Taylor Swift & Martin McDonagh - Directors on Directors
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00:00 I'm so good. I'm so happy to be talking to you.
00:02 Oh my God.
00:04 That was the one.
00:05 Guys, that was the one.
00:07 Take four.
00:25 Is it three or four?
00:27 How are you doing?
00:28 So happy to be talking to you.
00:30 You too. Directors on directors.
00:32 I think we should do sometime directors on directors on mushrooms.
00:35 I was thinking margaritas or like shots halfway through.
00:39 Shots halfway through could work.
00:41 I mean, no.
00:42 Let's get back to what we're here for.
00:44 I got a chance to go to the premiere of The Banshees of Inisheeran.
00:48 It was one of the most special experiences I could ever have imagined having at a premiere.
00:54 Being there, watching it with a group of people who loved it as much as I did.
00:58 I've been such a fan of your work between your short film, Three Billboards.
01:03 You're someone I respect so much and so I wanted to talk to you about how do you do it?
01:08 What's the secret?
01:09 Thank you, Taylor.
01:10 Give us some tips.
01:11 Now I'm embarrassed.
01:12 Put them in bullet points.
01:13 Give us some directions to follow.
01:15 As you know, I've been a massive fan of yours for years and years and years and loved all too well.
01:19 So I wanted to get into the nitty gritty of that too.
01:22 Oh, thanks.
01:23 Did you always want to direct?
01:25 No.
01:26 I always wanted to tell stories.
01:28 I have always written stories, poetry, songs.
01:34 I think this just kind of grew out of a natural extension of that storytelling.
01:38 I don't think I ever necessarily thought that it would be something I would sort of be allowed to do
01:43 until I actually had enough experience to kind of say, "Hey, you know what?
01:47 I want to step out and do this on my own and see what it's like."
01:50 And the more I did it, the more I loved it.
01:52 Did you ever have experiences where you knew you could do a better job than the person who was actually doing it?
01:58 Whoa, we're just going right in, aren't we?
02:01 There were times--this actually came out of necessity.
02:05 I was writing my videos for years, and I had a video that was a very specific concept I had written,
02:11 which was that I wanted to be prosthetically turned into a man and live my life as a man.
02:16 And I wanted a female director to direct it,
02:19 and the few that I reached out to were fortunately booked.
02:23 We like it when women work.
02:25 But none of the female directors that I wanted to direct it could do it,
02:29 so I was like, "Well, I could do it, maybe?"
02:32 And then when I did direct, I just thought this is actually more fulfilling than I ever could have imagined.
02:38 Wow, so it was almost by accident that you--
02:40 Yeah, it was like happenstance, and now I've done--I think I've directed about 10 music videos and now one short,
02:46 so I'm just sort of inching my way along towards taking on more responsibility.
02:51 Yeah.
02:52 But with you and doing plays, was there ever a point where you were starting out directing plays thinking,
02:59 "I want to direct films"?
03:02 Weirdly, all of my plays, I never directed one of them.
03:06 Oh, so you would just write them and you never directed the plays?
03:08 I'd always been in the rehearsal room with the actors and working with the director,
03:12 but because you've got so much control as the playwright in the room,
03:15 I never felt the necessity to be in that much charge.
03:19 And I worked with good directors who were not uncomfortable with me talking to the actors at any point
03:25 and kind of giving them some direction anyway.
03:28 That's amazing.
03:29 In theater, you pick the director, and you cast the actors,
03:32 and no one can cut a line that you don't want cut,
03:35 so it's a very different process to being a writer on a movie.
03:39 That's fantastic.
03:40 So that's kind of why I knew I had to direct the movies,
03:43 because the writer is the lowest form of life on a movie.
03:48 Yeah, in terms of creative control.
03:49 Exactly.
03:50 I kind of knew I had to jump in, and that's why I did the short first,
03:54 to sort of just see if I could do it without being completely terrified.
03:58 And I was completely terrified.
04:00 I think that your short is sort of like a 26-minute full menu
04:06 of the furthest reaches of your tastes as a director.
04:10 It's like so undistilled.
04:12 You're like, "And then the cow explodes."
04:14 [explosion]
04:17 Then the rabbit, and the gun.
04:19 And the ambiguity to the ending.
04:21 Yeah.
04:23 I guess so, yeah.
04:24 So it's just like a hit list of my crazy shit.
04:26 Oh, I love that you went extreme first,
04:28 because I think I did too with a short that I did where it's like,
04:32 "I'm just going to give you all my feelings of despair and heartbreak
04:36 with my first short."
04:37 In "All Too Well."
04:38 Yes.
04:39 So talk me through the process of that.
04:41 You wrote it knowing you were going to direct it?
04:44 I wrote it knowing I wanted it to be a short.
04:46 I wanted to treat it completely differently than I'd ever treated a music video.
04:50 I wanted to use a new cinematographer DP that I'd never used before,
04:54 Rina Yang.
04:55 I wanted to shoot it on 35mm.
04:58 And I wrote it with Sadie Sink and Dylan O'Brien in mind,
05:02 which I heard that you wrote "Banshees" with your full cast.
05:06 Yeah.
05:07 Pretty much cast.
05:08 I wrote it for Colin Fowle and Brendan Gleeson and Barry Kogan and Kerry Condon.
05:12 Those are the four main players.
05:14 That had to have been amazing to kind of know what colors you wanted to paint with.
05:20 Yeah, you kind of, I guess, write to their strengths,
05:23 but kind of give them a little leeway to bring some strange new things to it.
05:28 I think it's a new Colin Farrell performance.
05:30 I think he's quite lovely in it.
05:33 Amazing.
05:34 It's so incredible.
05:36 So you loved Dylan and Sadie's work beforehand,
05:39 or you knew them and knew their voices?
05:41 How did that work?
05:42 I'd never met either one of them,
05:44 but I had seen their work and I kind of thought,
05:47 you know how sometimes you see an actor and you see the work they've done,
05:52 you can kind of see how it could have gone further.
05:54 Yeah.
05:55 And you can kind of see flickers of how they could really be excellent
05:58 in a part they hadn't been cast as.
06:00 Yeah.
06:01 I had seen Sadie in "Stranger Things" and I thought she has such a presence.
06:05 She has such an empathy to her.
06:07 You can just see micro emotions flash across her face
06:09 in a way that I just don't usually see in performances.
06:14 It's rare.
06:15 And I thought she's never been a romantic lead
06:18 and I wonder if she'd be interested in playing a young woman
06:22 who goes through her first catastrophic, cataclysmic heartbreak.
06:27 Yeah.
06:28 And she did it so brilliantly.
06:30 She really, really did.
06:32 Why are you so pissed off?
06:36 I'm not pissed off. Who said I was pissed off?
06:41 Did you write it, then meet her, or meet her and then hear her voice?
06:45 I wrote it and I wrote the manuscript and I had visual references
06:50 of what type of art direction and the way I wanted to film it
06:54 and the colors I wanted to use.
06:56 It was a sort of a palette.
06:57 I sort of put together a PDF of what I wanted to make
07:02 because I'd never made a short before.
07:04 And so I'm in the mode where I'm trying to persuade these two actors
07:08 who I don't have backups for in my mind to do the project
07:12 and trying to convince them.
07:14 It didn't take any convincing because they just both said yes immediately
07:18 when I reached out, but I texted them directly.
07:21 Cool.
07:22 And then we talked a lot, had a lot of conversations.
07:24 I had them both over, they met each other,
07:26 and then a couple months later we were on set.
07:28 Wow. And so the script was like 20 pages or 30 pages?
07:31 Yeah.
07:32 And it had dialogue and all that?
07:34 It had dialogue.
07:35 We had actually, I'd scripted out some scenes of them falling in love,
07:40 the scene of them falling apart, breaking up,
07:43 and then I'd had this argument.
07:46 I'm really interested in this argument.
07:48 So the argument was the one that we ended up keeping as a scene.
07:51 I knew I wanted one scene to play out,
07:53 and I didn't know which one it was going to be.
07:56 Play out without music?
07:57 Without music because I thought that it was just important
08:00 to get a very potent glimpse into their dynamic,
08:04 and I didn't know if that would come through best
08:06 with them falling in love, breaking up, or fighting.
08:09 It turned out the fight was where we saw the most of who these people are
08:13 and what the problems are.
08:14 I actually had a fucking blast.
08:16 Now this is the night. Now we're doing this.
08:20 Awesome. So fucking awesome.
08:22 So could the song have stopped at any of those points?
08:25 Yeah, we have it in the edit.
08:27 I mean, we have it in art.
08:30 It's on film somewhere, but we didn't put it in
08:33 because I just thought I want to tell this whole story,
08:36 and I just wanted there to be one really portal glimpse
08:41 into their life where we stop the music
08:43 because the music does a pretty good job of explaining the arc.
08:46 And just shooting that, how did it go?
08:49 It ended up being one shot.
08:52 We had Rina with the Steadicam,
08:55 and we were just going to shoot it as many times as we needed to
08:57 to get the covers that we needed,
08:59 but it turned out that it was one of those magic takes
09:02 where we were able to probably 85%, 90% through that scene.
09:06 Wow.
09:07 My producer and I were just at the monitor
09:09 just clutching each other.
09:10 Oh, I love it when that happens.
09:12 Just, you know, like...
09:14 So it was fantastic, and I think you strike me
09:18 as someone who has a lot of trust in your actors.
09:21 Yeah.
09:22 And that was, I think, that was that leap of faith moment
09:25 of putting them in a room,
09:27 and they're having to fill in all the blanks of this chemistry,
09:31 and we had talked at length about the dynamics of this fight.
09:34 And it really comes down to the fact
09:36 that she does not feel seen within this relationship,
09:40 and on some level, he doesn't either,
09:42 because both of these people are essentially saying,
09:44 "You don't understand where I'm coming from,
09:47 and you can't understand where I'm coming from."
09:49 Well, one of the things I loved about it--
09:51 Sorry for interrupting--
09:52 No, no.
09:53 --was it did feel completely balanced.
09:54 I think the song mostly is sort of from her point of view,
09:58 but that scene was equal.
10:00 I think so, too.
10:01 I was quite surprised in a lovely way that that was there.
10:05 Hey, hey, hey.
10:06 Come on, come on, come on.
10:07 I don't want to fight.
10:08 I don't want to fight.
10:09 And so was that all your dialogue?
10:10 Was it partly improvised, or how--
10:12 It was partly improvised.
10:13 I had written out that fight with the same arc,
10:17 and it being about the same thing.
10:19 We had just talked about it so many times,
10:21 about what this fight is about
10:22 and what sort of things they would be saying to each other.
10:25 It's a testament to them as just brilliant actors
10:28 and collaborators that they went in there.
10:31 There were some things that Dylan would just blurt out
10:34 or that Sadie would say,
10:36 and I'd just be sitting at the monitor going,
10:38 "Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
10:40 We are keeping that in the cut."
10:44 So is the one we see--
10:46 Was that first take or only take?
10:48 It was the first take.
10:50 Wow.
10:51 And then we did one or two more,
10:52 but that was the one where I was like,
10:54 "If you have it, you have it."
10:56 And I knew we would use that one for the most part
10:59 for the predominant length of that scene
11:02 'cause it just did everything I wanted it to do.
11:04 And is it moments like that that you felt made it a short film
11:08 and took it away from the usual sort of music video milieu?
11:12 It was moments like that,
11:13 and it was the fact that it has a narrative arc.
11:16 The chapters in the short film are there
11:19 because it has chapters,
11:20 like the breaking point, the first crack in the glass.
11:23 Those end up being chapters in a book
11:25 that she one day writes.
11:26 So it's structured narratively
11:30 in a way that I felt had to be different
11:33 from any music video that I've made.
11:35 It couldn't be a music video where I'm singing the lyrics
11:37 and you're seeing some flashbacks and flash-forwards and whatever.
11:41 I wanted people to be in that world
11:43 with these two characters.
11:45 Anyhow.
11:46 I think in terms of breakups
11:53 and people fracturing and people falling apart,
11:57 watching Banshees, first of all,
11:59 it's such a special film.
12:01 Watching it with other people,
12:02 I think it's one of those films that's gonna hit home
12:05 and make people think and make people talk about it afterward
12:08 'cause I've been talking about it ever since.
12:10 What was it about--
12:11 With analysts and other friends that are here?
12:14 Yeah, so I've been talking to it about my friends,
12:16 and one thing I think is that
12:18 everybody relates more to one of the main characters,
12:22 whether you're going through what Colm is going through
12:25 or Pawryk or Siobhan.
12:28 I think it really depends on what you're going through.
12:30 I talked to a friend of mine who's a therapist,
12:33 and she was saying if someone brought in this dream to me
12:37 and said, "I had this dream.
12:39 "I don't want to spoil anything.
12:40 "I'm wanting to cut a part of my body off."
12:43 It's kind of in the trailer, so you're okay.
12:45 Okay, so I'm wanting to cut my finger off,
12:47 and it's all about--
12:48 She would say it's because you feel like
12:51 your aliveness is being cut off by a part of your life,
12:55 and this art represents the fingers.
12:58 What do you think the fingers is a symbolism for
13:01 is what I'm trying to say.
13:03 I don't know. I just thought it was funny.
13:04 Really? You just thought it was funny?
13:06 Each time you bother me from this day on,
13:08 I'll take those shears,
13:09 and I'll take one of me fingers off of them,
13:11 and I'll give that finger to you
13:12 until I have no fingers left.
13:14 I knew it was dangerous,
13:15 and I knew it couldn't be a threat
13:17 towards the other person.
13:18 There seems something kind of--
13:21 not artistic about it,
13:22 but there's something in the self-destructive nature
13:24 of Brendan Gleeson's character,
13:26 the artist, that has that.
13:28 I guess, I don't know if we all have that to a degree,
13:32 that it's something we're sort of staving off,
13:34 you know, however we do it to ourselves,
13:36 if it's through drugs or self-harm or all those things.
13:40 He had that in him,
13:41 and he almost had that before the story starts.
13:44 I talked about it with Brendan Gleeson,
13:46 and he was wondering whether or not the despair,
13:49 which is sort of touched upon through the film,
13:51 is something that we should see, you know,
13:53 building or manifesting throughout the film.
13:55 But we kind of came to the decision
13:56 that he's already sort of been through that
13:58 before the film starts.
13:59 Yeah.
14:00 And the whole reason why he has to be so harsh
14:02 with Colin Farrell's character
14:04 is that if he doesn't do that,
14:05 he could die by his own hand anyway.
14:09 Wow.
14:10 So that kind of explains how tough he's being.
14:14 'Cause I think in those first scenes when he says,
14:16 "I'm just not your friend anymore.
14:17 "Will you leave me alone?"
14:19 It's being overly harsh for just to get it through to him.
14:23 I think things kind of unravel
14:24 when he's being a bit nicer about it.
14:27 So him saying, "I don't want to be your friend,"
14:29 is actually the last straw
14:30 in something that's probably been building for ages.
14:33 I think so.
14:34 Yeah.
14:35 That's what it felt like.
14:36 A dramatic last straw, yeah.
14:37 But the fingers thing, the thread of it,
14:39 you kind of--
14:40 I didn't know--
14:41 I never plan out a script beforehand,
14:43 so I never do a treatment,
14:44 and I never know what's gonna happen from scene to scene.
14:47 So I was kind of shocked when he came into the pub
14:49 and made that thread.
14:51 But after it happened,
14:52 it kind of throws everything up in the air,
14:54 and anything could happen after that.
14:56 So when you sit down to write a script,
14:58 you haven't storyboarded the arc of it.
15:01 You just see what happens.
15:03 Yeah, just have a vague idea of the characters.
15:06 With this, it was basically, you know,
15:08 one guy doesn't want to be friends
15:09 with another guy anymore.
15:10 I love how you say you were shocked by it
15:12 as if it was sort of an involuntary thing
15:14 that just came out of your brain
15:15 without you having anything to do with it.
15:17 It totally was.
15:18 I love that.
15:19 Yeah, I love it when that happens,
15:20 plot twists like that.
15:21 If you don't know that they're gonna happen,
15:22 hopefully the audience won't see it coming, too.
15:24 You know the story's gonna probably not have a happy ending.
15:27 Not necessarily, or a happy next few scenes.
15:30 Yeah.
15:31 When something weird like that happens.
15:33 It's delightful to watch.
15:34 It's so sprinkled with humor and warmth and coldness.
15:38 It's all over the map.
15:39 And it looked pretty.
15:40 Oh my God.
15:41 And Ben Davis.
15:42 Yeah.
15:43 Had you worked with him?
15:44 He did "Three Billboards."
15:46 Oh my gosh.
15:47 And "Seven Psychos," too.
15:48 He's a brilliant DP.
15:49 I guess both of these things we're talking about
15:52 are breakup movies.
15:53 Yes.
15:54 To a degree.
15:55 I think you said at TIFF
15:57 that you found it hard to even sing that song
16:01 10 years before.
16:02 So I'm imagining you couldn't have directed it
16:05 way back when.
16:06 No way.
16:07 No way.
16:08 And you know, back then I was just starting the process
16:11 of writing music videos and starting to, you know,
16:15 kind of use songs as a prompt,
16:18 as like a creative writing prompt,
16:20 and then carry out the visual and make a video.
16:23 But I was not in a place where I ever--
16:25 First of all, emotionally, I was just kind of--
16:27 I was going through exactly what the short film depicts.
16:30 And I think that time is such an incredible asset to us
16:36 when we have these stories that are hard to tell
16:39 in the moment, because it's good if a story is hard to tell.
16:42 That means it's incredibly emotionally potent.
16:44 Yeah.
16:45 But it's impossible to tell it with perspective and truth
16:49 if you're in it sometimes.
16:50 Yeah, yeah.
16:51 Sometimes that amount of intensity
16:53 can be actually stifling.
16:55 Yeah.
16:56 And I think that having just the privilege of being able
17:01 to tell this story, the fact that it was something
17:04 that the fans wanted-- this song was very grassroots.
17:08 It was never made into a single.
17:09 It was always just a song on the album that I loved.
17:12 And over the years, the fans made it very clear
17:15 that it was their favorite song of any song I've ever done.
17:18 That's so funny that you didn't feel that way,
17:21 or it was kind of lingering in the back of your head
17:24 that it was a brilliant song.
17:25 I thought that it was.
17:26 I loved it, because I thought that it was, like,
17:29 the most truthful account of heartbreak and loss and grief.
17:35 In the moment, you know, I was on a record label that--
17:38 you know, any record label would have told you back then,
17:41 if it's a song that's over three minutes,
17:43 then it's not going to work at radio,
17:45 and you have these songs that are so much catchier
17:47 or whatever it was.
17:49 Things unraveled in such a great, weird way
17:55 to make this song exist the way that it does now,
17:58 and so I thought, it's been such a build-up,
18:01 I really have to tell this story
18:02 in a way that gets to the heart of it.
18:04 And so it was so exciting to kind of go through it
18:09 and to be able to be, you know, in my 30s looking back,
18:12 because I think there's a moment when you're 19 or 20
18:16 where your heart is so, so susceptible to just getting broken,
18:23 getting shattered, and your sense of self
18:26 goes out the window so quickly,
18:28 and it's such a formative age.
18:30 I wanted to tell that story too, about sort of girlhood
18:34 calcifying into this bruised adulthood.
18:37 Were you always going to play the grown-up writer
18:41 at the end of the short film?
18:42 Yeah, I think so.
18:43 I think that was always my idea for it,
18:45 because, you know, enough time has gone by
18:47 to where you can show someone in a different phase of their life
18:50 and see how they've been positively and negatively affected
18:53 by this event that you saw happen.
18:56 I think you kind of grow with each feature,
18:59 or you learn more with each feature,
19:00 or you just get less stressed or scared with each one.
19:04 I think this was the first one
19:05 that I was kind of completely comfortable going into,
19:08 partly because I knew, or had worked with,
19:10 all of the actors before, pretty much all of the actors,
19:13 and the team of DP and production designer of First AD,
19:18 which I never realised how important that job was
19:20 before I started.
19:21 It's like co-pilot, basically.
19:24 Absolutely.
19:25 Have you latched on to people
19:26 who you'll definitely bring from job to job?
19:29 Absolutely.
19:30 And to features in the future, which is my next question.
19:32 Ooh.
19:33 Yeah, I definitely have people I've worked with
19:35 who I thought were sort of imperative
19:38 and integral to the process of making what I made,
19:41 and yeah, I would absolutely work with people again.
19:43 I also want to branch out,
19:44 and I'm such a fan of so many people who are out there
19:48 being a part of crews on films that I love,
19:51 so it's sort of half and half.
19:53 There's a part of me that really has so many people
19:55 that are so talented that I want to work with,
19:57 but I also have people sort of in my back pocket
20:00 that I've thought working with them was a dream,
20:02 and I wouldn't want to change that up at all.
20:04 So would that be like a list of DPs or actors?
20:07 It'd be DPs, it'd be production designers,
20:10 it'd be first ADs, it'd be camera operators,
20:13 it's costume design, wardrobe, hair, makeup.
20:18 It's kind of, I've got a little list of people who--
20:21 'cause I love film, I love watching movies,
20:24 and I love when you see a film
20:27 that takes you to a different world.
20:30 I now ask myself, "Okay, who was in charge of that part?
20:34 "Who was in charge of that part?
20:36 Who made me feel this way?"
20:37 Yeah, so which films in your youth or 20s
20:40 were those that made you want to be a director?
20:43 Oh, wow, I think there are so many that I love over my life,
20:49 but with the short film that I made in terms of Heartbreak,
20:53 this is really recent, but the Souvenir part one and two,
20:56 I absolutely loved.
20:57 Yeah, they were beautiful.
20:59 They're beautiful, gorgeous, and they were about somebody
21:02 making art through Heartbreak,
21:04 and so I absolutely loved that.
21:07 I loved Marriage Story,
21:09 and I love a lot of films in the '70s
21:12 that really, like, I don't know,
21:15 Kramer vs. Kramer, for example.
21:17 Just kind of the dissolution of the belief system
21:20 that is a relationship is very fascinating to me.
21:23 Do you think all of your work is going to be relationship-based?
21:26 Could you see yourself doing, like, a sci-fi
21:29 or a Western or an Irish something?
21:31 Wow, I couldn't see myself doing sci-fi
21:34 at this point in my life.
21:36 I don't think that's where my strengths would lie.
21:39 I don't think I would go headlong into another Heartbreak story
21:43 because it's just, you know, just did that,
21:46 it takes a lot out of you.
21:48 But what about you?
21:49 I mean, you just told a really epic friendship Heartbreak story,
21:52 which I think is an angle that is, of all the stories that are told,
21:56 I haven't seen that touched on, that relationship dynamic.
21:59 Yeah, they don't usually have sort of platonic old guys
22:02 on an island breaking up.
22:04 But it's so important that it happens to everyone,
22:07 and it's so important.
22:08 That friendship breakup is a weird one.
22:10 You're right, it's not really talked about in modern culture too much.
22:15 But it can be the most devastating breakup of all, I find.
22:19 Even though I think this one was written more
22:22 through, like, a heartbreak point in my life.
22:27 So I think the sadness in the script was coming from that kind of point of view.
22:33 I didn't hear those to be a session.
22:35 Last minute tea.
22:37 Colm decided.
22:38 All the ladies love Colm, you know.
22:43 Always did.
22:44 Yeah?
22:45 That's not true.
22:46 I assume you want to make features.
22:49 I do, I do now.
22:50 And would the plan be to write a script or get a script from somewhere else?
22:54 I would want to write it.
22:56 It's so much easier for me to visualize how I would want to shoot something
23:00 and how I would want to tell a story if I know exactly where it came from.
23:04 And I know exactly why each line exists.
23:07 Me too, actually.
23:08 Yeah, I'm preaching to the converted.
23:11 That comes through in what you make, I think.
23:13 It's just such a sincere reason for everything existing the way it does.
23:19 And I think there's a subtlety also.
23:21 I loved how Banshees was shot.
23:24 Thank you.
23:25 It was gorgeous.
23:26 It was expansive.
23:27 You feel like you're getting a cinematic escape.
23:30 It's really about the acting.
23:31 It's really about the story.
23:32 It's about the weight of it all.
23:34 And it's not--you know, I love a trick shot.
23:37 It's fun, you know, when you put a camera in a ceiling fan or whatever.
23:41 But, like, this is a different story that's told, I think, in a very pure way.
23:46 And I thought the restraint that you showed was actually one of the most beautiful parts of it.
23:52 Thank you.
23:53 I finally found some restraint.
23:55 That's good to hear.
23:56 Yeah, I mean--
23:58 It is a quiet film, I think.
24:00 It's a quiet--that's why I've been kind of surprised that it's going over so well.
24:04 But I thought, you know, it's a quiet, sad one.
24:07 It's not the Marvel DC universe, I guess.
24:09 Quiet, contemplative--
24:11 It is not.
24:12 It is not the same kind of film.
24:14 But I think--yes, it's a sad film in one way.
24:16 But there's a lot of, like, beautiful humanity in it.
24:20 I hope so, yeah.
24:21 That's very warm.
24:22 And a beautiful donkey.
24:23 Such a beautiful donkey.
24:24 There's an incredible donkey in this film.
24:26 Wasn't it named Little Jenny or something?
24:28 Jenny, yeah.
24:29 Jenny in real life and Jenny in the story.
24:31 Dreamboat Little Jenny.
24:32 Jenny, just play yourself.
24:33 Just keep doing what you're doing, Jenny.
24:35 She was a little diva, actually.
24:36 Really?
24:37 She was quite, you know, of all the cast.
24:39 I've heard that about asses.
24:41 There were a lot of animals in this.
24:43 Yeah.
24:44 There are horses.
24:45 There are donkeys.
24:47 There's a dog.
24:49 There's an amazing dog.
24:50 Yeah.
24:51 So directing animals, is that something that you had a lot of experience with before?
24:55 Not really.
24:58 I've had rabbits, as you mentioned, in Six Shooter.
25:01 That's a harrowing rabbit cameo.
25:03 Oh, yeah.
25:04 There were some rabbits in Seven Psychopaths, I think.
25:07 They survived.
25:09 But I love having them around on set.
25:13 And Colin Farrell says--you know, he quotes the old adage of you shouldn't work with children and animals.
25:19 But he loves it, and I love it, too, because they're just like innocent little--like everyone in the crew just loves being around them, especially Jenny, like a little dreamboat.
25:28 Yeah.
25:29 Like I watch the film now, I'm just looking at the animals.
25:32 I don't care what Colin and Brendan are doing.
25:34 The devastating scene where--I'm not going to give any spoilers, but when Colin comes home to find something devastating has happened, there's a horse.
25:44 Doesn't the horse sort of--
25:46 Yeah.
25:47 The horse kind of is like, "Look over there.
25:49 There's something over there you should see."
25:50 Totally, yeah.
25:51 And--
25:52 And then goes and sniffs, and it's as if the horse knows the story, I feel like.
25:57 Yeah.
25:58 And that horse, weirdly, because the horse is so good in some of the early scenes, I kept adding more and more for the horse to do.
26:05 The morning of that shoot of that moment, we didn't have the horse in it, but I thought it would be so wonderful to have those innocent eyes on that moment, too.
26:14 Oh.
26:15 I think that the horse makes that shot, really.
26:17 I think so, too.
26:18 That scene, I think, is one of the most powerful scenes.
26:22 Colin Farrell is just incredible in this.
26:25 Yeah.
26:26 And it's just--it's the moment where everyone in the theater was kind of audibly weeping near me.
26:34 I always hoped that that would be--that would happen.
26:37 He's so brilliant in that moment, so raw and broken, I guess.
26:41 Yeah.
26:42 Which reminds me of Sadie's moment in your video.
26:45 Yes.
26:46 And just had, like--for me, for Colin, there was no direction to be given that morning because I knew he would find the place.
26:54 And my job was to get out of the way, maybe, you know, have him do it an extra time or two, but try and just leave it up to him.
27:02 Is that how you worked with Sadie on that moment?
27:05 She is so incredible and so good that it was a very similar thing where I had a few conversations with her about how she likes to work in those kind of intense emotive scenes.
27:19 And she--I think she does a lot of prep work on her own, but she also had this song that she says always makes her cry, which is "Save Your Complex" by Phoebe Bridgers.
27:30 Brilliant song.
27:31 Which your partner actually directed the video for.
27:33 Yeah, Phoebe did. The two Phoebes.
27:35 So there's another tie. But we ended up, you know, playing that song on set, giving Sadie the room for a while.
27:46 There was also sort of--we wanted her to look like she'd been crying and the kind of body heave of that.
27:54 There was like, you know, screaming into pillows and stuff, and some of that we did together and some of that was just her on her own.
27:59 But we wanted to give her a lot of space in the room, so.
28:02 So you and her would like clear the room, scream into pillows together. Really?
28:06 And then she would do that on her own and do body work to make herself.
28:10 You'll notice that her skin, you can see just the redness of--it's someone who's been crying for a while.
28:18 It's that just excruciating, heaving, sobbing pain.
28:24 She's an incredible actress.
28:26 She has been doing this since she was a little kid.
28:30 So I think she has her processes, but there was a music element to it, which I think is just like a beautiful thing when music can touch someone in that way.
28:42 Yeah.
28:43 So, yeah.
28:44 Colleen, I know, has earphones in. There was another scene on the cart where he's sort of tearful.
28:49 I never know what they're playing, though.
28:51 I never want to pry if it's like voices or songs or what the hell that is.
28:57 Is it until you say action or is there--
28:59 Yeah, and then it's leave him to--actually leave him to call action for those moments.
29:04 Oh, that's amazing.
29:05 He'll take them out, have another thought or two, and then just say yes to the first AD.
29:11 And then I think that's a nice way to allow them to have all control.
29:15 That's beautiful.
29:16 Has being an actress in movies changed how you direct?
29:22 Every aspect of my job as a singer--I've occasionally been in a film for very short periods of time--has affected the way that I am as a director.
29:36 I think I really want someone to feel comfortable.
29:39 If they want to be able to look at the monitor or they want to be able to know how it's set up and how it looks, then they should be able to.
29:45 If they don't want to see it, they shouldn't have to.
29:48 I think it's helpful when people know what story it is they're telling.
29:51 I've been a part of things where you didn't know the script and no one knew what the story was and you just know your little part of it.
29:57 That's crazy.
29:58 Yeah, so I think it's important to let someone in on this is why you're doing this and this is how it fits into a bigger story.
30:05 And this is--yes, this is your puzzle piece, but this is what the puzzle looks like.
30:09 Yeah.
30:10 I imagine you're very honest and frank about that, but it's not always the case.
30:14 I like to be secretive about projects I'm making, whether it's a music video or the short.
30:17 We were so top secret about it, but the people who--you have to trust the people that you're making something with to let them know this is exactly why this matters.
30:25 Yeah, and they're part of the whole team.
30:27 Yeah.
30:28 I don't think I would have that experience if I hadn't been on everything from--you learn that from commercial shoots or a film or a music video that I early on wasn't directing or hadn't written or whatever.
30:41 Yeah.
30:42 I don't know.
30:43 It's just--you have to cast people you trust and then trust them, I think.
30:47 Exactly.
30:48 That's a great--all directors should do that, and not a lot--well, not all of them do.
30:53 One of my favorite actresses is Laura Dern, and I hear you might be working with her or have just worked with her.
30:59 Yeah, so I worked with her on a music video for a song called "Be Jewelled," and it's sort of like a twist on a Cinderella story because the album's called "Midnights,"
31:08 and it's a song that I wanted to play into the main fairy tale that deals with the hour of midnight when the clock strikes twelve.
31:14 I wanted there to be a scene in the beginning where it's the Heim girls playing the stepsisters and Laura Dern playing my stepmother.
31:24 And working with her was absolutely incredible.
31:28 She's one of these people who is just as wonderful offscreen as she is on, and I'd heard that about her.
31:35 I mean, you hear people's work, but you hear they're really either sadistic or bad to people or just hate doing it.
31:44 Some people hate acting, even though they're really good at it.
31:49 So I'm not wanting--I don't need it.
31:53 Yeah, same here.
31:54 So I've heard that Laura Dern loves it, is passionate about it, is doing it for the right reasons, lovely person, and is also brilliant.
32:02 So I wanted to work with her. I reached out to her and she came to set, and it was just the most wonderful time, and I feel like I want to know her forever.
32:09 Wow.
32:10 I simply adore a proposal.
32:13 The single most defining thing a lady could hope to achieve in her lifetime.
32:17 Is it hard directing yourself in things?
32:20 No, because I only direct myself in music videos where I know exactly what shots I want to get for a music video.
32:29 I literally shot list every single shot because it's just so much easier.
32:35 I edit on set when I do music videos, too. I didn't edit on set when I did the short film.
32:41 But for a music video, when you have it shot listed, you can just knock it out.
32:45 You only have like two days to get it done.
32:47 Right.
32:48 So I'd rather just hit that, hit that, hit that, slot it in for a video.
32:53 So it's like not even two or three takes?
32:57 If we get it for a music video, if we get it done in one take, I move on.
33:01 Wow.
33:02 But that's not how I approach the short film, and that would not be how I would approach doing a feature film.
33:08 Every time I sit down with someone like you who's making work that I adore, that I respect, it's educational for me to learn how people work and how they make things that I think are...
33:20 I mean, I think this is one of the best films I've ever seen.
33:24 My God, really?
33:25 I do, I do.
33:26 Thank you, Taylor.
33:27 I've been talking about it for weeks.
33:29 Thank you.
33:30 I think I relate to the most, Pawrik.
33:35 I think my friends, they'll be like calm because they're like, "I realize that idle time is affecting my art."
33:44 Do you think that it kind of plays into the myth of art and suffering and how they have to exist side by side?
33:52 I think he, that character, sort of taps into that or thinks that.
33:56 I completely disagree with it.
33:58 I mean, you have to write something and be completely on their side with that point of view.
34:02 Totally.
34:03 It's a valid point of view, and so many people really, really believe that.
34:05 Yeah, but there can be a lot of bullshit about it too, so I don't believe that you have to be...
34:10 Like my sets are like happy places, and I'm a really happy person.
34:15 You are a happy person, and you write really poignant, sad stuff.
34:19 Poignant, sad, just dark shit.
34:21 I think it's really interesting, the idea of channeling something very dark and sad and somber and about grief and all these difficult things,
34:31 but having a lovely, great time doing it.
34:35 It's really strange because I don't think that anybody would imagine you guys telling this story,
34:42 or even on the short film, like me and Dylan and Sadie telling a story about just life-altering heartbreak,
34:51 but on set we're just like, "Oh, this is so fun. That take was amazing!"
34:54 Exactly. That's the funny thing about it.
34:56 Like Colin and Brendan had a chat at the start, you know, "Do we need to keep space between each other?
35:02 Do we need to enact it in real life?"
35:05 And they both were so happy that they both agreed that no, they're just going to have fun and act it.
35:10 It's just like that part is a myth that you have to suffer to make good art about suffering,
35:16 or that you have to suffer in order to make art in general.
35:18 Yes, it is a cathartic thing, but oftentimes I think that writing about your pain or your suffering, it sort of gets out the poison.
35:28 Yeah, it helps.
35:29 It does.
35:30 Yeah, because as I said, this script was written in a sort of place of sadness and heartbreak,
35:35 but even the evening of having finished those few pages, it's like, "That's pretty good stuff about my heartbreak and suffering,"
35:43 which is great to be able to have that. And I'm not sure if that's an age thing or what it is.
35:49 Do you feel like your songwriting is different, even if you're talking about a heartbreak song?
35:54 Are you different in that writing now as opposed to how you were when you were 22?
35:59 Yes, I definitely feel more free to create now. And I'm making more albums at a more rapid pace than I ever did before,
36:10 because I think the more art you create, hopefully the less pressure you put on yourself.
36:15 If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready. If you keep making stuff, you just keep making stuff,
36:20 and hopefully you get better at it. It doesn't have to be so… you don't have to belabor it and polish the doorknob so long that you forget to open the door.
36:27 I haven't really done that, but I like the idea. I used to do that when I was writing plays,
36:33 bang out another one and another one, and there's less pressure that way, I guess.
36:37 Yeah, I think it's just a phase I'm in right now. I might be in a different phase in two months. I have no idea.
36:42 It's just recently I've found that the more things I make, the more things I make, and the happier I am.
36:49 And everybody's different, and there are people who put an album out every five years, and it's brilliant,
36:55 and that's the way that they work. I have full respect for that, but I am happier when I'm making things more often.
37:02 So do you carve out time every day to be productive in that way?
37:06 No, it kind of pushes through without asking permission. We were talking about involuntary ideas,
37:14 like when you were saying, "Oh, and then it was a surprise to me when he went into the pub and he didn't have a finger."
37:20 I have songs come to me like that. I have ideas for a story I would want to tell come through like that.
37:28 Do lyrics and tunes come at the same time? Do you have to be strumming?
37:33 No. Sometimes it's a fragment of a melody that has a lyric on it already.
37:38 Sometimes it's just a line, and I'll write it down, and I'll use it later.
37:42 Sometimes it's a melody that I have to go to the piano and then record and remember it.
37:47 But the more that I'm writing, the more those ideas come.
37:51 So even on a day like this, when you've got lots of stuff to do like this, in the afternoon something could come through?
37:57 Totally, yeah. It's only been like that for me for the past six or seven years, so that's why I say I think it comes with age.
38:04 But I don't really know why I've been making more things recently, but I'm just trying not to question it,
38:10 because I kind of like it, I want it to keep going, and there's a part of writing I think that we don't understand.
38:17 Yeah, completely.
38:18 So I don't want to jinx it by being like, "Huh, this is all me. I'm just writing. I don't know why. I'm just going with it."
38:25 Talking of which, Midnight's new record, they call them records, albums?
38:30 Yes, we respond to both.
38:33 I hear you're going to direct 11 videos for the album. Is that true?
38:39 Yes. So the videos for this one are really fun because I wanted to do different things than I did with the short.
38:44 I have this scene in a video for a song called "Antihero" where I have my future funeral of if I were to have kids,
38:52 and those kids were to be terrible, fighting over-
38:56 I'm sorry, it's hilarious.
38:57 Thank you. We wanted to shoot it in a very different style than I've shot things in the past,
39:03 because ultimately I want to tell the story in a way that's interesting for people, but I also want to learn.
39:08 I want to experiment with how to shoot scenes.
39:11 Yes, there's a great puking scene in that.
39:13 Thank you so much.
39:14 I love that.
39:15 I worked so hard on that.
39:16 I might steal that.
39:18 Throwing up on myself?
39:19 Yes, but it's blue, isn't it?
39:20 It's blue. Yes. The blue glitter in that video was a metaphor for-
39:24 at one point I bleed blue glitter. It's supposed to be midnight blue glitter.
39:30 Then at one point I cut through an egg and it's glitter.
39:34 It's supposed to be a metaphor for I bleed glitter. I'm not normal. There's something wrong with me.
39:40 I'm not a person. I don't belong. I don't fit in anywhere.
39:43 Cool. Do you storyboard?
39:46 Yes, I do.
39:47 Because when I've written a script, I haven't really thought about it in visual terms
39:51 until I then storyboard it myself and I go through every single scene.
39:55 The storyboards I'll talk through with the DP hopefully months and months before,
39:58 and the production designer, which is what we did on this.
40:01 Wow.
40:02 The storyboards had shots through doorways to see the island.
40:05 You don't just find a house on the island.
40:08 You build a house in the perfect place to see the perfect vista, similar with the pub.
40:14 The pub that you built.
40:16 Yes.
40:17 That blew my mind that that was something you built. It looked like it had been there forever.
40:20 Right? Yes. It's pretty weird yellow, but we just found the most scenic road, Cliff Road,
40:26 which had vistas and mountains going each direction.
40:30 And just built it and literally angled it so through the doorway you would see the most of that scenery.
40:37 I was actually sad that you had built it.
40:39 I was happy for the production design and the feat of engineering and imagination that it was,
40:43 but I wanted to go there.
40:44 To that pub.
40:45 I was like, "I want to go to there."
40:47 Colin Farrell drove past it three weeks later with his son, and it's gone now.
40:52 I was afraid you were going to say that.
40:54 Maybe they could build it. Maybe if the film goes really, really well, people will visit.
40:58 I'd like to float that idea. I'll go.
41:01 We literally had to take away Porich's house, which we built overlooking the island too.
41:06 It was filmed on Inishmore, and it's a place of natural beauty and heritage.
41:11 You have to take everything away and leave it exactly as it was.
41:14 Which is good.
41:15 Which is good.
41:16 It's good.
41:17 Although a lot of the locals were saying, "This would be a great little extra tourist attraction to have."
41:22 Was this an island that you had thought about and thought, "Oh, it's there that we're going to do it?"
41:28 Did you have an overall idea of where you wanted to be?
41:31 I'd written two plays which are set on the Aran Islands, one in each.
41:36 In my head, this is a vague end of that trilogy of island plays.
41:43 That's so cool.
41:45 I wanted to shoot there, and we did on Inishmore, which is off the Galway Coast,
41:51 and from my parents' house just outside of Galway, you can see those islands where we filmed.
41:58 Every weekend off the shooting, I would just go back and see Mom and Dad and hang out.
42:05 I first went there when I was seven years old to Inishmore, the biggest of the Aran Islands.
42:11 That's really sweet.
42:13 It's always had a part in my Irish history, but it's where playwrights and poets have gone for a century or more.
42:22 Oh, wow.
42:23 Yeah, just to study.
42:25 They say it has retained a lot of the Old World Irish heritage and charm.
42:30 It does feel that way, but it also feels quite a spiritual place to be.
42:33 It comes across that way in the film.
42:35 We also shot up on Ackhill Island, which is much more mountainous.
42:39 It's where Colm's house looks over that crescent beach.
42:42 I wondered at one point whether or not it would work to have two very different island types
42:48 and have it seamlessly seem like one.
42:50 I think it works, but also it feels like…
42:53 So it was two different islands?
42:54 Yeah.
42:55 Wow.
42:56 It absolutely works.
42:57 Good, good.
42:58 I was completely fooled.
42:59 I mean, the island and the sort of remoteness of it and the claustrophobia of the beauty meeting the remoteness of it,
43:08 I think it's a plot, it's a character, it's a theme.
43:12 It's kind of what lends itself to this feeling more like a fable.
43:15 Yeah, very much so.
43:16 It's not a normal movie.
43:18 Good, yes.
43:20 That's what we're going for.
43:21 It's a fable.
43:22 It is.
43:23 The idea of a breakup on a place where you have to see the person every single day.
43:28 That's the claustrophobia of it.
43:29 It's horrible, yeah.
43:30 These amazing roads that you would have to pass someone on, there's no escaping it.
43:36 You have breakups nowadays where people just ghost each other and it's almost like that person never existed.
43:44 You'll never see them again.
43:45 It's like I think that this is such an amazing, timeless way to confront the idea of a breakup that you would have to confront.
43:54 You would have to see this person.
43:56 Every single day.
43:57 There's no secrets on this island.
43:59 Everyone's talking about everything.
44:01 I feel like your characters in this, they are compelled to confess and to say everything they feel except on certain occasions where
44:12 Pawrick's sister clearly is keeping inside how trapped she's feeling.
44:17 There are cases of that, but I love that everyone's gossiping, everyone's saying things,
44:21 and the one time that Colm really respects Pawrick is when he is finally honest.
44:28 When he's drunk, I guess.
44:29 Yeah.
44:30 And angry.
44:31 He's like, "Stop being fake nice."
44:34 Yeah.
44:35 The tyranny of politeness.
44:38 I like the line he has where I guess we've all had in breakups, he says, "Maybe you were never nice."
44:44 We've all had that.
44:45 Maybe I was in love with the wrong, my projection of you instead of you.
44:50 Oh.
44:51 Oh, that's sad.
44:52 No, it's so good though.
44:53 This is why I keep talking to everyone I know about this film because we keep thinking of new things that it made us conjure up.
45:02 So what's next for you?
45:04 Is it just Midnight's and all of that?
45:06 Yeah, it's all that.
45:07 I'm just going to keep on making music.
45:11 I haven't toured in, I think, what, 2018 was the last time I toured.
45:17 Is it that long?
45:18 It's been that long.
45:19 So I want to go and sing the songs to people who sing them back to me.
45:24 It's like a whole thing.
45:25 I'll come.
45:26 Please do.
45:27 Please do.
45:28 That would be great.
45:29 You and Phoebe can come.
45:30 It would be a blast.
45:31 How did we do?
45:32 Perfect.
45:33 Wow.
45:34 God, we're good.
45:35 All right.
45:36 Very good.
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