{"id":22962,"date":"2026-07-31T09:23:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T04:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=22962"},"modified":"2026-07-31T09:23:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T04:23:38","slug":"the-oral-history-of-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=22962","title":{"rendered":"The Oral History of Once"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/once_the_movie-size-custom-crop-870x650.jpg?quality=80\" \/><\/p>\n<div data-id=\"801916\" data-title=\"The Oral History of Once\" data-url=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/2026\/07\/once-oral-history\/\" data-page=\"1\" data-pages=\"8\">\n<p><em>This article was originally published in 2017 for the 10th anniversary of <\/em>Once<em> (the film). It has been republished <a href=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/2026\/07\/glen-hansard-dead-motocycle-crash\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">in memory of Glen Hansard<\/a>, who passed away this week (July 29th, 2026) at the age of 56. <\/em><\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>It\u2019s 2011, and <a href=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/artist\/glen-hansard\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Glen Hansard<\/a> is worried. His breakout film, <em>Once<\/em>, is about to open as an Off-Broadway musical at the New York Theatre Workshop in Manhattan\u2019s East Village. Sure, the movie brought him and his co-star Marketa Irglova a level of fame in America neither could have ever dreamed of \u2014 the duo had, at that point, played two sold-out shows as <a href=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/artist\/the-swell-season\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Swell Season<\/a> at Radio City Music Hall, won an Oscar, and garnered two Grammy nods \u2014 but they both, Hansard especially, were anxious about how their delicate, incredibly low-budget indie film would transfer to the stage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat if these guys fuck up?\u201d Hansard reminisces. \u201cWhat if they turn it into some nonsense?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So one night in late autumn, Hansard decides to take the leads of the musical to his favorite Manhattan bar, an unassuming, dimly lit Irish pub on a quiet block on 5th Street called The Scratcher. He has his friends, including renowned Irish singer-songwriters Mark Geary and the late Fergus O\u2019Farrell, meet him there as bartender Brendan O\u2019Shea promptly locks the doors.<\/p>\n<p>After a few whiskeys at the bar, the musical\u2019s co-stars, Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti, were led to the back of the bar alongside all of the other musicians, who had readied their acoustic guitars, tambourines, and other assorted instruments and began to play. Throughout the course of each traditional or modern Irish folk song, certain musicians would join in and sing \u2014 everyone was expected to participate.<\/p>\n<p>After a few tunes, it was now Kazee\u2019s turn. A self-described Irish folk superfan, Kazee, who was gearing up to play Hansard\u2019s \u201cGuy\u201d character, began to strum the opening chords to Van Morrison\u2019s classic track \u201cInto the Mystic\u201d. \u201cOh my god, I was fucking terrified!\u201d he remembers. \u201cIt was almost like this weird hazing, but more of an indoctrination into that world. It was like, \u2018Alright, if you\u2019re going to be doing this, know the roots of it; know that this is what it\u2019s about.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember just beaming the whole night,\u201d Cristin Milioti adds, recalling her performance of an a capella song she had written. \u201cIt was so, so beautiful and the music was gorgeous. I remember walking out when the sun came up and feeling on top of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Once | 2012 Tony Awards\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LhsRYkf1EW8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>They had passed the test. Soon after, this iteration of <em>Once<\/em> hit the stage at the New York Theatre Workshop for a critically acclaimed one-month run and was quickly moved to Broadway, where it became one of the most successful musicals in recent memory, eventually winning eight Tony Awards in 2012 and a Grammy in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>The musical, written by acclaimed Irish playwright Enda Walsh, gave <em>Once<\/em>, then a cult classic of sorts, a second life. Though Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova had been playing some of the world\u2019s most important stages for years, their music was introduced to a different audience entirely \u2014 hell, the aforementioned O\u2019Farrell song \u201cGold\u201d, an inclusion on the <em>Once<\/em> Soundtrack originally recorded by little-known Irish band Interference, was being performed onstage at the Tony Awards, complete with choreography and about a dozen voices.<\/p>\n<p>So, how did we get here? Hansard\u2019s band The Frames was playing midsize rooms across America \u2014 Chicago\u2019s Metro and New York\u2019s Bowery Ballroom, for instance \u2014 but they surely weren\u2019t hitting No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums Chart like the <em>Once<\/em> Soundtrack did on March 15, 2008. To understand the<em> Once<\/em> phenomenon, we need to dig deep in the film\u2019s origin story, which now dates back a full 10 years since its release. It\u2019s a narrative as absurd as it is unlikely; a low-res, quickly shot, extremely independent Irish film that only hit dozens of art house movie theaters became ingrained in American popular culture on the backs of two extremely talented musicians with little to no acting experience and a director who never gave up.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got it!\u201d screamed John Carney as he ran down the stairs of his house in Dublin toward his girlfriend in 2005. Carney, then a struggling filmmaker a few years removed from <em>On the Edge <\/em>(one of <a href=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/tag\/cillian-murphy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cillian Murphy<\/a>\u2019s first movies), felt as if he\u2019d finally cracked <em>something<\/em>, though it was unknown what that was.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was one of those moments with this script,\u201d he says over the phone. \u201cWith this idea, with this story, I felt like I had finally managed to crack a story that would have universal appeal no matter which way you did it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That original screenplay was simply a page-long outline of the story, beginning with a musician meeting a woman on Dublin\u2019s Grafton Street, a pedestrian walkway famous for its many busking artists, and ending with the unnamed female character receiving a piano at the end. The film was set to star Cillian Murphy, fresh off of his portrayal of Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan\u2019s <em>Batman Begins<\/em>, and would include Glen Hansard and <a href=\"https:\/\/consequence.net\/artist\/damien-rice\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Damien Rice<\/a> (among others) as its musical advisors, helping Carney develop the busker character while also writing new songs for the soundtrack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>\n\t\t!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n\t\tn.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;\n\t\tn.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=1;\n\t\tt.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,\n\t\tdocument,'script','https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n\t\tfbq('init', '1753966171496536');\n\t\tfbq('set','agent','tmgoogletagmanager', '1753966171496536');\n\t\tfbq('track', \"PageView\");\n\t<\/script><script defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&#038;version=v7.0&#038;appId=434175690014\" nonce=\"6gwmbCtM\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article was originally published in 2017 for the 10th anniversary of Once (the film). It has been republished in memory of Glen Hansard, who passed away this week (July 29th, 2026) at the age of 56. It\u2019s 2011, and Glen Hansard is worried. His breakout film, Once, is about to open as an Off-Broadway&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/consequence.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Once.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}