Martin McDonagh

A few days before the opening of their movie In Bruges, actor Colin Farrell and writer-director Martin McDonagh sat comfortably beside one another at the Regency Hotel. The film, which co-stars Brendan Gleeson, is about two hit men holed up in Bruges—a perfectly preserved medieval city in Belgium—after a job gone horribly awry. “I was sort of struck by how beautiful and cinematic the place was,” said Mr. McDonagh of the inspirational weekend trip he once took to the city. “But then you saw all the museums and got bored out of your head,” chimed in Mr. Farrell (who might have heard this story a few times before). “Yes,” Mr. McDonagh said. “It was like beautiful, beautiful, beautiful on one side of my brain, and then boring, boring, boring on the other. The two characters evolved from there.”  read more »