NEW YORK, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- British playwright Martin McDonagh said he decided to set his feature-film directorial debut in Bruges because the Belgian city is seldom seen on screen.
McDonagh's aptly named "In Bruges" is about two Irish hit men, played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who hide out in the city after a difficult job.
"I was just struck by how beautiful (Bruges) was and how unchanged and medieval and Gothic and otherworldly, and I just wondered why it hadn't been captured on film before when it was so distinctive. And, in the middle of the second day, I had gone to every museum twice and every church three times and I was bored and just wanted to get drunk," he told reporters in New York Monday. "That kind of became two warring characters in my head -- the culture-loving geek and the drunken slut."
McDonagh said he then started thinking about reasons why two people might be in a town like Bruges when they didn't want to be.
"It was completely organic. Bruges wrote itself into it. If we hadn't been allowed to shoot there, I'd have scrapped the whole thing because there isn't another place which would've served the same purpose."
