A Sony Pictures Classics release, The Guard hit theaters in late July. The film is the directing debut of John Michael McDonagh who also wrote the screenplay. He’s the older brother of Martin McDonagh, a playwright and screenwriter, whose first-time directing effort was In Bruges, another mob-themed film released in 2008, which he scripted and also starred Gleeson. Though he’s listed as one of the film’s producers, his main contribution to The Guard was to introduce inimitable Irish actor Gleeson to his sibling. “I don’t really like the theater. I’m a big film buff,” says the older McDonagh. “When he got his film set up, I was a bit jealous at that point. That spurred me on even more to direct a film”
His best-known previous credit was screenwriter for Ned Kelly, the 2003 remake about the Australian outlaw and folk hero starring Heath Ledger. Soured by his “negative experience” collaborating with director Gregor Jordan, “I thought if I wrote a script that was low-budget enough, I’d be able to direct it,” he says. The opportunity arose with The Guard, budgeted at $7 million. Assistance was provided by the Irish Film Board with a 40 percent rebate on production costs. The film went from script through the end of the shoot in just one year.
DP Smith appealed to McDonagh for his range of experience. “I was impressed that Larry had worked for Kubrick but also did great work on a small film like Bronson,” he says. The latter was a well-received movie about England’s most notorious prisoner directed by up-and-coming Danish helmer Nicolas Winding Refn. “When you meet Larry, there is nothing highfalutin and pretentious. He doesn’t try to intimidate you with lots of fancy talk about lenses and other technical issues,” says the director. Smith also encouraged McDonagh to go for a richer, more vibrant look. “Larry feels that if you’ve got a good set and costumes, show it. Let’s not do close-ups all the time,” he notes.
Kelly and Mhaoldomhnaigh obliged. “I told them I didn’t want gritty realism, I wanted to do a stylized movie with bright colors,” says McDonagh who is a fan of Michael Powell and Emric Pressburger, the production team behind classic 1940’s British films like The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death. “I love the vibrancy of the old Eastman color in their movies,” he observes.
For the film’s music, McDonagh made an unusual choice: Calexico, an indie band specializing in mariachi /Tejano border rock. “I didn’t want some tiddly-di Irish music. I wanted something more like Enrico Morricone (the prolific Italian composer of soundtracks),” he says. He approached the band, which agreed to compose special music for The Guard along the lines the director suggested.
Shooting the film’s big-bang ending that takes place on an exploding boat tested McDonagh. “It’s quite nice to write that kind of stuff, but when it comes to shooting it’s like a great big jigsaw puzzle,” he observes. Not helping was a night of torrential rain that cut the available filming days. “You’re under lots of pressure, because if you have no ending you have no movie,” he says. “Despite everything shot in the previous six weeks, if it didn’t go right you could end up nowhere. It was quite tense but we got through it.”