2007 awards. I don't know what, when her birthday is, but she was born in '88. So she's she was 19 at the time of the Oscars. Wow. Yeah.
• 50:23
  Crazy. Anyway, over at the British Independent Film Awards, it was nominated for best for an independent film but lost to the lives of others. At the Grammys, it was nominated for best compilation soundtrack album for a motion picture television or other visual media, but lost to the Beatles in love. And it was nominated for best song written for motion picture television or other visual media, falling slowly, but lost to love you, I do from dream girls. At the Irish film and television awards, it was nominated for best music and film, but lost to the tiger's tale.
• 50:50
  At the Dublin film critic circle awards, it was nominated for best Irish film, but lost to garage. John Carney was nominated for best breakthrough artist, but lost to Shir Shir Shir Shirronan in atonement. And at the two thousand nine Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards, it was nominated for best Irish film of the decade, but lost to a tie between Hunger and Adam and Paul. So, I mean, there were a lot of wins around song, you know, best independent film, things like that. I just wanted to look at, like, the musical ones and the Irish ones.
• 51:18
  So that's where I largely focused.
• 51:21
  Pete Wright: Okay. Well, this is where we get into some real excitement for you, which is around the money. Because I have a feeling we're starting we're starting a whole new we're turning a leaf. You know, this is the year of the snake, and we're about to go into the year of the horse as we record this. We're gonna shed that old skin of not being able to find anything about numbers, and we're gonna ride confidently into the new year where Andy gets to research budgets and find answers to budgets.
• 51:52
  How did this do at the box office?
• 52:01
  Andy Nelson: You're very lucky because this was independent, and I wasn't completely sure I'd actually find any numbers for this one. But in fact, I did.
• 52:08
  Pete Wright: Okay.
• 52:08
  Andy Nelson: For Carney's film, he he has spent years developing this with the Irish Film Board. Then he was given a micro budget of a €112,000, three quarters of which was from the Irish Film Board. And that's 160,000 in today's dollars, which is just no, a 160,000 US dollars, which is just under 245,000 in today's dollars. After a premiere at the summer school summer film school in 2006, the film officially debuted at Sundance two thousand seven, then had a very successful festival run. It opened limited on two screens 05/16/2007 opposite twenty eight Weeks Later, Georgia Rule, Delta Farce, and The X before expanding eventually to a 150 screens.
• 52:48
  It would get as high as twelfth place at the box office. All in all, the movie did incredibly well, going on to earn 9,400,000.0 domestically and 13 and a half million internationally for a total gross of 35 and a 35,100,000.0 in today's dollars. That would land the film with an adjusted profit per finished minute of 405,000 and means it earned back a 143 times its budget. Great way to start this series.
• 53:11
  Pete Wright: Yeah. Not bad. Not bad, Carney. Not too shabby. Not too shabby.
• 53:16
  Hell of a flick. Yeah. Well, I am thrilled to have talked about it. I'm thrilled that you actually appear to like it, and that this entire little spiritual trilogy of Carney's music movies isn't gonna be a train wreck because we just have fight all the time. And, I love to revisit these songs.
• 53:36
  This was just a treat.
• 53:37
  Andy Nelson: Yeah. This I think I probably heard the soundtrack to this a lot more than watch the film. I think I'd only seen the film once. And so now I'll have to scratch it out off the off my Blu ray copy, and I'll have to write twice on the cover.
• 53:52
  Pete Wright: Have you been nursing that joke for the last hour?
• 53:56
  Andy Nelson: Just waiting. Waiting for my shot. Oh, yes. Alright. Well, that's it for today's conversation, everybody.
• 54:05
  Next week, we are looking at Carney's studio follow-up. Begin again.
• 54:21
  Pete Wright: Letterbox, Sandy. Letterbox.com/thenextreel. That's what we're talking about. It's where you can find our HQ page for all the movies that we've talked about on this show. It's where we apply our stars and hearts.
• 54:31
  Rules are, any stars have to come from other movies. Andy never agrees to this rule. What are you gonna do?
• 54:36
  Andy Nelson: This I I really enjoyed. I mean, it's definitely a quieter simpler film that I remembered, but it's still just so sweet and and honest. Four stars in a heart. That's where I sit with this one.
• 54:48
  Pete Wright: I'm four stars in a heart too. And I I want to leave a little bit of headroom because even though I think this movie does succeed in all the ways that it needs to succeed on its own, and I do believe that there are some there are some shortcomings in just the raw store there's it's light it's story light. But it's also I think these these three movies are in conversation with one another, and this is not my favorite part of that conversation, I don't think. Interesting.
• 55:21
  Andy Nelson: I'm yeah. I'm curious to see where we move forward because, I I liked I liked how we started with this. I think that he's off to a good start with this these musical films. For sure. Alright.
• 55:31
  Well, that averages out to four stars in the heart, which you can find on our account at Letterboxd the next reel. You can find me there at Soda Creek Film, and you can find Pete there at Pete Wright. So what did you think about Once? We would love to hear your thoughts. Hop into the Show Talk channel over in our Discord community where we will be talking about the movie this week.
• 55:49
  When the movie ends, our conversation begins.
• 56:07
  Pete Wright: Letterbox giveth, Andrew. As Letterboxd always doeth. Alright.
• 56:13
  Andy Nelson: What do you which which way did you go? I landed at four stars and a heart. Oh, okay. Higher than me. Go ahead.
• 56:21
  Higher than you. I went with Holly, who has this to say, and to think I've been putting off watching this for years because the poster looks like a Hallmark Christmas movie. This is so true.
• 56:36
  Pete Wright: You know what? I'm about to cheat. I'm I just noticed a second one. I'm going to do two.
• 56:41
  Andy Nelson: Okay.
• 56:41
  Pete Wright: The first one is a three star and a heart from Adam Boldt who says, I can't believe this is the first movie to be filmed on a Nokia phone. Which I find delightful. But the second is five stars and a heart from Dee Selwyns who says, imagine meeting a guy and asking him to play a song he's written, and he plays bloody falling slowly. That is that hits me so hard right in the chest because I've written some songs, and none of them are falling slowly. And I worry that I'm the guy who would play one of my own songs if asked.
• 57:15
  That
• 57:17
  Andy Nelson: would be embarrassing. That would be funny. So funny.
• 57:22
  Pete Wright: Alright. Thanks, Letterboxd.