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Fantastic Movieline interview from TIFF

11 September 2009 at 11:52 PM | by Melty_Girl, with Lillian

Cillian TIFF 2009
TIFF 2009

Movieline's S.T. VanAirsdale did an interview with Cillian at the Toronto International Film Festival today that's chock full of new info for us starved Cillian fans. If you're reading this blog, you'll probably want to read the whole article (which we've added to our Feature Stories archive), but here are a few interesting bits.

We learn more about Cillian's perspective on his Perrier's Bounty character, Michael, "the straight man" who "keeps winding up in these crazy situations" and is in a

...constant state of anxiety. You meet him and he’s hungover, he owes money, he’s sleeping in the afternoon, and from there it just gets increasingly worse. I wanted to squeeze him a bit, to really feel the pressure he’s under. It was important for Michael to make him look as physically exhausted and ill-equipped as possible—he’s in the mountains, and he’s freezing, and he’s struggling to roll a cigarette. ... I really enjoy seeing how human beings respond to pressure—how they respond underneath. To me, that’s drama.

He also reveals his approach to fostering onscreen chemistry when commenting on his rapport with Jim Broadbent, who plays his father:

I put a lot of stock in actually meeting actors before the movie. Not necessarily rehearsing, but just hanging out and going for dinner and talking—trying to establish as quickly as possible some kind of trust or common understanding of the characters and the script.

VanAirsdale comments that Perrier's strikes an unusual tone in its rare blend of drama and comedy, and Cillian explains:

Mark O’Rowe, the screenwriter—whom I worked with previously on Intermission—managed again to blend this sort of dark, tragic scenarios with humor. He pushed the boat out even more on this one. Even though it’s set in Dublin, it’s a heightened version of that city. People there speak in this heightened way, and I trusted his writing tremendously. And I trusted (director) Ian (Fitzgibbon), too, who was an actor. I thought that between all of us we could certainly make the change in tones quite seamless.

...I think we were all saying that this isn’t realism we’re doing. It’s grounded in contemporary Dublin, but we kind of pushed it a little bit. There’s a metaphysical aspect to it that’s totally unusual.

Cillian also tells of his long-time admiration of Brendan Gleeson (the titular Perrier) "above all" as an actor—

I love the way he moves between genre and can just play any type of character. Good guy, bad guy… It’s a career I’d very much like to emulate.

but also as a mentor:

And I very much like his attitude to the business—toward Hollywood and the independent world. He’s very rational and common-sensical about the whole thing. I’ve gone to him a number of times for advice about situations in the business and how to deal with certain things.

Cillian won't be hanging around the festival; Metro says he's off tomorrow to continue shooting Inception. Photos from the premiere don't seem to have made it online beyond the little one above, but we should be seeing more in the days to come.

Thanks to Emma for the Movieline tip and Rukia for the photo!!