The award-winning playwright behind "The Weir" and director of charming Irish comedy-drama "Saltwater" goes for all-out farce in "The Actors". He talks to BBCi Films about mucking about, the toughness of comedy, and Michael Caine's "angry energy"...

How do you feel about "The Actors"?

I lived with that project for a long, long time. I'm proud of it, I'm very proud of it. I think it has its own kind of mad charm, in a way, its own genteel kind of insanity, which I really like. It's not trying to say anything about anything, it's just being there, it's just this crazy thing that you look at.

It's not believable - it's not really meant to be - it's just ridiculous. I find it quite easy to look at because it's not like I was trying to achieve anything of huge, lasting value. It's just: is it funny? Do the audience like it? And if they do, that's it.

Comedy is an underappreciated genre...

The thing about comedy is that it's really, really hard, it's really, really difficult to do. If it's a horror film you can go, "What we need now is a big shock," and you can work that out and do it. You've got all those things at your disposal - editing and music and all that. Whereas with comedy you go, "Well, what happens now is we've got to make everybody laugh." And it's like, "How the **** are we going to do that?"

People constantly underestimate great comic actors...

It's like with [Robert De Niro in] "The King of Comedy". To play a character who is enthusiastic, confident, upbeat, is much harder. Any actor can break down and cry, that's actually quite easy. Even people that aren't actors can do it, but if you say, "For the next ten minutes, I just need you to be funny," only about two or three percent of people in the world can possibly manage to do it.

Michael Caine is an underappreciated actor...

Yeah, Michael Caine is a very, very good actor, but he's done a lot of work that isn't... the standard hasn't been consistent. And he's very open in talking about that. He would say that not every film can work, and you have to agree with him. That is true.

He says "Jaws 4: The Revenge" paid for the extension on his house...

That's what he says. It's like, "Yeah, I did "The Swarm", I bought my mother a house. Not everything in life is about art." You have to agree. And who are we to criticise him? Except that we have to sit through it. But then he says you don't have to if you don't want to.

How did Dylan Moran get involved with "The Actors"?

Dylan was suggested to me by Susie Figgis, the casting director. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to see him, because I thought we'd need a really good actor in that part, and I wasn't sure that he had ever really done any acting. When I screen-tested him, he came in and he just was that character.

Dylan has that thing where it's like he's just landed on the planet. He has a wide-eyed kind of innocence about him, sort of a childlike quality which makes him very vulnerable. I think the audience identify with him. They like him, they root for him, and I knew that he was right for that part.

I thought that Michael Caine was perfect for the other part, because he always struck me as having quite an angry energy, and he just suited that part perfectly. But he doesn't have that energy when you meet him, and he's actually very pleasant. But his persona always seemed to me to be quite spiky somehow.

What was the atmosphere like on set?

It was a bit like being in school and you've got a free class or something, or you're all behind the bike sheds and you're wondering when someone is going to tell you to come in and stop messing.

It was an impossible film to direct in terms of the acting, because it wasn't like I could really base the emotional stuff in it on anything that was real, because it's all so crazy and stupid. So all I could really do was to encourage the actors to do it with a lot of enthusiasm, just really go for it.

I think people did it with a lot of abandon. I think they just enjoyed it, so it was kind of a highly charged, electric kind of atmosphere. Doing all that slapstick as well, with people running around all the time, it was really bizarre. It was just weird. You just always felt like someone was going to come and say, "What the **** are you doing?"