Movies

Being a blogger isn’t always sunshine and lollipops, unless you are one of the lucky ones covering the bi-annual ‘Sonnenschein und Lolly-Knalle’ festival on the outskirts of Salzburg of course. Sometimes it’s a thankless, spell checking, dull awards-sitting, social nightmare of a thing. However, it also allows you the opportunity to be asked ‘Do you want to sit in a pub and chat to Danny McBride for a little bit?’, which is not something you say no to really.

 

Yes, the insanely manly-looking star of such movies as ‘Pineapple Express’ and the T.V. show ‘Eastbound and Down’ was in town to promote new fantasy comedy epic ‘Your Highness’. Following a screening of the film (which a review can be found here), Danny came on stage for a quick Q&A hosted by the quick-witted, priest-voiced comedian Jarlath Regan. Here Danny would discuss such topics as the dangers of carrying around a fake dismembered penis in the back of your car, how shocking it is to suddenly be sitting across from George Clooney , and the writing process involved with giving a puppet a hand job. So, it genuinely was going to be interesting to find out where the man could go in the more intimate setting of a pub.

In the rather lovely setting of the Brazen Head, Danny took his place with a group of bloggers, enough food to shoot a Christmas ad for Iceland (including the nicest sausages I have ever had, I mean, Jesus, they should have sent a poet to write about them) and, a taste developed during his time spent in Belfast shooting the film, a pint of Harp. Being a genuinely nice man, completely unfazed by success, conversation flowed without any pretension or awkwardness, rather unsurprisingly to the filming of a scene halfway though the film where Danny’s character Prince Thadeous is captured along with his companions by an army of rather attractive women, wearing very little indeed. Annoyingly a friend of mine had the difficult job of being an extra that day (bikini clad lady in the cage, if any booking agents are reading). Danny rather unconvincingly commented ‘Yeah, a tough day that one’. The jammy bugger.

 

The actor speaks very highly of his time spent in Ireland, six months shared between filming and having drinks in Belfast, and escaping to Dublin every now and again, for a drink. Watching his face light up when discussing his discovery of the beer ‘Budvar’ and how it’s hard to believe that something that sounds very much like another type of beer could taste nothing like toilet water, is like watching someone describe watching ‘Star Wars’ for the first time.

From here we move on to topics such as January Jones, (Danny says she’s ‘doing just fine money wise, trust me’) and what a ‘Culchie’ is (not a plug, he was curious). I answer that I’m unlucky enough to be a culchie nomad, too from a town to be a culchie, but from a town that makes its ‘Sea View Princess’ chase the winning pig of that day’s pig race down the main street, and so couldn’t be anything other than a culchie.

Of course throughout all this, there is an elephant in the room, and it’s something that the man needs to be thanked for. Without going into spoiler zone, there is a scene in the third act of ‘Your Highness’ where Zooey Deschanel, an actress so lovely she could lighten up your grandmother’s funeral, is in a rather revealing dress, being sort of sexy. (Well, she’s tied up, but don’t read into that.) Knowing that our drinks were coming to end, I finally thanked him for it, and akin to a brother finding his little brother rooting through his ‘private magazine’ drawers, Danny just said ‘I understand completely’. An amazingly down-to-earth man who is very possibly about to wrestle the crown of ‘Nicest man in Hollywood‘ away from that Clooney fella.

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