Feb 21, 2008, 18:27 GMT
Dublin - With a shoestring budget, inexperienced actors, and eight full-length songs, the film Once about a lonely busker falling for a Czech musician and flower seller has wound its unlikely way from Dublin's Grafton Street to the Oscars.
The story behind Once is as romantic as it is boundary-blurring with the Oscar-nominated song Falling Slowly having particular resonance for the film's stars, singer songwriter Glen Hansard and Czech musician Marketa Irglova, who started out as friends and are now a couple.
Hansard, who has been making music with The Frames, one of Ireland's most popular independent bands, for the last 17 years, told Ireland's national broadcaster RTE that he was 'floored' by the nomination.
'Look what our little film went and did,' he said, speaking from the Czech Republic where he and Irglova like to spend a lot of their time these days.
Hansard admits that he likes the film's biographical aspect.
'I did busk, I know what it's about, I didn't have to act, I knew Marketa Irglova, John had been the bass player in my band for years,' he told the Irish Times.
Director John Carney quit Hansard's band The Frames in 1993 to make films.
'So there were a lot of parallels between the film and my life. He knew all my stories because he was right in the middle of it. There was a safety net and it felt comfortable.'
What has been slightly less comfortable however has been the reaction in Ireland, which has ranged from near-indifference to the film being nominated for a 'gooseberry' award, honouring worst performances, for its allegedly sick-making qualities.
Hansard puts it down to a certain over fondness for iconoclasm in the Irish character mixed with a hostility towards anything resembling loftiness about art.
'The Frames fill rooms all over the world, you could be in the middle of an intense part of a set, playing in Belgium to 1,000 people and an Irish fella will shout out 'go on ya fuckin' eejit, ya' - we call it being Irished.'
'It's as though people feel a national duty to throw spears at anybody who is getting too much into their own myth or up their own arse. That's why artistic people have always had to leave Ireland,' he says.
'As an artist you sometimes need to go into the dark and maybe even disappear up your own arse on occasion to get somewhere. The Irish will always try and stop you. They want you to be an everyman instead.'
To guard against drawing more spears, Hansard admits that before his current success with Once, The Frames were entirely reliant on the loyalty Irish audiences.
'I don't want to be all 'poor me,' and I have to say Irish audiences have been incredibly supportive, the only patrons of our music for the past 17 years,' he says.
With the success of Once, that is set to change with Hansard's foray into acting, propelling him and The Frames into the international spotlight.
Hansard rejects all associations of Once with filthy lucre and insists that he was only interested in acting in the film because its budget was practically non-existent.
Internationally-known Irish actor Cillian Murphy was supposed to play the lead in the film, but when that fell through, Carney drew an initially reluctant Hansard in.
'I've always wanted to be a songwriter and I've largely stuck to my guns,' says Hansard.
'But what made the project attractive for me was that it was being done for nothing. The less money involved, the more excited I get. I only would have to talk to John, there was no middleman or money man.'
This level of impoverishment meant that there had to be an element of creativity with regard to resources.
'There was a lot of guerrilla stuff. We didn't have permits. We used long lenses when we were shooting on Grafton Street ... We shot the opening scene at 4.30 in the morning which is the only time when Grafton Street is quiet.'
The film relies heavily on atmosphere and setpieces, the most powerful of which is a scene in a music shop where Hansard supplies vocal and guitar accompaniment as Irglova tries out a grand piano.
Irglova is a classically-trained pianist, who had never acted before. Long lenses were used to prevent self-consciousness from creeping in and she almost steals the film in the closing shot as she plays piano at the window of an inner city Dublin tenement surrounded by her immigrant family.
Hansard and Irgolva are set to perform Falling Slowly at the Oscars ceremony on February 24.
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