Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, winners of Best Song for “Once.”
“We were in a restaurant and we sat down, and we saw, oh my god, that’s Melissa Etheridge, she won last year!” Hansard said. “I asked her, Can I hold the hand that won last year’ It was a very amazing moment for us.”
Hansard said he’d also gotten a congratulatory text message from a famous countryman.” “Getting a text from Bono is one of the biggest things that can happen to an Irishman,” he said, calling the U2 frontman “the chieftain of our country.”
Irglova said she hoped “Once,” in its modest way, did its part to restore some art to the art form.
“We set out on a trip to make something that was true to us, and felt that we could share with a lot of people,” she said. “Nowadays a lot of the films that are being made for different reasons than art. … Art has been compromised by how much money a film is expected to gross.”
