Moe Dunford stars in Nightride as Budge, a smalltime dealer in Ireland who is attempting to pull off one last deal with money borrowed from a dangerous loan shark. When things go awry, however, he finds himself in a race against time to find his missing product and a new buyer before the loan shark can track him down
Ahead of the film’s release, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with star Moe Dunford to discuss Nightride, stepping into the executive producer’s chair, the challenges of a one-take movie, getting pulled over during filming and more.
Screen Rant: So I gotta say, I went into Nightride totally blind and was just blown away by what I saw. What about the project really interested you in the first place?
Moe Dunford: It was working with Stephen Fingleton. The amazing mind that he has, his can-do attitude of, “Huh, funny, this has never been done before, but it can be done. It’s crazy, but it can be done.” The script by Ben Conway, who has been a friend of mine for years, Ireland, Dublin, is very small like that. I’ve known him for years, I’ve worked with him before on a short film, when I get back home I’m working with them on another short, I love the man.
I just thought that was a great unit and we had a dream team, I got so spoiled on it. It wasn’t easy, but when you go back to normal filming days and you go to the director, “I can have another go at this, I can do another take?” I enjoyed that, it had kind of never been done before and it was a challenge and it sort of scared me. Because there’s one thing reading the script and its influences of Michael Mann, there’s the Thief reference and Heat and one last job as a man is getting out of the business after this night. It was the one-take thing which was the challenge for all of us and even though, to me in front of the camera, it was that the crew were working in a lockdown where everybody has been told to stay within their 20-kilometer restrictions.
Here we were driving all over Belfast doing 100 lines of dialogue, it was crazy, it was like pulling off a heist but being included in it from the get go, all of us in a team. I got great memories of last year, all of us down on the docks in Belfast, cameraman, sound recordist, guys in the front van, the actor driving behind me trying to talk about how we’re going to avoid get stopped by the police. It felt like it was the Northern Irish version of Heat where Pacino’s looking at the De Niro down on the docks, or the other way around, you know? It was exciting.
So I was reading all about this movie and it was so interesting that this was done with you driving as much as acting. You did just talk about it a little bit now, but what was it like for you getting to actually be in the driver’s seat for forever and acting for the entire film?
Moe Dunford: I love driving and it certainly made reversing out of the car park easier for me after doing Nightride, I’ll tell you what. But Stephen wanted to simplify things, “Just say your lines, don’t forget them, drive the car and don’t crash into anybody,” and you know what, it kind of should be as simple as that. I love watching movies, I adore Locke, we all adore it. But when we’re driving for real and it’s one take, it was more about the right energy and the right energy in rehearsals, which could be cheeky and happy go lucky. But as time went on, and we had less and less days to do the take and there’s a neighborhood where the guys are throwing bottles at you for real who are living there and they’re threatening to set the crew cars on fire and you’re in the pandemic, things got a lot more heated quite quickly.
You can sort of see that in the film and I think it helps, it may not be exactly the way we wanted to go, energy wise, to begin with, but it works. Stephen said, “This is the last time Budge ever gets to do this.” I always liked the idea of letting go of your your past life and wanting to start a new future for yourself and drive away with your love. That was always the goal that, hopefully, when it reaches its crescendo, the audience will feel that and they’ll feel that that was real. There were unexpected moments, you asked about the driving, and there were unexpected moments where mistakes would happen and they’re in the movie, but they make it. I would send the wrong call, I’d call the wrong person, a police man pulls me over and I have to talk to him for real. Troy, played by Gerard Jordan, is being pulled over by the police and in the back of the back of my head I’m like, “Good luck, but you got to stay in character.”
That was a thrill, mate, that was a real thrill. I actually feel so honored that I got to do that as an actor, because sometimes when you’re told to hit your mark in close up or wide, I thought, “This is new.” I always enjoy the single take, but this was something else. Trusting Stephen, having a dialogue with Stephen and seeing where he’s coming from, there’s a great line of dialogue at the very beginning of the movie, “The fool is the precursor to the savior.” I always found that sort of fascinating why he put that in over the cards, I don’t know where he got the idea of revealing the characters with the cards revealing themselves and that quote coming on.
But if you combine his visionary style of directing with Ben’s script, I really thought you have a dynamite combination there because he can make it more spiritual, more profound, more real, more edgy. I thought it was quite exciting with that. With the driving, because it was a lockdown, there were a few people on the on the streets, so if you want to get metaphysical or metaphoric, Budge is sort of on his own in that car. It’s his journey to hell. We paid everybody to clear the streets, we had that much budget. [Laughs]
It was a blessing in disguise, in a sense.
Moe Dunford: We had a lot of blessings on this shoot, we had a lot of blessings. That crew, I’m in awe of what they did. Our cameraman Dave Bird, our focus puller Ben, our grip Ian McGurrell. You talk about avoiding shadows in one-take movies, but when you’re out of the car, the cameras and magnets to the bonnet, they got to get out at a time in front and it was like a dance. I’ve never done anything like that where you got to drive, hit your mark 20 or 10 miles away. Just trust your buddies, trust your team, trust your units and they come in volume. I had a joy working with the other actors, I worked with three other actors in person, Ciaran Flynn, Joana Rubio, Gerard Jordan, and every time I’d get out of the car was like, finally a real person. [Chuckles]
These beautiful people who’ve got your back, they’re driving off camera, following you on your journey, it’s sort of like a play in that way. I hadn’t done theater, I did a play when this finished up because the adrenaline in me kind of got me brave again. I was like, “You know, hitting your mark and doing the wide and close-ups, eh. Let’s do some theater again.” But, you know, wishing your other actors good luck, have a good one tonight, I’ll see you at the other side, that was a real joy. All we wanted is to make the best movie possible so that someone in the audience will go, “Wow, these guys really care.” That’s is something that I believe you can tell, don’t you? You can tell when cuz people care about a project.
So that was an actual police officer that pulled you over?
Moe Dunford: Yeah, it wasn’t an actor. It was for real.
I wondered, because when I saw the film, I was like, “Wait, the cop’s face looks blurred out” and I wondered, “Is that like because it’s a real officer?” How did that happen?
Moe Dunford: We got pulled over every night, you just didn’t see the other times we got pulled over, but Gerard would get pulled over, the crew van in front would get pulled over, I got pulled over a couple of times. But there’s something special about that one time. I was really trying to make something of that take, Stephen and I were sort of at loggerheads over how things were going and we were like, “Get this, I can get this.” It just happened at the perfect point in the movie. I heard the sirens going off and at that moment, Stephen is holding the camera beside me and I knew what he was thinking. He was like, “Great,” because at the back of my mind I’m like, “F-ck, yeah, pull me over, pull me over. This is gonna make the movie. If I can get him to play along with me, this is gonna make the movie.”
Policeman pulls me over, I just have to tell myself, “Don’t say that cheesy line of, ‘What seems to be the problem?'” [Laughs] Because I’ll be in a lot of trouble. But the policeman was great, he makes the film. He says, “Are you working tonight?” He obviously looked at the cameras, I was like, “Yeah,” so in a way, me being as nice as possible, as we all do when we get pulled over, works because it shows a side of Budge you haven’t seen before. He can turn it on when he wants, you know what I mean? Then he can flip back in when the police goes, and now we’re in business, so they’re the little moments that you can’t plan and sometimes you need those things where you can’t plan.
Because life and filmmaking, if you’re holding on like that, it’s easy to do and we all hold on, we try and control, the hardest thing is to just let go. But then when you do let go, magic can happen and I think as the end of that movie goes, there’s a little bit of calm in Budge, he takes off his watch, time is meaningless anymore. He believes in that love and then we see him let go. That’s all you want the audience to feel and that was Stephen’s message and that’s what I’m proud about this movie.
You guys captured it perfectly, so I commend you on that front. I know that you’ve executive produced shorts that you’ve been involved in before, but this is your first time executive producing a feature-length project. What was that like for you stepping into that chair?
Moe Dunford: In a way, I didn’t have to do very much, I just said to the lads, “Listen, lads, I have a good few contacts here in Ireland and they can help us out and I can be of help and hopefully you give me a credit and I might actually get paid something if this does well.” But besides all of those logistics, it was Jon Silk and Paul Kennedy that did the heavy lifting. John Silk was involved with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so much weird coincidence with with that, but he’s just so cool, he’s a proper producer. Paul Kennedy, amazing producer.
All I can do is go, “Hey, let’s get into a film festival here, get into a film festival there,” have a word about casting. It was fun, because on a project like this, you can’t just show up as an actor on day one and go, “Okay, let’s go,” you have to be involved for the whole time. You have to be involved with talks, you have to be involved with the logistics and Stephen himself was so generous and it was such a positive kind of working relationship where I was included every day. The most enjoyable thing about this was the rehearsal stage before we shot, we’re all in our lockdowns in Ireland, different places, all on Zoom, all changing lines to suit, no ego involved, just trying to make it as understandable and relatable as possible, and that I really enjoyed.
I don’t really enjoy coming in and talking to a director and there’s hierarchies, I really like that when it comes to that process, so it was really fun and I learned a lot from it. It was scary, at times the element of fear would come in when doing it and you just have to trust you’re working with a great team, great actors with you.
So what would you say for you was the biggest challenge out of all of it?
Moe Dunford: I haven’t even talked about the phone calls, Jesus, yeah, the phone calls are a huge part of it! The phone calls, they were the biggest challenge to me, because they weren’t coming in live. Like with Locke, Andrew Scott was up in his hotel room and you have a couple of takes to do it. We organized the way that they were on a CD, so I was driving and operating, “Stop, start.” There were seven different tracks, so I’d have to drive, do the dialogue knowing there’s a camera there.
I’d have to forget about the tracks, get comfortable with the tracks, trust that the tracks are going to work. That was kind of head wrecking, man, we probably could have done with another week, I’d say, of rehearsals. [Laughs] But we pulled it off, that was a bit of a head mincer. The other thing is not knowing how one reads on camera in the frame, because it’s just you. You’re doing all of that, you’re trying to tell the story and you’re working off these great actors who deliver great performances in their voice roles.
But one night, your energy might start a bit too much, next night, you’re told to calm it down a bit, next night, somebody throws a glass bottle, things had gotten quite intense at the beginning, I’m talking about in the neighborhood that I mentioned, there was a lot of stuff going on outside in the locations. Stephen gave a great note to “Just drive the car, don’t crash it, say the lines, don’t forget them,” and we stuck to that mantra, things were a lot easier, you know? Well, in theory they were. [Laughs]
Nightride is now in select theaters, digital platforms and VOD.