Cillian Murphy & Max Porter: Shy / Steve

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Hello everyone and welcome back to the Inklings Book Club podcast. I'm your host, Jack Edwards, and today is a very Today we are joined by Killian Murphy and Mr. Porter. Ah oh my gosh, this is so cool. Gillian Murphy and Max Porter have collaborated as co-curators of the Sounds from a Safe Harbor Festival in Cork Island, as well as the theatre adaptation of Max's book, Grief is the. With feathers.

This book is a hybrid of prose and poetry about a crow visiting a grieving family. Now they're working together again on the adaptation of Max's book Shy, which is now a Netflix movie called Steve available to stream right now. The original book is a lyrical novella about a boarding school for troubled boys. It documents specifically the chaos of one boy's mind and that boy's

Is Shy. Now, Shy is in the movie version. It is also about him, but Steve is actually very different from the novel, instead, named after the head teacher at that very moment. School. In the film, he's played expertly by Killian Murphy. Now, Killian is an Irish actor, winner of a BAFTA, Golden Globe, and of course.

an Oscar. I sat down with the two of them to discuss this experimental and exciting project and their love for books in general. I actually first met Max earlier this year when he was the head judge of the International Booker Prize, which is one of the most prestigious prizes for translated fiction. And he so expertly managed that judging panel and chose a really excellent winner called Heartlamp. But here's what happened this week when I caught up with Max Porter and M Buffy.

Hey, I'm Jack. Nice to see you. How are you? Pleasure. King of the online book world. Our king is generous. I'm very grateful for that title. So yeah, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about books specifically today, if that's all right. Um I've given up on him, Jack, frankly. You're done, tired of it. Well last time I saw you was at the book. I just think it's it's like slightly altered my capacity for reading. Too much of a good thing. I'm reading I'm thrillered.

But I just need a l I need to be like pulled through the phone. Fluffy romances by plot. Well, Max, I'm a massive fan of your novella Shy. Um the film Steve is of course based on it, an adaptation, a reimagination, an expansion. How would you describe it in your own words? What I've been landing on is is like a another tree in the wood, you know. I always felt that shy the whole point was you pick a completely ordinary kid.

Yeah. And you you you cut it open and you take one of those rings and you just take one little section of that ring and say, What's occurring here? And obviously being human beings, there's a lot occurring. Um and so the same with with Steve, just go to another tree in in in in the cockpit. Book to screen adaptations are often lifeless or sort of illustrative.

And I'm much more interested in the kind of um radical translation. Yeah. You know, so we left the book behind. The only thing the only way in which we didn't really leave the book behind was um obviously the day and the life, the school, but also with Shy.

So Shy becomes that book in a way that I hadn't predicted. He used the book as a Bible. Jay Jay was in that book all the time with the music and with the pain and with the relationship with his parents in a way that is now extraordinarily palpable to a viewer. Um but was just good preparation on his part and good soulful engagement with the material on his part. But the but the film is effectively new. It's it's it's a new story, it's about this guy.

calling out to you, I need my own project based on me as well. I have a like a a a perpetual man crush on a certain type of compassionate and broken individual. Not you. I'm not suggesting it was me. It was implied. Not necessarily man, but obviously given the given the chronic problems we have with masculinity in the world it it it's also especially alluring when it's a man. But just these gu you know, these broken, hard working, tender, funny, um self deprecating, committed people

I just love I love these people. So I thought, yeah, let me build him. Killian, you play the title role, the eponymous Steve. Yeah. Um I know that you also produced this film as well. So I wanted to ask you when you're looking at books or scripts, what is it that attracts you to those? What makes you think Yeah, it's hard to know really. That's actually affected my reading a little bit, is cause you read everything going, Ooh, I wonder would this make a good film or T V show and

I wish I could just read for pleasure now. Which I can with some books that you know are never going. Television. Um I I I'm not really sure. Like we did small things like these and I that was um that was kind of sitting in the kind of recesses of my mind for a long time. until we figured it out. In fact I think it was my wife's idea, that one. Um

But th i those sorts of characters I'm I'm very attracted to. With this one, it was an ongoing conversation with me and Max. We'd adapted um Grief is the thing with the feathers for s for the stage. So I was very familiar with the world of Max's work and then we made a short film an original short film together and so we were very keen to work together. I adore his work. Uh I I I I completely

um on board with everything all the messaging in his in his work and just the compassion and the humanity that exists in his work and really wanted to see if we could find something else. So then it was really up to Max to To do the to do the work. The heavy lifting. Yeah, but you know, it was very, very collaborative because I knew Tim Mealens would be the perfect director for it.

Small things like these you wouldn't necessarily think that, but You know, I've worked with him for a long time now, and he he again he has that real sensitivity uh um and that kind of um care as an artist that was needed for it. And we have that inbuilt trust. Yeah. Which is uh my main driver in making work is like a dream team. Yeah. Keep the good people close. Have a laugh but take it deadly seriously, you know.

Tim is like a kid in a toy shop. He wants to play. He wants to play with different filmmaking techniques. He wants to play with actors. He he he he he does stuff with actors that that you know people come offset.

And they're like, I wanna work with Tim again. Every time. He brings something out and he and he flips he flips the room. So you're doing a scene, it's all going well, everyone thinks it's kind of rap, and then Tim goes, How about we do it as if you're the you know and then and actors are like, Oh Very close to how I write.

Uh you know, I'm always like what if I try this over there? What if I reverse this? What if this is a what if this is a voice from a dead badger? What if this is a what if this is in fact an echo or this is a screenplay glitched into a into a poem, you know?

There's there was a there was an element of of joy at our i in our materials. Yeah. Question for you both. I want to know what type of a reader are you when you're reading a physical book? Are you scribbling in the margins? Are you annotating it? Are you folding down the pages or do you keep it Christine. I love and you know this very well. I love

I don't like pristine book I like to crack the book. The spine's gotta be cracked and I like the book to be I I I dog ear every page when I'm finished reading. I always Find my name in it and where I bought it and the date.'Cause my dad used to do that and I remember picking his books off the shelf and going, Oh my god, my dad read bought this in Rome. And it's just it gives this extra sort of thing to the Yeah. Yeah.

is like I mean how would you describe it? It's like it's been put into a cement mixer. Rendered unreadable. Because I kept it with me so for so long and it's so annotated. And to me books should be like that. I'm really not into the They're just books as decorations. I think they're kind of lived um um are like artifacts and you need to keep them in your bag and you can feel the sweat from your hands and them So I really feel that all of my books are the good ones are all like battered in.

Broken but like They represent a part of my life, you know. Yeah, Max, I need you to start publishing waterproof copies'cause I keep crying on all of them, they're ruined. All the ink is bleeding. Yeah, no, I'm the same. And and cool. Like I've got a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that has my dad's name in it, nineteen seventeen.

I'm just like, Oh my that my dude. You know, two years before my brother is born he's just tripping out on this book and I have a copy of M. R. James's Ghost Stories. And inside it there's a postcard that my grandfather put in the book from one of the locations of the ghost stories. and put the postcard in.

I'm leaving notes I'm ne I'm leaving notes for the future and even the point is that's the that's the delicious bodily experience we have with reading physical copies, right? Is that that um we're leaving our trace. Killian Murphy, I have to ask you if you were my English What would you say is mandatory reading? What's gonna be on the curriculum? Oh shit. That's a great question. I wish I had this in advance. Um

There probably be a lot of Irish literature on there. One of course. I imagine uh older and probably a lot of like probably John McGarron would definitely be on there. James Eath. Uh I think, um

If you're gonna talk about contemporary Irish literature, maybe uh you know Clara Keegan. Actually she's uh small things like these is on the curriculum. As it should be, yes, I think it's a lot of things curriculum. Yeah. Um what else? I mean all the classics, I guess. I mean it I th I do think it's important To put in the time and to read the classics. I do think you gotta you c you gotta do it. Do you have an essential

I mean you gotta read Dubliners, you know what I mean? And it's not difficult but it's revolutionary for what for what he did at that time. Absolutely changed everything and you know and then he went on to do Yucy obvio obviously, but like I I think Um I'll help you'cause he goes blank at these times. You love Bamville and you love the kind of American you know, you love the kind of Don Dolillos of the world. Yeah. That's a strong reading list.

Obviously I do think you need to do your Shakespeare's and you need you need to do like, you know, contemporary theatre and poetry. Um I loved it all. I mean it was that most my favourite thing in school. Absolutely. You and me both. That's why we're here. Yeah.

Max, as a celebrated writer and a an international Booker Prize judge, head judge, what's on your reading list? Yeah, I mean that that y you you've set me up there beautifully, Jack. I I I think I think I'd I If I was ever privileged enough to be working with minds at that malleable time, read widely, read in translation for God's sake. English people, read as hungrily as you possibly can the bulletins that uh we are lucky enough to receive from the rest of the world.

Read with n with with no uh inhibition as regards form. You know, I read kids' books, comics, graphic novels, um I read a big juicy big nonfiction book, you know, at the same time as I'm dipping into novellas and poet I read poetry like it's sustenance. I read poetry just as easily as I drink water. Yeah. And I don't really I don't I don't I'm probably not a very good or disciplined reader of poetry. I'm probably reading the wrong stuff. My poet friends to be like, eh can But I don't care.

I I and I don't need to even pay huge amounts of attention to a poetry collection or work out what it means. You know, I'm unschooling myself and the way we're taught to read poetry is this sort of serious different thing. I'm just glugging at it you know as I go past'cause it keeps me alive and it keeps the language humming in my head.

He recommended me an amazing book just recently which I'm like halfway through and it's a masterwork. What's the book? Independent people. Independent people by Haldor Laxnus, the great Icelandic. Oh great. But it's you know, it's it's it's an epic. I read half of it on the plane going across the Atlantic and it was you know. But you can't put it down, that's the best feeling.

Well and you needed something absorbing. Yeah. You know, and and not and not kind of um not surface level g gimmicky or anything. You needed a proper big master work.

It's already destroyed the book. Every page as you go just Um, I have a book club and I thought I would bring you my monthly pick for the book club. It's um A Palestinian writer writing about New York. It's called The Coin. Yeah. Thanks so much. I really recognize it as a free when you're done with the Icelandic book. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Nice to see you. Thank you.

So so much to Netflix for inviting me to do this interview. Steve is available to stream on Netflix right now. A massive thank you, of course, to Max Porter and Killian Murray. their time. And also for all of these incredible book recommendations, I am heading to the bookshop as soon as I finish recording this. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast if you're new. We have new episodes going out twice every single week with extraordinary authors and celebrities talking about their favorite book.

the things that they have written. If you're feeling kind, you can also give us a five-star rating if you enjoyed the episode. I would really, really appreciate it. You know, if you're feeling generous. And of course, stay tuned for our next episode with a very talented Irish author called Fiona Scarlet. I'll see you then. Bye-bye.