One of the sweetest success stories of the past year is the one behind John Carney's Once, starring Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, a couple of musicians who, as reporter J. Freedom du Lac puts it, had "exactly one combined acting credit between them" when Carney coaxed them into starring in the picture, which was already built around the songs they'd written together. (Originally the male lead was to be played by Cillian Murphy; after Murphy dropped out, Carney had to talk a blue streak to convince Hansard, who had appeared on-screen more than fifteen years earlier to play a bass player in Alan Parker's The Commitments and hated the experience, to step in front of a camera again. The movie, which was made for $150,000, was not supposed to be a big deal. Now that it is, Carney and his stars are learning about the perils of getting what you wish for but never really expected to get. "I've been terrified by the reaction," says Hansard, a year or so into a steady stream of happy festival responses and rave reviews and top-ten lists and, now, award nominations. "The film is too small to withstand this kind of praise. It looks like it was shot on a mobile phone. And people see it and they think there's something wrong with the sound in the cinema. But that's just the way it sounds!"
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