Aston Villa supporter Brendan Gleeson is in Dublin filming Studs, the tale of a hapless football team. And he's delighted to be home, writes Mary Hannigan
The Portakabin almost rocks off its foundations. If Paul Mercier was hoping for some sympathy from Brendan Gleeson for his hapless career as an amateur footballer, he's looking in the wrong place. Gleeson's laughter booms so loudly, upon hearing of Mercier's misfortunes, there's a danger the cabin will collapse. Much as Mercier's team habitually did in their games.
Gleeson asks Mercier about his team's track record. "We just . . . (long pause) . . . got beaten. But it was the quality of the loss, that's what I always said - and we'd some great losses," he says, drifting into dreamland as he recalls those infrequent occasions when his team wasn't hammered.
"What was a quality loss?" asks Gleeson. "A quality loss was 1-0 - or maybe two. Or three." And you celebrated? "Ooooh yeah!" An open-top bus parade? "Absolu-u-u-utely!" "When we shoot the cup final for this film I have to get it right because it's the only final I've ever been in," says Mercier.
"Well, don't forget to enjoy it," says Gleeson. "A lot of you younger people, it just passes you by the first time." And the pair erupt again.
Outside it's so bitterly cold the footballing actors hanging around on the pitch clutch heat-pads in the palms of their hands to avoid frostbite. It's miserable. Grey. Damp. And everyone's covered in mud. "LOVE IT," Gleeson roars, with feeling, lovingly inhaling the Arctic air, rubbing his hands together in appreciation of his surroundings: the Grange Depot and a ploughed-up field in Lucan. "LOVE IT!"
Why this enthusiasm? One, he's working with Paul Mercier again. (They go back a long way. So long that there's not much need to express mutual admiration, the fact that they're still working together is enough. When Mercier tries to compliment Gleeson - "he's BRILLIANT in this" - the actor is having none of it. "See? Luvvies already," he says, "this is Ireland, would you stop. Go 'way. You can't be doing that." And they're laughing again.) Two, "it's a gift of a part".
And three, he's home. And these days that means everything to Brendan Gleeson. Home in Dublin to shoot Studs, the film based on the Mercier play that was first staged at the SFX Theatre in 1986. "It's been almost eight years in the making," says Fiach MacConghail, named last month as the successor to the outgoing Ben Barnes as artistic director of the Abbey Theatre, who is producing the film with his brother Cuan. "Raising the money for it was, well, a long saga, mainly because there's a wariness about football movies - name a good one? We just wanted to do a really good sports movie, something like Slapshot, but it's taken us a while."
"Studs, the movie" finally became a reality courtesy of the Irish Film Board's low-budget initiative, TV3 and Buena Vista International (Ireland), which has acquired the Irish cinema and DVD rights. It should be in cinemas by the end of the year.
"BRENDAN WAS COMMITTED to this from the start," says MacConghail. "He was in a short film that myself and Cuan produced, Before I Sleep, which Paul directed. So, from the word go, Brendan wanted to be in it - as luck would have it everything worked out fine, we had this five-week slot before he was about to start on Harry Potter.
"Paul and I go back a long way," MacConghail says. "When I ran the Project Arts Centre I invited him, when he was working with Passion Machine in the SFX, to do a couple of plays. One of them was Pilgrims, with Brendan. We liked working with each other. He's one of our best writers, for contemporary Ireland. He is, though, unfortunately, a West Ham supporter. And Brendan supports Aston Villa." Eyes roll. And you? "Em, QPR." Pot. Kettle. Black.
As well as directing the film, Mercier has written the screenplay, in which Gleeson plays the newly recruited coach of an amateur Dublin team that, before he took over, enjoyed about as much success as Mercier's old line-up.
"He's a flawed messiah," Gleeson laughs. "That's why it's such a fantastic part, one you just wanted to get your hands on. I wasn't in the original play but I went over to Liverpool and did it a few years back and loved it." "The setting for the play then was people living in vast areas of the city where there was nothing going on - no employment, people were just leaving, the whole thing had fallen flat on its face. The state had failed in so many ways, at one stage we were thinking of handing the key back to Lizzy and apologising for the condition of the place."
"So, back then, you had the magic of the football pitch in the grimness of the surroundings, but now the guys are all working - but one of them is getting a barracking off his supervisor in the supermarket, another guy's dad is getting on his case all the time, another is working so hard he's just trying to get away from the job. So, in a way, the situation hasn't changed, the football is still as pivotal for these fellas, even if there was far more despair in the 1980s."
"But it's still the same in so many ways - the inspiration, the adrenalin rush, the camaraderie, even though they're all bickering at the start. But they don't want to let go. They threaten to walk out, but nobody really wants to make the final decision because how will they replace this? So it was interesting to me that it didn't make a bit of difference that the film was set 20 years later than the play." It's the tightest schedule Gleeson has ever worked on, "five weeks of a shoot for a full feature film", and there can be no extensions because he has to be in London to finish Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, in which he plays Mad-Eye Moody - a deranged "Defence Against the Dark Arts" instructor with eyes in the back of his head.
Is that part, eh, quite different to the manager in Studs? Gleeson has a think and concludes: "not really". At which point, Mercier almost chokes on the pecan pie he's devouring. And the two of them are off again.
"He keeps putting my collar up at the back, Mourinho-esque," Gleeson complains, in reference to his director's attempts at transforming him to José Mourinho, the Chelsea manager. "I haven't asked him why, but there's something very odd going on. I just keep turning it back down again." As Mercier departs to get back to work he's told "the collar up, the collar down" business could present a continuity problem in the film. He laughs. Then stops. Then says: "oh Jeeeeesus". He has two days to re-shoot every second scene featuring Brendan Gleeson. The Portakabin rocks again. Mercier leaves, scratching his head. And, again, he's getting no sympathy from his leading man.
SINCE GIVING UP being a teacher it's been a quiet few years for Gleeson, if you don't count Braveheart, The General, Mission Impossible II, Artificial Intelligence: AI, Gangs of New York, Cold Mountain, Troy, Kingdom of Heaven (the Ridley Scott film he finished last year), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire . . . and all the others. It's been dizzying.
Are you enjoying it? "Yeah, I am, I'm aware that it's necessary to enjoy the moment," he says. "But while loving the work I hate being away. Hate it. It's like anything, it's great for a week or two, it can be fascinating seeing all these places, but I actually love living here. It just bugs me, the loneliness of it."
"The goldie taps thing doesn't do an awful lot for me. You get a thrill the first four or five times, but it's ludicrous. You look around and you think: 'I wouldn't build this, I wouldn't make this, I wouldn't have it in my house'. Nothing is right about it. All that is a pain. That's why it's a fantastic thing just to get back here and to be doing stuff I know, places I know, people I know, all that. I would love to work here more but it's just hard to get stuff this good . . . and I love the work that I do away. I know what a privilege it is.
"This is it for me. When I was four I knew this was what I wanted to be. But I didn't realise I had anyright to it, I got side-tracked a lot until my mid-30s, so this is all a kind of second life. I know it's a gift, I really do, I treasure it, but on an everyday level I kind of wonder at this stage . . . hang on a second, how much is this actually worth to me, as a person? It has to be worth it now, has to be, the work has to be proper."
ARE YOU AFRAID to turn things down? "That is a danger, that you suddenly become unable to live without it. I know I'd miss some of it, if I stopped doing films abroad - there is something exciting about speeding down a runway. But it gets me down, I kind of feel I'm wasting my time.
"Especially - which I did a couple of times before - getting booked for the whole film. Hanging around, they can't let you go . . . I don't blame any one for doing that, I know that's part of the business, but I'm getting to the stage now where I say: 'No, that's too high a price'. Too high a price. I'm wandering around, my morale is bad."
"Even with Gangs of New York, I was in Rome, a beautiful place, they tried to let me home when I wasn't working, but I could have done what I did in that film in about three, four weeks, but I was there for the best part of five months. I wouldn't criticise anyone, I went looking for that, and it was a major joy working with yer man [ Martin Scorsese], a dream come true, but I wouldn't do that again."
You get restless? "Well, I'm a mix between that and a complete . . ." Good-for-nothing? "Yeah! I'm Homer Simpson! My hero!" And with that there follows 20 minutes of recalling Homer's finest moments. "It's slightly worrying, at this stage of my life, that Homer is the love of my life," he roars.
Would you, eh, like to play Homer in a human version of The Simpsons? Gleeson recoils. "I would be unworthy. Unworthy. No, I couldn't do it. No! NO! How could you enhance it? Never. You only do these things if you bring something to it," he says, and with that he dissolves again.
Forget Homer Simpson, then, what of his Harry Potter experience? "It's been phenomenal," he says, "a real joy working with amazingly gifted people. There's so much they could have done in that film with computer wizardry but, instead, so much of it was real, pure craftsmanship, very English." "I went over with some trepidation. Maybe the kids would be brats? And I would have hated if they were spoilt, or if they had been messed up by the industry, because you do feel guilty about that, you're part of an industry that can do a lot of damage, especially when kids get involved. But those kids were just the best. Really nice. They're all getting into their teenage years now and you forget how much fun you can have with guys like that." A completely enjoyable experience, then? Well . . .
"I spend two and a half hours in make-up to look even uglier than I am, I'm going out frightening people, which, when I think about it, is pretty much what I do for a living. Jaysus, I don't know why I gave up the teaching."
And he's laughing again, while heading out the door to lead Paul Mercier into the first final of his footballing career. Collar down. Determined to enjoy it. It can, after all, pass you by the first time.
