‘I’m Trying to Get All the Coolness Out of My Movies’

Reflecting on a career spent making movies and plays that have featured exploding cats, surprise decapitations, and other inventive acts of destruction, Martin McDonagh let out a rueful laugh. “I don’t think I ever set out to shock,” he told me. “Every single one of them just came out that way.” Since emerging as a playwright with The Beauty Queen of Leenane in 1996, McDonagh has had a reputation for leaving audiences simultaneously screaming with laughter and shrieking with horror. His new film, The Banshees of Inisherin, is not without a few ghastly jolts—but by McDonagh’s standards, it’s a subdued, mournful story.

During our interview over breakfast, McDonagh was cheerful, almost impish, about his career arc and penchant for grisly surprises. “[ ] doesn’t have much … well, when [one is quietly sad, and I like that,” McDonagh said, adding that when he rewatches his first film, ,he likes it for its sadness more than its coolness: “I think I’m trying to get all the coolness out of my movies.”