Declan Cashin

Writing: the art of applying the ass to the seat

Groan

My recent interview with Cillian Murphy about Inception for the Irish Examiner

When Cillian Murphy signed on for his latest role in Inception – one of this summer’s biggest and most eagerly-anticipated movies – he knew that filming would be anything but conventional. After all, the script called for several transcontinental location shoots (six countries if you’re interested), as well as complex, 360-degree-spinning, gravity-defying sets.

However, for the 34-year-old Corkman, the greatest challenge throughout was mastering a certain winter sport for the movie’s final act, which was filmed in snow-bound Canada. “They had to dispatch [co-star] Tom Hardy and I up to the mountains in Calgary to learn how to ski,” he recalls, smiling.

“I’d never skied in my life. I’m much more a temperate climate kind of guy. I find it kind of counter-intuitive to just throw yourself off the side of a mountain. Anyway, Tom and I had four days to go from novice to not-quite-novice. I still ended up skiing into the camera a few times.”

Today, however, Murphy is speaking to Weekend amid the more sedate opulence of the Dorchester Hotel in London. The star is in the midst of a hectic promotional schedule for Inception that has already seen him travel to LA, Paris and London, before going back to LA and on to Tokyo in the next fortnight.

That said, Murphy, decked out casually in white T-shirt and jeans and sipping on coffee, is good-humoured, and much more relaxed than usual in the presence of the media (he doesn’t do chat show interviews, and declines to talk about anything pertaining to his personal life. Indeed, one of the first things he says in our interview is: “I endure rather than enjoy this whole talking to people and stuff.”)

He concedes, however, that the interview process is made a lot easier when there’s a project like Inception to discuss. This is the latest movie from the visionary writer-director Christopher Nolan, the man behind Memento, Batman Begins and the iconic, $1bn-grossing The Dark Knight. It stars Leonardo di Caprio as Cobb, a fugitive thief specializing in extracting valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Murphy plays one of Cobb’s team’s targets in a dangerous, and unprecedented REM-based heist.

Whilst it may be a major summer release, with a reported budget of $160m, Inception could never be classified as traditional summer fare. Every brain-scrambling frame is bursting with visual and narrative invention, while the plot’s internal logic and dreams-within-dreams set-pieces would make the TV show Lost look like an episode of Teletubbies in comparison.

“When I first read the script I did question my intellect as an actor,” Murphy says wryly. “I was like, ‘Shit, am I the only cast member who doesn’t quite get what’s going on here?’ Then as we spoke to each other and realized we all had the same reaction.

“It required three or four readings to really get inside it. But once you get your head around the rules, it actually becomes pretty simple. I describe it as an ‘existential heist movie’. It does follow that sructure vaguely, plus it has elements of James Bond, as well as a love story, a thriller aspect and some comedy. Above all else, it’s anchored by emotion, particularly in Leo’s performance, and to a lesser degree mine, so it has that core that I think people will identify with.”

Murphy has never shied away from challenging and unconventional material before, so why start now? Born in Douglas, and raised in Ballintemple, Murphy’s first acting role was in the stage play Disco Pigs (later turned into a movie) that he undertook while studying for an uncompleted law degree in UCC.

On the back of a few Irish movie roles, Murphy was cast in Danny Boyle’s monster hit zombie-flick 28 Days Later (2003) and his career went into orbit so fast that it’s a wonder he didn’t develop a bad case of the bends. Parts followed in blockbusters like Girl With a Pearl Earring, Cold Mountain, Red Eye, Sunshine, and, of course, Batman Begins (his first movie with Inception director Nolan).

Even as his profile was going supernova, Murphy established the pattern he has kept to this day of mixing blockbusters with independent fare like his Golden Globe-nominated turn in Breakfast on Pluto, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and the recent Perrier’s Bounty.

In Inception, Murphy forms part of an A-list ensemble that, in addition to the aforementioned DiCaprio and Hardy, also includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Ken Watanbe, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine. “Towards the end of filming, we were all staying in this hotel in the middle of the mountains, so there was a lot of meeting up in the bar afterwards to have the craic,” he reveals. “It was a really special experience.”

Mention leading man DiCaprio and Murphy unashamedly becomes as effusive as a starstruck, poster-on-wall-kissing teenage fan. “For my generation he’s one of the finest and most successful actors around,” he says. “I’ve been a fan of his for long before I became an actor, just watching his movies at home in Cork. He surpassed my expectations professionally, and offset, socially, he’s just a really sweet guy.”

His role as ‘the mark’ in Inception also touched something in himself, as his character is forced to contend with some serious daddy issues throughout. “I’m a dad of two boys, and I obviously have a relationship with my own father. They are very complicated relationships, so it’s nice to explore that,” he explains.

Murphy’s sons, Malachy (5) and Aaron (3) live with him and wife Yvonne in northwest London, but he reveals that the boys don’t yet fully grasp what their dad does for a living. “They’ve never actually seen me in anything because all my films are highly unsuitable,” he says with a laugh. “The older boy has a vague concept, but not really. When they ask the question I’ll try to explain it to them, and not make it a big deal, which it isn’t anyway.”

He evidently loves his life in the English capital. “I thought about moving to New York about 10 years ago, but never to LA,” he explains. “I feel that London is close enough to my parents and also perfect for work as so many things are cast out of London anyway. I want my kids to grow up closer to home. Nobody bothers me here either. I’d get a little bit of attention in America and at home, but that’s about it.”

After the mayhem of Inception, Murphy plans to take some time off, and perhaps film something in the autumn (he’s long been linked to a screen adaption of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds). “You can never plan time off in this job,” he says as we finish up. “Sometimes it works out and sometimes it goes horribly wrong. That’s the nature of it. It was more exciting when I was a young fella than it is now because I have kids and a mortgage.” He pauses, and adds: “But it’s still exciting not knowing what’s around the corner.”

*Inception is in cinemas everywhere now

My recent feature-interview with The A-Team’s Bradley Cooper in last week’s Irish Independent

Bradley Cooper is all about the ‘Face’ these days, but it’s pretty much impossible to miss the rest of his body too, especially in the trailers for the new big screen adaptation of classic 80s TV show The A-Team.

For while it may be a movie aimed squarely at the boys, Cooper’s willingness to throw off his shirt to reveal that ripped, sweaty chest is a generous sop to the girlfriends reluctantly dragged along to watch their fellas relive the giddy, fort-building-with-cushions-behind-the-sofa Saturday teatimes of their youths watching Face, Hannibal, Murdock, and BA Baracus kicking ass, leaping from helicopters, and engaging in general high concept, cigar-chomping, fool-pitying, love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together mayhem.

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Feature from the Irish Independent on a poll of the most confusing films ever made.

Have you had your head melted by the new ‘sleeper hit’ movie Inception yet? If you think the Leonardo DiCaprio-led dream-world thriller is tough to follow, then it might be wise to steer clear of the following list of puzzling pictures that have just been voted in an online poll as the top 10 most confusing films ever made.

But fear not, for below we have your easy-to-follow guide to the plots of the most baffling flicks of all time. Unless, of course, we’re so confused that we don’t understand them either, and will only serve to muddle things even further.

It goes without saying — lest there’s any, em, confusion — that the following contains some major plot spoilers.

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Nightwatch column from today’s Day and Night in the Irish Independent

Feet. The very mention of the word should be — is — enough to make one shudder and gag. Why? Because feet — yours, mine, hell even Brad flippin’ Pitt’s — are, to put it mildly, ugly with a capital ‘Ewwwwww’. As the warranties that came with each and every one of us explicitly state, we are all different and special in our own little ways, but I can assure you that the one area in which we are all exactly alike is when it comes to our hooves. And they’re all uniformly gicky.

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My interview with James Mangold, director of the latest Tom Cruise vehicle Knight and Day, from Day and Knight…I mean, Night, in today’s Irish Independent

Director James Mangold tells Declan Cashin how he got to grips with blowing things up, Cameron Diaz’s legs and Tom Cruise’ s baggage.

It’s the day after the London première of Knight and Day, and its director James Mangold is perched on a luxurious sofa in the Dorchester hotel, sipping on an ice tea, reflecting on the occasion. “Yeah, it was nice,” he starts, before adding with a hearty laugh: “But they always make me feel like it’s going great, so how would I know?”

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Taylor Lautner needs a moment. He leans back in chair, pondering the trickiest of questions. “Strangest fan experience so far?” he repeats aloud. “It’s so hard to choose just one.

“The most recent was at a fan signing in Australia. I was going down the line signing books, paper and even arms. So I get to an arm with a massive ‘Wolf Pack’ tattoo, like the one I have in the movie. The girl was like, ‘Can you sign it right here in the middle?’

“I replied, ‘Yeah sure’, and I felt something was a little suspicious about it. That night Kristen [Stewart, his co-star] said to me, ‘I bet you that girl is going to get your signature tattooed’. I was like, ‘No way! That will stick with her for the rest of her life’. Sure enough, the next day it was all over the papers that this girl got my signature tattooed on her arm. That just shows the amount of passion our fans have.”

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