Inside the frame
Irish rocker Glen Hansard has temporarily traded stage for screen to star in 'Once'
Irish rock band the Frames might not have a fan base that numbers in the multimillions (yet), but pound for pound, the sheer devotion of the ones they do have is equal to that of any act that can sell out stadiums.
It is in part thanks to that devotion that Frames lead singer Glen Hansard finds himself starring in the new film "Once," which opens Friday.
Director John Carney was such a fan that not only did he sign up for a three-year stint as the bassist in an early incarnation of the critically acclaimed group, he conceived his film with Hansard's voice and words central to the musical story of boy meets girl.
"For me the music is great," said Carney, sitting in a hotel suite with Hansard and his co-star, singer and novice actress Marketa Irglova . "I've always been a fan, so if people need a film to hear the music , then fine."
Convincing his leading man to take the role after childhood mate Cillian Murphy ("28 Days Later," "Batman Begins") dropped out, however, was another story. Hansard felt strongly about his songs, yes, but his acting? Not so much.
"In music I feel somewhat confident in that I've been doing it a long enough time to feel OK about any project that involves music. And that's how I was originally approached, to write some songs for the film," said Hansard in an earlier solo interview be fore a sold-out Frames gig last month at the Somerville Theatre.
Some of the tunes were co-written by Irglova, 19, a native of the Czech Republic and his partner in the Swell Season , which released an album last summer.
"So for a couple of reasons I accepted, and one of them was so that Mar could make the film," he says with a laugh. "She's a very close friend of mine and she really wanted to do this."
The two play characters -- called only "Guy" and "Girl" in the credits -- that don't stray too far from their own lives.
In reality, Hansard, 37, dropped out of school in Ballymun at 13 at the urging of his rock 'n' roll loving headmaster, Frankie Byrne. "Every time I'd get sent down to him we'd start talking and get into music and I was able to tell him what bass player played on songs by Leonard Cohen or what the fifth song on 'Harvest' was by Neil Young," said Hansard with a laugh as he multitasked by restringing and tuning up his guitar backstage.
"And he said, 'You've obviously got brains to burn . You're just not applying them in the regular curriculum , so what I suggest is you take your guitar, leave school today, and get on a bus and go to the city center and start making a living. Start at the bottom and go busking. And promise me you'll follow music because it's obviously what your passion is.' So I did."
He founded the Frames in 1990, and the group steadily worked its way up to being one of Ireland's best-loved bands -- if still something of a treasured secret on these shores -- with a combination of exuberant live shows and Hansard's craggy voice and dark but optimistic worldview.
In the film Hansard portrays an aimless but gifted Dublin musician who splits his time between being a "Hoover-fixer-sucker guy" in a vacuum cleaner shop and busking on Grafton Street while pining for -- and writing aching songs about -- the girlfriend who has left him for London. Irglova is the enigmatic Eastern European girl he meets who has romantic issues of her own but with whom he shares an instant musical chemistry.
It is funny and sexy, but not a romantic comedy. It is melancholy, but not depressing. It is a musical, but not in the traditional sense of people bursting into song. It is low-budget but does not cheap out on intimacy. It is hard to pin down.
That elusiveness is exactly what John Nein , the second Frames fan to enter the "Once" picture, loves about it.
"I think one of the things that the movie does is it completely defies that notion of compartmentalization," says Nein, a programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, who spied "Once" at the Galway Film Fleadh and was thrilled to see the frontman of one of his favorite bands starring and singing in it. "It's just a very simple film. It's a pure expression of the story and the music."
Whether or not viewers warm to that music is probably going to determine whether or not they enjoy the film because, in a bold choice for our quick-cutting age, Carney allows eight songs to be played in their entirety in the film, which, quite frankly, worried Hansard.
"I said to John all along, 'I really don't think audiences are going to sit through this. I really think you need to edit the songs down.' And he said, 'Dude, I need the whole song."'
Carney isn't concerned since exposing the songs was the whole point of making the film, but he may have had an ulterior motive. While early reviews have generally been favorable, he observed that all the negative notices have been from critics who simply didn't care for the music, which, he concedes is a matter of taste. As the director, he says, "I get away scot-free."
Nein loved the music and brought the film back to Park City for consideration. Those in the Sundance office were charmed, including a few diehard Frames-heads, and the film went on to convert new fans and win the World Audience Award this past January.
That experience, says Hansard, was crazy for what was essentially conceived as a "visual album" by Carney, once Murphy -- and the investors -- pulled out.
"The initial idea was , let's make a film about a busker who sings a few songs, he meets this girl, they hang out, and, you know, we put it out on DVD, a few Frames fans'll buy it, and we might make our money back."
Instead, in the afterglow of Sundance, Fox Searchlight bought the film, which was shot for $100,000 in three weeks -- "basically on mobile phones" quips Hansard -- for a little under $1 million and is rolling it out across the country.
Calculating the possible numbers of people who will see the film -- let's say one million -- and the fraction of those who in turn will buy the soundtrack , and the sliver of that group who'll investigate the Frames, Hansard concludes unscientifically that the number will be "a lot of people. A [expletive] load more than usually buy them. If I'm honest, best-case scenario: The Frames get a bit of attention, Mar gets some offers to make music or do some more acting, and I get to continue with my band with this film I'm proud of in my canon of back work."
It is not the first time that Hansard can take pride in being in a distinctly Irish film about the power of music to magnetize, heal, and express feelings we sometimes can't name. Sharp-eyed viewers with good memories may recall the then-baby-faced 19-year-old as shy guitarist Outspan Foster in Alan Parker's jubilant 1991 serenade to soul music and Irish fortitude "The Commitments."
But there's a reason it's been 16 years between roles. Hansard has no interest in being a movie star. Even now that the good buzz surrounding "Once" has generated at least four film offers, he says "I didn't even ask what they were. I just said [expletive] it, it's not my area."
With almost no prodding, however, Hansard admits that he'd put down his guitar and explore a new area if the filmmakers he admires come calling. When he heard that famed indie director Jim Jarmusch saw and liked "Once" he thought, "If someone like him were to come along and say I've got a cameo part I'd like you to play, I'd be an idiot not to."
If he's a Frames fan, he just might.
Sarah Rodman can be reached at srodman@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog. 