Bibbs interviewed Calvary writer/director John Michael McDonagh at Sundance, where the film was picked up by Fox Searchlight for distribution. The weekend it opened in New York and Los Angeles, Calvary star Brendan Gleeson came to L.A. for interviews. He plays a priest who hears a confession threatening to kill him in the beginning of the movie. Some of our conversation includes mild spoilers about events of the film, but Gleeson still doesn’t give away who turns out to be the confessor. Perhaps if you’ve seen the film last weekend, you’ll want to read Gleeson’s thoughts. Look for Calvary in more cities on August 8 and August 15. Gleeson also looks ahead to his next collaboration with McDonagh, the aborted Marvin Gaye movie in which he costarred, and corrected an erroneous early credit from IMDB.
Related: Sundance 2014: John Michael McDonagh on Calvary (Video)
CraveOnline: John Michael McDonagh told us you’d always wanted to play a priest. Why did that interest you as an actor?
Brendan Gleeson: Well, I had played a priest in The Butcher Boy prior and I didn’t get an awful long run at it. Father Bubbles was the guy’s name, and I liked him. But, I had become interested in the notion, there’d been a couple of priests who’d been accused of pedophilia in the wrong. I couldn’t imagine how somebody would maintain their optimism and aspiration when they’d been accused of something so vile and were innocent. That was really part of it. I also had a Christian brother in primary school who was a mentor to me in a very real way. He explored our creativity, put shows on and made us make sets for films. He brought us up the mountains and was just a proper vocational teacher. So I guess I was flying the flag for him to a certain extent.
Did Father Bubbles swear or blaspheme?
Not really, no. I sang a song, I remember, walking down a road. Francie Brady, the young kid character who’s so disturbed, Sinead O’Connor appeared to him as the Virgin Mary. I don’t know if you remember the film. So I was very taken with him as a child. He was a good man but he didn’t curse that much.
So how did it feel to swear and say “Jesus Christ” while actually wearing the collar in Calvary?
It felt like this is a man who had a life outside of the church for a long time. He had a separate life. He had married, he’d lost his wife, he’d had an alcoholic problem and he was a man who lived in the world in a very real sense, in a layman’s sense, prior to joining the priesthood. So I think he would’ve brought some of that with him. I think a lot of people, swearing and all that kind of stuff, it’s not taken overly seriously at home in the way it can be here. Even in the city and the countryside, there’s a different way of swearing that seems a little bit less offensive in one place than another.
I think we imagine that’s something priests give up when they take the priesthood.
Why? Did that disturb you?
Not at all. I thought it was a significant decision.
I worked in a school that was run by the Oblate Fathers for 10 years. I’ve heard priests remark about a player on a hurling pitch to get that bollocks off the field. It never struck me as something to get into too much of a flap about.
What parish was that?
He was from the Oblate Fathers and I worked in a school that was run by those Oblate Fathers, so the priests that were running the school would be some of the most intense hurling Gaelic football fans. When the football team wasn’t performing as well as it should’ve been, sometimes the language got a little bit juicy.
A priest is really all about listening. Was that an interesting sort of acting job?
I think it’s part of acting. I think a lot of people forget about it but actually it’s the quintessential part of acting. If you’re going to have a proper interaction with your fellow actors on set, you’re supposed to listen. This was a passive role up to a point, but I think one of the great things about the film is that he has to respond too, that it’s not enough just to absorb. Absorbing has its own challenges given the vitriol that’s thrown at him, but his response too, we wait for his response and see how he reacts to it. In a way I felt, yes, listening is a huge part of it.
The opening scene is played entirely on a close-up of you. How did you navigate that performance?
I suppose the cliché is “in the moment.” In the moment, I had it read to me from the confessional by David Wilmot because there were going to be a number of different ways of doing it. One of the things was to record all the suspects and then splice up the various things so that it could be any one of them. It didn’t really work in the end. There were various different ways we were going to approach that because it does give away, in a sense, it could give away who it is in the end.
If you’re really good with voices.
Yes, and some people assume it is who the perpetrator eventually turned out to be, and it’s not. That was kind of hilarious.
Oh, it’s not his voice in the beginning?
No. It was a cheat, for obvious reasons. So David Wilmot read it, but something that happened in this movie was the intensity with which the other actors came to set. It was something that was personal to everybody I think in a way because it does deal with the metaphysical issues of faith and humanity or despair and dissolution and all that. So you respond in the moment to somebody who is impassioned and who is of the part. It’s their DNA. I didn’t hear a character. I heard a person. As I say, David Wilmot did a great job on the day and that’s how it ensued. As we were going through each episode, everybody came with a level of intensity that made it easy to listen.
Domhnall has a small role in Calvary, but have you felt a lot of fatherly pride to see him pave his own very successful movie career?
Yes, absolutely. He was great in terms of our scene together. It’s a very dark period of the movie. We didn’t talk to each other for about a week beforehand, because we had rehearsed and read it with John, but afterwards we kind of felt we weren’t particularly helping each other. We kind of needed to retire to our separate corners and come out fighting, essentially. It was great. I was in a very intense and angry mood as Father James that time because there was a question of the horror of what he had perpetrated but also the fact that he didn’t appear that he had any real regret or that he was really seeking to find a way through. So it was a very intense, angry scene from my point of view and it was fantastic to have Domhnall throw it right back at me, to give as good as he got. As I say, I was glad to get him back at the end of the day.
Do you go see all his movies now?
Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Oh yeah. Of course, I’m totally proud of him. I mean, I’ve got four men. I’ve got four boys. I’m proud of every one of them but it’s a bonus that I can work with Domnhall now as a proper actor in terms of I don’t have to think about him anymore as my son. We consult a lot on stuff, and equally with me and the other lads. I value their opinions now as much as they value mine. It’s been a bonus. I couldn’t expect that that would be the case.
I noticed the newspaper headline talked about two hit men and Dublin murders. Is that a reference to one of your other movies?
[Laughs.] I’m not sure about that. You’re going to have to ask John. It might’ve been, but I don’t think so because it doesn’t quite make sense to In Bruges for example.
It couldn’t be In Bruges because they were in Bruges.
Because they were In Bruges.
Unless they did a job in Dublin before, but maybe those two hitmen were the guys you encountered in The Guard.
Exactly, there’s kind of a thing but I’m not sure how well it pans out.
It’s too prominent a headline to be random.
I know. I think John will take every opportunity to show up Dublin as a place of mayhem, crime and misery that he can. He’s very much a west of Ireland background, even though he grew up in London himself. Dublin is always fair game for any kind of criticism, so I think any foul play that he can show happening in Dublin, he’ll do it.
Has John Michael talked to you about his abusive paraplegic policeman character he’s writing for you?
He has indeed. I think he wants to offset the notion that because I’ve done policeman, priest, the next one will be politician. He decided to go for two Ps in this one and have a paraplegic who is extraordinarily abusive. I think that’s the term he uses. He wants me crashing around in a wheelchair in South London in outrage and frustration, but at least I get all the vitriol in that movie.
Is the script done?
No. He works the way he normally works. He lets it ferment. I think he would have the beginning and the ending more or less sorted out in his head and then he’d get down to the guts of it when he’s ready.
Did you shoot the Marvin Gaye movie, Sexual Healing, already?
It kind of had money problems six weeks into shooting. It kind of collapsed, so it feels slightly stillborn.
So there’s half of a movie shot?
That’s right, and that’s the vicissitudes of independent filmmaking in the present climate. You can depend on absolutely nothing. Tough one.
Your first credit is actually the Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie. Do you remember making that?
The what?
The Punisher.
No, I didn’t make that.
You’re uncredited as a prison guard so you were probably just an extra.
No, I wasn’t in it. Where did you get that from?
IMDB. I’d have to watch the film again and see if I can spot you.
The Punisher? No, I never did a film called The Punisher unless it’s retitled as something else.
It was based on a comic book so they wouldn’t have retitled it.
Oh no, then absolutely not.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
