John Michael McDon­agh: ​‘I’ve become more jad­ed the more films I’ve made’

Born in Lon­don in 1967 to Irish par­ents, John Michael McDon­agh spent the ear­ly part of his career explor­ing his cul­tur­al roots, ini­tial­ly mak­ing his name as a screen­writer with the Heath Ledger his­tor­i­cal dra­ma, Ned Kel­ly. But where his first two film as a writer/​director, The Guard and Cal­vary, each con­tain sub­tle auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal ref­er­ences to his Irish upbring­ing, McDonagh’s third sees him head in a bold new direc­tion – specif­i­cal­ly, west to Albu­querque, New Mex­i­co with Alexan­der Skars­gård and Michael Peña in tow. He describes War on Every­one as a con­tem­po­rary west­ern, and indeed it is indebt­ed as much to the films of John Ford as clas­sic bud­dy cop come­dies like 48 Hrs, and Lethal Weapon. Here McDon­agh dis­cuss­es some of his influ­ences while can­did­ly dis­pens­ing some sage advice about the fin­er points of filmmaking.

LWLies: What do you do the day before you start shoot­ing a movie? What’s your mood like?

McDon­agh: How ner­vous you are on your first film is the same as how ner­vous you are the day before your sec­ond film. It’s the same for your third film. The only thing is, on the sec­ond and the third film, the nerves go away quick­er. By the time you’re on day two, you’re more into the swing of things. But that ner­vous feel­ing nev­er real­ly goes away. I’d like to hear from direc­tors who’ve made 15, 20 movies, whether it does ever go away. You’re still tense, because you nev­er know what’s going to hap­pen. The thing with film­mak­ing is, you could be three or four hours into film­ing, and sud­den­ly, like what hap­pened on The Guard, you’re just about to do a shootout and it starts rain­ing. Three days into the shoot, if it keeps rain­ing, you’ve got no end to your movie.

And on War on Everyone?

This is what’s good about Albu­querque: it’s a very sun­ny place. I love going to Ire­land – my fam­i­ly live there and every­thing – but we were shoot­ing in Octo­ber so it was dark at four o’clock so it was a lit­tle bit mis­er­able. I found that my mood was a lot bet­ter in Albu­querque. I was a lot more opti­mistic. That week­end, I’d prob­a­bly gone out on the Sat­ur­day night and enjoyed myself, then relaxed all day the Sun­day. Just have a quick look at the next few day’s sto­ry­boards – because I sto­ry­board for the entire movie. So just go through the next few days, go through each scene and start writ­ing notes on any­thing you think the actors might bring up or ques­tion you about. And then just try to for­get about it, don’t think about it again until you’re on the way to the set. On The Guard, the first day on set I was phys­i­cal­ly try­ing to stop myself from shak­ing. You’re basi­cal­ly try­ing to be an actor, to act the part of a direc­tor that knows what he’s doing.

You don’t feel like you have to act that part as much now?

Not real­ly, because I felt con­fi­dent enough after the first two movies. Michael and Alex had seen them so they know the tone. I guess, if your first two films are bombs, maybe the actors feel more lee­way to brow­beat you. But if your first movies do well – which mine did crit­i­cal­ly and com­mer­cial­ly – then they obvi­ous­ly have more faith in you. Then it’s just how you behave on the first day. I remem­ber the first scene we did was the scene in the din­er where they’ve got the kid beside them, and they’ve got this rapid dia­logue where they’re talk­ing about what to do with this kid. At first they were doing the dia­logue too slow, so I explained that it need­ed to be fast. From then it was fine. It helps if you’re the writer of the script, because then you can give that note.

Why did you shoot that scene first?

It was prob­a­bly just loca­tion. I always like to start movies with an inte­ri­or, because with exte­ri­ors there’s a lot more that can go wrong. If you’re start­ing a movie with a mas­sive track­ing shot, you’re prob­a­bly going to get into trou­ble immediately.

Was there a scene that was par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing on this movie?

Well, Alex isn’t the great­est dancer in the world. There’s this scene in the mid­dle where he’s danc­ing and it’s this joy­ful exu­ber­ance. On a big bud­get movie you’ve prob­a­bly got a dance instruc­tor for at least three weeks. We had a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, but they prob­a­bly only had time to spend about three days with Alex. So you know, Alex had a more neg­a­tive view­point of the work he’d done. I was like, ​‘I think we’ve got enough,’ and he was like, ​‘No, no we haven’t got it right.’ We were get­ting to the end of the day’s shoot and you can’t keep going over on a low-bud­get film. So that was the only time it got a lit­tle bit tense between us.

Luck­i­ly, we were back at the same loca­tion the next day. So we did the scene with Alex and the kid on the couch, and that kid was great. They just flew through the scene and we had a spare maybe 30 min­utes to an hour. So they came back in and did the dance again. Alex has been giv­en a sec­ond chance. He’s more relaxed. So, they get it in the three takes. Overnight I thought, ​‘Why didn’t I do a swirling Steadicam shot?’ So I got that in. When it came to review­ing the footage in the edit­ing room, I realised Alex was right – the first one was crap.

When you’re on set with an actor and things aren’t going well from you’re point of view, how far do you push them?

I was talk­ing about this the oth­er day. Some­body men­tioned The Shin­ing, and how Kubrick pushed Shelly Duvall for 80 takes in one scene. If you’re doing 80 takes with an actor, you’ve cast the wrong actor or you’ve got some­thing psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly wrong with you that you’re try­ing to destroy them for some rea­son. Shelly Duvall’s a fuck­ing great actor – I just watched her in 3 Women by Robert Alt­man and I’m sure he wasn’t doing that many takes with her. And what hap­pens when you actu­al­ly get into the edit­ing room? ​‘Christ, I’ve got to go through 80 takes…’

‘…The tenth one was fine.’

As a direc­tor, I very rarely go above five takes. If it’s some­thing tech­ni­cal like the danc­ing sequence or a stunt or some­thing, then maybe you need a few more to per­fect it. But 80 takes… how dif­fer­ent can they actu­al­ly be? I’m not a big fan of those types of direc­tors who think they have to destroy an actor to get a per­for­mance out of them. I have a big thing for John Hus­ton. The act­ing is in the cast­ing. Cast the right actor and the act­ing will take care of itself. If you do ever have a dis­agree­ment with an actor, you have to remem­ber that they’re still try­ing to do the best they can. They want to play the char­ac­ter the best they can and they want the film to be real­ly great. You can have argu­ments with oth­er peo­ple on the set and the crew – you can tell they don’t real­ly give a shit if it’s going to be a great film or not. They hope it is, but it’s a job, you know. With an actor – the actors that I’ve worked with at least – it’s not just a job.

There’s a sto­ry Aidan Gillen tells about you instruct­ing him to ver­bal­ly abuse Bren­dan Glee­son on the set of Calvary.

It’s the scene where Aidan’s char­ac­ter has just tak­en coke with Veron­i­ca, and Brendan’s char­ac­ter inter­rupts them. I said to him, ​‘When he clos­es the door, tell him he’s a fuck­ing cunt or some­thing.’ Now I don’t know if Bren­dan thought Aidan him­self was call­ing him a fuck­ing cunt or what­ev­er, but the next time he came in there was some­thing in his face. After­wards I realised that I’m not keen on that sort of manip­u­la­tion. I kind of felt it was a mis­take to do that.

How easy is it to find good actors?

With Bren­dan, we had such a good expe­ri­ence on The Guard that the char­ac­ter of the priest [in Cal­vary] was specif­i­cal­ly writ­ten for him. You men­tioned Aidan Gillen; once I’d writ­ten that part I thought it would be per­fect for him. Some­body like David Wilmot – who’s been in all my films – is that kind of mal­leable char­ac­ter. Not only is his per­for­mance dif­fer­ent from film to film, his appear­ance changes. The killer in The Guard is so dif­fer­ent to the stu­pid priest in Cal­vary. But if you start writ­ing a part for a par­tic­u­lar actor, you’re on a hid­ing to noth­ing. If you don’t get them, is your film then ruined?

So why Alex and Michael?

Michael’s char­ac­ter was orig­i­nal­ly going to be African-Amer­i­can. But then I thought if we’re down in the south­west why not make him Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can. I’d always loved Michael’s per­for­mance in Observe and Report, so I reworked his char­ac­ter in the hope he would get it. I remem­ber with Don Chea­dle, I saw him being inter­viewed and I thought, ​‘Oh wow, he’s real­ly wit­ty and fun­ny and seems down to earth,’ and then he turned out to be that way. If I see an actor and think, ​‘They’re a prick,’ I’m going to avoid them.

And Alex?

I saw a YouTube video of him drunk at a Ham­mar­by foot­ball match, try­ing to get the crowd going, and that’s kind of the Ter­ry char­ac­ter right there. I only had a cou­ple of phone con­ver­sa­tions with him, and he came across exact­ly how I expect­ed. If I think someone’s going to be real­ly hard work I’ll get some­one else. That’s my approach to it. If you have one bad apple it’s going to ruin the whole thing.

What do you love about movies?

To be hon­est, I’ve become more jad­ed the more films I’ve made. The ini­tial impres­sions made on me were, ​‘Wow, that’s what art can do.’ It can change your life. I’m think­ing specif­i­cal­ly of films like Bad­lands or The Night of the Hunter. I don’t have that as much any­more but still, every now and then a film will come along. One that comes to mind is Chungk­ing Express. I remem­ber being so tak­en aback by it that I went back again the next day to watch it again. I remem­ber see­ing an ear­ly Takeshi Kitano film, Sonatine, and I had to watch it again and again because I found it so odd. It’s actu­al­ly influ­enced my edit­ing style. He often shows the reac­tion to the event before he shows you the event itself. He shows the observ­er first. And then he holds on the vio­lence. A lot of vio­lence in movies is quick cut­ting. I guess the child­like inno­cence of it has been lost on me. Before it was like, ​‘This could change my whole life,’ now it’s, ​‘This could change a scene in my film.’

War on Every­one is released 7 October.