Circuit Training 44: The oddly unsung Owen O'Neill

He's done stand-up on Conan O'Brien and Letterman, adapted One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the West End (with Christian Slater in the Nicholson role), written a script for Danny Boyle, acted for Neil Jordan and won awards as a film director. So why isn't Owen O'Neill up on a pedestal like, ooh, that Ricky Gervais? "I seem to do everything once," he says, and it's a fair point. Let's have a trawl through that multi-platformed career...

Morning Owen, which career strand are you working on today?

I'm writing a pilot for a TV drama. We've kind of a deadline, it hasn't been green-lit or anything but I'm doing it for Kudos who are a good company, they make good things, they made The Hour, and they do Spooks, so at least we'd get a chance to be seen.

That's all you can hope for these days really...

You know, I wrote a screenplay in 1991 - I had the idea, my agent sent it to George Faber, who was the [BBC] producer then, he got me in, we had a chat, he said 'I like this, lets do it' - and we did it, in six weeks. That wouldn't happen any more. It was called Arise and Go Now. It was a black comedy about the IRA, and it was directed by a young Danny Boyle.

So he owes it all to you?

Oh yes, absolutely!

So that was your first big broadcasting thing?

It was one of those things that just came and went, good reviews, but these days, if it was on ITV it would be trailed, there would be posters up about it, but then it was just another play on BBC2. People on there like Dennis Potter, Bleasdale, Ken Loach - you took it for granted really.

Your CV is amazingly varied.

Well, it's been a double-edged sword, I had an agent who said 'do you want to do comedy? Then you have to have a five year plan, get on a panel game, diddly-dee,' but I used to go off and do other stuff like poetry and short stories, films, a bit of acting.

It was poetry first, then comedy?

Comedy came in about '84/85, I used to compere at the Comedy Store and I'd throw in poems; [founder] Don Ward used to say to me 'I don't mind you doing poems as long as they're funny: this is The Comedy Store, the clue is in the name.' Then I started to lose the poetry in the '90s and do one-man shows. More theatrical shows, autobiographical, almost every year I had a new show for Edinburgh, I don't think anyone else was doing it then, maybe half a dozen people. I did my last one-man play in 2008. That was called Absolution and was about a guy who killed paedophile priests - I took that to New York in 2010.

Quite a change of pace there then. You did stand-up on a couple of the big US talk shows along the way?

I did two Conan O'Briens, and then I only did about three minutes on Letterman. It was outside: they did a thing for St Patrick's Day, I wasn't actually in the studio so it was a bit of a cheat really. It sounds like I was interviewed by him but he didn't have a clue who the fuck I was. But it went really well and a lot of people saw it and thought it was funny.

Did you not think of relocating?

There are so many comedians there and they're all so driven and so ambitious, and, oh Christ, you'd have to up sticks and go to LA, and that's my idea of hell.

Paul Provenza told me that UK stand-up is better - more scope to experiment.

I think there probably is, because when I went to do Conan they take you to do all the clubs to try out your spot, every gag, there's a guy there with a notebook. You're suppose to do 10 minutes and they're sitting there with their pen. I flew in, jetlagged, did them all - Caroline's, the Comedy Cellar, Stand Up New York, all these gigs...

I didn't realise it was so rigid...

They know exactly what you're gonna do. I mean you can change it a little bit - I remember I opened up with a different gag and I could see his face fall. It worked really well but they don't like you to do that.

Was it very well paid?

Not really, I think you get about $1500, they fly you over, put you up, maybe 2000 bucks but that's it.

You popped up in some big films in the '90s - how did that come about?

Neil Jordan saw me in Dublin. I was doing a gig and he was in the audience, it was just stand-up, my agent rang me and said 'he's doing a movie, Michael Collins, and would like to see you.' So I went down and we had a chat. And the next day he said 'yep you've got the part.'

You did a few films, some decent TV - did you also do some ads?

I'm like 'I don't fucking want to do that' but they'd say 'the directors you see on ads, in two years time they're going to be directing films.' I did try, but there was this time where this guy said to me - I didn't know what I was going up for, strawberry yoghurt or something - and he said 'show me your belly button.' He wanted to see if it was an inny or an outey. So I'm saying 'are you serious, what's this for?' And he said 'it's about a guy going along the beach and he has a strawberry in his belly button, and the strawberry's talking.' And I said to this director 'let's leave it there' and I just walked out.

You did a fair bit of theatre after that, adapting One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest very successfully, then the Shawshank Redemption, which did well in Ireland but less so in London?

There are two or three critics in the West End and they have a bee in their bonnet about movies being made into plays, 'it's easy' - its the fucking hardest work I've ever done in my life! We put things in that weren't in the book or the film - we had a prison band, different characters...

Did that put you off?

Not at all, I've got a tough hide, it happens to the best of them.

Did you do some radio plays too?

I did six of my one-man plays for radio, I cut them down to half an hour which was very hard, but a good exercise as they were an hour and a half long. I like the radio but it's a lot of work for hardly any money at all. It's very enjoyable but it's painstaking, and it's on in the middle of the day so you imagine people are listening to it with just half an ear.

You're also a budding Danny Boyle?

In 2008, a straight short that I wrote [The Basket Case] - I got €80,000 from the Irish Film Board and it won two awards, it won Best Irish Short at the Boston Film Festival and Best Short at the Brazilian Santa Posa. But they sent me this award and I don't know what it is, it's all twisted up. You say 'thank you very much' but I've fucking no clue what it is...

I presume the Irish Film Board don't have 80k to spare these days?

You can't do anything now. I've not had the opportunity to do any more directing - I was asked to direct a script but it was so bad, I went off to the writer and suggested a few things, but he didn't really like that. I tried to be as tactful as possible but he said 'what you're asking me to do is write another film' and in the back of my mind I was thinking 'well, yeah.'

As for the stage, you've been doing poetry again?

I started doing the festivals. It comes and goes, but I think there's a bit of a resurgence at the moment. Next year I might do a show called Struck by Lightning, straight stand-up - when I was nine I was struck by lightning, so there might be an Edinburgh show in it. Although I might be in a play in the West End.

We'd best leave you to get on...