Exclusive Interview with
John Carney
“My bad day is transformed by the politeness of strangers“
What motivated you to make Once ?
– A very large gas bill. I’m joking. I had spent three years co-writing a TV show which was wall-to-wall dialogue. I was tired of plot and exposition, and wanted to try and write something which was about communication through art. In this case music. I’m a musician, and have realized that a good three-minute song can be worth twenty pages of talk.
– You were a musician before devoting yourself to a career in film. What place does music occupy in your everyday life now?
– Music is a distraction to me! I sit down to do a couple of hours writing but end up with my guitar in hand. An hour later, and I have no work done! So you could say that writing Once was a way of incorporating music into my work. And feeling less guilty about one or lazy about the other.
– One comes away from seeing Once with a feeling of well-being and pleasure. While you were shooting the film was it your intention to make the spectator feel happy?
– I try not to second guess how an audience will or should feel at a film, but instead just try to deliver something which they haven’t really ever seen before. But there are always so many emotions connected with music and singing, so I knew that I had something that would connect emotionally almost as early as the first week of shooting.
– Your film, shot as a candid camera movie, also imparts real hope and tremendous optimism. Love and music are closely linked here. Do you believe that music can create this sort of everyday exuberance?
– Absolutely. I believe that music tends invariably to arise from the two extremes of emotions: Joy and Sorrow. Look at most songs: “I’m so miserable I could kill myself, or; I’m so happy I met her!” It’s quite rare that a band write songs about the everyday stuff of life. In the case of Once, the songs are very connected to the characters, who are both sad and happy at the same time.
– How do you explain the fact that these days it is rare to hear people singing and whistling in the street? Do you yourself begin your day singing?
– People now listen to music on their ipods! Which again, is rather sad and inappropriate for social life. Music should connect people, not separate them. Which is why I like buskers. I like when you hear workmen singing or whistling, but it is rare nowadays. I do start the day singing sometimes, as does my girlfriend, which is nice. I like in “A Star is Born”, when James Mason asks Judy Garland to sing as she washes the dishes in the final scene. Though what he does afterwards is quite a surprise...
– Just as is the case in your film, to some extent, do you believe that music and love are able to transcend ethical and cultural differences?
– Of course. Like all good art, it should transcend cultural differences and language barriers. Music enters the system directly- like painting. It’s intravenous. It doesn’t require intellectual processing. Just an aesthetic one.
– What was your objective in choosing performers who are not professional actors?
– It became clear to me in pre-production, that it would be better to have singers that could half act rather than actors who could half sing. It was after all, a musical.
– Once accentuates human relationships. Would you want to see cinema play a role of rapprochement and better understanding between people in the world of today?
– Of course. I’d rather see a film than a piece of news footage from another country. Even though the news footage might be shocking and affecting, a film tends to represent a deeper, more complex insight into the director’s country or culture.
– If your film were to be taught in academic institutions across the world, what would you most like them to learn?
– That a film can be made for next to nothing. That Francis Ford Coppola’s prediction that the future of cinema was the guy/girl with the camcorder, has finally become a reality. With the advent of digital technology, beautiful films can now be made for next to nothing. As long as you are lucky enough to get a good distributor.
– Do you personally believe that the action of a single human being can make a difference in the world around her/him?
– Most definitely. My bad day is transformed by the politeness of strangers. We rub shoulders with people all day and whatever rubs off tends to inform and transform our energy. There is no reason to believe that this doesn’t apply to the bigger picture.
– What do you believe to be the greatest challenge for the present world and how do you see humanity dealing with the solution thereof?
– That’s a difficult question to answer in so short a time, if at all! And I don’t want to appear pessimistic. But it’s hard to be joyful about the future right now. But I guess for me, the most important thing at the moment is the F word. That is, forgiveness. There’s a lot the world and its inhabitants have to forgive these days. Imagine if George Bush had forgiven the people who drove planes into the World Trade Center. How good he would feel about himself. What an example he would have been to all Americans. The way the world is going right now, my guess is we’re going to have to start to learn how to forgive a hell of a lot better over the next couple of decades. To err is human, to forgive sublime.
– What does receiving the Time for Peace Award represent for you?
– These last twelve months have been very good for me and my film, but I have to say that receiving this award has meant the most to me, and to many of the cast and crew of the film. We come from a country whose filmmakers have spent a long time wrestling with issues of the troubles in the North of Ireland, so it is very nice to have our little two-hander musical love story honored in such a way.